No One I Knew by A McDine (best e book reader for android .TXT) 📕

wide as she fought for her balance against the raging river. I leaned towards her, every sinew in my arm stretched to breaking point. Our fingers touched for the briefest second. And then a surge of water swept her off her feet, flinging her body against the back wall as if it was a piece of flotsam.

I watched, mesmerised, as the river carried her through the open water gate and away.

Epilogue

THREE MONTHS LATER

Traffic was heavier than usual on the drive to work, and when the red lights began flashing on the level crossing at Sturry as I reached it, I called the office.

After a single ring the phone was answered with a cheerful, ‘FoodWrapped. How may I help?’

‘Emily, it’s Cleo. I’m running ten minutes late. Is everyone there?’

‘Oh, hi Cleo, yes they’re in the conference room. I’ve made a fresh pot of coffee and set out the Marks and Spencer shortbread. They seem happy enough.’

‘You’re an angel. Tell them I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘Of course. You drive safely.’

I ended the call and smiled to myself as a South Eastern train rumbled past on its way to Canterbury. For the first few weeks after the flood, I used a series of temps to man the phones. Then, out of the blue, I had a text from our old secretary, Emily, asking if I had any part-time work that she could fit around her young family. I said yes on the spot, and she started the following week.

It had been a wrench, sending the children back to school, going back to work. But we couldn’t hide from the world forever.

While Immy had remained remarkably unaffected by her ordeal, it had left a lasting impact on me. I still had nightmares about those dark days following her abduction. I was hyper-vigilant in crowds and reluctant to let the children out of my sight. Confident and self-assured all my life, I now understood how crippling anxiety could be.

The counsellor I was seeing told me it would pass. That time was a great healer. And he was right. The nightmares were becoming less frequent, the panic attacks less severe. And Stuart had been amazing. He talked me down when anxiety threatened to overwhelm me and understood my need to know where Nate and Immy were at all times.

He was also fully supportive of my decision to sell FoodWrapped. As was Melanie. She had no interest in stepping into Bill’s shoes and so, less than a fortnight after the flood, I started putting out feelers for a buyer.

It wasn’t long before I had an expression of interest from Templemans, a well-known Kent-based firm that supplied restaurant chains, hotels, hospitals and schools across the UK and was keen to make the move into meal kits.

Templemans had the factories and distribution chains in place to see FoodWrapped go to the next level. As Dave Templeman, the company’s managing director, said to me the first time we met, ‘We want a piece of the meal kit pie.’ And then he pushed a piece of paper across the table towards me with an eye-wateringly large amount of money scrawled on it. ‘And that,’ he said, ‘is what we’re willing to pay for a piece of that pie.’

After negotiating an additional ten percent and an assurance that Templemans would keep on all our staff - just because I suffered from the odd panic attack didn’t mean I’d lost my killer business instinct - I put the offer to Stuart and Melanie.

‘Are you sure you won’t regret this?’ Stuart said with a frown. ‘The company means everything to you.’

‘It used to,’ I corrected him. ‘Not any more. Mel?’

She glanced at Stuart and then smiled. ‘I’m more than happy to take the money and run.’

And so we accepted the offer, and while I sat in traffic waiting for the level crossing barriers to rise, Dave Templeman, Melanie and Stuart were waiting in our small conference room with the Templemans’ lawyer and our accountant drinking coffee and eating shortbread until I arrived and we could sign the contracts. As of ten o’clock this morning, the company would no longer be mine.

It was the end of an era. Because FoodWrapped wasn’t just a business to me. With Bill by my side, I’d created it from nothing, sacrificing so much along the way. My blood, sweat and tears were built into the fabric of the company and I’d always thought that without it I’d be cut adrift with no anchor, no goal.

But I’d ignored the toll the constant pressure had taken on me. The feeling that I wasn’t good enough at anything: a good enough businesswoman, good enough wife, good enough mum.

And so Stuart was wrong. I had no regrets. Just an intense feeling of relief mixed in with a hefty dose of excitement at what the future held. By lunchtime, I’d have a stupid amount of money sitting in my bank account. Financial independence bought security and freedom. And time. Time to spend with the kids, to make memories, to heal ourselves. I could kick back a little, take it easy. Buy a campervan and take the kids to Europe every summer, like Stuart and I had always promised ourselves we would when we were students. Buy a castle on a Scottish Isle. Fuck it, with the money I’d have in the bank, I could probably buy the entire island.

The contracts signed, Emily appeared with a fresh pot of coffee.

‘I think this calls for something stronger, don’t you?’ I said. ‘There’s champagne in the fridge.’

‘I’ll fetch it,’ she said.

‘No, you take a seat. I’ll do it,’ I told her.

I found a tray and glasses and the two bottles of Moët I’d bought for the occasion and carried them through to the conference room. Stuart jumped to his feet and took the champagne. ‘Let me,’ he said, expertly popping the cork and filling our glasses.

I held mine aloft. ‘To the end of a chapter.’

‘And the beginning of another,’ Dave