The following morning I woke from a deep sleep to the sound of fast flowing water. Startled, I sat up and rubbed my eyes – I was alone in the bed.
"JOSH!" I shouted.
The soft shuffle of his footfall filled me with a surging sense of euphoria. He appeared in the doorway looking adorable in his white towelling bathrobe and sexy smile. He held out his hand, "Come girlfriend, I've run us a bubbling love bath," he said.
It was a wake up call I welcomed, and I realized that I was a very lucky girl as my first time was beyond perfection – it was heavenly.
###
Afterwards I felt light and floaty as I dressed; whilst Josh ordered a cab to take me home. Mum knew I'd stayed over. I'd decided to call her, as she deserved to know this truth given there would be so much more that I would have to hide from her.
Josh opened the door of the cab and kissed my cheek, "See you later, love ya," he said. I watched as he blew kisses until the cab turned the corner and he was out of my sight.
But he was firmly in my mind – a momentary thought frightened me: I really would lose my mind if anything happened to Josh. But it soon vanished at the thought that I'd be seeing him again in a few short hours.
I was to meet him at the hospital to visit Dylan. We'd spoken to his dad and learned that the bullet had resulted in a relatively superficial wound and he was recuperating, expected to make a full recovery. Donal also informed us that Dylan had been diagnosed as a Paranoid Schizophrenic just after his fithteenth birthday and his sudden halting of his medication had facilitated the traffickers to use him to their advantage. It all began to make absolute sense.
###
Mum was sitting at the kitchen table her hands clasped around a mug of tea. She looked at me strangely and I reacted accordingly, "What's up, what you looking at?" I asked, while switching on the kettle.
"You. My daughter's a woman now, you look all grown up. I feel sad," she said.
I made my tea and joined her at the table, "SAD!" I exclaimed. She stroked my arm, "You're growing up, being responsible, I'm proud of you." She smiled, "When I say sad, I mean a kind of happy sad that my bay's growing up – I can see you're happy, you're positively glowing."
She lifted her eye and asked sheepishly, "Were you responsible?" I laughed, "Yes, we were. Were you?"
She squealed, "Daughter, you can't ask me that, I'm your mother."
"Yes, I can. Were you and Mr Lacey responsible?" I repeated.
Suddenly our roles were reversed, mum looked all wrong and guilty, "We got a little carried away, I had to go for the morning after pill this morning," she said, looking ever so slightly ashamed.
After a moments pause, we both smiled at the irony and instinctively hugged. She was my mum, but she was also my best friend and I could never judge her harshly.
She unwound herself from me and asked, "Do you love him?"
I glanced at my phone, hoping to see a message from him. When there wasn't one my heart sank and the strange sense of foreboding came over me. I glanced back to mum, "Yes. Probably too much, because I've got this fear that something bad is going to happen to him," I confessed.
Mum rubbed my shoulder, "That's understandable, you lost your dad at a young age and you saw what his loss did to me." She lifted her voice, "Fate won't allow such a loss happen twice in the same family," she said, with a positive optimism.
