The truth was that since the moment she’d regained consciousness, she’d been fighting a numbness that was trying to steal over her. A veil of paralysis was trying to descend somewhere in her mind like a roller shutter door that couldn’t be stopped, and yet somehow she kept managing to wedge her foot underneath and send it back up. It was constant and it was exhausting.
Everyone she met greeted her with the same question or a variation. How are you? How are you feeling?
Nothing. She felt nothing.
She wasn’t angry, sad, regretful, joyous, grateful. Just fucking nothing.
How the hell was she supposed to feel?
She’d given herself to a madman. She had knowingly offered her life to save Emma and Chloe. She had made that deal. She had accepted it. Every inch of her body had been subjected to a brutal attack, and she had kept her side of the bargain and died. And then due to the actions of others, she’d been forced to renege on the deal she’d made. Her life was owed to someone. Not Leanne, but someone, somewhere was owed the debt of her existence.
Barney stepped up onto the sofa with reticence instead of his usual gambolling buoyancy. It had been a while since it had been just the two of them together in this house.
He didn’t look at her. He stared forward as though waiting for an invisible boundary line to be lifted.
She slipped her arm around him and pulled him close.
‘We’ll be okay, boy, won’t we, eh?’ she asked as the numbness came for her again.
* * *