Brick by Brick

Part Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Six months later

"You young lady are becoming a terror!" Sammy returned to the lounge to find that her daughter had disappeared. Rushing to the kitchen, the only room that Eleanor could crawl into, she stopped in the doorway and laughed out loud at the sight of her daughter in front of the open freezer, an ice cube in her hand her face a grimace as she tried to chew it.

Moving to her she scooped her into her arms, "you want an ice lolly?" Over the summer her daughter had got a real taste for frozen yoghurt sticks, but helping herself was a little too advanced for Sammy's liking. She wasn't yet a year old.

"It's always the way, you're desperate for them to crawl, to walk, yet when they do you can't relax any more. You were the same. Always into everything, always ahead of yourself."

Sammy turned to see Monica stood in the doorway watching them. Her mother's dramatic change in behaviour had been the most weird yet the most perfectly timed surprise that could ever have happened in the last few months. She'd returned from London in such a mess, at such short notice, and where she'd expected to be sleeping on Corinne's sofa, trying to scrape together the resources to rent a place to live. And Monica had arrived and offered her the two rooms in the house she'd inherited from her grandmother.

"Why this? Why now? You've never done anything for me." She'd immediately had been defensive at the offer of support from her so frequently errant mother.

Monica had shrugged and given a half smile, "rattling around in that big old house, there are two rooms...plus you could help out with bills..."

She'd laughed at that, "I should have known there was something in it for you."

Monica had been honest then, "so I'm not great in managing finances, but it'll be cheaper than living anywhere else."

Whatever she had thought about her mother's plans, she was right, it was a secure home, she was safe and there was plenty of room for Eleanor to run around. She'd fallen from a home, to another home, she couldn't have asked for more.

As she thought about the home she'd left behind, her home with Marcus, she wondered if she could cry anymore after all that had happened. She'd cried a million rivers over all that she'd lost that afternoon at just one sentence from Joel.

She remembered that day so clearly even though it was months earlier, a hung-over Joel stood in front of her reciting what almost seemed like a script that Daniel had read to her days earlier.

"I thought you could keep this place, this apartment, but there's been some anomalies...I'm sorry, I thought I could work it, but the finance company...they've sold it."

"Sold?" Her heart had pounded in her ears, the four walls that surrounded her were literally all the security and support that she had in the world.

"Look I've got a short term plan, just until I work out what the fuck is happening, then we'll be back on track."

She had shaken her head as she stepped away from him, suddenly this was all too much, "I...er..."

He took her hand, "move into mine, for a little while, you'll have to share a room with Eleanor, but when we get things sorted I'll help you find a new place..."

"He said you'd do this." The words sounded foreign leaving her lips, but not as foreign as the pain that entere3d her heart. He had betrayed her, he'd lost her the home she craved...and she couldn't even begin to think what that meant in terms of Marcus. She thought that she'd had the answers; Joel had assured her that it was all ok, that Marcus hadn't lost everything.