In The Name Of Love

Chapter 21

I laid the table and sat down waiting for dinner. Mum was making shepherds' pie, my favourite, and my stomach was growling. She brought it in calling Roy in for dinner too. I kind of wanted to leave the room, but I knew I had to face him some time, and it wasn't like he'd done anything wrong. 

"Mum, did you see the news earlier?" Roy asked.

"I was busy making dinner, why?" she asked and sat opposite me.

Roy sat next to me as usual because he even liked us to sit in certain places. "Mircea was on it telling everyone that Wyn left and he was really upset about it."

My heart constricted and my throat closed up. Mircea. He was upset because of me. I wanted to go back there and tell him I'd changed my mind, that Roy could go hang and look after himself, that everything was going to be ok because I was going to be with him and live with him and love him and marry him. But I couldn't. I had to stay here. I had to.

I forced myself to eat some pie even though I wasn't hungry anymore. It tasted like cardboard and took a lot of effort to chew even though it was mash potato and mince. It got stuck in the back of my throat as I swallowed and made me feel sick when it hit my stomach.

"He was reading a statement that Wyn wrote about why she left and he started crying – It's on TV again now." He picked the remote up and turned the TV on.

I snatched the remote from him, turned it straight back off, took the battery cell out of it and slammed it down on the table.

"What did I –"

"I don't want the TV on, ok," I snapped and turned back to my food.

He only went and got his phone out and watched the news on that. I took the bloody thing off him and dropped it in his cup of water.

"Anwyn!" Mum snapped.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot Roy's the most important person in the universe," I snapped right back as she began to fuss over her precious Roy.

I got up, disgusted, and took my dinner into the kitchen knowing that he wasn't going to follow me in there. I sat on the floor leaning against a cupboard and picked at my food suddenly not hungry at all. I'd heard his voice. Mircea. Saying 'I'm sorry'. I knew the words were mine, that he was reading my apology, but the way he said them, the tone... It was all for me.

He was apologising to me when he had no business doing so because he hadn't done anything wrong. I put my plate on the floor and tipped my head back against the cupboard.

In the dining room Roy was making a fuss which I blocked out.

"I hope you're happy with yourself," Mum said to me and slammed the door shut. "He's got to spend days getting his phone working again."

"It'll give you a project," I said bluntly.

"What happened to you? You were only treated like a princess for a few days, girl, that's no reason to get selfish!"

"Selfish?" I asked flying to my feet. "Me? I gave up the man I love to that I can look after your precious little Roy and all because he's too set in his ways, convinced he's afraid of kitchens even though he's never set foot in one before."

"Fears are difficult to over come. Look at you and horses!"

"I sat on a horse for hours the other day!" I yelled. "I spent the best part of a month being scared out of my mind that I was going to do something wrong but I went to support the man I love and I tried my damn hardest and I came back. I didn't want to, but I did. Because Roy's too selfish to even try." I stalked out of there and stomped my way up the stairs crying my eyes out.