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I couldn’t finish my mountain of tagliatelle, but Hope had no trouble polishing off hers. ‘I thought you were saving some room for a gelato,’ I said, glancing over at the very impressive ice cream counter. My eyes were already moving on when they stopped and darted back to two tall figures standing by the counter. He spotted me a second or so later.
‘Maddie.’
I smiled broadly across the heads of the other diners. ‘Mitch.’
‘Small world,’ called out Mitch, his voice a rumbling boom, even when he was trying to talk quietly. Thankfully, rather than annoy the other customers, he grabbed his companion’s arm, and began threading his way towards us.
I had seen Mitch briefly at the flat on a couple of occasions since I’d moved back in, but he’d been in a hurry both times and had needed to rush away. For a moment I thought he might be thinking of doing so again when he noticed that I wasn’t eating alone.
‘Hope, you remember Mitch, don’t you?’
My usually confident daughter mumbled a shy and almost inarticulate ‘Of course,’ and when I stole a sideways glance I noticed her pale skin was flushed a becoming pink. It was only as I lookedbeyondMitch that I realised the blush hadn’t been for him.
‘This can’t be Sam, can it?’ I asked. The young man standing beside Mitch, who was almost as tall as his father, nodded once. His limbs looked disproportionately long, reminding me of a baby giraffe’s; a comparison I wisely chose not to share. I probably should have thought twice before voicing my next comment too. ‘How is that even possible? The last time I saw you, you were playing with Transformers and action men, and eating chocolate biscuits like they were going out of fashion.’
The fledgling stubble on Sam’s cheeks wasn’t thick enough to hide the rush of blood to his face.
‘He still does that – the biscuit thing,’ chimed in Mitch. Sam and Hope exchanged a look of mutual sympathy at their embarrassing parents. Their eyes connected for less than a second before quickly darting away. I noticed Hope was flattening her hair against her neck, making sure the unsightly love bite was completely hidden. Perhapsthat’swhat prompted me to impulsively ask Mitch and his son to join us.
‘We were about to order ice creams,’ I said, shuffling my many carrier bags to one side to make room for Mitch to pull out a chair.
‘And we were just going to get a couple to take away,’ said Mitch, gesturing his son to take the chair beside Hope. ‘But we could join you for a few minutes, if that’s okay with both of you?’
‘Great,’ I said, answering for Hope who for some strange reason seemed to have mysteriously lost the ability to speak.
I shared a dessert menu with Mitch and ignored the pointed glare Hope shot my way when I suggested she and Sam ‘scooch up’ to share the second one.
‘Have you decided?’ Mitch asked, leaning in and jolting my attention away from our offspring, who disappointingly seemed more interested in their mobile phones than each other. From out of nowhere, a long-forgotten memory surfaced of Ryan jokingly complaining about my obsession with posting on social media. It wasn’t often that I allowed myself to think back to the days before my accident, when Ryan had been mine instead of Chloe’s. Looking back always unsettled me, so perhaps that’s why I’d jumped when I’d looked up to find Mitch’s face so close to mine. My heart spent several moments skittering around in my chest like a startled creature before finally finding and resuming its normal rhythm.
I chose randomly from the menu, anxious for Mitch to settle back in his own chair. If I didn’t know better I would say I was nervous, but that was crazy because Mitch had always had the exactoppositeeffect on me. His friendship was like aloe vera, a soothing balm on my soul. I’d tried once to explain it to him, but I must have reached for all the wrong words, because instead of taking it as the compliment I’d intended, he’d looked vaguely hurt as though I’d somehow insulted him.
‘Are you and Sam shopping today too?’ I asked, unable to stifle a laugh at the look of horror on Mitch’s face. Mitch wore a ‘uniform’ of jeans and checked shirts which I had long suspected he bought in bulk to avoid any type of shopping expedition.
From the other end of our table Sam laughed. ‘No. We’re going to the cinema here.’ He named a film I had never heard of, which apparently was the latest release in an action movie series that had broken box office records while I slept.
‘I thought you were more of a romcom guy,’ I said, turning to Mitch.
Amazingly his cheeks flushed with colour. ‘I can’t believe you remembered that. It must be years since we had that conversation.’
‘Years to you, but just months to me,’ I said trying not to sound sad, and almost managing to pull it off.
‘You’re a bit like a time traveller, aren’t you, the way you drop in and out of our lives?’ It was an unexpectedly poetic way for anyone to describe my medical history, and I could see Mitch rather liked his analogy. He smiled at me, brushing the hair out of his eyes, but leaving a single lock behind. It was much harder than it should have been not to reach over and tidy it away for him. He reallydidneed a haircut.
‘You’ve certainly aged much better than the rest of us,’ Mitch continued.
‘Well, I definitely feel old, especially when I see how grown up Hope and Sam are these days.’ I looked over at the two teenagers who now appeared considerably more relaxed as they leant closer together, laughing at something on Hope’s phone screen. ‘Although tomorrow I’m sure I’ll be feeling like a helpless child all over again.’
‘Why? What’s happening tomorrow?’
I swirled the spoon through the melting remains of ice cream in my bowl. ‘I’m going to visit my mum in the care home. It’s the first time I’ll have seen her since I woke up.This time, that is.’
Mitch gave me the moment I needed to compose myself before startling me with his next question. ‘How are you getting there? Because I happen to be visiting a friend tomorrow and she doesn’t live that far away from your mum’s care home. I could give you a lift if you like?’
His offer surprised me on several levels. One, that he had remembered the location of the care home after all these years; and that he’d realised how little I’d been looking forward to the long train journey. I refused to acknowledge that there was anything further that bothered me. I wasn’t in the least bit curious about the identity of Mitch’s female friend, because obviously that was none of my business. And yet, like a troublesome tooth that you just can’t leave alone, my thoughts persisted in going back to it throughout the rest of afternoon.
CHAPTER 3
‘She’s still in the shower, I’m afraid.’
