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Town
Now
We’ve been back for one whole week.One week. It’s making the year look like an eternity. Something longer and more painful than an eternity. If there is such a place - it’s here in my new life refilling my old existence. Isaac starts school on Monday, the first day of the Autumn term, and he’s as nervous as hell; prowling caged tiger nervous, lashing at anyone who so much as looks at him. As we live together I’m nursing some internal parenting scars. Even I’m nervous, although trying not to let it show in a stiff upper lip British way. Worried sick he’s not going to get on there: won’t make any friends, will be behind, or that all the other mums won’t talk to me. It can’t be all about him.
I’m rushing around town getting all the supplies we need. It’s very last minute, but I’ve barely had a moment to myself all week. I don’t know how mum was surviving before we got back. It’s a full-time occupation, trying to make sure she’s not wandering down the street in her nightie or setting fire to baked beans—both things have happened in the last few days.
Dani has been around, helping where she can. I had an uncomfortable moment where I had to wave at Grant Bale who was sat down the end of the drive in his car. “Come and talk to him,” she prompted. Hell no!
I haven’t had any other visitors. The locket which keeps finding its way into my hand every night feels heavier and heavier with every passing day. It’s like it’s reminding me I need to grow a pair and return the damn thing.
The one thing I do want to do in town is get some paint for Isaac’s room. He’s now refusing to sleep in there at all. He says it’s a granny room and freaks him out. I can’t really blame him.
My mum isn’t even that old—young by some standards—but the early Alzheimer’s has aged her far beyond her years.
I steer my way into the small DIY shop. It’s one of those places where all the stock is covered in dust and precariously balanced, cramming as much onto the shelves as possible.
I work my way around to the paints and gaze blankly at the selection. Now it comes to it, I’m not sure what colour a nine-year-old would like.
Finally, I settle for a moss coloured green and some brilliant white. I’m attempting to carry four big tins to the counter when someone grabs two out of my left hand. I glance to the left to say thank you, but the words die in my throat. It’shim.
Teaspoon heartbreak.
Shit. He still looks beautiful.
Truly beautiful.
His hair is slightly darker than I remember but still very fair; his mouth wide, always quick to grin; and then there are the ocean blue eyes which were created to drown in.
“Mrs Williamson.” He nods in greeting and my heart gives three almighty pumps and then possibly stops working. My knees start to knock together, my limbs as awkward as a puppet on a string. I think my body is shutting down. Someone get me one of those zapper things, jeez, I can’t even remember what they are called… I’m staring… I can’t help it… defibrillator… that’s the one.
“Bleugh.” Apparently my standard tongue-tied response hasn’t improved in ten years. Actually, I can’t remember being tongue-tied in the last ten years. Well apart from that moment where I struggled to say, ‘I do’, and sounded it out like a five-year-old practising their phonics.
“I d-o-o,” should have been the first sign.
“Painting?” he asks, hoisting the tins onto the counter.
“Nope. I needed some doorstops.”
A small twitch lifts the left side of his mouth. Just the smallest movement, but I see it all the same.
“Want some help getting them to your car?”
“Uh.” My mouth flaps about. “Uh.” The car is parked right down the other end of the High Street. That sounds awkward. And sweaty.
Freddy leans back and folds his arms across his chest, waiting for me to answer. By the look on his face, I’d guess he remembers that sometimes I find situations like this particularly challenging.
I wish I wasn’t, wish I could be better, superior… anything other than tongue-tied Amber.
‘Yes,” I blurt, eventually, just to stop him staring at me that way. His eyes are a bright, a challenge in their faceted depths. I’m trying not to look within them. I know if I do it will make it harder. Cry diamonds out of my tear ducts, harder. “Thank you.”
Freddy moves himself out of the way, leaning his long legs against the counter while I struggle to pay. And when I say struggle, what I mean is that my fingers won’t work, and my hands are shaking.
Finally, we are ready to leave the shop, but only after a mortifying ten-minute process whereby I firstly can’t get my damn bank card out of my purse with my useless fingers, and then secondly my mind goes completely blank, and I can’t remember my pin. The whole time he watches me with an amused look on his face.
He follows me out into the sunlit street, and the warm air smacks me straight in the face, making my top lip sweat. My hands are busy holding a can of paint each, so I just have to walk on with it glistening there. I trail my way to the car, his legs matching my short stubbies, just like he never stopped trying to slow his pace to mine.
He doesn’t say a word.
