AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For a long moment we watch each other, two women who were best friends from childhood now standing like two strangers across a supermarket aisle. I shift from foot to foot until the weight of the groceries laden in my arms kicks me into moving on. “Listen, I’ve got to go.” I motion to the packages.
“Sure, listen, I’m sorry to hear your mum is sick, Amber.”
I’m confused and I must show it, then reality hauls me straight up to present, to my mother who is sick and living in decay, and to Isaac who’s waiting at home for something to eat.
“Yeah, me too, I guess.” I shrug with an inch or two of indifference because I haven’t truly had time to process the fact that my remaining parent is ill enough to need assistance from the child she despises. Another shrug, just for good measure, just because it makes me feel a little better.
I head for the till, and Dani aims for the door. “Listen,” she calls, turning to face me with her hand paused on the handle. “I’d love to catch up when you’re ready.”
“You would?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Sure.” I lift my lips into a tentative smile. “I’d like that sometime.”
“Sure,” she echoes.
After the door closes behind her, I turn to the cashier and start to pay for my groceries. A panicked fluster makes me drop my purse, then my cards, and then forget my pin. I’m a sweaty mess as I head back out into the sunshine. Walking back to the car, I’m distracted from overthinking as I groan a long torrent of curses and grasp at the parking ticket waving prettily in the wind. Snatching it off the window, I dump the groceries in the boot and dive into the driver’s seat, gunning my way to the safety of the edge of town before I run into anyone else from my past.
Back home,I can hear music upstairs. That’s good news, Isaac must be settling in. “I’ve got bread,” I holler up to the landing. “We need to eat it today, otherwise it will be stale tomorrow.” I wait a beat for a reply but when none comes I haul my purchases into the kitchen. “Mum, I’ve got eggs, would you like some scrambled?” No reply. Crap, where is she? I’m trying not to be alarmed or dramatic, but the woman is as wily as a fox when it comes to escaping. I lost her twice yesterday and I’d only been back half an hour. A quick peek into the lounge shows me she is asleep in the chair, the cup of tea I made her this morning balancing untouched on the armrest. I change course from the kitchen and go rescue the cup in the dingy front room. The curtains hang unwashed. The nets—my mother’s former pride—hang in grey drags like a torn cobweb. Taking a long look at Mum, I wonder if I did the right thing coming back here. It was a crazy gamble coming back, hoping that maybe I could make a new life for myself, especially after being so desperate to escape from the one I had here before.
With a deep sigh, I make it into the kitchen and see just how truly awful the state of it is. It’s grimy and dusty. Spider’s webs hang from all fixtures. Digging out the rubber gloves I had the foresight to buy, I ping my hair tighter through my hair elastic and start the business of scrubbing the place clean.
The nets are on a boil wash and I’m on all fours with sweat dripping from my forehead and rolling down my nose, my knees aching from being on the floor, when the doorbell rings.
The only person who knows I’m here is Dani, and I believe we’ve exhausted our conversation for the day. Assuming it’s the neighbour coming to check on Mum, I shuffle my way into the hallway, shaking my legs out as I go. The doorbell rings again, and again, drilling a high decibel into my brain. As I swallow down my irritation, it reminds me, I haven’t had a drink yet today, despite making my mum one.
“Damn these bloody—” I pull at the rubber gloves that have stuck to my sweaty skin as the bell rings again, and again, and again, becoming increasingly more grating with each repetition. “I’m going to punch whoever it is,” I’m muttering as I finally get to the brass catch with the dodgy chain that gets stuck in the door when you close it, all because my dad didn’t read the fitting instructions right seventeen years ago.
“Jesus.” I bite back some four lettered expletives, just in case it’s Mum’s doctor, as I swing the door open. “Calm down.”
“It’s Freddy, but Jesus could work too.”
I stare up into a pair of indigo-blue eyes that in all honesty, I never expected to see again. The air simply fizzles out from inside me, like a deflated balloon. The tang of rubber from the glove I’ve got dangling from my teeth gently taps against my chin filling my nose. My little half-whimpered exhale gently rocks the rubber glove like it’s rocking from a palm tree in a tropical breeze. My legs, burning with pins and needles, give at the knees. I clutch the door tighter, anchoring myself to the present, fighting the pull of the past as it wraps its tight fingers around me the moment I gaze into starlit blues.
I breathe, and then I breathe again, forcing my lungs to work.
Breathe. It’s not that hard.
It’s him.
It’s him of the teaspoon heartbreak.
“Welcome back, Amber French.” His gaze searches over my face, looking for the answer to some forgotten question on a long-lost scrap of ancient parchment.
Even hearing him say ‘Amber French’ does something to my insides. Squishes them like Play-Doh. Makes my stomach squeeze.
Amber French is the girl I used to be. The girl who left this place.
My pulse charges, and my skin tingles with a now rare flush as I swallow down a mouthful of panicked nausea.
“It’s Amber Williamson,” I reply, almost shouting. Then my hand swings out and slams the door shut on Freddy Bale, and more importantly on the past I’ve locked away for so long. Except of course it doesn’t shut. The door never shuts. Instead, it just bangs and then shoots straight back for my face. I fall against it, desperate to block the sight on the other side of the all too thin wood.
It’s too late though. Way too late. I slide my back against the rough texture of the peeling front door, grabbing hold of air like all the oxygen in the universe may be sucked out of the atmosphere at any moment. Every memory that I’ve blocked over the last ten years floods back. My mind falls like a castle under siege as memories assault me. Words, laughter, smell and touch; they all cram in, rushing like water over cracks on a dry rock bed. They fill the deepest darkest corners of my conscience, painting every inch I have within me with a kind of magic that once I wouldn’t have thought could exist. All I’m left with in the place of rationality and sensibility is one clear thought. The only one that ever really mattered.
Freddy Bale.
Once upon a time the absolute love of my goddamn life.
