AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay.”
Before he starts the car, my hand shoots out and grasps his. “Freddy, I know this is too much.” I lose my words, not sure what I’m trying to express.
He lifts his chin and looks directly at me. “What’s too much?”
“Ev-everything we’ve ever been. I feel like tragedy is following us, determined that we shouldn’t be anything more. I can understand if you want to call it a day.”
He pauses, possibly picking the right words. “So, eleven years ago you sat by my side every single day, you dropped your schoolwork, you lost your friends, you fell out with your family in a way that can’t ever be fixed, and you think that this will be too much for me?” He offers a slow shake of his head. “Nothing is too much for you, Amber.”
I slide back down in my seat. “I hope you’re right.”
Fifteen minuteslater and still in silence—although this time not so laden with unspoken words—we pull into my old road. It’s lined with Edwardian semis and they stand regal, holding their lofty position off the pavement, surrounded by pruned bushes and neat pathways.
“Is this where you lived before you came back home?” His voice hesitates over the wordhome,as he looks critically at the upper end of the suburban middle class living quarters.
“Yep.” My gaze drifts up the familiar street. “Come on. Let’s get Isaac and get this over with.”
I’m making it sound less than it is, but if I can just pretend that what I’m about to do is nothing major, then I may just get through it.
“Do you want me to come in with you?” Freddy jumps out of the car without my answer and comes around to open my door.
“I think I should do this by myself.”
Hesitating, he runs through this scenario. “I don’t want you going into that tosser’s house by yourself,” he states firmly.
“It’s okay. I doubt even Elliot can make this situation about himself.”
Freddy doesn’t look convinced, but allows me to pass him by, his feet trailing just one step behind mine up to the blue front door. I rap the brass knocker loudly and hear the shout of Isaac’s voice laughing at something the other side. Freddy stiffens and raises his shoulders, so I reach my hand back and give his fingers a brief squeeze, dropping them again as the door flies open.
“Mum!” Isaac shouts, a wide beam from ear to ear. “I can’t believe you ventured out of sticksville to come and get me.” His bright eyes land on Freddy and his smile becomes a fraction smaller.
“I’ll wait outside,” Freddy says, as Elliot comes down the wood-floored hallway.
I step over the threshold and start to close the door, but not before Elliot pipes up with, “You can always use your keys, Amber.”
The door snags shut and I take another deep breath, visualising Freddy standing on the other side, completing the same fundamental task.
“Mum, what are you and Freddy doing here, and why is he standing outside?”
Dragging another lungful of air, I turn and face my son, ready to tell him how our lives have changed yet again.
Despite my absence of months from my old home, it still seems strangely familiar. The gouge taken out of the wall in the hallway when Isaac rode his bike along it is still visible. The pencil lines marking Isaac’s height as the four years spent here sped past are still faintly marked on the wall just outside the kitchen. And all my purple cushions and furnishings are still in place, just as I left them.
A bitter pang tugs at my heart and sets off a tingle of tears, which I try to rapidly blink away.
I wasn’t happy here, the six months I spent on the sofa before I built up the guts to leave reminds me of this, but on the day after the only other home I’ve known has burnt down, anything familiar feels good.
“Isaac, I need you to sit down, baby, and listen to me.”
He does without question, which must be a lifetime first. I pick his hand up in mine as I race through the right way to say it. I should have thought about this in the car, but the only thing I could think of then was the silence sitting between Freddy and myself.
“Can you give us a moment please?” I ask Elliot, who has perched on the other sofa. The one I didn’t sleep on. He hasn’t got the smirk on his face I’ve been associating with him of late; he looks much more like the man that I thought I could fall in love with.
He doesn’t argue and he leaves immediately.
“What is it, Mum?”
“Isaac, there is no easy way for me to tell you this, but yesterday there was an accident at home, and Nanny was killed in a fire.” I just blurt the words, my own inability to process them ensuring there is no sugar-coating to sweeten the truth for my son.
