Page 43 of The Light Within

Julien squeezed his hand tighter.

“I thought…” his mother eventually said, pressing one hand to her mouth, and running the other through her ponytail. “Oh, my God. I thought he was sick.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “He told me the same thing.Exactlythe same thing. Oh my God,” she repeated, as more tears cascaded down her cheeks.

Fuck. He didn’t wantthis. Should he do something? Hug her?

“I told him he needed to get help,” she whispered. “I’m the reason he left us. I’m the reason you… you…”

Julien passed her a silk handkerchief that Cinn had never seen before, materialising it from thin air.

“He was acting so crazy,” she continued, an edge to her voice, a plea to understand her. “It just got worse and worse and I just couldn’t cope any more. Not between looking after youandhim.” She paused to blow her dripping nose. “We had you so young. I always thought, if only we’d been just a couple of years older, then everything would have been different. I thought the stress of having to provide for us drove him to madness.”

Cinn searched for words that didn’t come.

“Sometime after he left, someone phoned me,” she said slowly, as if forming connections. “I don’t think they said Switzerland, but they sounded foreign. They told me he’d died. And that was that.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Cinn blurted out.

Now he knew all this, there would be a tiny part of him that would blame her, of course. He wouldn’t be able to help it. But there wasn’t any point in her beating herself up over it. Not over twenty years later. Not now, when they’d just reconnected, when they had the rest of their lives to try to forgesomethingtogether out of the rubble they’d been left with.

“There’s no way you could have known. It sounds bonkers, even to my own ears.” Cinn managed a meek smile he hoped would comfort her.

His mum offered him a watery smile. “That’s kind, honey.”

The rain outside pelted the café window with a suddenly increased vigour, reaching deafening decibels. “Did he ever bring anyone or anything back, though?” he shouted, battling against the noise.

“What?” she shouted back, eyeing the rivulets of water streaming down the glass.

“Did my dad ever return back from one of his…visitswith something from that realm?”Murderous ghosts? Demon cats? Nope, just me?

Her mouth opened in surprise. “I don’t think so.” Her eyes narrowed. “Well, there was one time…”

Cinn leaned forward. “Yeah?”

“He was in the bedroom, talking to someone, even though there was no phone in there. I tried to open the door, but he’d locked it. He screamed at me to go away, like a mad man. This was right at the end, just before he left. I didn’t even bother to question him about it, I don’t think. I was just… getting through it all, back then.”

This is fucking horrific.

No wonder Cinn’s poor mother had cracked. He pictured her back then—young, poor, a demanding baby to care for, and a partner slowly descending into madness.

“I have to go,” she said, glancing at her fob watch. “I’m so sorry… but my patients need me.” She stood up.

“Mum?”

She held his gaze, eyes wide. It was the first time he’d called her that today. A name she hadn’t heard in a decade.

“I’m proud of you. For… you know.” Cinn gestured to the hospital, hoping she would glean, ‘for sorting your shit out, for becoming a fuckingnurse,’out of it.

His mum nodded, pressed her hand to her mouth like she was suppressing a sob. She reached into her bag and brought out her set of keys. Her fingers quickly found what she was looking for.

She flashed Cinn some sort of coin. It was green with a gold triangle in the middle, with the numeral V dead in the centre.

The shock of what she was showing him delayed his reply.

“Five years?” he said, his voice choking. His mum, who’d had at least one drink every day of his childhood that he could remember, had been clean forfive years?

He jumped to his feet and threw his arms around her. Her soft gasp of surprise tickled his ear as he clutched her tight. He was taller than her now, but he hugged her like a child, clinging to her like he never wanted to let go.

But he did.

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