Page 79 of The Second Chance Bus Stop
‘Zara gave me this. She said you photocopied it from the library.’ I hold out the A4-size picture of a gathering outside the town hall. The one she used as her screensaver. I point to a face in the crowd.
She doesn’t reply. Instead she touches the hem of her long-sleeved T-shirt, a bit like Sophia would, and looks straight at me. The slow nod that follows feels like a drawn out, hard-fought-for confession. The thought of my mum and him both alone, on different sides of the North Sea tugs at my chest. But then I remember that they weren’t all alone. One had me, and the other had Sophia.
‘You weren’t really waiting for him were you? Not that afternoon and not now. Because he did come, didn’t he, Mum? We both saw him in that picture from the archives. He did turn up that afternoon in 1996. It was you that didn’t turn up, right?’
Her eyes meet mine. I repeat what I just asked.
‘Hewaswaiting. But you never turned up, did you?’
Sophia
Sweden
The next day I wake up to a crying puppy.
‘This is your home,’ I tell Cornflakes. ‘And I’m your company. It’s just me. It will always be me.’
I settle him on my lap and stay in bed with him. The shop can wait. In all these years it’s never opened up a minute after eight o’clock, but what has that done for me? What has all my work given me?
At ten there’s a knock at my door.
Lina has a floury apron and a hairnet scrunched up in her hand. Cornflakes barks and nips at her trouser hems until she crouches down and acknowledges him with large enthusiastic strokes.
‘The shop is closed,’ she states.
‘I’m having some time off.’
‘Two customers have been in asking for you.’
‘People miss me?’
‘You’re an institution, one of the monuments in this town. Yes, people will miss you if you don’t show up to work. I suggest you don’t go missing again.’ She eyes me from top to toe. ‘Go pick a grey sweater and a pair of jeans. Socks and sneakers.’
‘Okay,’ I reply, happy to have been told what to do and for the element of choice to have been eliminated.
She’s still there when I reappear five minutes later dressed and with my hair pulled back into a ponytail.
‘Good. Let’s get you some breakfast.’
I sip my hot chocolate sitting on the chair outside her shop so I can see any incoming customers to my own. I’ve sifted through the online orders and have a couple of deliveries to make this afternoon, but apart from that it’s a quiet first day back.
‘My dad has asked to meet me. He’s attending a conference in Malmöand suggested he’d drive over to see me,’ I say. ‘He should be here around six.’
‘Has he ever been here?’
‘A long time ago. He’s always very busy.’
She snorts.
My dad is outside at six sharp with a box of chocolates in his hands.
‘You don’t drink wine, and I couldn’t bring you flowers.’
I take the box from him. There are milk chocolates, white chocolates and only a few dark ones. I wonder if he remembers that I don’t eat dark chocolate and whether he looked at the ingredient list before choosing this one, or if it’s by chance.
‘Right. This is lovely,’ he says as he sits down on my two-seat sofa after a tour of the shop downstairs.
‘Thank you.’ I don’t know what to say. Having my dad in my house feels rather like a stranger having asked to come in to use the bathroom and I’m standing around waiting for him to leave so I can resume normal business.
