Page 81 of The Second Chance Bus Stop
I interlace my fingers as though in prayer, as if the mere mention of a church requires it.God,do I hate habits with a passion.
‘He had come back into the picture, your father. Promising exactly what I’d wanted—love, co-parenting and financial support. But to get it I had to stay. To give us a chance. Even if I’d said no I couldn’t have gone, because he wouldn’t sign the passport form. I couldn’t take you out of the country. He said it was because he loved you too much, because he was going to be a father to you.’
‘He didn’t keep the promise. He didn’t stay around.’ The pain on Blade’s face, still visible after twenty-nine years, reminds me of exactly why I made the choice to stay. To try. He wanted a father.
‘He didn’t.’ In fact, he disappeared faster than a British heatwave.
‘You chose the wrong man.’
‘That I did.’
‘Why didn’t you try to find him? When Dad left? When I was older? You could have had a second chance.’
‘We are allowed second chances, but we can only take them if our first choices don’t ruin us.’ What would I have said? It was too late.
Blade perches forward on the chair, as if he’s about to stand up and sprint off, then moves both hands to his face.
‘My God, Mum. You’ve lived with the regret all this time. It’s drained you. I saw it sometimes, growing up. It was... hard for me to watch.’
‘Yes,’ I say. The guilt when I think of Sven, of him never marrying, of dying before we found a way to reconnect. Then the guilt for letting my choices affect my son. For being a broken parent.
We’ll just wait for time to pass and with every day we’ll forget each other more until we’re just each other’s bleak memories, like running barefoot on summer grass, or hearing on the radio that the Berlin Wall had fallen. Our love story will be memories and marks of time and nothing more.I’d think.That’s what we’re doing. Waiting for time to do its thing.
Turns out I was left to age and forget alone.
In the end I’m the only one waiting. Because Sven died suddenly seven years ago. Before I could find it in me to look for him. Then I started to get cloudy, everything blurring together, but within the haze he was always clear, and I knew I had to find him. That he was what was unresolved in my life. Some days that’s all I had. But it was enough.
Sophia
Svedala
At night I reread all the messages I have from Blade, but it’s like watching your favourite Disney movies as an adult. The magic has disappeared, and you see the cracks, the plot holes and the special effects that are too obvious.
I can’t hold off any longer, so I message him.
I got a dog. I’m still crying a lot, but at least I’m not alone. Started taking a daily vitamin because my main source of nutrition is cereal and milk. I’ve seen my dad and I didn’t feel like everything about me, from the way my hair falls to the sound of my voice, was wrong this time. I think that’s progress. I think we can work it out. Me and my dad, I mean. And maybe even me and my mum. She reads my emails.
The next day at five o’clock he video calls. I’ve looked at my phone so much the past week that I’m amazed the screen, or one of my retinas, hasn’t cracked. Apart from work emails and group chats there’s been nothing. His voice is tired and hopeful and just as I remember it.
‘Soph.’ The abbreviation of my name makes me feel little, but not in a bad way. Everyone needs to feel little sometimes. Even very tall women.
‘Speaking.’
‘That’s good. It helps when you call someone.’
‘Well—Hej.’
‘Hey as well.’
‘Got your message. I’m glad you responded to me. But I’m sorry things haven’t been going well for you.’ He pauses briefly before continuing. ‘I think that’s mostly my fault. I couldn’t have stayed, I needed to get home to my mum, but I also shouldn’t have left in that way.’
‘I needed an explanation. I needed more from you.’
‘Your explanation starts now. I need to start from the beginning though. My mum got ill three years ago. It was slow at first, but the disease has been progressing rapidly. She started digging up her past, her memories, while she still could, before she forgot it all. She wanted me to know who she was and what she’d given up. She was looking for someone in particular, a friend, someone that she loved and was in love with. She knew she had to meet him, but kept forgetting that she couldn’t. But she would return to the bus stop every day, always waiting for someone who would never come.
‘Because she couldn’t just say that to me, a mix of denial and her memory fading, I agreed to go to Sweden and look for her lost love, so that maybe she could stop waiting. I had only five leads, five possible names that corresponded to what she could remember.
‘The first one lead me to that funeral, where I met you. The former schoolteacher, who had the right name, right age, right town but wasn’t mum’s Sven. The second lead was your uncle. But at the beginning, when you said he’d never been to London, didn’t even own a passport you thought, I dismissedthe idea that he was the right one. Svens three, four and five all didn’t pan out. I’d given up any hope of finding him until you said you’d learned something new. That he had travelled, specifically to London, and lived there. The more you shared about your uncle, the more it became clear he could be the one.’
