Page 9 of The Second Chance Bus Stop
‘Tea or coffee?’ I ask.
‘I know very well what you’re doing here,’ she replies, and I smile a real smile. Caught.
‘You’re giving me choices so that I feel involved and in control still. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you put two pairs of socks out for me to choose from the other day. Although I wouldn’t call the Christmas socks from a decade ago a valid choice.’
Again: it’s laundry day.
I look at her, my hands outstretched with what she correctly identified as intentional options. I’ll drink whatever she doesn’t choose.
‘Tea,’ she answers, and I hand her the cup, waiting to let go until her two hands are firmly wrapped around it.
‘We don’t have any appointments today, so I thought we’d go for a walk after breakfast.’
I never walked for the sake of walking before. Always walked with a destination in mind, always towards something. Now Mum and I just walk. Slowly. Past things. Then back to where we came from.
‘Wonderful,’ she says, already halfway through her toast. ‘Then, when we get home, we can discuss your trip.’
Oh. She hasn’t forgotten.
At nine o’clock, once Mum is settled for the night with an audiobook and the laundry is dry and folded, I do what I always do when I have a huge fucking problem that seems to have no solution: I ask Zara.
The pub is one street down from ours, offering an average food menu and peanuts that seem to have lost all of their salt. Its unique selling point is that it’s the only place my newly purchased baby monitor will reach and therefore my only escape. Mum tends to get restless at night after taking her medication, and I can’t trust her to sleep through. I lower the average patron age by a good thirty years when I walk in, and I spot Zara in a far corner in full conversation with the owner Raj and his band of regulars. They leave us with a hello so I assume they’ve now exhausted the pool of potential ladies to introduce me to. Ever since Jade leftme, I have been tortured with set-up after set-up with local girls, magically appearing alone in the pub on nights I’m there.
‘Hey, stranger,’ I say to Zara. Feels like it’s been ages since we met up like this.
‘Tell me.’ Her pink hair is held in place by a collection of small white clips. There are two drinks and a bag of cheddar crisps on the table.
I press the baby monitor to my ear: Everything appears quiet. It’s a long-range model which I bought from Mothercare. When I paid for it, the sales-person told me congratulations, and I wasn’t sure what to do with that or how to explain that I didn’t have a newborn, just a mum who needed similar care, so I ended up just saying thank you.
I summarise for Zara.
‘Apparently in order to stop my mum from playing homeless outside Kensington town hall, I need to go to Sweden. She just sits and sits at that damn bus stop, waiting for an old flame who didn’t turn up there almost thirty years ago. She said she’d move into a care home, any care home, if I can just find Sven.’
‘Haven’t you looked for this guy before?’ She opens the crisp bag with a pop.
‘Well, yes.’ I did a thorough Facebook search, which should have yielded something, considering everyone has Facebook still, but no. ‘But I’m tired. Tired of worrying about her. Tired of being on edge constantly. Every time I leave the house I check my phone is on highest volume about fifteen times. Every time there’s a call I jump. Where has she been now? What’s she getting up to this time? I need to know she’s safe and that I can leave the house for more than a half hour at a time without suffering a panic attack.’
I stop for air and a gulp of cold cider then continue to fill the silence.
‘Her latest scans show that it’s progressing fast. I’ve got all these nurses asking how I’m coping, and that’s all there is. Questions. Because there’s no solution. No answers. I can’t stop the disease, and I can’t be what Mum needs all the time She needs more than what I’m capable of. She needs to be happy, and I can’t seem to give her that.’
‘Unless you find Sven?’
‘Unless I find Sven.’
I stop for a minute to ponder how I ended up here, in a pub with my best friend discussing taking a trip to Sweden. Some people are busy climbing a career ladder or honeymooning in the Maldives or running marathons or hell, even just catching up on the latest show. I got left behind big-time. I wouldn’t change it for the world—but also wouldn’t have chosen it.
‘You want to come along for the ride? Could be massively entertaining to watch me search aimlessly for a man I’ve never met,’ I say. Zara is my only constant. Other friends have been circumstantial, there whilst we had a joint location to be, a class to share or a desk opposite one another. I hadn’t realised until they all disappeared that Zara is my one true friend, there since we were sixteen, still here despite all the changes in life.
‘I only have two weeks of leave left, and as much as I love you, a tour of Swedish care homes looking for some man your mum’s obsessing over is not how I intend to spend them. Sorry. Eagerly awaiting the video chats, though. Do you think there are any hotties? Everyone gushes abut Swedish women, but the men are equally gorgeous. All trendy denim, tall and handsome.’
‘Unless you’re into older men, I doubt you’ll find someone where I’m headed.’
Zara falls silent, and I wait. She has been contemplating the problem for long enough that I start to shake my left leg and am about to open my mouth. She puts up a hand to stop me. Don’t disturb the genius.
‘But this is a short-term thing?’ my best friend finally asks.
‘For sure. Couple weeks at the most. Find a man, take a picture, arrange a phone call. Let the nostalgia flow and maybe set up a pen pal scheme. Let’s say I give myself two weeks? Money will run out, if nothing else. I’m not even sure how I’ll make ends meet to be honest. I’ll need to look into a carer whilst I’m away.’ Shit. Only just realised that cost will add to my travel expenses. I’d hoped to have two weeks. More like two days. In the cheapest motel there is with shared shower facilities.
