Page 42 of The Perfect Son
It takes over an hour to go through them all, from that first photo of us in the hospital with Jamie cradled in my arms to the selfie of the three of us on Christmas day, in our matching Christmas jumpers, with the fairy lights on the tree glinting in the background making the photo seem somehow magical. That was the last photo you printed.
It steals my breath seeing those albums. It tears open the wound of us just that little bit more.
Oh, Mark. There were so many little things you did that made our lives so special, so full of laughter and love. How will I ever be strong enough to take on all of those things on top of everything else? Why did you get on the plane? Why didn’t you get the message and come home?
I love you, Tessie.
I love you too.
CHAPTER 23
Wednesday, March 7
32 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
Manningtree is smaller than I remember from the time you took me for lunch last October.“You know you can’t drive to Chelmsford and back anytime you want to have your hair cut or see the dentist, Tessie?”you said with a grin on the way back from dropping Jamie off at his new school. You took my hand, giving it a squeeze because you knew that I was worried. Would Jamie make friends? Would he be bullied? Would he cry himself to sleep every night for weeks, begging us to move back to Chelmsford?
“Let me show you the nearest town—Manningtree. It’s pretty. You’ll like it. It’s right on the River Stour as it makes its way out to sea. Plus it’s easier to park in Manningtree than the multi-stories in Colchester, and cheaper too. You can’t get everything from Amazon and Tesco,”you laughed.
“Almost everything though,”I muttered, unsure whether I was annoyed that you’d found another excuse to avoid unpacking or pleasedto be spending the day together. The latter won me over, and when you pulled me into the crook of your arm and kissed my cheek I smiled.
I didn’t like the drive to Manningtree though. One narrow twisty lane, then another, and you bumping the car onto the bank and into the bushes anytime we met a car coming the other way. I preferred driving on the A12 to Tesco, but lunch at the pizzeria overlooking the sailboats sloping to one side in the low-tide mud was nice.
“You’ll get used to the lanes,”you said on the drive home, and maybe I will, but today my hands gripped the steering wheel at ten and two, and I spent the entire time hunched forward in my seat, barely scraping twenty miles an hour, praying a 4x4 didn’t tear around the bend ahead and send my little Focus toppling into a ditch. It didn’t help that there was a car right behind me the whole way. I could feel the impatience of the driver at every break and turn.
I park in the main car park by the long concrete floodwall. It is chilly and a mist hangs in the air. Droplets of it cling to my hair, flattening my curls, and I pull my scarf closer to the bare skin on my neck.
It feels good to be out after two days hauled up inside with the rain a constant spatter on the windowpanes, watching theHome Alonemovies with Jamie after school and doing not much else.
I should get out of the house more, out of the village. I see that now. The two trips down the lane to the school each day, the one trip to Tesco last week, and walking to the post office to send the letter to the phone company haven’t been enough.
With the smell of the salty estuary sea carrying in the fresh wind, the house feels like a dark and depressing place. Maybe I’ll walk along the river wall if there’s time after my lunch with Shelley before Jamie finishes school.
The main high street is an odd mix of old and new. Quaint giftshops and tearooms, alongside a kebab shop and hairdresser’s. There’s a market across the road—half a dozen stalls selling cleaning products, fruit and veg, and women’s clothes.
I turn right opposite the library with its white Georgian facade and find myself on a cobbled street that curves down to the wide, sandy banks of the river. Seagulls swoop and screech high above my head.
The café Shelley suggested for lunch is halfway down on the right-hand side, tucked at the end of an alley no wider than a doorway. If it wasn’t for the handwritten chalkboard advertising homemade lasagna at the Honey Pot Café, I would’ve walked straight past.
I hug my bag a little tighter and glance over my shoulder before I step down the passageway and into a shadowed courtyard. There’s a tattoo parlor dead ahead, and two businesses on either side. To my left is a small New Age gift shop with dream catchers dangling in the window above silver skulls and fat Buddha statues. The smell of the river is gone, replaced by the musky scent of sandalwood incense drifting from the gift shop. The Honey Pot Café is on the right.
When I step through the door, a bell tinkles above my head and I’m hit by the smell of fresh brewed coffee and bacon. The place is small, with a dozen tables covered in gingham tablecloths. The kitchen is at the back behind a long counter covered with cakes and scones and muffins and cookies. Jamie would love it here.
The heat from the oven and the steamy windows adds a coziness to the place, and it must be good food, because there’s not a single table free.
“The breakfast rush is just finishing,” a woman in a black apron says as she shimmies between the tables, carrying four plates heaped with all the trimmings of an English breakfast. It’s your kind of place too, Mark. “I should have a few tables free in about ten minutes. Is that OK?”
I nod and check the time. It’s only ten to twelve. “I’m early anyway. I’ll come back.”
“Grand,” she replies, puffing a loose strand of hair away from her face as she turns and starts gathering empty plates from a group of workmen—decorators, I guess by their paint-spattered overalls.
Back in the cold courtyard I dither for a moment, racking my brain for a purpose, something to fill the next forty minutes. There must be things I need from the shops, but my mind is a blank page.
It’s only when I’m out of the alley, with the gray daylight hurting my eyes, that I catch someone watching me.
CHAPTER 24
The figure is in a doorway across the cobbled road. At first it’s little more than a shadow in the corner of my vision. And if it wasn’t for the shiver traveling through my body, and the sudden jerking movement as the man backs out of sight, I probably wouldn’t have noticed him at all.
