Page 24 of The First Time I Saw You
‘My heart,’ I say quietly and give her a brave smile.
‘Oh, I kiss it better. Put your arm like this.’ I follow her instructions and stretch my arm out where she plants a kiss on my wrist. I laugh despite myself.
‘Why have you kissed my arm?’
‘I didn’t kiss your arm, silly Aunty Sophin, I kiss your sleef.’
‘My sleef?’ I question.
‘Yes. Mummy says I wear my heart on my sleef.’ She climbs on to my lap and begins to twiddle her blond hair. ‘I like it when you live in my home, Aunty Sophin. Are you going to live here?’
‘No, sweeetie, I’m just visiting.’
‘Oh, then you go back to your home?’
I hear Mum’s voice as she crouches in front of my grazed knee, my cries turning into hiccups.
‘It’s just a scratch. Let’s get you home – you’ll feel better once you’re home.’
I kiss the top of her head and marvel at how, in the space of a minute, a three-year-old has managed to bandage my old wounds and help me back on to the road of recovery.
Week Seven
Samuel
‘Samuel? Can you open your eyes for me? Samuel?’
Week Eight
Sophie
I flick through Helen’s pregnancy book. By week eight, according to The Book, if I could see inside my stomach, I would be able to make out the tip of Bean’s nose, the folds in the eyelids. Bean’s arms and legs are stretching out and bending towards where a tiny heart beats. It looks like a little person – albeit with a giant head.
I put the book down, grab a mirror and sigh at my pallid skin and lank hair, and begin to put my hair up and add some make-up.
‘Right then, Bean, this is the plan.’ I open my mouth into an ‘o’ and begin adding mascara to my lashes, then replace it in my make-up bag. ‘We’re going to go on a road trip – if you’ll let me off the hook this afternoon, that is.’ I swallow down another wave of nausea. ‘We’re going away, just me and you. I’m taking us home. My real home . . . our home.’
I haven’t been back to the cottage since just after Mum died. I own it outright and yet it has been sitting empty for the last fifteen years. I’ve made arrangements for the gas and electric to be reconnected and called a local odd-job man (Handy Huw) to visit it and make sure that the water is safe and that the heating is working after being shut up for so long.
‘But surely you’d be better off staying close by? Renting something here so I can help you?’ Helen asks as she pulls a pile of damp washing out of the washing machine. ‘Do you think this will dry on the line yet?’ She peers out of the kitchen window where petals of daffodil light fall intermittently through the clouds.
‘It’s supposed to rain later, I think,’ I tell her. She sighs and begins putting half of the laundry into the tumble dryer. ‘I’ve thought about it, Helen. I can’t face going back to London, not for a while, at least. I’ve registered the house with a renting company – fully furnished, so I only need to get my clothes and stuff out. They’ve already got a couple interested.’
‘Won’t that be weird? Having some stranger living in your house?’ She slams the door with her hip and presses buttons that whir the machine into action.
‘Strangely . . . no. It’s just a house.’
‘Not a home?’
I shrug my shoulders as she opens a wire airer, hanging a variety of pink and purple pyjamas over it. ‘But the cottage, Soph? Are you sure? Won’t it bring back memories of . . .’ She shakes out a tangled pair of dungarees and folds them over one of the bars. ‘What I mean is, you’re obviously in a bit of an emotional state at the minute and I’m just worried that being there, on your own—’
‘I’m not on my own. I’ve got Bean with me, haven’t I, Bean?’ I imagine it practising, this little person, moving its arm and giving me a little wave. Oh, before I forget,’ I add, ‘they’re picking up the car later. Could you give them the keys?’ I grin.
‘You’re sending the company car back in that state?’ Helen laughs.
‘I am. It serves them right.’
‘Fair enough, but the cottage, Sophie . . . it’s a lot to deal with.’
