Page 40 of The First Time I Saw You
‘You need to rest your eyes, Sammy – it’s probably staring at this thing that has buggered yours up in the first place.’ I sigh.
‘Would you like biscuits with your tea, Samuel?’ Mum fusses as Da starts pounding the keys on the laptop.
‘Right. Here we go . . . oh, two, oh . . .’ he starts punching numbers into the landline phone next to him. ‘It’s ringing.’
‘Ah, hello. My name is Paul O’Grady.’ I close my eyes and would shake my head if I could. ‘I’m running a promotion for our garage and was wondering if your company would be interested in a free trial? We’re a new business and . . . right, right, right you are. And just so I know who our main competitor would be, who is the firm that you use?’ He pauses, covers the handpiece and whispers that they are transferring him. ‘Hello!’ he begins again. They won’t tell him, but then again, Da usually gets his way. ‘Fast Fix, you say?’ Ma stands in front of me and claps her hands together. ‘Grand, grand. Thanks for your time.’ He replaces the phone.
‘Mr McLaughlin, I always said you should be a spy.’ She winks at him and leans into the darkness where I hear a peck on the cheek.
‘Now then . . .’ It’s a wonder the buttons still work on that laptop, I think as he punches the keys again. ‘F-A-S-T, space, F-I-X, space, S-H-R-O-P-S-H-I-R-E . . . here we go. There are seven, Sammy. Now then, that’s narrowed our search a bit, hasn’t it?’ The springs in the sofa creak and clap him on the back for a job well done.
Ma returns with the tea, which I have to drink in the lidded jam jar.
‘Sophie’s eyes look like the colour of tea,’ I say, smiling.
‘Really, has she got cataracts? You’d make a blinding pair, you two!’ Da laughs, the bass rumble filling the room.
‘Ah, would you shush, Mr McLaughlin? What colour do you mean, Sammy?’
‘Like amber,’ I reply.
‘You’ve turned into a right soft touch, Sammy. What else did you get up to after the paddle boats? Paddle boats! I ask you!’
‘We read Tolstoy together.’
‘Tolstoy? Best get you up and sorted and back on to the rugby pitch, I reckon . . . Blind rugby! Now that would be an extreme sport I’d enjoy watching!’
‘Sweet Jesus, wash out your mouth, Mr M! Now pass me that laptop while you drink your tea . . . let’s find where this Sophie who has stolen our boy’s heart is hiding.’
Some time later, Mam tries the last number on the list. ‘Thanks anyway,’ she says into the phone. We have called every one of the Fast Fix garages in Shropshire, but each call is a dead end.
‘What’s yours will always come back to you,’ Mam says, kissing the top of my head after the final call. ‘You’ll find her.’
Week Sixteen
Sophie
Sleep hides from me, crouching behind vivid memories and unknown questions. This time last week I barely knew Charlie at all. I think it is safe to say that our relationship has changed quite a bit.
Charlie had flipped the fence panel with relative ease. I had been distracted as he pulled on his T-shirt while walking through my garden, so didn’t see it at first. He carried the panel away to the side of the house while I stood, my skin prickling with goosebumps: it felt like the heat of the day had been inhaled by the past and ice filled my lungs as it exhaled.
The memory had been so buried that I felt dizzy with its resurrection. The day I had left for that night at my friend’s, Mum had looked disappointed. She had forgotten all about the sleepover, she had said with a bright smile; never mind, we’ll do it at the weekend; do what? I had asked; nothing important, she had said with a dismissive wave of her hand. But it wasn’t nothing. The night she had died, there had been dreadful storms – I remember me and my friends shrieking at the lightning. When I was thrown into hell the next day, I remember thinking that the world must have been angry that night and that it had tried to let me know. Maybe pulling that fence panel down that night was the world trying to protect the last piece of her.
What the broken fence revealed was the round garden table which we had spent countless sunny afternoons sitting around with the Scrabble board. But I couldn’t see the cast-iron swirls of the table top because it was obscured by a tablecloth; the rose pattern and lace around the edge just visible beneath its dark green covering of moss. Each of the three high-backed wooden chairs was covered in dense green foliage which tucked and folded itself like seat covers over the frames. In front of the three chairs I saw cutlery: knives, forks, spoons, their silver tarnished to bronze, sitting slightly out of place but preserved. In the middle of the table were the remains of a china teapot, green-tea innards pouring over and spilling on to the table, and at each place setting, a china cup and saucer, each cup filled with the same vibrant green moss as the chairs. I felt myself keel over, a loud keening noise escaping my lips: it was a tea party, the tea party she had always said we should have, the tea party fromAlice in Wonderland, preserved and sheltered by the moss and wood of the fence panel.
I was aware of his warm hands guiding me inside, of him holding me as I sobbed into his chest, his unfamiliar smell feeling alien and yet comforting. Time passed as I began to talk. And once I started, I just couldn’t stop. I told him about Mum and Ian, I told him about moving to London and meeting Samuel, I told him how I had left him and how hurt I was that he betrayed me but that I knew I deserved it. I told him about Bean and the way I felt having this baby entirely dependent on me. The sun arced slowly across the sky: just as it would in Paris, dipping past the Eifel Tower; sinking behind the Sphinx in Egypt; hiding behind the Colosseum in Rome.
As dusk began to blink heavy eyelids, and the darkness of night closed around us, he listened to me. He poured bitter lemonade into iced glasses. He closed the windows as the insects began to creep in with the end of the day. He made sandwiches. He washed up: he listened.
‘Thank you,’ I said as he passed me another tissue.
‘You’re welcome,’ he answered with a small smile.
‘Thank you for listening. I don’t know how I would have coped with finding that today if you hadn’t been here.’
‘You would have coped anyway.’ He gives a short nod of certainty. My eyes were stinging, and my body felt drained.
‘Well, thanks anyway.’
