Page 55 of The First Time I Saw You
‘But Aunty Soapie’s face was on it!’
‘Just give me the phone.’
The screen is filled with a whiskey bottle being pulled out of a plastic bag, then by Greg himself, his nose looking even larger than usual this close up. I hold my phone away from my own face.
‘Hey, a little early for the hard stuff, isn’t it?’ I ask.
‘Some weird blind bloke has just given it me.’
‘Blind bloke?’
‘Never mind. How are you? Are you feeling better?’
I put on a bright smile, ignoring the pain in my back and the flush in my cheeks where the last of the temperature I’ve been battling hangs on.
‘Much better, thanks. I was after Helen, but I’ll call back later.’
‘I’ll tell her, she’ll be back soon.’
‘Dad!!! Tell her my hair does not look like a pineapple!’
‘Sorry, Soph, I’ve got to go.’
The screen returns to my home screen, my question still needing validation.
Week Twenty-Two
Samuel
I’ve left it a few days before returning to this house, trying to think of a way to get back in there, but I’ve run out of time and I’ve run out of ideas. This is the best I can do.
The plastic handles from the shopping bag are digging into my palms, and I can feel their imprint leaving their mark on my skin. The bag is filled with chocolate bars and sweets for the kids and a large bottle of whiskey; he looked like a whiskey kind of man.
I unfold my cane, who I have decided to call Michael; the feedback vibrates through my wrist as he rolls down the steps. Following his guidance, I step on to the road, scanning the street through my tube of sight. The houses are all the same shape: they all have a door, they all have a bay window downstairs and two windows above them. The street stretches away from me, coating the inside of the tunnel, each house straight-backed and ready to salute: a parade of uniformity. But inside, they are filled with the chaos of people I don’t know, people with different lives, different problems, different hopes.
Michael follows the cracks in the pavements; he warns me that there is a bin next to the lamp post and he tells me where the edge of the kerb is, but I still manage to trip. Michael, myself and the shopping go flying, all of us landing with a clatter on the road. I gather myself and stand back up with a groan.
I still have enough of my sight to be able to scan the ground if I dip my chin, and I spot him lying apologetically in the middle of the road. Part of me wants to leave him there – it would serve him right – but then I see how pitiful Michael looks lying on the road amongst the contents of the shopping bag; it’s as if he’s been abandoned. My head tilts so I can push the gloom away enough to be able to see the road and the step, then follow my feet until I’m standing next to my cane. I look at my shoes, the same pair of high-top trainers that Sophie had laced up for me. That man could see his beautiful girlfriend without her being framed in a circle of darkness. That man could chase after her, throw her over his shoulder while she shrieked in protest, her feet making little kicks as he ran up the stairs. They are the same shoes, the same feet, but they belonged to a different man.
These feet are standing next to a blind man’s white cane, this man’s feet; this man’s cane, is surrounded by shadows that are trespassing into this man’s world, shadows that will soon swallow it. The man who could run in these shoes is dead.
A honk from a car’s engine shakes my insides as it swerves around me. I push the bottle of whiskey and the chocolates back into the bag, grab Michael and let him sweep the road in front of me until he guides me to a bench. I sit down and think of the time I spent with Sophie and then I replay it, adding the tunnel, adding the cane, adding this new person that I have become.
I don’t belong here. I don’t belong in DC. I don’t belong in Wales, either. Maybe it’s time I went home and began to start living my life, my new life, a life that Sophie and the man I used to be don’t belong in.
What am I doing here? Trying to get into a family home that, for whatever reason, holds secrets. He seems like a decent man with a young family. Sophie isn’t here. The message from Gemma could be wrong. Sophie might not even have a sister called Helen Yates.
I knock on the door with my other hand, having successfully negotiated the steps without further injury. It swings open and the man from last time stares at me, the gentle, friendly manner replaced with a stern expression. His eyes seem to be drawn together by his eyebrows, and below them a deep groove cuts across the bridge of his nose.
‘Hi,’ I say, smiling. He responds by stepping forward slightly. His hair is brown and bushy, and I’m reminded of a grizzly bear. ‘I hope it’s not too inconvenient, I just wanted to thank you for helping me the other day.’ I stretch my arm forward; the plastic bag swings hello. ‘Just a few things, to say thanks.’
The nose groove relaxes a little and the eyebrows loosen.
‘Oh. Cheers, it was nothing.’ He looks down at the bag and takes it from my grasp.
‘Well, thank you anyway, I really appreciated it.’
‘Pineapple Head! Pineapple Head!’ is being shouted from behind him.
