Songs For Your Mother

I don’t want to look, or to think about it. None of it makes the slightest bit of sense and particularly not today. This morning I’d planned to have breakfast with Rachel. This activity does not in any way, shape or form involve children and women from the past who appear to have arrived from an alternate reality. I know I’m ill-equipped and fighting against it, fighting the past, the present and the future all at the same time. Deep down I know that everything that is happening relates back to what happened six years ago.
‘Okay,’ I say.
Josie stares at me, she thrusts the envelope forward, and this time I take it. I am not sure I have much choice. I stand there staring at my own name. Josie picks up the bags and walks past me and up the garden path to the house where Luke is now sitting on the step. I follow on behind her.
‘Hey buddy,’ she says. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I’m hungry,’ Luke says.
Josie looks at me questioningly, waiting for me to take charge of the situation. This is also something that I am disinclined to do because of the previously mentioned escalation, which is hurling me unceasingly forward. I conclude, however, that we should probably all go inside, if for no other reason than my bare feet are cold and stiff and Luke is only five.
‘Maybe we should go in,’ I say.
‘You made a decision, congratulations,’ Josie says.
Josie picks up a clutch of bags and gets Luke to his feet. I pick up the remaining things and lead Josie and Luke up the stairs. When I get to the top, I pause at the entrance to my flat for a second or two as Luke and Josie troop behind me.
Inside the flat, Josie and Luke sit on one of the two small couches. I worry that Rachel will come out and that this already complicated situation will take a turn for the worse, and try to push these thoughts aside. I put the bags down by the window on the far side of the room, as a train rumbles by outside. I am still holding the envelope, and make no move to look inside.
‘Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Why are you and this child here?’ I ask.
‘His name is Luke,’ Josie says tersely.
‘Okay, so why are you and Luke here?’
‘Why don’t you open the envelope and find out? Everything you need to know is inside,’ Josie says nodding to the package in my hands.
I turn the envelope over and look at it. I am entirely reluctant to open it. I’m worried about yet more escalation. What worries me further is that it feels like there’s a lot inside. It feels substantial, and I’m trying to work out what it could contain. What I do know is that I’m now out of options and I have to open the envelope. I take a deep breath and gingerly tear at the edges of the paper as Josie looks on. There’s a letter sitting on top of a pile of loose sheets of paper that are clipped neatly together.
It’s a letter from Lauren, and, as soon as I start reading it, I can hear her voice in my head and I miss her so much. Somehow, I knew what it was going to say. In spite of this, there’s no softening of the shock, and I have to fight to keep reading. It gets sadder and more tragic by the word. My jaw falls earthwards like it’s weighted. I stare at Josie. She looks back at me pityingly. She knows what I’ve read. She can see the penny drop, and it’s falling far.
‘I…’ And I start to say something when Josie cuts me off. I am about to tell her what happened and why I never came back. Only she doesn’t give me a chance to explain how Will died and I almost did.
‘You said you would come back. Lauren was absolutely convinced you would, she had total faith in you because of everything that had happened. That next day we went out after you didn’t show. She said that maybe you got held up and that it would be tomorrow. I thought, yeah maybe, I mean you seemed pretty decent.’
‘I was on my way,’ I say. ‘I was going to come.’
‘But you didn’t, did you?’
‘I know, but I can explain,’ I say.
I realise this is my chance to tell the story of what happened to Will and me. To explain how we crashed, and how he died and I barely made it. If I at least tell Josie this, she will understand, and will know that I did not walk out on Lauren. At least not right away.
‘Save it, I don’t want to hear your excuses. You didn’t show up that day or the next day or the one after that. You never showed up. I liked you when I met you. I thought you were a good guy. You were charming and you got up onstage, that was cool. Turned out to be bullshit. You broke that girl’s heart,’ Josie says.
I’m stricken when she says this, and it makes me ache. The feeling sweeps over me, and I am overcome by a terrible sense of loss. That day is never far from my thoughts. It stabs at me every now and again, and it always hurts. In my heart of hearts, I know that’s where I should have been. That was my place. I couldn’t bring myself to get on the plane and go. I know it was my chance, and I wasted it, but I was scared and guilty, and no matter how much I wanted Lauren I could not bring myself to do it. Not after what happened. I should have found a way, I know. I should have tried harder and been stronger. I should have been all of that. Most of all, I should have gone but I didn’t.