What Else Can Happen In A Second? #amwriting

'I'm just coming' he yelled. They were late, and Vee was getting agitated. She had been pacing the floor for 15 minutes. 'We're going to miss the train' she warned. It was 17.23 and the train was in 10 minutes and they needed to leave now. no. They needed to leave 5 minutes ago. But that's just how it was, how it had always been. He had teethed late, walked late, talked late, and he had been continuing in the same vein for the last sixteen and a half years.

Vee had grown accustomed over the years, and usually built in extra time, told him that they need to be somewhere half an hour sooner than they did, but the invite had come as a surprise and they had only just agreed to go last night. The opening night of a West End play wasn't to be sniffed at - not when you were mates with the leading actor and had been promised box seats and an invite to the after show party. 'Hurry up!' she pleaded, leaning round the hallway door to make sure he heard this time, her call echoing off the smooth wooden floorboards and polished bannister. 'Ok mum', dismissing her fuss, knowing she always made them arrive half an hour early to everything. 'Down in a sec'.

             

How could she have known he would be so true to his words. A sudden thundering, thumping roar filled the house, followed by silence. What the hell was that? 'You ok?'

Nothing.             

'Robbie?' Her stomach lurched as she rounded the corner back in to the hallway, her purple slingbacks skidding on the polished floor. A rag doll with dull grey eyes and a mop of brown curls was lying folded inelegantly at the foot of the stairs, limbs in the wrong order and an air of confusion around usually laughing lips. Its neck looked strange, like a slinky stuck mid spring. So out of place on this solid, rugby playing frame.

'robbie', she whispered, frightened to startle him. She knew, even before she got to him, she knew, but checked anyway. No pulse. her baby boy had no pulse. She crumpled, the floor rising up to meet her. What had just happened? And what was that noise?

She fumbled in her pocket for her phone, dimly aware of hitting the emergency call button. When the answer came 'emergency, which service', she realised that the noise had been her raw scream as her heart tried to climb up and out of her mouth. 'ambulance' she muttered.

'My son is dead'.

****

Almost 17 years ago, she had found this child left on her door step. There was no note, no clue as to who the child was or where he had come from. The poor bundle was freezing cold, and in desperate need of a clean nappy. She had fallen in love as soon as she had picked him up, and whilst she had distracted herself gathering essentials, feeding and changing him, she knew that this could only end badly.

She had waited, nervously for days, hours, weeks for someone to come and claim him, but as the months wore on, there was no not knock on the door. No missing person information in the papers, nothing on the news about a stolen or missing baby.

She had the skills and resources to create the documentation to make him officially hers as far as the authorities here were concerned. And as time had passed, she knew that against her better judgement, she could never give him up. She knew it was selfish of her. Knew that she was putting the boy’s life in danger, but in all of her years, she had never felt an aching in her soul like the one she felt at the thought of not being able to see these beautiful grey eyes staring out at the world like he knew everything.

He had grown so quickly. It seemed that in a blink he had transformed from a chunky little pudding with flailing arms and uncoordinated legs, to a strong, brawny teenager, complete with breaking voice until it evened out at a beautiful woodwind tone, strong and commanding, reminding her strangely of her own father’s so long ago. She had watched in awe as he developed into a real person. There had been the outbreaks of acne across his soft face and back. He had tried to take control, hitting the gym and bulking out, getting out in the sun as often as he could and guzzling water as though it was going out of fashion. She had spent a small fortune in acne creams for him during those tough few years, but since his facial hair had started to make an appearance, his skin cleared up as if by magic as soon as he started actually washing every day.

She remembered with a smile the embarrassing conversation about why his sheets and PJs were wet. She had caught him creeping around the kitchen early one morning, with a bundle of laundry tightly knotted in his arms, struggling to work out where the detergent went. He had always done his share of chores around the house; there was no way a son of hers would be a pampered layabout, but the washing machine seemed to have permanently confused him. Poor Rob, he was terrified he had wet the bed. As much as he was relieved to find that was not the case, he was still mortified to be having ‘the conversation’ with his mother at 7am. She had made them tea and toast, told him that they could talk any time he wanted to, and then left the subject.

She had told them they could talk any time. But not any more. Her baby, who was not her baby, had been taken anyway.

She knew that there was nothing more to be done here. That the life she had constructed so carefully to make sure Robbie had a normal upbringing, was over. She stood, finding the floor was solid under her feet once more although her heart weighed heavier than the universe, and made her way around the house, undoing the traces of her, erasing her existence. She put a few small trinkets in the pocket of her long tawny leather coat; Robbie’s last birthday card to her, emblazoned with ‘Happy 40^th Birthday To The Best Mum In The World’. If only he had known how far off he was. She would never be able to tell him now.

Digging through the pile of papers in her bedside cabinet, she gathered up a small photo of him as a baby, and his most recent ‘night out’ photo noting that he still had the same unruly brown curls, even now as his body lay broken. She turned, made her way carefully back down the stairs, stopping to look at her angel one final time, before walking back along the hallway. She picked up a small satin bag that had been gathering dust for longer than she cared to think on top of the coat rack, opened the heavy oak door and stepped out into the street. She left the door open for the paramedics, she knew they would take care of the body, that they would do all the things that needed to be done with his mortal remains to meet the requirements of the world she had been inhabiting when she had been ‘Robbie’s Mum’. As she marched down the street she could hear the sound of sirens heading towards the house.

She kept walking, not looking back, remembering who she had been before, becoming ‘Violet’ once more. She knew who was responsible for this, she had smelt their mark in the tiny patch of oil on the stair, had found their grimy prints on the otherwise immaculate balustrade. She had been dormant for far too long, she had grown soft and allowed them to get too close. And now, oh now they would pay. She would have blood.