So instead I buried them, deep down inside me, and left them there to fester.
‘Ben?’
Mum’s voice breaks in again, drifting up from the kitchen, and I realise I’m still crying.
I can hear her feet starting to pad softly up the stairs. ‘It’s after eleven! Daphne will be here any minute!’
Chapter Fourteen
Without thinking, I leap out of bed and sprint across the corridor into the bathroom.
‘One second,’ I gulp, as I lock the door and duck my hot, streaming face under the cold tap.
‘Well don’t be too long,’ I hear her shout over the rushing water. ‘She’ll be arriving any time now.’
I let the water run and run, and then sit on the edge of the bathtub for a bit, staring blankly at the wall, my mind too frazzled to work properly. When my eyes have finally dried and lost their puffy redness, I go back to my room and put some jeans and a T-shirt on. I have no idea how I’m going to deal with this. But I know I can’t stay up here hiding forever.
I take a deep breath, then walk downstairs with my heart hammering.
The house looks like a Santa’s grotto has exploded inside it: holly and ivy hang from pretty much every wall, and tinsel curls down the banister like an exotic silver snake. Mum always took Christmas very seriously.
With every step, the déjà vu gets more intense. Every inch of the house conjures some long-forgotten memory: the photos of me and Mum that line the staircase; the deep dent halfway down the banister rail (a result of my decision to slide down it wearing rollerblades, aged nine). And then there it is: the picture of us at Whitley Bay, hanging next to a faded photo of Mum’s dad – my grandad Jack – as a young man, a broad grin stretching out beneath his twinkling blue eyes.
I feel a strange shiver run through me – something I can’t quite define. This place was home. And back in the present – in 2020 – it’s someone else’s home. Uncle Simon and I put it up for sale a few months after Mum died. We got a fair bit less than the asking price, but I didn’t care. I just wanted the whole thing over with as quickly as possible; it was too painful to keep setting foot in this house with Mum gone.
So now another family lives here, filling it with their own memories.
I push open the kitchen door. Mum is standing with her back to me, arranging bits of smoked salmon into a neat pattern on a plate. ‘Finally,’ she says, brightly. ‘I thought I was going to have to entertain the poor girl on my own.’
She turns around and smiles, her eyes crinkling softly at the sides, and it takes everything I have not to fall apart again. There’s less grey in her hair, but aside from that, she’s exactly as I last saw her. She’s wearing black trousers and a smart button-up velvety cardigan thing, and even with my extremely limited fashion knowledge, I can tell this is one of her ‘special occasion’ outfits. I feel a powerful rush of love for her.
‘Now, I’ve done some little salmon bits to start with,’ she says. ‘And the beef’s in the oven. But, you know, I forgot to check with you whether she actually eats meat. Because more and more people don’t these days. You know Hiam’s son, Henry, well, he’s become a “pescatarian”, and …’ She breaks off, her finger quote marks still hanging in mid-air. ‘What’s the matter, darling? Is something wrong?’
I realise I am clenching my jaw painfully, twisting my mouth into a shape that’s supposed to resemble a smile. Clearly it’s not having the desired effect.
‘Oh God,’ Mum sighs, dropping her hands to her hips. ‘She’s a veggie, isn’t she? I knew it.’
I can’t take it any more. I rush forward to hug her.
‘Blimey,’ she laughs. ‘What’s all this?’
She pats my back gently, and I speak into her shoulder, my voice thick and muffled. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I mumble. ‘I’m so sorry …’
‘Don’t be stupid, darling,’ she says. ‘I can easily do her a macaroni cheese.’
There is so much I want to say to her that I don’t know where to start. I want to apologise for all those terrible things I haven’t even said yet; to tell her I won’t mean them when I say them, and that she’s the best mum in the world and I’m a useless, pathetic excuse for a son. And I want to warn her about what will happen in – what will it be? – twelve years’ time.
There are a million things I want to say, but I don’t get the chance to say any of them. Because the doorbell interrupts me.
Mum breaks out of the hug and claps her hands together: ‘Right, you let her in, I’ll go and get the baby pictures.’
She laughs at whatever expression I’m currently wearing, and then adds: ‘I’m joking, I’m joking. We can do the baby pictures after lunch.’
She nudges me out of the kitchen. At the end of the hallway I can see Daff’s silhouette through the stained glass on the front door. Oh God. I’m just about getting a handle on seeing Mum again, and now I’ve got to open the door to a nineteen-year-old Daphne. I take a deep breath and try very hard to compose myself.
Through the glass I can see Daff fiddling with her hair, and when I open the door, she stops and smiles at me.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey … you look amazing,’ I say. Because she really does.
A whole year has passed since ‘yesterday’, but she looks pretty much exactly the same: young and happy, albeit with a touch more nervous energy about her. The cold air outside seems to have coloured her entire
