Sara Foster - Come Back to Me

‘It’s going to take time, Alex,’ she said eventually. ‘If we’re going to try to get back to normal. We need to take it slowly and see what happens.’

‘Okay,’ he agreed. His whole focus from now on would be to spend every minute of every day putting this right. He was going to try to make Chloe happier than she had dared dream she could be. ‘Where do you want to start?’

She looked at him as if coming to a decision, then took a deep breath and said, ‘Right here, I think.’ To his surprise, she took his hand and pulled it forward, placing it over her stomach. She looked at him intently, conveying a knowledge that made his skin prickle as he realised there had been far more going on back home than he had ever imagined.

‘Alex, I have something to tell you,’ she began, and, in astonishment, he watched her lips moving, before there was a quick, shy flash of that lovely smile of hers, in answer to his own.

When Tess Duvalis opened the door, her expression was a blank of shock. She briefly put a hand out against the doorframe to steady herself, and then her face filled with joy and she moved swiftly towards her daughter, whispering, ‘You’re alive, you’re alive, thank god, thank god’. She caught Amy in a hug so fierce that it crushed the breath from her, leaving her gasping for air, as they sobbed their relief into one another’s shoulders.

Eventually, Tess let her go, and they moved into the house. Amy felt light-headed, floating.

There was so much that was unfamiliar, but the totality of the place was achingly like home. Although everything Amy was seeing was answering her questions, it was not until she made her way over to the mantelpiece that it sank in. There were old pictures of her on the wall – various school photos showing her metamorphosis from child to adult.

And on the mantelpiece, another photo – Amy, and yet not Amy.

A single photo. But it answered the one big question she hadn’t dared face for all these years.

Tess came up behind her. ‘She’s at school,’ she said.

Amy turned around and saw everything in her mother’s eyes – frustration, sadness, understanding, concern, love.

Amy’s voice was a sob. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Tess came and held her. ‘What for, my darling?’

‘I left her. I just left her.’

‘Yes, you left her. But you left her with a way home.’

A letter in the blanket. A number scrawled on her tummy in eyeliner, just in case the letter got lost. Such precarious links, but at the time it was all she had been capable of.

‘Listen,’ Amy’s mother said as she held her. ‘As soon as I got that call, I understood. I’m so sorry, Amy.’ She stroked her daughter’s hair.

Amy could barely get the words out through her grief, but gradually stuttered, ‘I’m the one who should be sorry.’

‘What for?’ Tess asked. She moved Amy away from her, holding her by the shoulders. ‘She was never a burden, Amy. She was a gift. I have been able to do things for her even if I couldn’t do them for you. It has been a precious, precious link between us while you’ve been gone.’

‘What’s she like?’

Her mother smiled. ‘Cheeky. Moody. Funny. Actually, she’s pretty much like you.’

Suddenly Amy forgot how to breathe again. ‘I need some air,’ she gasped, and rushed for the back door. She flung it open and sat on the steps, her eyes closed, concentrating on the in and out of her tired, aching lungs.

Her mother sat down beside her, putting her arm around Amy, staring into the distance. When Amy looked over, she saw Tess was crying silently. She rested her head on her mother’s shoulder as they sat there and let their feelings flood out of them.

After a while, in a small voice, Amy asked another question she hardly dared hear the answer to. ‘Mum, did Dad die because of me?’

Tess took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. ‘Amy, of course your dad was very upset by what happened to you. But any number of things could have triggered the heart attack. He never ate very well, he drank, he’d only given up smoking a few years before. And although he was sad when you left, and wished he could have supported you more, he was always optimistic when he spoke of you. He knew you loved him; he understood why you left, even though he didn’t like it, and he was sure you would come back.’

‘That’s the crazy thing, Mum. I was on the verge of it all the time until he died. And then I just couldn’t.’

Her mother rubbed her back in reply.

As Amy looked down the garden, her gaze caught on something at the end. She jumped up and ran, until there it was.

Her garden. Their garden – in a tatty wicker basket, with new patches of moss and a few tiny flowers.

Tess came and stood behind her. ‘Beth thinks she looks after it,’ she said, a wry smile on her face.

Amy smiled back, overwhelmed just by hearing that name. Beth. Her daughter .

She fished around in the inside pocket of her jacket until she found what she was looking for, and then placed the wishing well back in the centre of the tiny garden. It settled snugly into the space it had been taken from nearly ten years ago. It looked like it had never left. She glanced briefly to the sky, then both she and her mother stared silently at the wishing well.

‘I’m scared to meet her,’ Amy whispered eventually.

‘I know, you’re bound to be,’ Tess replied. ‘Although, to be honest, she’s like a mini-whirlwind most of the time, full of questions and energy and activity – I’m sure she’ll suck you up into the madness straight away.’

Amy managed a small smile, then asked another of her endless awkward questions. ‘What does Beth know about me?’

‘That you’re her mother. That you had to go away and you will be coming home as soon as you can. That you love her.’

‘And what about… her father?’

Her mother sighed, tears shimmering at the edges of her eyes. ‘I’m afraid I’ve told her he’s in heaven. I didn’t know what to do – I thought that might be best.’

Amy nodded. ‘I think it was, at least for now,’ she said.

Tess continued quietly, ‘I prayed every day that you would call, so I could tell you I had got her. So you didn’t have to worry.’

Amy shook her head. ‘I should have, Mum, I know. But I didn’t dare. I always wanted her to be here, with you, but when I let myself think about it – that letter; the phone number – they were such tenuous links to you. What if the letter was lost, or not read properly – it was a foreign country, after all. What if the number was smudged, or they didn’t understand what it was? I knew if I contacted you and you didn’t have her, she would probably be lost forever. And if that had been the case, it would have truly, finally broken me; I would never have found my way back from it. So it was better to be in the dark and to hope. I’ve only really stopped blanking things out in the past few weeks, because I’ve been forced to confront them.’

Then she told her mother about meeting Alex again, and the court case. Tess just listened, her eyes conveying the emotions she felt about everything Amy had been through.

When Amy had finished, they stood there in silence again, looking at the miniature garden. Then Amy asked, ‘Wasn’t it risky to tell her anything about me when I might not have come back? You could have told her I was dead too. Or pretended she was your own.’

Her mother’s gentle hand was resting against Amy’s back, as though she needed the touch to confirm all this was real. It felt heavy, but Amy didn’t mind the weight.

‘I never lost hope, Amy,’ Tess said.

Amy looked into her mother’s steadfast eyes, and saw, without the tiniest thread of doubt, someone who had never stopped knowing her or loving her or having faith in her. And, instead of drowning in each and every moment, she felt propelled at speed towards a glassy surface, gasping as she broke through. Drawing in huge lungfuls of fresh, clean oxygen. And finding, at last, that it no longer hurt to breathe.