Come Away With Me. Sara MacDonald

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      Ruth laughed. ‘It’s true, Jenny. You’re no trouble. I’ll be hurt if you want to leave.’

      ‘You’re being very kind, thank you,’ I said. The words sounded formal and hung in the air. All the time we were talking I was listening out for the movements of the boy in the rooms below. I had only glimpsed him when I first arrived and Ruth briefly introduced us. I lay here in the evenings and listened to the noise of his laughter and the muffled sound of a clarinet being played through the open door.

      Tonight, he self-consciously carried soup up to me. I could not take my eyes off him. He was so like Tom it was eerie and I felt the hairs rise up on the back of my neck. I had the displaced feeling that I had time travelled and I was his mother looking up at the child Tom, the young Tom I never knew.

      ‘Mum will be up in a minute,’ he said, placing the tray carefully on my knees. Then, looking around the room, taking in the silence, an anathema to anyone his age, he asked gruffly, ‘Would you like me to bring my radio up? It has tape and CD too. You could play some music.’

      Before I could answer he was gone, bounding down the stairs to fetch it for me. He brought back Mozart and Beethoven, Eric Clapton, Bryan Ferry, Handel and Barber. Whose taste, I wondered, Ruth’s or Peter’s?

      As he bent to plug in the radio and CD player by my bed I longed to reach out and touch the back of his neck where his hair curled into his collar, where the small patch of white neck lay vulnerable.

      ‘Thank you, Adam, that’s so thoughtful of you.’ Longing to keep him, I asked, ‘Is it you I hear playing the clarinet?’

      He laughed and tossed his head in that achingly familiar way. ’Yeah. I’m not very good yet.’

      ‘You sound good to me.’

      ‘Well…’ He was moving to the door. ‘I don’t want to be, like, concert standard. I just love the instrument. Um, I’d better go, I think supper’s on the table.’

      ‘Thanks for the soup and the music.’

      He stood tall and fair, framed in the doorway where his father had stood earlier. He was half turned to me and I knew for sure that Peter was not the boy’s father.

      ‘That’s OK,’ he said and was gone.

      I sat, listening to the sounds of crockery and voices way below me. Ruth would come up in a minute and have her supper with me. She was still a little like the girl I used to know long ago, when we were close as close and swore that nothing would ever come between us, and our blood mingled from the tiny cuts we made on our wrists.

      If I closed my eyes I could almost believe I was someone else living a different life here in Birmingham; that I belonged to another family who were caring for me. I felt an acute sense of unreality, as if the past and the future didn’t exist. It seemed, as I lay in someone else’s attic, that my own life had ebbed away, or was momentarily suspended. I liked it.

      Ruth had rung Flo for me. Flo wanted to come down immediately and take me home, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to stay here. Soon, I would be well enough to leave, to go back to a hotel or return home, but I liked it up here in my eyrie. I thought about the boy all the time. His image lived behind my eyelids: his schoolboy smell of body heat and biro; his face etched on my brain.

      I heard Ruth coming up the stairs. Her steps were slow as she carried up her tray. Smiling, she sat on the chair beside the bed. ‘I understand you now have, like, music. So sorry I didn’t think of it. I’ve just been ticked off. Is the soup hot enough?’

      ‘It’s lovely.’

      I wanted to talk about Adam and Ruth was only too happy to discuss him. ‘He’s obviously not happy at school. It’s a worry.’

      I played with my soup. ‘What does Peter think?’

      ‘Well, he’s always thought he would be better off at a private school. The local comprehensive is huge.’

      ‘You didn’t?’

      Ruth sighed. ‘I was against it. I thought Adam would settle, he’s bright enough, but that seems to be the problem. We’re sure he’s being picked on, although he won’t say anything.’

      ‘Could he change schools?’

      Ruth hesitated. ‘Go privately you mean? It’s a huge financial commitment. It seems unfair on Peter.’

      ‘But you’re working too, aren’t you?’

      ‘Not enough for a private education and the standard of living we’ve got used to, Jenny.’

      I was silent. My soup had got cold and I put down my spoon. I couldn’t seem to edge Ruth nearer to what I wanted to know. ‘Adam’s such a sweet boy. You must be very proud of him.’

      ‘I am. We both are.’

      ‘How old is he? You must have got married very young.’

      Ruth did not meet my eyes. Colour swept over her face.

      I said quietly, unable to bear it any longer. ‘Peter isn’t Adam’s father, is he?’

      Ruth turned and placed her tray on the floor. ‘No. Peter isn’t Adam’s father. I’ve only been married for five years and Adam is thirteen.’ She met my eyes.

      The heat rose under my skin as I tried to do the calculation. ’You…you must have got pregnant soon after you got to Arran?’

      She shook her head. ‘No, Jenny.’ She leant forward, took the tray off my knees and put it on the floor with hers.

      Into the silence of the room Adam shouted up the stairs, ‘We’re off, Mum. See you later.’

      Peter called out, ‘’Bye. Back around nine thirty.’

      The front door slammed and Ruth picked up the trays and stacked them, arranging the plates all together neatly. ‘I’ll take these downstairs and bring you back a drink. I won’t be long.’ She did not look at me.

      I got out of bed and went to the bathroom to wash my face and hands. Outside the bathroom window there was a huge chestnut tree hiding the house next door. A blackbird was singing on a branch. It had been raining and the leaves dripped. If I opened the window I would smell the wet earth. I got back into bed. My mind jittered back fourteen years, trying to remember little signals, little signs I should have picked up.

      Ruth brought back two mugs of tea and sat in the chair again. ‘It makes more sense now, does it? The important bit I left out. My parents sent me to Arran because I was pregnant. That’s why my father took up the job in Canada, to avoid any scandal and having to deal with me.’

      I stared at her. ‘How could you leave without telling me something like that? I thought we were so close.’

      ‘What I told you on the train was true. My parents threatened awful things if I told anyone I was pregnant. I was seventeen, traumatised and scared and…’ Her voice was so soft I only just caught her words. ’I felt I’d let you, Bea, your family, down. I thought that you would all look at me differently. I felt contaminated. I felt unworthy of…’

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