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СКАЧАТЬ I looked forward to Christmas with a lightness of spirit and a happiness in my heart that I’d never felt before, convinced he would return. I knew without doubt that we’d have an even better time than the previous year. I was going to let him read the Christmas diary I’d written about the amazing time we’d spent together, and I’d saved up lots of funny stories during the year to make him laugh.

      I was so naive.

      I learned a cruel lesson that year. Daydreaming can be so dangerous when the reality turns out to be heartbreakingly different to what you imagine.

      Alessandro never did come back for me.

      ‘Tea?’

      I look up, dazed. Mum is holding out a mug.

      Deftly whisking away the tears, I paste on a smile, hardening my heart to the memories, as I always do.

      Mum frowns. ‘What’s wrong?’ She’s immediately on the defensive, thinking she’s upset me. ‘I’m going to have a bit of a tidy-up tomorrow, so you don’t need to worry about me.’

      I shake my head and take a gulp of hot tea that burns my mouth. ‘Good, good.’ These days, I go along with her pretence that she’s going to get around to clearing up the place. I know she won’t. And that’s why I will keep coming round every day. To make sure she hasn’t toppled the huge stack of medical books piled up on the side table, knocking herself unconscious with The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Diagnosis. (It gives me nightmares, that tower of hardback books, but Mum point-blank refuses to move them, saying that she might need them for reference.) Or that she hasn’t accidentally set one of her revolting stuffed parrots on fire. Actually, that would probably be a good thing.

      If I don’t laugh about it, there’s a danger I might start weeping and never be able to stop.

      I take a deep breath and change the subject. ‘We’ll need to talk about Christmas Day. When I should collect you and bring you over to ours.’

      It’s going to be just Mum and me this Christmas. Harrison’s dad died earlier this year and his mum lives in Spain, so Harrison is flying over to join her for the festive season. It’ll be strange not to be together on Christmas Day.

      Mum waves her hand. ‘Oh, there’s plenty of time for that,’ she says, even though there really isn’t. I know she finds the festive season hard. I suspect that if she had her way, she’d elect to stay here with her pot noodles for company. She hates thinking she’s a burden to me. But I’d never want to spend Christmas without her.

      I feel suddenly overwhelmed with sadness. If I were ever granted a wish by some passing fairy godmother, it would be this: Please help Mum to move on with her life the way Martin has …

      *

      On the short drive home, I think about relationships and how it’s so difficult to know if you’ve met the right one for you. Mum thought she had, but how wrong she was.

      I’m happy with Harrison, and I know the feeling is mutual. We’re quite different in many ways but they do say that opposites attract, don’t they?

      Everyone should have a hobby, and Harrison is fascinated by Britain’s industrial heritage. He reads weighty tomes on the subject (weighty in the physical sense, as well as the intellectual – they’re the sort of books that come in really handy if a door needs wedging open). And he particularly enjoys photographing manhole covers. He says there’s a wealth of fascinating history right under our feet that people don’t even notice.

      I must admit, it took me a while to get my head round his passion for manhole covers. But after a weekend in London dedicated to showing me many fine examples of cast-iron street furniture, I can sort of see why he’s interested. (Well, actually, I still struggle. I’d rather have gone to Madame Tussauds, to be honest. But that’s just me. Embarrassingly lacking in intellect. We did have a brilliant full English next morning, though.)

      To be fair, it’s not just manholes. Harrison will also drive a fair few miles to see a good coal-hole cover, and the occasional drain grating. At first, I thought it was a really weird hobby to have. But I’ve been online and it absolutely isn’t! You’d never believe it but there’s actually a whole army of ‘gridders’, as they call themselves.

      This morning, over breakfast, he was telling me that he’d heard about a particularly fine specimen of drain cover in cast iron somewhere along Ribblesham High Street. (Interestingly, not all drain covers are made of cast iron. Concrete is also used. And it’s a little-known fact that manhole covers date back to the era of ancient Rome, which is obviously a very long time ago. I know these things now.)

      Another interesting fact is that Harrison and I actually met over a drain cover. It’s true! Mum’s bungalow is built on the site of an old ironworks and, would you believe, there’s a manhole cover almost right outside her house that has the name of the ironworks company on it. I’d never really noticed it before. Until the day Harrison was there, taking photos of it from dozens of different angles.

      It was a boiling-hot afternoon in July last year. I’d nipped over to see Mum in between shifts, only to find her in despair over a blocked toilet. We tried pouring bleach down and waiting before flushing, but that had no effect. Mum was almost in tears because she knew what was coming. I was going to have to call a tradesman.

      ‘It’s fine,’ she said, pleadingly. ‘I read somewhere baking soda can work wonders. I’ll see if I can find some.’ She went off to perform the hoarder’s equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack, and I stared after her in despair.

      ‘Mum, you have to get it sorted properly. You can’t live with a blocked toilet. I’m going to phone a plumber.’

      ‘No! I won’t let you!’ She beetled back and made a grab for my phone. It fell to the ground, smashing the screen, and I had to bite my lip to stop myself yelling at her. I couldn’t leave Mum without sorting out the damn toilet, but how could I do that without a plumber? And now my phone was broken!

      The burden of caring for Mum was suddenly too much. I escaped outside on the pretext of looking for something in the garage, and leaned against the wall, taking big gulps of fresh air and trying to calm down so that I could try to address the problem logically.

      That’s when I noticed a youngish, fair-haired man, with dark-rimmed glasses and what looked like a camera, peering intently at the ground just beyond Mum’s front gate. Wondering if he was okay, I went over to investigate.

      He looked up and I thought how handsome he was.

      ‘Do you live here?’ he asked, gazing at the house as if it was a palace.

      ‘No. But my mum does.’

      ‘Wow. Does she know she has a piece of social history right outside her front gate?’ He pointed at the circular piece of metal, with a design on it, set into the pavement. ‘Look at that. A Victorian coal-hole cover, made by a foundry that doesn’t exist any more. Amazing!’

      ‘Gosh. Now that I know it’s a piece of Victorian history, I’ll take more notice of it in future!’

      He smiled, showing lovely white teeth.

      I took out my hanky to dab my wet mascara.

      ‘Are you all right?’ He seemed genuinely concerned, so I ended up telling him all about Mum’s blocked toilet СКАЧАТЬ