Page 50 of The Second Chance Bus Stop

London

At home, I’m watching an episode of something with actors I seem to recognise but can’t place, when Blade calls me on my iPad.

For a minute I feel a familiar tug at my emotions. I think it’s the same one I felt years ago when I started working and dropped

him off, six months old, at nursery. The feeling of wanting him to be with me but also knowing that he needs to be somewhere

else.

‘Mum. Listen, I have some photos of who I think is your Sven. I want to show you. Is Zara there?’

‘Yes.’ She is sat next to me, just close enough that I can feel the side of her body.

‘Okay, great. I’ve sent her the pictures. Where do I start? He moved back to Sweden after three years in London, changed his

name for whatever reason—he’s now called Fredrik—then married and had a child the following year. A boy. Then two grandchildren.

He worked for an accountancy firm until he retired two years ago.’

‘Here.’ Zara passes me her phone with the pictures. Blade has sent all the ones he’s found. From teenage years and graduation

to family shots and old age.

I sit quietly and solemnly for what must seem like an age to the young people.

‘It’s okay, take your time,’ Zara says. I can see the look on Blade’s face, it says I can go home. Finally.

‘This is all great, Blade,’ I say. ‘I particularly like the family picture. It looks like they were a lovely little unit and

I just adore the child’s red dungarees.’

‘Okay. This is good, right?’

‘There is just one problem.’

‘I knew it. Whatever it is, we can fix it. I was going to suggest we bring you two together via FaceTime, if he’s up for it,

of course. What do you say?’

I take the phone from Zara and put it down on the table, looking straight at my son through the screen.

‘That sounds very lovely, and looking at this handsome man here I wouldn’t quite mind a FaceTime date, if I may say so. This

man in the pictures you sent is not the man I’m waiting for. He’s not Sven .’

Blade thinks I’ve lost my mind. Which we all know I have—that’s not what we’re debating here. But I have not yet lost all of it. Not yet. Blade went off and sulked. Swore in his head, I’m sure. He’ll pick himself up and continue. Something floats

in my mind, just out of sight. I know it’s there but can’t quite see it. I’m waiting for it to move into view the way moving

clouds do, but it doesn’t. I think it’s a picture. Not one that Blade found but one that I found.

Next to me Zara is still scrolling on my iPad. I lean into the shape of her body. It’s nice sitting next to another human.

‘Look. I’m googling olfactory hallucinations. Apparently they’re a thing.’ She’s been avoiding getting involved in the Sven business. Apparently today we are avoiding Sven by focusing on the dead-rat smell that only I can smell.

‘I see.’ But I don’t see at all.

‘Sometimes you may smell things that aren’t there. Other people do too. Look here.’ She opens a message board where someone

named @john1951 has written that he can smell rotting cabbage and burning bonfires in his apartment.

‘It’s not just you. If the doctors had informed you about this it may have reduced the anxiety. I’m sorry. How does it make

you feel now?’

‘There is no dead rat,’ I say.

‘There’s no dead rat,’ she confirms.

‘It says here that you can put your timer on thirty minutes when you start to smell whatever you’re smelling, go do something

else, and if it still smells when you come back it’s real. If not it’s a hallucination.’

When you start to lose your balance and need a cane to help you walk, you feel a little bit unsafe all the time, not massively

but a little bit. When another part of you stops being reliable it is hard to keep believing in yourself. I swallow and fold

up my reading glasses. I read somewhere that children can’t understand pretend until they’re school age. So even if you tell

them there are no ghosts they’ll still be afraid of them. If you are specific and tell them there are no ghosts in their room

because you’re there and ghosts really dislike humans with your specific hair colour and blood type, that will work. Perhaps

I can tell myself that there is no dead rat because rats detest the sound of Zara’s tapping on the keyboard, and I’ll find

some relief.

‘I wish I would hallucinate freshly baked buns or clothes on a washing-line,’ I say. ‘Instead, I get an animal cadaver.’

Thinking again of the photo Blade showed me, I say to her, ‘I know Blade’s upset. I know he wanted that to be Sven. But that’s not him. I know it’s not, or at least I think I do. Tell me, do you think I have lost my mind?’

‘No. I think you know the face of someone you love, Edith. No matter how lost you get.’