Page 53 of The Second Chance Bus Stop

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When we arrive at the field where yesterday’s bustling scene has been replaced by still and scattered litter on trampled grass,

Blade helps me unload my crates and boxes to pack up, then he hovers.

‘See you at four. I’m not going anywhere today. No more places to visit.’

‘Later than that. I’m meeting Vincent.’

He has asked me for a meeting to talk over the project and say thank you before I leave, but I’m guessing it’s more my uncle

and old times he wants to discuss. I don’t do reminiscing. My memories of him are mine, they’re childhood and warmth and a

very big hole in my life ever since. Listening to another person talk of my favourite person in the world is like watching

a movie: I may smile and feel touched but it’s not me or my life.

‘So I’ll wait for you at six, then?’

‘Perfect.’

‘I hope you eat pizza?’ Vincent says. He has stubble today, and I think that would be a helpful detail for my sleep routine

should the sheep fade from my memory.

‘I do.’

It’s not busy at five o’clock and we choose a table by the window, where prams are pushed past and college students flock

in groups with Fj ? llr ? ven backpacks.

‘How are you finding it, this project? I take it that it was a bit out of your comfort zone.’ I have a water, and he has a

Coke, full sugar. I take a sip and am glad he added that last clarifying bit, or I might have started into an explanation

of the satnav and drive to the project.

‘It’s been good. Thank you for the opportunity. I do look forward to being at home with my plants, doorbell and regulars,

though.’

‘I never could get your uncle as far as this town. He also liked it best close to home.’

‘Really? I thought he had the shop busy with projects and sales? A thriving and booming business,’ How else would he expect me to save up more than a million?

‘Not at all. He made just enough and was happy to make just enough. Sometimes he’d have lodgers when trade was down, recession

of 2006 and the early nineties recession.’

I remember this now. Faintly. An Afghan woman in the spare room, so I’d slept on a blow-up mattress in the living room when

I visited.

‘It’s a bit of a different situation for me. I’m not sure you’re aware, but I need to buy my brothers out.’ Every time I say

it I feel embarrassed, as if I’ve failed already.

‘Well, you’ve had quite a few years to learn to stand on your two feet and show that bunch what you are capable of, am I right?

Doing that well. I can have a chat with your brothers, if you like. They were very impressed with your work, Sophia.’

I think of the message Mattias sent me last night. I know he’s proud of me, but I still don’t think I’m ready to confront them.

‘It’s better not to. But thank you.’

The food arrives. Pizzas with garlic sauce and white cabbage salad on the side. More Swedish than meatballs and Zlatan.

I crease my forehead as I think for the first time: perhaps I got it wrong. Perhaps the five-year period was not there to

allow me to make enough money to pay my family off, but to allow them to change their minds about me. For them to see that

I am capable and deserving of the inheritance.

‘My uncle must have had quite a few lodgers, but I think I only met one of them.’ I say, shuffling the pizza around on the

plate, not able to finish it all whilst also talking and having the added distraction of pedestrians walking past on the other

side of the glass. ‘I used to receive letters for one of them.’

I stored them for some time but must have thrown them away eventually. They never looked important and it’s rude to open a

stranger’s post. I search in my memory for the names of the lodgers now. The Afghan woman was definitely Damsa.

‘I think he was lonely,’ Vincent tells me. ‘If it was up to him he’d have had you living with him full time.’

I let myself imagine that childhood. Going to a different school, quiet dinners for two every night and practical clothes

that suited gardening.

‘I think I might have loved that,’ I allow myself to say then close the chapter as one that wasn’t meant to be.

‘Trust me, it was enough for him just having you for holidays and odd weekends. It was the getting back from England and taking on the business that needed a settling-in period. Easing back into solitude. He solved that with people staying. He wasn’t one to go out and socialise, but having someone around helped ease the loneliness.

He could read a book and they could cook, and at the end of the night they hadn’t both been entirely alone, there’d been the turning of the pages and the smells of the food to remind them of each other’s existence.

Was more like himself when I saw him a couple years after he got back.

Your birth probably had something to do with it as well.

’ All I can hear is the name of a certain country.

‘England? My uncle?’

‘He lived there for some time. Before you were born.’

‘But he hated planes. I didn’t even know he owned a passport. The only holiday of sorts he took was when he drove to Germany

to buy cheap wood crates for plantation. He told me he was an oak, a Quercus robur , because his roots were so strong and he planned to grow a hundred years old. In Sweden.’ The statement brings a wave of sadness—he

didn’t grow like an oak. The image of a chopped-down tree, its rings visible on the stump, comes to me. If you trace the rings

with your finger and count them you find out how many years the tree grew for. I imagine an oak tree stump now, fifty-two

rings. He died way too early.

‘Well, he definitely spent time in England.’

Blade is waiting outside when we come out of the restaurant. He’s still to take off his beanie, not even for a second, even

during this heatwave. As we arrive at the car and I sit down, I realise that he remembers things. Like that I want my seat

warmer on. Constantly. Things that he shouldn’t remember. No one else does. When I was a child no one reminded me to take

a snack because Big girls pack their own school bag, Sophia so I’d arrive at the dinner table famished and with a feeling of my stomach being turned inside out from emptiness. But Blade just casually drops little hints. Or actual snacks. In my lap.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s a cereal bar. I thought it was a decent one because it seemed the biggest brand in there.’

‘Why is it in my lap though?’

‘Thought you may want to eat it. I take it you didn’t finish your food so there’s room for it.’

Well, no, I hadn’t. Too many thoughts in my head. Too many things to look at outside the window. Too many Vincents opposite

me.

I open it and turn towards the window when I eat, aware of each crunching sound my jaw makes.

I message Lina.

Me: Blade hands out snacks at the right time. Continuously. Feel strange. Might have to hand flap for release.

Lina: Wow. He seems to have evoked quite an emotional response in you. You only hand flap stim when I put on Bambi.

Me: I DON’T LIKE ANIMALS DYING ON ME.

Lina: Exactly: Blade reaction is right up there with an orphaned-deer kid reaction. Just saying...

I close the conversation and notice twenty-three new messages in my family chat. There’s an instant stress ball at the base

of my stomach, but I open the thread. I can ignore up to twenty messages, but any more than that I need to at least chime

in with a one-liner.

Me: All good. Working hard and keeping busy. Vincent is happy enough. Thank you for the pictures and updates everyone.

Then five minutes later I open it up again.

Me: Did my uncle go to England before I was born?

Mum: He lived there for a year, yes, then started the shop. Not sure what happened to him there as he never travelled anywhere

after that trip!