Page 65 of The Second Chance Bus Stop

London

Five days after her accident Mum gets to go home. She’s made an incredible recovery. Unprecedented, the medical team told

me. A physio will be coming twice weekly and a nurse every day to begin with but she’s fit enough to be home. Eliza got a

cleaner to come in while we were in hospital and Mum has spent the first hour rearranging items and moving them back to their

original place. I hold onto the letters and sit with the words they contain, waiting for a moment to speak to her. Zara left

a lasagne in the oven and a bowl of rocket in the fridge, but once we got back she headed home. Now it’s just Mum and me again.

This time I know I’ve got it right. The story. Mum’s story.

My anger is gone. Can you even be angry at someone for forgetting? For sending you to look for someone they deep down knew

died years ago? When you know how much she never wanted to forget?

I sit down next to her on the sofa.

‘I need to talk to you, Mum. I met someone in Sweden. Someone I really like.’

‘A girl?’

‘A girl. She’s called Sophia.’

‘That’s a lovely name.’

‘It’s a long story, and I think I better start at the very beginning. With Sven.’

‘He didn’t turn up.’

‘Zara gave me this. She said you photocopied it from the library.’ I hold out the A4-size picture of a gathering outside the

town hall. The one she used as her screensaver. I point to a face in the crowd.

She doesn’t reply. Instead she touches the hem of her long-sleeved T-shirt, a bit like Sophia would, and looks straight at

me. The slow nod that follows feels like a drawn out, hard-fought-for confession. The thought of my mum and him both alone,

on different sides of the North Sea tugs at my chest. But then I remember that they weren’t all alone. One had me, and the

other had Sophia.

‘You weren’t really waiting for him were you? Not that afternoon and not now. Because he did come, didn’t he, Mum? We both

saw him in that picture from the archives. He did turn up that afternoon in 1996. It was you that didn’t turn up, right?’

Her eyes meet mine. I repeat what I just asked.

‘ He was waiting. But you never turned up, did you?’