Page 67 of The Second Chance Bus Stop

London

My neurologist told me that a new study found there to be twenty-seven human emotions. He told me this as he warned that I

may be experiencing a shortening in range, perhaps only really feeling happiness, anger, sadness and contentment. Or, he said,

I could be finding myself within a mix of them and not always a rational one. How wrong was he, I think now. How very wrong. Look at me skilfully singling out just the one pesky emotion. Regret.

‘I’ll read the last one you sent, yeah?’ Blade says, and I want to cover my eyes like a child, but then I think that this

is what I want, isn’t it? I want it to happen now because in a few years I may stop talking about m o ssas and Hornton Street and start talking about a na?ve woman who didn’t come to meet Sven when she should have, who chose

the wrong man and ended up alone for a lifetime. So I shush it and keep my hands in my lap.

S,

I know you would do anything for me—for us.

I know it will hurt you, and so I cannot face telling you in person.

Or with lengthy words. I’m sorry. I can’t take Blade with me.

I’m not allowed to bring him out of the country without his father’s permission.

He is promising to come back and be involved, that this has been a wake-up call.

He’d come back into both of our lives, then.

And I feel I have to give him a chance, to give Blade a chance at a life with both his parents.

I’m sorry.

Blade stops, folds the letter up and waits for me.

‘I got as far as that small alleyway next to the church. Then I stopped. I wasn’t going to meet him but I desperately wanted

to move closer so that I could get a look at him. But if he saw me hovering he might have thought I could be persuaded. I

couldn’t allow myself to be persuaded. Because I couldn’t leave you behind. But I also couldn’t bring you.’

I interlace my fingers as though in prayer, as if the mere mention of a church requires it. God , do I hate habits with a passion.

‘He had come back into the picture, your father. Promising exactly what I’d wanted—love, co-parenting and financial support.

But to get it I had to stay. To give us a chance. Even if I’d said no I couldn’t have gone, because he wouldn’t sign the passport

form. I couldn’t take you out of the country. He said it was because he loved you too much, because he was going to be a father

to you.’

‘He didn’t keep the promise. He didn’t stay around.’ The pain on Blade’s face, still visible after twenty-nine years, reminds

me of exactly why I made the choice to stay. To try. He wanted a father.

‘He didn’t.’ In fact, he disappeared faster than a British heatwave.

‘You chose the wrong man.’

‘That I did.’

‘Why didn’t you try to find him? When Dad left? When I was older? You could have had a second chance.’

‘We are allowed second chances, but we can only take them if our first choices don’t ruin us.’ What would I have said? It was too late.

Blade perches forward on the chair, as if he’s about to stand up and sprint off, then moves both hands to his face.

‘My God, Mum. You’ve lived with the regret all this time. It’s drained you. I saw it sometimes, growing up. It was... hard

for me to watch.’

‘Yes,’ I say. The guilt when I think of Sven, of him never marrying, of dying before we found a way to reconnect. Then the

guilt for letting my choices affect my son. For being a broken parent.

We’ll just wait for time to pass and with every day we’ll forget each other more until we’re just each other’s bleak memories,

like running barefoot on summer grass, or hearing on the radio that the Berlin Wall had fallen. Our love story will be memories

and marks of time and nothing more. I’d think. That’s what we’re doing. Waiting for time to do its thing.

Turns out I was left to age and forget alone.

In the end I’m the only one waiting. Because Sven died suddenly seven years ago. Before I could find it in me to look for

him. Then I started to get cloudy, everything blurring together, but within the haze he was always clear, and I knew I had

to find him. That he was what was unresolved in my life. Some days that’s all I had. But it was enough.