As I hit the floor the memory comes to me, my old life crossing paths with the new. Something jolted perhaps, knocked back into place. I am in my old house, my old bed. The sheets are cold, and I am alone. Early morning sun is already creeping over the horizon, enough to light the room. Outside I can hear the frenzied gulls as they fight over the fish shoaling in the shallow water.
It is near the coast, a small house with two bedrooms and one large room downstairs that spreads into a neat kitchen and small dining room. I can see it now, the way the light catches the kitchen cabinets, that place I can recall warming milk. The rear window affords a slim view of the sea, framed between the walls of two other houses. And on that morning, the sky is on fire as the sun rises over the pier, bathing the water in a golden haze. It should be beautiful, but I have long stopped finding the beauty in such days; Andrew should be there. I have no idea where he is.
The floor is covered with a scattering of plastic toys and miniature cars. I collect some of them, toss them into a large wicker basket underneath the stairs. It was one such toy that led to the argument last night. Andrew stepped on one of the tipper trucks, the sharp edge cutting the underside of his foot. He stormed out, hasn’t been home since.
Despite the early hour and the lack of sleep, I feel alert, wide awake, as I do most mornings. It is more a sense of vigilance than anything else, a little like a soldier asleep in a war zone, never sure if this is the day I will wake to find an enemy gun thrust in my face. Gladiatorial awareness from the second I open my eyes.
I get Joshua up and dressed. I watch as he performs his daily ritual, checking each room, under the beds, inside the cupboards. He never asks where his father is, not by now. He just conducts his own circuit of the house, looking in each of the rooms. If he finds him in our bed it is a good day; on the sofa a cause for concern. When he can’t find him at all, that’s when he is the quietest.
We drive west along the seafront that morning, watch the waves rolling in to shore, gentle and submissive as they break under the pier. It is a call to swim, a glorious day, the sun painting the surface of the sea a brilliant white as it rises in the sky. The stucco hotels loom tall on our right, and the early vacationers are out walking on the promenade, serenaded by the call of gulls. I listen at the traffic lights to the tap, tap, tap of somebody hammering in a windbreak.
I drop Joshua at school and continue towards work. Piles of paperwork await me as I walk into the sweaty office at Fresh Starts, the heat of an early summer. I sit down, open the window as far as it will go, gasp at the cool air. I can smell grease and chips, the saltiness of the English Channel. I glance over at the others. George, one of my colleagues, waves at me. But nobody stops for a chat, or includes me in the office gossip. I keep myself to myself now. It’s easier that way, limits the need for explanations. Everybody knows about my problems with Andrew. You can’t share in the office gossip when you are the subject on everybody else’s lips.
At lunchtime I slip out, grab a sandwich stuffed with pastrami from the Italian deli I go to every day. I walk down to the beach, peel off my summer dress to reveal a plain black swimsuit underneath, and step into the water, the waves lapping at my feet, comforting and calm. I breathe the sea air as I wade in further, the cool surface swelling around the soft stretch marks that appeared on the tops of my legs midway through my pregnancy.
Gulls circle overhead as I swim, the water washing against my face. It feels good, a relief from the humidity, the headache I have been nursing all morning beginning to relent. But the day is changing, a storm brewing out at sea that promises a downpour later, the clouds deep and grey on the horizon. I can feel it coming, the sky a little darker, the breeze a little cooler as I sit wrapped in a towel on the shore.
I like the changeability of the coast, the strength of the sea. It is a comfort to see the seasons change, feel the passage of time. Even on the coldest of days I bring Joshua here, both of us wrapped up in thick winter jackets. We sit on a bench where we can feel the spray from the water, sipping from a flask of hot chocolate, watching the relentless push of the waves. Andrew never comes with us.
‘The world is always working on a new day, Joshua,’ I told him once, on one of those days when I could feel the weight he carries on his shoulders. The weight of having a parent who drinks, who disappears for days at a time. ‘Don’t ever think that one bad day means the next has to be the same.’
He looked up at me and blinked, and a tear streaked down his freckled face. ‘But every day is the same, Mama. Nothing ever changes.’