Kitty

Moving Home

Moving Home

Kitty answered her mobile phone.

‘Sorry, Mum, first chance to call. Crazy busy today.’

‘Darling, don’t worry about calling! I know you’ve got a lot on your plate.’ She smiled, delighted to hear from her son, whom she pictured in his scrubs in the busy A speaking to her kids always restored her spirits.

‘Gotta go. Love you.’

Kitty held the phone and pictured her boy rushing off to do his thing.

‘I love you too,’ she whispered.

She had pulled their trunks into the middle of the room last week when the bed had been dismantled and disposed of and now they stood like sentinels, the keepers of secrets.

Kitty flipped the latch on Olly’s trunk and pulled out his baby blanket. She brought it to her mouth and inhaled the glorious scent that had all but faded, picturing herself knitting of an evening in front of the fire up at Darraghfield. Kitty’s eyes filled with tears. She remembered that particular trip back home in all its sad detail. She and Sophie had gone up there for the autumn half-term, just a couple of weeks after Angus moved out. They had both needed the change of scene, and Kitty was in desperate need of a shoulder to cry on. Heavily pregnant with Olly, she could think of nowhere she’d rather be than with her dad.

He was of course over the moon at having so much time with Sophie, and Sophie was as keen as mustard to go fishing with him. She looked adorable in Kitty’s old waders and her grandad’s fishing hat, and it turned out she was pretty good at tickling the salmon and even cleaning and gutting them.

Good old Soph, mature beyond her years, even at ten. No wonder she’d made such a good teacher. Kitty smiled proudly. Her kids were her lifeline. Always had been.

While her dad and her daughter were out on the river, Kitty nursed her hurt and rediscovered her favourite nooks and crannies at Darraghfield. The house always seemed even grander after any time away, another world from the narrow alleyways, terraced houses and twisty cobbled lanes of Blackheath. But there was a sadness about the place too, and it wasn’t just her own. Her mum was frail, aloof, and Kitty found it hard to get through to her. She asked her one afternoon if she remembered Balla Boy and her mum simply looked away, as if that time and the woman she was then were almost too painful to remember.

There was one day, though, when her mum was in a quite different mood. Kitty had been resting in the library, trying to finish knitting the baby blanket for the new arrival. Her mum had walked in, composed and smiling. Seeing the little blanket, she took it from Kitty, saying, ‘Oh, darling, that takes me back… I so loved being pregnant with you. It was such a special time.’ And with a dexterity Kitty hadn’t seen in her mum for years, Fenella deftly added on the final dozen rows, chatting away as she did so. ‘I used to knit you a new wee jumper every year when you were little. I remember teaching myself how – it wasn’t my natural forte, you know, but I was determined to do it!’ She smiled dreamily. ‘Every stitch was made with love. You were the centre of my universe, Kitty. Still are, darling.’ Kitty was so choked up at this, she hadn’t been able to reply. ‘I can’t wait to meet your new little one in a couple of months. I’ll make them a wee jumper too – why not!’ And with that, her mum had floated out of the library and back up to her room.

Kitty swam nearly every day, loving the chance to take the weight of her enormous belly off her feet. As she lay in the water, she would think about the day Angus had walked into her life. She’d been fourteen, a baby, as Tizz kept reminding her – lovely, loyal Tizz, who called up most afternoons while Kitty was at Darraghfield. ‘Who wouldn’t have fallen for Golden Boy?’ Tizz said emphatically. ‘He was gorgeous! Still is. You were fourteen, never been kissed, and the most handsome boy at Vaizey wanted to be your boyfriend? You didn’t stand a chance!’ Even Kitty had giggled at that.

Tizz was of the view that she and Angus had never really been right for each other; that Angus had confused friendship with love and had had neither the self-awareness nor the courage to think about what he really wanted. Kitty hated that she might be right. She wished she could run to her fourteen-year-old self in the pool and yank her from the water. She would take her in her wise, adult arms and rock her until the danger had passed, until the shape of the boy had slipped back through the gap in the hedge and the world had returned to a simple, sunny, ordinary day… And then, just maybe, she might have gone on to meet a different boy, a boy who really loved her, loved her for herself and wanted to lead a simple life together. A life where they both got to see the whole picture, without lies, without hiding.

Kitty placed the precious blanket back in the trunk and lifted out Olly’s first Vaizey College blazer. That had been another decision reached during that half-term at Darraghfield. ‘Send the kids to Vaizey early,’ her dad had urged. ‘Soph can start in the summer term. You’ll miss her, of course you will. But you’ll be so busy with the new baby, and she will love it there. I know she will.’

He’d been right, of course. He always was. Her lovely dad. He had so many challenges of his own to deal with, especially that year, but he was always there for her, even when his own world fell apart.