Chapter 2 #2
The locks allowed them to ignore the knocking and the ranting of their mother when her demands to be let in went unanswered.
Instead they’d stay silent and hope she might believe they’d gone out.
It was why Eden had come up with their ‘secret’ knock, the code that meant they’d know who was at the door.
It was silly all these years down the line, with their mother and father both completely transformed from the people they’d been, but the ‘secret’ knock endured all the same.
Felix opened the door a few inches. ‘I don’t interact with cold callers.’ His attempt at keeping his tone serious and his expression neutral failed almost instantly, and he laughed as she rolled her eyes.
‘You’ve got three freezing callers out here, never mind cold ones, so just let us in, will you?’
‘You should have said Teddie was here.’ His heart instantly lifted at the sight of his four-year-old nephew in the arms of Eden’s partner, Drew.
When Teddie reached out towards Felix, everything in the world was good again.
Eden’s little boy had been diagnosed with autism and, until very recently, had been completely non-verbal.
Now he was beginning to say things, but the development of his speech was quite different to that of most children, who would learn individual words and eventually begin to string them together.
Teddie had what was called Gestalt language processing and as soon as he started to speak it was in phrases, rather than individual words.
The phrases had a unique meaning to Teddie and weren’t always easily decipherable to those who didn’t know him.
One of the earliest examples, had been when he’d memorised the phrase ‘we all fall down’ from the ‘Ring-A-Ring-A-Roses’ nursery rhyme.
Now, every time Teddie hurt himself, whether it involved falling over or not, he’d say ‘we all fall down.’ The speech and language therapist had told Eden that the phrases were stepping stones to the development of more fluid speech, where the set phrases would eventually progress to single words, but she’d been so delighted for him to say anything at all that she wouldn’t have minded what his first words had been.
‘Twinkle, twinkle.’ Teddie repeated the phrase with the same rhythm it had in the nursery rhyme, but Felix knew exactly what his nephew wanted and it wasn’t a singalong.
‘Okay, sweetheart. Let’s get inside and I’ll get your toy box out for you.
’ Lifting Teddie into his arms, Felix carried him through to the large open plan living area, one corner of which had been given over to sensory equipment for his nephew.
There was a big wooden toy box containing all the toys that Felix had bought for him, the most recent additions were a set of shatterproof tubes that were filled with liquid and glitter, that twirled and danced when they were turned over or shaken.
There were also some squidgy toys in different shapes, filled with sequins and sparkly beads providing sensory stimulation when they were held up to the light box.
Teddie loved the feel of them, and the new additions had quickly become firm favourites, Felix had sung the nursery rhyme ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ to Teddie, when he’d first bought the toys and noticed that some of the sequins were star-shaped.
Now ‘twinkle, twinkle’ had become his nephew’s way of verbalising the intention to play with them.
Felix had had an affinity with Teddie from the first time they’d met and, despite the fact that he’d come and gone from his nephew’s life because he’d only returned to Cornwall for all-too-brief visits when he’d been living in the States, they’d always had a close bond.
Felix was able to understand what the little boy wanted in a way that was only matched by Eden and Drew, and he found the development of Teddie’s language fascinating.
If the human mind could create those kinds of building blocks for speech, when the usual path to language development was closed off, then surely it was capable of all kinds of things that the medical field didn’t even know about yet.
Felix lived in hope that there’d eventually be huge leaps of progress in terms of understanding the relationship between addiction and brain chemistry, leading to the development of far more effective treatments.
It would be too late for far too many people, but there were so many others who needed help.
He’d spent all day dealing with the consequences of what happened when they were out of treatment options, and it never got any less devastating.
‘You’ve got a knack of choosing toys he loves.
Mum bought him a gorgeous wooden fort, but the only thing he likes about it is the feel of running his hands along the battlements.
It doesn’t matter how many times she retrieves the little wooden soldiers and puts them all back in the fort, the first thing Teddie does is to grab them all out again and hurl them to the furthest corner of the room.
She still doesn’t quite seem to grasp the fact that Teddie doesn’t play the way she expects him to. But she’s trying.’
‘She is and you know, Mum, she just wants everything to be okay and she struggles when that doesn’t look the way she expects it to. But we know Teddie isn’t just okay, he’s perfect.’ Felix gave his sister’s waist a squeeze. ‘Now what can I get you guys to drink?’
‘You don’t have to get us anything, we just came to check that you were okay.
’ Drew looked puzzled when his statement was met with another eye roll from Eden.
He’d clearly let the cat out of the bag in his usual direct style, but it was one of the things that Felix liked best about him and there was a lot to like.
Drew had come into his sister’s life in the last year and it was as if he’d been made to fit there.
He was a pathologist at St Piran’s Hospital and he had high-functioning autism, which allowed him to understand Teddie in a way that perhaps not even Eden could.
Drew clearly adored both her and Teddie, and it was wonderful to see her happier than Felix could ever remember her being, especially after the hell that Teddie’s father had put her through.
Eden had had so much on her plate that Felix had never told her about Meredith.
It had been easy to keep his private life private, when he was living thousands of miles away.
Eden would have warned him off getting involved with someone with addiction problems and repeating the cycle in the same way she had with Teddie’s father.
It was ironic when he’d been the one to caution her against that, but he’d done it himself anyway and it had ended in exactly the way she’d probably have predicted.
Maybe it had been mapped out in their DNA after all they’d gone through as kids, but his sister’s newfound happiness with Drew made him happy too and it gave him hope for a future that wouldn’t have any echoes of their past. The last thing he wanted Eden to do was to worry about him now that he was home, but there were some things he knew he couldn’t keep from her forever.
‘I’m fine.’ Felix tried to sound as if he meant it, but he’d been unable to fully shake off his sadness at the loss of another life to addiction. ‘It was an overdose and when we sign up to volunteer at Domusamare we know that sometimes these things are going to happen, don’t we?’
‘Yes, but it’s still a kick in the gut when they do.’ Drew gave him a level look and all he could manage in response was a small nod. ‘It’s especially hard when you think you’re making progress and that someone is on the road to recovery and then it all falls apart.’
When Felix still didn’t answer, Drew continued. ‘You did everything you could. Everyone at the charity did. You’ve got to shake off the feeling of being responsible for the people we work with. We can’t force them to take the help that’s offered or to stay away from the drugs.’
Drew ran a hand through his hair, breaking eye contact.
He wasn’t being flippant or trite and Felix knew what he was saying was true.
If you took these things home with you then you’d be no good to the next person who needed your help, but it wasn’t easy, especially not when you’d loved an addict, or been parented by one.
Felix had done both of those things. It was why he was so determined to continue trying to help others, but it was also what made the blows when they came all the harder to bear.
Drew was right, though, he had to be able to separate those things out from his own life.
‘I’m all for shaking it off, what do you suggest?
’ He looked at Drew, a suspicion of what the other man might say making him raise his eyebrows.
‘Although if you suggest another cold water swim it might be the end of our friendship and it’ll almost certainly be the end of any hope I’ve got of becoming a father one day.
It’s still only March and I thought my testicles were never going to recover from the last one. ’
‘Too much information, big bro, too much information.’ Eden shook her head, but she was laughing. ‘Now you can see why I keep refusing to go and I haven’t even got testicles.’
‘You don’t know what you’re missing out on.
All those endorphins that come rushing to the surface, not to mention the improvements to your circulation and your mental resilience.
’ Drew could spout all the science he wanted about his newfound passion for sea swimming all year round, but Felix’s toes weren’t the only things curling in on themselves at the thought of it.
Even if he had wanted to make it a daily habit, he definitely wouldn’t have chosen March to start.
‘Eden might not have tried it, but I know exactly what I’m missing out on and I intend to keep it that way.
’ Felix grinned again, already feeling much better just for spending time with people he loved and who he knew loved him in return.
It was certainly far more appealing than plunging back into the Atlantic and trying not to release a string of expletives about just how cold it was.
Otherwise, he’d have turned the air as blue as his testicles.
‘I don’t need to try it when there are plenty of other ways to get an endorphin rush.’ Eden said as she shook her head and Felix raised his eyebrows for a second time.
‘I think it might be my turn to caution you about too much information.’
‘Not that.’ She stuck out her tongue. ‘Boys are so basic. What I was going to suggest was that we all head for dinner at Penrose Plaice. When we went in there with Teddie last month, I told Brae, the guy who runs the place, that he’ll only eat chicken nuggets from McDonald’s or Birdseye, so there’d be no point ordering anything for him.
You know what Teddie’s like, nuggets might be one of his safe foods, but if they deviate even slightly from what he’s expecting, we might as well be asking him to eat a whole trout with its head still on. ’
‘He’s got a discerning palate.’ A wave of love for his gorgeous nephew, and all the little quirks that made Teddie who he was, washed over Felix as Eden nodded.
‘He has indeed and it turns out that Brae was more than willing to cater to it. The next time we went in, he said he had a stash of Birdseye nuggets ready and waiting for Teddie’s visit.
So my vote for the endorphin rush we all need is a family dinner at Penrose Plaice and a wander around the harbour in Port Agnes to look at the winter lights before they take them down. Teddie loves them.’
Port Agnes was the neighbouring village to Port Kara and for the first time this year they were keeping some of the lights that had been put up at Christmas on display until the first official day of spring on the twentieth of March.
It had been billed as ‘light in the dark’ and a way of encouraging visitors in the quietest months of the year.
Teddie would have been happy to see the lights up all year round and anything that made his nephew happy was a good idea as far as Felix was concerned.
‘That sounds perfect. Thank you.’ Bending slightly, he dropped a kiss on his little sister’s head. This was why he’d come home. Family was everything and no medicine or therapy would ever be able to take its place.