Of course Ben and the dog were oblivious to it. While I composed photographs in my mind, both of them, with misty breath and bright, wild eyes, ran and played and hid. Ben wore a red anorak and I saw it flash down the path in front of me, then weave in and out of the trees. Skittle ran by his side.
Ben threw sticks at tree trunks and he knelt close to the leaf-strewn ground to examine mushrooms that he knew not to touch. He tried to walk with his eyes closed and kept up a running commentary on how that felt. ‘I think I’m in a muddy part, Mum,’ he said, as he felt his boot get stuck, and I had to rescue it while he stood with a socked foot held precariously in the air. He picked up pine cones and showed me one that was closed up tight. ‘It’s going to rain,’ he told me. ‘Look.’
My son looked beautiful that afternoon. He was only eight years old. His sandy hair was tousled and his cheeks were pink from exertion and cold. He had blue eyes that were clear and bright as sapphires. He had pale winter skin, perfectly unblemished except for those freckles, and a smile that was my favourite sight in the world. He was about two-thirds my height, just right for me to rest an arm around his shoulders as we walked, or to hold his hand, which he was still happy for me to do from time to time, though not at school.
That afternoon Ben exuded happiness in that uncomplicated way children can. It made me feel happy too. It had been a hard ten months since John left us and although I still thought about him and Katrina more than I probably should have, I was also experiencing moments of all-right-ness, times when it felt OK that it was just Ben and I. They were rare, if I’m honest, but they were there all the same, and that afternoon in the woods was one of those moments.
By half past four, the cold was beginning to bite and I knew we should start to make our way home. Ben didn’t agree.
‘Can I have a go on the rope swing? Please?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I reckoned we could still be back at the car before it got dark.
‘Can I run ahead?’
I often think back to that moment, and before you judge me for the reply I gave him, I want to ask you a question. What do you do when you have to be both a mother and a father to your child? I was a single parent. My maternal instincts were clear: protect your child, from everything. My maternal voice was saying, No you can’t, you’re too young, I want to take you to the swing, and I want to watch you every step of the way. But in the absence of Ben’s dad I thought it was also my responsibility to make room in my head for another voice, a paternal one. I imagined that this voice would encourage Ben to be independent, to take risks, to discover life himself. I imagined it saying, Of course you can! Do it!
So here’s how the conversation actually went:
‘Can I run ahead?’
‘Oh, Ben, I’m not sure.’
‘Please, Mum,’ the vowels were strung out, wheedling.
‘Do you know the way?’
‘Yes!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘We do it every time.’
He was right, we did.
‘OK, but if you don’t know where to find the track, just stop and wait for me on the main path.’
‘OK,’ and he was off, careering down the path ahead of me, Skittle racing with him.
‘Ben!’ I shouted. ‘Are you sure you know the way?’
‘Yes!’ he shouted with the assurance of a kid who almost certainly hasn’t bothered to listen to what you said, because they have something more exciting to be getting on with. He didn’t stop, or look back at me.
And that was the last I saw of him.
As I walked the path behind Ben I listened to a voicemail on my phone. It was from my sister. She’d left it at lunchtime.
‘Hi, it’s me. Can you give me a ring about the Christmas photo shoot for the blog? I’m at the Cotswold Food Festival and I’ve got loads and loads of ideas that I want to chat to you about, so I just want to confirm that you’re still coming up next weekend. I know we said you should come and stay at home, but I thought we could do something better at the cottage, dress it up with holly and stuff, so why don’t you come there instead. The girls will stay with Simon as they’ve all got things to do, so it’ll be just us. And by the way I’m staying there tonight so try me there if you can’t get through on my mobile. Love to Ben. Bye.’
My sister had a very successful food blog. It was called ‘Ketchup and Custard’, named after her daughters’ favourite foods. She had four girls, each one the image of their father with deep brown eyes and hair that was so dark it was nearly black and stubborn, wilful temperaments. My sister often joked that if she hadn’t given birth to them herself she’d have questioned whether they belonged to her at all. And I admit I sometimes wondered if my sister ever truly got the measure of her girls: they seemed such an impenetrable bunch, even to their mother.
Close in age – all of them older than Ben – they formed a little tribe that Ben never quite managed to penetrate, and in fact he regarded them with some wariness, mostly because they treated him a bit like a toy.
Nicky proved a match for them more often than not, though, scheduling and organising them down to the last minute, dominating them by keeping them busy. Their lives ran to such a strict routine that I sometimes wondered if these raven-haired girls wouldn’t implode once they entered the real world, beyond their mother’s control.
On her blog Nicky posted recipes that she claimed would make even the fussiest families eat healthily and eat together. When she started the blog I thought it was naff and silly but to my surprise it had taken off and she was often mentioned when newspapers published ‘Top Ten’ lists of good food or family blogs.
My sister was a brilliant cook and she combined recipes with good-humoured writing about the trials of raising a big family. It wasn’t my cup of tea – too contrived and twee by far – but it was impressive and it seemed to strike a chord with lots of women who bought into the domestic heroine ideal.
I called her back, left a message in return. ‘Yes, we’re planning to come up on Saturday morning and leave after lunch on Sunday. Do you want me to bring anything?’
I was making a point by asking that. I knew she wouldn’t want anything from me. She prided herself on being a perfect hostess.
Limiting our stay was also deliberate. When I’d thought we were going to visit Nicky at their family home I’d been determined to stay only one night, because although Nicky was the only family I had, and I felt a duty to see her and to give Ben the chance to get to know his cousins, it was never something I looked forward to especially.
Their big house just outside Salisbury was always perfectly presented, traditional, and loud, and it became claustrophobic after one night. I simply found the whole package a bit overwhelming: super-efficient Nicky working domestic miracles left, right and centre, her big, jolly husband, glass of wine in hand, and pile of anecdotes at the ready, and the daughters, bickering, flicking V signs at my sister’s back, wrapping their father around their little fingers. It was a world apart from my quiet life with Ben in our small house in Bristol.
Not that the cottage was my ideal destination either, even without Nicky’s family to contend with. Left to both Nicky and me by our Aunt Esther, who raised us, it was small and damp and held slightly uncomfortable memories for me. I would have sold it years ago, I could certainly have done with the money, but Nicky remained very attached to it and she and Simon had long since taken on its maintenance costs entirely, largely out of guilt, I think, that she wouldn’t let me release the capital in it. She encouraged me to make more use of it but somehow time spent there left me feeling odd, as if I somehow had never grown up properly, never shed my teenage self.