Читать книгу Searching Fifty Shades Of Grey - Audrey Ellis - Страница 11

May heard rain pooling as water collected in gushes and rushes at the end of the close and into the gutters as their dray-man delivered his coal. Then a short time later, three pairs of eyes stared as a Daily Mirror reporter and photographer walked up their garden path. Eyes that kept May up-to-date with her neighbour’s comings and goings. Who didn’t seem to miss anything? Small things like when workmen came to paint nearby houses with a fresh coat of paint, or if someone different was pushing a pram; these eyes logged it all.

“Ah, you must be Esther” said the reporter, as she put her notebook down on the piano lid. She listened whilst May chattered about never being frightened of being blind and how there were compensations, like having a surer touch and keener hearing than most.

“I was really frightened though, when Esther was born. I was kept in longer than usual. Yet, with lots of patience from the maternity staff, I learned how to bath and look after her. I was fumbling at the beginning, but quickly gained in confidence. I was mixing baby feeds and taking Esther for walks in her pram. I used to listen for her heartbeats. I'd tickle her to see if she would laugh. If she didn’t I knew something wrong with her. I've managed to nurse them all through things like whooping cough and measles!”

So she continued, as she carried the reporter her freshly made cup of tea; with the tea dripping onto the saucer.

“I’m happy but of course I do have regrets. I long to know what spring looks like, I can feel it and smell it, but I can’t see it. I would love to see Esther’s blue eyes and Peters mischievous grin but the funny thing is I don’t even know what a mischievous grin looks like!”

The reporter turned to Esther who was anxiously standing behind the sitting room door.

“Your mummy has been telling me all about you and what a helpful little girl you are. Have you had a nice day at school?”

Esther didn’t reply but ran to her mum, sitting on the warm saggy sofa and whispered.

“You told me not to talk to strangers. Who is that funny man who has a big camera round his neck?

“It’s okay darling he's a photographer at the Daily Mirror, a big paper that wants to tell all their readers how daddy and I are managing. Is that alright? I did talk to you about them coming at the weekend. Don’t you remember?”

What she didn’t try to explain to Esther was how she'd written to the paper herself after James had mentioned how a blind couple who he’d known had their kids taken into care just because they were blind.

Esther nodded and walked to the kitchen to get her usual orange juice and biscuit, then returned and listened as a young lady, who said she was a reporter, talked to her mummy about how she coped with not being able to see and what the difficulties were and why she contacted the paper about their story.

Shortly afterwards her younger brothers dashed in from Mrs. N.’s, where they’d been watching a Granada children’s television programme called Zoo Time, being spoiled with Swiss roll and bread and jam sandwiches, with remnants on their faces and would Mummy and Daddy please take them to London Zoo to see a panda please.

Their mummy talked quickly, whilst the young reporter with windswept hair and long red painted nails (with one being broken in her car door, she said) scribbled in her rapidly filling notebook. Then they waited for their daddy to join them briefly out in the Close where together they ran down the road where her daddy had first taught her to ride her bike and with the magic camera capturing that memory for ever.

The reporter and photographer slipped away to report on what they called another bigger story, whilst life in the close seemed to be normal again. How might they, sleeping in blissful ignorance, be prepared for the changes that lay ahead for them all?