Читать книгу With My Body - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 21

She hath done what she could

‘Hey,’ Mel says soft, frowning, with infinite understanding. ‘Get in.’

You gulp your tears; the car is warm, the heating on.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong –’ you rush out, your voice veering high, off course.

‘Sssh …’

‘The boys, the school gate, Hugh –’

‘I know, I know.’

Mel has pulled over, down a lane, she is not taking you back, thank God she is not taking you back. You barely register what she is doing: she is listening, that’s all, she wants to know. Her hand is on your knee, just that.

‘Sssh,’ and now the tears are coming again, soft, in the stillness, the quiet; cracked by kindness. You begin to talk, in a way you haven’t for so long.

‘But you’re so lucky.’ Quiet, at the end of it. ‘Don’t you see that? You have so much.’

You look at her. Yes, you nod, yes, you know; yet it has all, bafflingly, come to this.

Mel leans across, holds your chin, and says your name, softly, gently. You smile; no one has spoken to you like that for so long, a cadence of … caring. She kisses you on the cheek, softly, affectionately, in comfort.

It strays.

The tenderness of it, you pull back – but the tenderness, it holds you, draws you.

Something is coming alive within you, after so long, so many years. You go to speak. ‘Sssh,’ Mel soothes, kissing you, kissing you. There is a stirring, like an anemone swaying into life under the water’s caress; your belly is flipping and you remember long ago, the surrendering, opening out, when you had never felt more alive … once, long ago, for six transforming weeks, another place, life. Something long dormant is awakening within you.