Hope and Happiness in Bluebell Wood - Ali McNamara Page 0,2
that you’ll be careful.’
I beckon them over and I put my arms around them – marvelling once again at how tall they both are now. When had they stopped being my babies and grown into such wonderful, kind, caring adults? ‘Promise me,’ I say again. ‘Promise me you’ll both take extra care at all times – you never know what’s around the corner, what people might be thinking . . . ’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘Of course, Mum,’ they both say at the same time. They’d heard me say something similar a few too many times before.
‘I mean it. I totally understand you both wanting to live in busy cities – you’re young, why wouldn’t you? You think you’re invincible. I certainly did at your age. But none of us is – not these days.’
‘Mum, we’ll be fine,’ Hannah insists. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Keep in touch, won’t you?’ I insist. ‘And you too, Matt.’
‘Of course,’ Matt says. ‘I’ll text you and speak to you on Facetime as often as I can – although we’ll have to get used to the time difference . . . ’
‘What time difference?’ I ask. ‘What do you mean?’
Matt looks uneasily at his older sister.
She glares back at him.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask, looking between them both.
‘You’ve got to tell her now,’ Hannah says, looking and sounding annoyed.
‘Tell me what?’
‘I’m going to New York for six months,’ Matt blurts out, his cheeks flushed. ‘As part of my university course. We talked about this ages ago, didn’t we, before the . . . thing.’ He glances at Hannah, but she simply shakes her head dismissively. ‘Only I didn’t know where I was going to go then. But now I’ve been offered a work placement with a firm in Manhattan, and I’ve accepted it.’
I continue to stare at Matt. I’m trying desperately not to show it, but inside I’m horrified. My little boy in New York. Yes, I’m pleased for him, of course I am. But why did it have to be there?
‘I’m sorry it had to be New York, Mum. I know you’ll worry about me in a big city – even more than you usually do. But it really is an amazing opportunity.’
‘Yes, yes, of course it is,’ I say, recovering enough, on the outside at least, to speak. ‘I . . . I’m pleased for you, Matt; honestly I am.’
I reach forward to hug him, and suddenly his twenty-year-old, six-foot-two frame feels like it’s shrunk, and in my arms I’m holding a wiry, short-for-his-age eleven-year-old boy, who needs his mum because he’s scared of his first day at secondary school.
‘I’ll be fine, Mum,’ he says, trying to reassure me just as I’d been the one reassuring him back then. ‘I’ll be as safe there as Hannah is when she visits London for her job.’
I hear Hannah sigh heavily behind us at her brother. She clearly thinks he’s said the wrong thing . . . again.
‘Look,’ I tell them both, taking their hands in mine, ‘you’re adults now. I know I can’t tell you what to do, where to go and where to live. But I’m your mother, I’ll always worry about you wherever you go, you have to understand that. All that I ask is—’
‘We be careful!’ they cry in unison.
‘Please stop worrying, Mum,’ Hannah pleads. ‘What’s important right now is that you feel secure and happy again; and if this little cottage in the middle of nowhere is going to help you to heal, then if you promise not to worry too much about us, we’ll promise in return not to spend all our time worrying about you. Deal?’
‘Deal,’ I say, trying my best to sound as confident as they both did. But worrying, anxiety and general fear was what I experienced on a daily basis these days. My state of mind was one of the things I hoped this move to the country might help me with. But hearing the news that my son was going to live somewhere I considered dangerous like New York was not getting me off to the best start.
So as Merlin and I wave off my two children, I know in my heart of hearts that promising not to worry about them was a promise I’ll never be able to keep.
Two
‘Right,’ I say to Merlin when I’ve tackled some of the many boxes and cases that Matt had unloaded from the back of his car. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of this already.’