‘Look here.’ She pointed. ‘That’s Adam and James in our garden, back in Reading. There’s thirteen months between them, but you can’t tell them apart, can you? They were such good babies. All the neighbours would say what bonny faces they had, and you’d never hear them cry. They were perfect.’
I looked up at Adam, who had tutted and wandered over, hands in his pockets, to the bookcase in the corner of the room. His head tilted to one side as he read the spines of the twenty or so albums gracing the shelves, each carefully documented by year.
‘It’s lovely to have so many photos,’ I commented. ‘Ones that you can really look at.’
‘Oh, you’re so right, dear. Nobody even prints them anymore, do they? They just take them on their phone things and probably never look at them again. Such a shame. This is the way photos should be displayed.’ She stroked the plastic film that separated her from the photo of a beaming four-year-old Adam, proudly holding a fish, albeit a tiddler, aloft. A man grinned into the camera lens from behind.
‘Is that Adam’s father?’ I asked, tentatively.
Adam had apologized for snapping at me earlier, but I still felt on edge. I’d never seen that side of him before. I wondered if I’d been ‘inappropriate’ by asking about his father, but he didn’t turn around to face me. He stayed stock-still, shoulders set.
There was a momentary pause before his mother answered. ‘Yes,’ she choked. ‘That’s my Jim. He was such a good man, a real pillar of the community. “Here come Pammie and Jim”, everyone would say, wherever we went. We were the perfect couple.’
Her chest began to heave and she quickly pulled out a hanky from her cardigan sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said, as she blew her nose. ‘It still gets to me now, all these years later. So silly of me, but I can’t help it.’
I reached my hand across to hers and gave it a squeeze. ‘Not at all. It must be terribly difficult for you. I can’t even begin to imagine. Your husband was so young, too, wasn’t he?’
‘Come on Mum, you’re okay,’ said Adam softly, as he came over and knelt down in front of her. She immediately dropped my hand and held his face between hers, her fingers stroking his two-week beard. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and he gently wiped them away. ‘It’s okay, Mum. It’s okay.’
‘I know, I know,’ she said, pulling herself up straight, as if the gesture would give her more strength. ‘I don’t know why I still get like this.’
‘I’m sure it’s perfectly normal,’ I offered, as I removed my hand from where she’d dropped it on her knee.
I tucked a loose curl behind my ear and, as I looked at Pammie, a wave of guilt washed over me. I’d spent the best part of three days planning this whole event in my head: what I was going to wear, how I wanted to be perceived, how I should act and what I should say. How selfish of me. This woman, no matter how well she looked after herself, could never hide the years of hurt and grief that quite literally made her shoulders stoop with the weight. The feathered hairstyle, cut close around her face and neck, with its en vogue streaks of grey, so evenly distributed that it could only have been done in a salon, could never disguise her pain. Nor could her porcelain-smooth skin that fell into deep creases around her sad, hollow, eyes as she looked at me, biting down on her bottom lip. The shock and grief of losing her beloved husband all those years before, so soon after becoming parents, was still etched on her face. Here was a couple who were embarking on a new and exciting chapter in their lives, but then she’d been widowed and left on her own to cope with two children. The importance of how I looked, and what I should wear, now seemed pathetically trivial. So too did Adam’s sharp words earlier. There was a much bigger picture going on here, and if I wanted to be a part of it, I’d be wise to remind myself what was important and what wasn’t.
‘And I suppose we’ve got this lovely girl here to thank for this new addition?’ she smiled half-heartedly, whilst still ruffling Adam’s beard.
I held my hands up in mock remorse. ‘Guilty as charged,’ I offered. ‘I love it. I think it really suits him.’
‘Oh, it does, it does,’ she crowed. ‘Makes you even more handsome.’ She pulled him to her and nestled against his shoulder. ‘My handsome boy. You’ll always be my handsome boy.’
Adam awkwardly extricated himself from her, and looked at me, his face flushed. ‘Shall we get some lunch? Is there anything we can help you with?’
Pammie’s sniffs were beginning to subside. She pulled at the arms of her cardigan and smoothed down her tartan skirt.
‘Not at all,’ she said, wagging a finger. ‘It’s ready, I prepared it all this morning. Perhaps, Adam, you could help me fetch it in from the kitchen?’
I went to get up from the sofa. ‘No, no,’ she insisted. ‘You stay here.’
She carefully laid the photo album on the cushion next to me, and followed Adam into the side room. ‘We won’t be a moment.’
I didn’t want to carry on looking through the pictures without Pammie or Adam being there – it somehow felt intrusive – but I allowed my eye to fall on the open page that was laid bare in front of me. Top right was a photo of Adam with his arms wrapped tightly around a woman, his lips softly brushing her cheek. My heart lurched as I picked it up for a closer look. The couple exuded happiness as the camera captured the candid shot. It wasn’t posed or set up, it was a spontaneous moment caught on film, the pair oblivious to the prying lens. I fought the tightness in my chest, and staved off the vice-like grip that was threatening to snake its way up my throat.
I knew he’d had girlfriends before me – of course he had – but that didn’t stop the insecurities from creeping in. He looked so relaxed and at one with himself; I thought he was happy when he was with me, but this was a different expression, one I hadn’t seen before. His hair was longer, and his face fuller, but most of all he seemed carefree, smiling at life. The girl was equally at ease, soft brown curls fell around her face, and her eyes laughed as Adam’s strong arms engulfed her.
I found myself asking if that’s what we would look like if a photo was taken of us. Would our faces show the same abandonment? Would our feelings for each other be clear for all to see?
I chastised myself for allowing doubt and petty jealousy to sneak in. If they’d been that happy they wouldn’t have split up, would they? They’d still be together now, and our paths would never have crossed.
‘That’s life,’ Adam had said when I’d asked him, three weeks into our relationship, why he and his last girlfriend had broken up. ‘Sometimes things happen and you have no way of understanding them. You try to find a reason to justify it, but there isn’t always an answer. It’s just life.’
‘You make it sound like you didn’t want to break up,’ I’d said. ‘Did she call it off? Did she cheat on you?’
‘No, it was nothing like that,’ he’d said. ‘Let’s not talk about it. That was then, this is now.’ He’d put his arms around me, pulling me into him. He’d held on as if he never wanted to let me go, inhaling my hair and kissing my head. I’d looked up at him, taking in his features: his hazel eyes, tinged with green specks, that glistened under the streetlamps of Borough High Street, and that strong jawline that I’d once called chiselled, to which he’d laughed and said, ‘You make me sound like something in a tool box.’ He’d held my face in his hands and kissed me, gently at first, but then more deeply, as if doing so would stop anything from coming between us. Ever.
That night, our lovemaking had felt different. He’d held my hand as we climbed the stairs to his apartment above the market. We’d rarely made it much past the hallway without losing at least two items of clothing, but that night we waited until we were in his bedroom, where he undressed me slowly. I’d reached out to turn off the lamp on his bedside table, keen to keep the parts of me I didn’t like in the dark, but he’d caught my hand. ‘Don’t. Leave it on, I want to see you.’