The Homecoming

Rex has gone to get her from the airport. I was supposed to go with him, but slept in. He left a note saying he didn’t want to wake me, but really, it was my punishment for last night.

Sunlight hits the windscreen, flashing in my eyes for a moment. The winter sun hangs low in the cold blue sky, not a cloud in sight. Surely, it's a sign of the occasion: my baby girl, back home.

Gosh, I haven't seen her for over three years. How will she have changed, my beautiful girl? Will Time have marked her? Will she bear traces of the life she's lived without me?

The car lurches over the pockmarked road surface, jarring me in my seat. I grip the wheel tighter, my heavy head swimming, trying to focus on the road. The council really needs to sort that out. All it takes is a cold-snap to rip apart the carriageway. There's always bloody roadworks, but really, does anything ever get properly fixed?

Never mind, today is a day for celebrations. I picture her face, that bright spark in her eyes when she's excited. The scowl when she's upset, like that last time, when I told her not to leave.

It's my life, mum. It's not fair to guilt-trip me.

My husband took her side. I don’t think I ever quite forgave him for that.

The road winds between a copse of trees, their branches almost bare. The woody limbs reach over the car’s hood, plunging me into shadow. The last few leaves are holding on for dear life, refusing the shift of seasons. A blood-red leaf is ripped away, carried off in the breeze.

I think the rot set in the day she left, steadily eroding our marriage. A bitterness began to grow, poisoning our bond. At first we attempted to repair it, but like the damaged roads, no amount of temporary patchwork could undo the fundamental flaws. Eventually, neither of us could muster enough energy to even try.

My hands didn't know what to do without her. Holding a glass was a comfort. The cold liquid filled a void. I welcomed the numbing of loss. Of grief. Of Anger. Began to rely on it.

Emerging from the canopy of trees, I’m forced to squint, the low sun almost blinding me.

Today is a new start. A warmth fills me at the possibility.

I hope the store is well stocked with bubbles. We need to celebrate properly, make up for lost time.

A smile spreads across my face, only to be knocked off when the car hits another pothole. The empty bottles clink together in the boot. A reminder that I need to deposit them in the nearby bottle bank. I could've put them in a home recycling box, but Rex doesn't need to know how much I've drunk this week. It would only send him into one of his lectures. At the very least I'd get that look. The disappointment. How does he find her absence so easy? 

There was half a bottle in the fridge this morning. A perfect accompaniment to my smoked salmon breakfast, a little hair of the dog. Better than wasting it.

I know I've been drinking more and more since our daughter left, but what else is there to do? Without her, the hours stretch endlessly.

Bang! Another pothole. The car shudders violently to a stop. Did I blow a tyre?

“Fuck sake!”

I sit, frozen, gripping the wheel.

My daughter's coming home – this can't be happening now! I've been dreaming of this reunion for too long, clinging to it desperately.

Screaming shatters my thoughts. It's so loud. Why can't it just stop? Please, make it stop.

I need to prepare for when she arrives. Make a fuss of her. Soak up those cuddles. Everything will go back to how it was with her home. I promise I won't drink as much, not like this.

A siren, from somewhere in the distance, cuts through the screaming. There's a shout. The siren grows louder, more urgent.

It's so at odds with the bright sunshine. That's why I didn't see the pothole, because of the glare. At least Millie will have beautiful weather. I'm sure it's been awful where she's been living during her studies.

There's more than one siren now. A chorus of chaotic noise, rising in crescendo.

There's a tap at the window and the door opens, with a rush of frigid air. And a strange mingling of sulphur and cut grass. The man looking down at me is in uniform. How peculiar. He doesn't look like vehicle recovery.

He holds out his arm and I take his hand, unsteady as I climb from the car. He's very gentle as he leads me to the side of the road.

“Have you been drinking, madam?”

I shake my head slowly, thinking of the bottle in the fridge this morning, now empty in the boot of my car.

A crowd has gathered, people standing about in the road, muttering and gawking. It's an odd, unsettling sight.

Traffic is backed up behind them, into the distance. Another man in uniform is waving his arms frantically at the bystanders, trying to let an ambulance through the throng.

In the midst of it all, a woman is crouched on the freezing tarmac, and I realise who has been screaming. She's screaming still, that heart-rending shrill sound slicing through me, again and again. 

She's crouching over the small, crumpled body of a young boy, his golden hair matted with blood pooling rapidly around his head. His clothes are torn, tiny trainers askew on the pavement.

“It was a pothole,” I say, trying to make sense of it.

“Madam, what have you had to drink today?”

The people in the crowd are staring at me now, a mixture of horror and disgust on their faces. One woman has visibly paled. A man is shaking his head as the police officer asks me to breathe into the tube.

I look back to the bundle in the road being cradled by the woman, his mother? “Daniel! Daniel!” She's screaming his name over and over. 

The paramedics approach but there's no haste in their movements, no urgency. It’s too late.

I make a strangled sound and my legs give way as I crumple onto the grass verge, the reality of the situation slamming into me with brutal clarity.

Millie – I picture her face – Oh, Millie, what have I done?

Then I'm being led away, to the waiting police car, stumbling in a daze.

A single word is screamed and it cleaves my heart in two. I turn towards the sound, and there she is, though her hair is shorter. It's a shock to see her here. She wasn’t supposed to be here. Not yet. She’s looking at me with wide, terrified eyes. She says it again, quieter, though it's more a question: “Mum?”

The ground shifts beneath me, my legs buckling, an acrid tang of smoke and burnt rubber on my tongue. The officer's grip tightens, keeping me upright. How could I explain it to her, when I can't even fully comprehend it myself?

Millie's coming home but her mother won't be there.

Millie's coming home, but Daniel never will.