Motherhood

The trophy was laughing at her.

The formidable glass sphere sat atop a stand of obsidian, smiling with diamonded teeth. Carved in silver were the words, ‘Best Debut Novel 2004’. A decade later, the Award was still sitting on a shelf above her desk, covered in a sheen of dust.

Emma Simmons paused above her keyboard staring, as she had been for the past few days, at a blank word document. The cursor blinked, as if mocking her. Her fingers hovered, teetering over the Caps Lock button. Three days since she’d announced the sequel to ‘A Flower Blooming in the Fire’ and she’d failed to write a single word. It didn’t even have a title; it just sat stagnating in the laptop’s hard drive with no notes, no characters, no plot.

Emma’s head fell into her hands. Her nails were gnarled, having been gnawed down to cuticles. Her publisher had called about the project an hour ago, asking for an update on her progress. She’d laughed, saying,

“I’m about halfway through. On Chapter Twelve. The words just keep coming”. Once the call ended, she’d thrown the cheap android across the room. Now there was a black smudge on the plasterwork, while the phone lay in three separate segments on the floorboards.

Emma rolled her tongue around her mouth. Her teeth were gobstoppers, each one seemingly lodged in her throat as if to prevent her from choking out a single sentence. The document before her remained blank like untouched snow on a Winter’s morn. Ah, that was it. Smiling, Emma began to type the opening line.

“’On a winter’s morn, when the holly bushes were bloodied with berries…’”

Growling, Emma slapped her hand onto the backspace key. Again, and again and again, until she was left with an empty word document and no letters to fill it.

Leaning back against her chair – a harsh wooden slab which was sparsely populated by a cushion her Mother had once kitted – Emma sighed. Rubber her face, her eyes. No words formed. Her characters remained exactly where she’d left off, in chapter thirty of ‘A Flower Blooming in the Fire’.

“Yet here I am,” came a voice which only should have exited inside her head. Inside the best-stelling paperback she’d had published in December 2003, just before her daughter’s engagement. Evie had been gone for years now, her last days with Emma punctuated by contemptuous glares and late nights at the gym.

Now, Emma turned to face the character which had driven Evie from the house that sickly winter afternoon.

His name was Todderick Jackman and at the beginning of the novel, he’d been a down-on-his-luck car salesmen who was overweight and dissatisfied with what his life had become. After being involved in a life-changing accident, where his flesh was burnt to cinders and he’d lost an arm, he returned to the world with PSTD and permanent scars. Eventually, he managed to build himself up to become a famous sportsman, and even reunited with his University sweetheart. Only, at the end of the novel, thinking his sweetheart only loved him because of his money and despised his appearance, he decided that until he could love himself as much as the world did, he could not get married. Instead, at the end of the book, he donated his money to a Children’s Home and adopted a little girl who wanted to be a gymnast.

Now Todderick was standing behind her, leaning on a dove-white bookcase, his prosthetic arm fluttering in amusement.

“I thought I’d find you here,” he said. His Brazil-nut eyes coupled with his shadowed jawline, betrayed nothing.

“You never lost me,” said Emma. Todderick frowned.

“Actually, you lost us. You lost me. You’ve barely thought of me in ten years”.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you, or Ella Longmill or Chelsea Speedwick. You won me a British Book Award”.

Todderick sighed, scratching at his chin. His arm glistened like the Sword of Damocles, even in the dimness of the study. Where the curtains were permanently drawn, crafted it seemed, from molasses.

“Oh. I see,” glared Todderick. “We won you a fancy Award, so we’re hard to forget. Is that really all you remember? About us? About me?”

Emma slapped the desk; the pencil pots, many in the shape of a large quill, jumped. Breathing hard, she wiped the sleep from her eyes. Only when she opened them, Tod was still there.

“Hello,” he waved.

“Leave me alone,” she snapped. That was why he was here – to taunt her. To torment her over another day passing without writing a word. Haunting her, as he had for so many years after Evie had left.

Todderick shook his head. Stood his ground.

“I’m not leaving until you remember. Remember who I was, what I was like. My appearance, my personality. Do you remember who I am?”

Emma thought for a moment. Stalling, she was stalling; she knew exactly who he was. What he meant. She’d known ever since the day Evie had wept her way out of her life. Disappeared into the fresh slush.

“I remember you,” said Emma. “I remember taking you horse riding in the snow, and you laughed and pelted me with snowballs. I swear the horses laughed along with you. You used to make me little daisy chains or necklaces out of paper. I never kept them. Why didn’t I keep them? You never liked reading and it broke my heart. You never said you were proud of me. But… I never said I was proud of you either. And you disobeyed me. You married him, without my consent. You screamed and railed at me and called me inhuman. But what I said…”. She trailed off into nothing. Glanced up at Todderick who was perched on the wall, smiling softly.

“You’re not haunted by me, Emma Simmons,” he said. “You’re haunted by your daughter. Evie”.

Emma launched herself from the desk, the chair tipping back and slamming against the floor.

“You’re not real,” she realised.

“No. But she is. Evie is real and she’s in pain and she’s out there, waiting for you. Which is more than I can say for me”.

Emma blinked and Todd was gone.

Shutting down her laptop, she rushed to her mobile, trying to piece it back together. Eventually, she resorted to the house phone was sat on the rugged table at the bottom of the stairs. She dialled the number Evie’s husband had left when he’d wanted them to get back in touch, despite what Emma had said to him. About him. Telling him he wasn’t good enough. He’d only sighed and said,

“By your standards, no one is good enough to marry your daughter”. At the time, Emma thought he was right. Thought she was right. Now, all she could do was hope that ten years was not too late to fix everything.

The phone went to voice mail.

Tipping it back into the receiver, Emma jumped out of the door into the cold. While there was no snow, the slush was heavy, the sky was peppered with rainclouds, and she found herself falling into the driver’s seat of her Kia. Evie’s address was still in the SATNAV, resting there from last year when she’d gathered enough courage to decide to visit, but not enough to put her keys in the ignition. She only hoped Evie hadn’t moved to a new house.

Slamming the door, Emma turned the keys. The car purred to life. It wasn’t too late, she realised. It was never too late to fix everything.

As she put the car in gear, she smiled. The opening sentence was forming and now, she finally had a title.

‘A Fire Kindled from the Snow’.

It began with a Mother driving towards her daughter in the rain.