Page 81 of Falling for Grace

“There was this new family that had moved into Number Five, the yellow house. I hadn’t seen them move in, but my mum had. She was always a notorious curtain twitcher.”

He chuckles, his smile reaching his eyes.

“I was going through my roller-skating phase.”

“Now that I would love to see,” he says. The dimple that I noticed the first time we met appears as he grins.

“Don’t mock it, mister. I will have you know I am a force to be reckoned with on roller skates.”

“Sounds like date number two is sorted.”

He’s smiling at me, and there’s that warm fuzzy feeling in my stomach. I blush behind my bottle.

“Anyway, I was skating, and I noticed these little faces appear at their window. They were watching me skating up and down the road. It was ridiculous; I was ridiculous. I was wearing this stupid tartan skirt, with these huge roller skates on, my hair was in pigtails, and I was eating a lollipop.”

“Sounds sexy. Wear that. At the next date.”

I laugh at him and continue my story, Ben takes a sip of his beer, listening intently.

“I stopped right in front of the house. Waved at them to come down. The little faces disappeared, so I shrugged and carried on skating. After a few minutes, the door to Number Five opened and this little round-faced boy came running out, holding his own roller skates. But rather than roller skates, they were roller blades.” I turn my nose up. “It’s not about having roller blades, Ben.”

He smiles again, dimple showing in all its glory.

“So that’s how I met Danny. He came out, put his blades on, and I took him on a skating tour of our little figure-of-eight estate. And as they say, the rest is history.”

Ben is warm and welcoming, trusting. I feel myself wanting to open up more with him. Not everything, but maybe in time…who knows.

“And he killed himself?”

I lean back and my shoulders tighten.

“Shit, Grace. I’m sorry. If you don’t want to talk about it…”

“No, it's fine. I mean, I need to talk about it at some point, right?”

I take a breath and lean forward, resting on my elbows.

“I’m guessing you saw on the news?” I ask, and he nods. “That’s the trouble with having a famous brother, I guess. You become everyone’s six o’clock news.” I take another sip of beer. “He had cancer.” Ben’s eyes widen. “No one knows that, so please keep this between us.”

“Of course,” he says, taking my hand. It looks tiny in his, and I can feel the slight roughness of his palms.

“It was a brain tumour. I didn’t know. No one knew. He only found out a few weeks before, but it was incurable. Stage four.”

“Fuck,” Ben says.

“I mean, I’m still pretty raw. But, I understand now. We didn’t at the time, we were angry at him, but I get it.”

“And when you say we, you mean—”

“His family, his brother.”

“Your number one secret,” Ben says.

I nod and take another swig of my beer.

“How is…his brother?”

I don’t like where this conversation is going and I lean back in the booth.

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