Page 15 of That One Moment

“Okay,” he says when I finally pull away. “I'll try.”

Chapter Seven

Caiden

“Mum? I’m here. They said they can’t keep the table for much longer.” The restaurant is crowded and the waiter keeps eyeing my table, making another lap around before coming back over to see if I’m ready to order. I’ve been sitting here for an hour. Alone. The red tablecloth, white roses, fluttering candles and silverware remind me that this place is far out of my budget. Instrumental Christmas music plays softly through the speakers but I tune it out along with the happy sounds of other diners.

“Oh! Caidy. I’m sooooo sorry.” Mum drags out the word ‘so’ and I already know what she’s going to say before the words leave her mouth. “Roger got tickets to see a Pink Floyd cover band and they’re incredible. I didn’t want to miss it. Next week, okay?”

Next week won’t be my birthday.I stand abruptly from the table and throw down a few notes for a tip and the one drink I had, lay my coat over my arm and storm out of the restaurant.Despite the cold, I hastily undo the buttons of my shirt and shrug it off, feeling like I can breathe better without it.

“Why didn’t you let me know earlier? I’ve been waiting for you for an hour!” I try not to let my anger show, gritting my teeth as I speak. My breath rides away on a cloud of mist as my mother tuts at me on the other end of the line.

“God, no need to get snippy, Caidy, it was just dinner.”

It was my birthday dinner. It wasn’t just any dinner.

As I walk down the tree lined avenue that runs between the restaurant and the main high street, coming up to the entrance to a park, I bang my hand against my head, inwardly berating myself for once again putting so much hope in my mother.

“Anyway Caidy,”I hate that fucking nickname.“I have to go, the band is coming on soon and Roger wants to get some beers first.” She hangs up the phone before I can say anything. The sad part about this is that Roger isn't even the same guy she abandoned me for last time we were meant to meet.

My stomach swoops, my hands tingle and I want to rip my hair from my head so I can feel something other than rejection. The dark pit that opens up inside me every single fucking time she does this, rumbles, threatening to suck me in. I hate myself for not being stronger, for needing her approval and her love. Why can’t I be more like Cooper? He brushed her off years ago and he’shappy. I don’t know when I last felt happy. In less than five hours, I’ll be twenty years old and still craving my mother’s attention like a stupid, pathetic little child.

A light rain starts to fall and the tickle of water on my face makes me shiver. I stop to put on my coat, hugging myself and rubbing at my arms to warm me up. Taking in my surroundings, it’s as though I’ve been walking in a daze, because I have no idea where I am. But worse than that, I have no idea where I’m going.

People will only disappoint you, that’s what my mum told me time and time again, so I keep everyone except Cooper at arm’slength. Which means there isn’t anyone I can call. No friends I can rely on. My brother has his boyfriend and I know they had plans tonight, and my father - I shake my head, not wanting to think about him and his perfect new family. Why couldn’t he have treated my mother the way he treats Maria? Then none of this would be happening. Mum wouldn’t be picking some guy she met in a bar over me, Cooper would never have met Jamie and I wouldn’t be walking alone through a park, wishing I had something sharp to help take away this feeling.

I’m spiraling, choking, drowning. Sinking down into a darkness I am afraid, one day, I will never climb out of. My chest tightens and my skin itches. If I allow myself this, just one more time, I know I’ll feel better. More in control. Less like a fisherman lost at sea.

Leaning my back against a tree, I slide my hand into my jeans, feeling around my thigh for a more recent cut. Most of them have scarred over, but there’s a few that haven’t healed fully. Finding one particularly tender spot, I sink my nail into it and wince at the pain. It shoots through me and all my focus lasers in on the burn. A few tears fall, the night air cooling their trail down my cheek.

I’m in control. I’m in control. I’m in control.

Rapid breaths pass my lips in desperate little pants and I scrunch my eyes closed against the bone deep ache in my body. Behind my closed lids, in the dark of my mind, a memory flashes, unwanted and unbidden.

I’m ten years old and my mother is packing her bags on the bed. A floral duvet lies at the foot of it as she moves from her cupboards back to the bags, throwing clothing and toiletries in. The room smells like smoke and I scrunch my nose, wondering why I can’t smell her perfume like I usually can.

“Where are we going, Mummy?” I ask, looking around for the little blue suitcase I use when we go away, frowning when I don’t see it.

“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying with Dad. Mummy is going away.” Okay, I tell myself. This is okay because she always comes back. Mummy goes away for work, but she always comes home.

“Will you be back in time for my school play next week?” I’m playing Peter Pan. She told me it’s her favourite book, so I tried really hard to get the part, to make her happy.

She looks at me and I can’t work out the look in her eyes. Maybe it's happiness? Because of my part in the play. Or excitement because she’s so proud of me. She shakes her head and sighs the same way she does whenever Cooper gets ill or when the dog does its business on the carpet.

“No, I don’t think Mummy is coming back this time, not to this house anyway.” Her words are confusing to my little brain. She’s my mum, why wouldn’t she come back? Tears well in my eyes and drip onto the sheets as I crawl over her bed. “Jesus, don’t cry. You’ll be fine. I'll take you for burgers sometime okay?”

“Please don't go, Mummy. I'll be so sad if you miss Peter Pan.” I try really hard to find the words to make her stay, but I’m only ten and the only big thing I can think of is Peter Pan and that’s not working.

“Oh, Caidy, people are going to make you sad your whole life. Trust me. The only person you can depend on is you.”

Nothing I said changed her mind and a day later she was gone, popping back in at random points in my childhood. Sometimes, when the water is closing over my head, I think that life would have been better if she had never come back at all. That if she hadn’t kept contact with me for the last ten years, sprinkling me with little dashes of hope, that maybe things would be easier.

That day was the first time I ever felt like my world was spinning out of control.

I’m in control.I repeat to myself over and over again as blood starts to drip down my fingers. The warm liquid leaving my body is a physical manifestation of my pain. The tension in my chest eases and I choke on a breath as I do it one more time in another spot until my muscles stop clenching and I feel like I can breathe again.

Guilt as powerful as the pain gnaws at my stomach when the moment has passed, and my twin's smiling face comes to mind. I promised him I’d stop hurting myself and I did. For a while, at least. Until my dad said he was getting married. Until my mother laughed about it and said she hoped he was a better husband this time. Until once again I felt like I was spinning out of control.

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