Page 88 of Some Kind of Love

history

Now

“Mum, can I ask a question?”I’m sat on my bed, staring out of the window when Isaac pokes his head around my bedroom door. I feel sick. So sick I may never leave the room, let alone the house. I don’t want today to happen, and I am sure that if I hide in my room then it just won’t. Simple as that.

“Sure.” I pat the bed beside me, and Isaac comes and settles at my side. He’s getting so tall our heads nearly the reach the same height when sitting. He definitely doesn’t get his height from me.

“Freddy’s race?” he says, and I instantly know where the conversation is heading.

“Yes?”

“Why aren’t you going?”

“Neither are you, so don’t worry about it.” It’s been an ongoing argument for four weeks.

Isaac does that teenage, “Ugh,” and shoulder shake he’s been perfecting in preparation for when he hits the hormonal years. “Mr Bale said I could go with him, and he’d look after me.”

“I’m sure he did, but Charles can’t make promises to you like that, only I can.”

“But you care about Freddy’s race and about him, don’t you?” Isaac’s voice is hesitant here. We still haven’t had the chat. I keep building up to it, but it never seems to be the right time.

I keep silent, my maturity level rapidly sinking to the same level as a seven-year-old.

“Okay, Mum. Do we need to have the boyfriend chat?”

“What boyfriend? Freddy’s just a friend. I told you, we have a lot of history.”

“Mum, you and Freddy, that’s not the way normal friends behave.”

I flush beetroot and have to give myself a little fan to cool down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Isaac laughs the chuckle I know he’s learnt from Freddy. “Okay, when other mums are talking to ‘just friends’, they never lean over and brush their friend’s hair out of their eyes. Also, I don’t think they tap knees under the dinner table, or kiss when their kid leaves the room.”

I’m burning through and through.

“I also don’t think they laugh together in the middle of the night, you know? I’m just saying.”

“Bleugh.”

“Freddy says you’re always articulate when put on the spot.”

“Did he, indeed? That’s a big word, Isaac. And did he also put you up to asking about the race?”

“Maybe. Come on, Mum. Please let me go. You can stay here and stare out of the window, but I think Freddy would prefer it if you were there.”

“Is he there already?” I wouldn’t let him come over last night. I didn’t want there to be the slightest chance I could make him late so he failed to check his car again, like that ill-fated day all those years ago. The time I nearly lost Freddy to flames and twisted metal.

“Yep, he texted just before I came to find you.”

“Text him back and tell him to check his car.”

Isaac hands me his phone, where a message is sat on the welcome screen.Tell your mum I’ve checked the car already.

My heart starts to pound uncomfortably, nerves creating butterflies that swirl in my stomach. “Listen.” I grab Isaac’s hand. “I can’t go. Before, when I lived here, before I had you, Freddy and I were more than friends—something else, something better.” I’m trying to keep it vague, he’s only nine, he doesn’t need to know about first love yet. “Freddy had an accident on a racetrack just like the one he’s going to drive on today. He nearly died, Isaac, and it was the end of everything. I can’t do that again.”

“But you love him though?” Isaac says it so simply, with the uncanny perception of a child.

“Maybe,” I whisper. “But I love you more, and I don’t want you to ever see what I had to see that day.” The blocked image of a rolling car engulfed in flames breaks through my mental barrier and I see it all play out in my head just the way I did back then.

---