Page 7 of Silver Tears

The walk to the shop takes less than five minutes and we pick up a tub of mint choc chip as requested. I also buy some bread, ham, milk, and some yoghurts to ensure he has something for his packed lunches for the next few days. On our way home, I knock on at Peggy’s.

“Hey Peggy,” I greet her warmly when she comes to the door, tea towel in hand. Peggy is a seventy-five-year-old widow who has lived next door to mum ever since she moved in six months ago.

“Well, hello there. Charlie, have you grown again?” she asks him, ruffling his mop of unruly hair.

“I have,” he tells her proudly. “I’m going to be bigger than you when I’m a grownup.”

Peggy laughs, her eyes filled with warmth. “Well, I don’t doubt that my boy. Do you both want to come in?” She steps back and gestures into the house.

“Not today, Peggy, thank you. Have you seen my mum since this morning?”

Peggy purses her lips briefly before she smiles back down at Charlie. “Why don’t you bob into the kitchen and grab yourself a cookie off the worktop?”

Charlie nods his head excitedly and runs into the house. Peggy checks he is out of earshot before she turns to speak to me. “There’s been a new fella here this week. Drives an old ford van. He picked her up around lunchtime today.”

I nod my head and sigh. There was a different guy on the scene regularly. Mum would always say this one was different, but they were all the same. They were usually deadbeats with no money, a taste for alcohol, and they saw my mum as an easy lay and target.

“Do you know who this new one is?”

Peggy shakes her head. “I’m sorry, pet, I don’t. He’s a big fella, though, covered in tattoos and a bushy beard.”

I grimace and kick at the dirt with my trainer. “She didn’t pick him up from school today. I got a lift over, but next time—”

Peggy reaches out and touches my arm. “If there’s a next time. Ring me, pet, and I can get him for you. I can bring him back here until you can get here or until his mum comes home.”

I go to protest, but she holds up a finger. “I’ll not take no for an answer. It’s not like I don’t have time on my hands.”

“Thank you. You’re a star. I better get him home and in the bath.” I look at my watch. It’s already gone six. Peggy sticks her head into the house and shouts to Charlie. He comes trundling out a few seconds later with a large half-eaten cookie in his hands.

“Say thank you to Peggy,” I tell him as he slips his hand in mine.

“Thanks, Pegs,” he mumbles in-between chewing on a mouthful of cookie.

Peggy chuckles at his shortening of her name. “Enjoy it young man, but make sure you give those teeth a good brush tonight.”

Charlie nods his head, too engrossed in his cookie to reply. When we get back into the house, I put two scoops of ice cream into a bowl for him and settle him in front of the television while I run his bath. I get him bathed and his hair washed and into his pyjamas. I’m tucking him into bed and about to start a bedtime story when I hear mum come home. I tell Charlie to choose a book whilst I go down to speak to her.

I stop in the doorway to the front room when I spot her. She staggers into the room and throws her bag on the sofa. “Hey, baby girl,” she slurs. She walks over to me and squeezes my cheeks between her fingers. “My beautiful girl.”

I lean back and wince. Jesus! She smells like a brewery. “Where have you been, mum?”

She taps me on my nose, almost taking my eye out in the process. “Lenny took me on a date, and we had a few too many.”

“Lenny?” I place a hand at her elbow and guide her to sit down on the sofa before she falls down.

“Ah, he’s a catch this one,” my mum tells me, smiling as I lift her foot up and pull off her left shoe and then her right. “He works at the local scrapyard.”

“Wow. A real catch, mum,” I say, not doing well to hide my sarcasm.

She wags her finger at me. “Don’t you get uppity on me lady jane.”

I hold my hands up in front of me. “Sorry. Mum, you didn’t pick Charlie up from school. He was waiting for you. School called me.”

She scrunches her nose up and lifts her right wrist up. “Ah, no damn watch on. Why, what time is it?”

“It’s nearly seven, mum,” I reply, with a tired sigh. “What if I hadn’t been able to get over here? Do you want the school to call social services?”

Her eyes narrow, and she wags her finger again. “They wouldn’t dare. It won’t happen again, baby girl. I promise.”

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