Page 67 of When We Are Old

I hung up and stood from the table. “Boys?” I found them in the front room, playing on the Xbox. Oh yeah, I had this parenting malarkey down. “Want to go to Nan’s for fish and chips?”

Jack looked up through his floppy hair. Haircuts needed to be on tomorrow’s agenda. “Are we not going home?”

I shrugged. “Your mam’s still with Grandma. You’re okay with me though, aren’t you?” For fuck’s sake please say yes.

Jack jumped up on the sofa and pounded the cushions with his feet. “Yes!”

I grinned and grabbed him tight, pulling him up into my arms, and pushing my nose into the skin of his neck. “Come on then.” I walked with my arms to the side as Jack clung, screaming, to my neck. “Let’s go and eat all Nan’s food.”

Before we piled into the car, I shot Julie a message.

New nails? We need to discuss Easter holidays… I assume I’m having the first week?

I knew what she’d think; Matthew doesn’t have anything better to do, and well that’s where she’d be wrong.

Turns out renovating shops spoke to my inner creative.

“Quick, quick, up the stairs, it’s bollock freezing.” I rushed them up the stairs to Mam’s front door. Jack had a quilt wrapped around his shoulder and his teddy bear hanging from his hand. Ewan had his Xbox. All the essentials.

I battled two boxes of beer.

Essentials.

Hands full, I kicked at the black front door until it opened from the inside.

I struggled to hold the box as the door opened. Inside the house you could have heard a pin drop.

“Ronnie?” Those two syllables kickstarted my heart, picking it up at an uneven beat.

“Matthew.”

The top box almost slid off and she stepped up and safely grabbed it, her eyes on my face. Of all the wild fantasies I’d held onto over the years, her opening Mam’s door was one I’d never even thought of. I should have though.

She stepped back and I shoved the kids through the door, urging them with the palm of my hand further into the hallway so I could get over the threshold with my shaking legs.

Mam stepped out from the kitchen and called the boys, gesturing them towards her. The kitchen door closed, leaving Ronnie and I with two boxes of beer and a stiff spring breeze rushing into the hallway.

Ronnie put her box on the floor and straightened to meet my gaze.

“I’m sorry.” My breath ached in my lungs.

Her rosebud lips pursed while her grey eyes searched my face. “Sorry?”

God, I wanted to touch her, slide my fingers against her skin. I wanted to breathe in the air from her lungs, stealing it all with a kiss, so it could ease the pain in my own.

“Please tell me you didn’t walk away because of Fred being a knob?” Her gaze narrowed with a shrewd intensity.

My lips curved. “No.”

“Did my Ma upset you?” I glanced down at her shaking hands. “I’d get it if she had.”

“No. We had a great time.”

She watched me. Waiting.

“How’s Hannah?” I asked.

Ronnie’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Do you care? You can’t be there one minute, all ‘I’m making toast', and then gone the next. She had a tough day; she’s had a tough week. I had a tough day. Mr Jewson told me off.”