The First Time I Saw You: the most heartwarming and emotional love story of the year

by Emma Cooper

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I say loudly in explanation for my state of disarray, and smile. He looks up then and meets my eye.

  ‘And you moved here alone?’ he asks, his expression somewhere between disbelief and revulsion. I nod hesitantly, the smile frozen on my lips. ‘Sounds like a pretty stupid thing to do,’ he replies, turns his back and goes inside his house.

  I feel like I’m walking through nettles as I tread back to my doorway; his words have stung, and my body itches as they echo through me. I slam the door and slump into Mum’s chair. What kind of man says things like that? The tears come, but they are short-lived. I’m not some weak, stupid woman without a plan. I know I can do this by myself; I don’t need help.

  The sounds of twilight filter in through the open kitchen windows as I sip my water, the ice chiming as I tilt the glass. The word ‘Google’ is winking at me from my monitor. I drain the rest of my drink and crunch on an ice cube. My fingers begin to tap ‘Samuel McLaughlin Greenlight Finance’ and my hand hovers over the enter key. It’s as though I’m daring myself to do it, the way I did before I jumped off the pier when I went on a residential school trip when I was ten. Go on. You can do it. You’ll be fine. You’ve seen water before. I hit enter and within moments his face fills the screen. He’s still at Greenlight, then. I reach forward and follow the outline of his jaw but another knock at the door makes me pull my hand away. I exit the screen and close the lid. The knock is different this time, a tentative knock, one that could be ignored but doesn’t want its feelings hurt.

  For the second time today, I peek through the tunnel, but there is nothing at the end of it except the beginnings of a beautiful sunset, oranges and reds mixing together as though the sky has been tie-dyed.

  I open the door and there is a wooden box, about the size of a ring binder. I lift it and take it into the kitchen where I place it on the table next to my closed laptop. My fingers run around the edges of the box until I find the catch and open it.

  Inside, wrapped in delicate blue tissue paper, is the duck-egg blue picture frame.

  Week Thirteen

  Samuel

  Ah, it’s good to be home at the best of times, but after the journey that I’ve just had, it’s even better. My mam and da’s house is crammed to the gills with family that have come to see me. When I say come to see me, what I basically mean is Mam has invited all and sundry to visit as if it’s Christmas Day; the oven is on and the thick, rich smell of roast beef hangs in the air.

  I’m sitting next to the electric fireplace, which gives the illusion of a flickering open fire, my crutches leaning precariously against it. The old pictures of me and my sister in various school uniforms at various ages stand on top, as they have for years; the edges of the frames are chipped and worn, but smell of the polish that Mam uses religiously twice a week. On one sofa – beneath the photos of myself in my graduation cap and gown, my sister in her hockey kit and my parents’ wedding photo – is my gran, my sister, her husband Duncan (who I used to play rugby with) and my niece (Gertie, three) and nephew (William, five), both of whom have inherited Sarah’s red hair and who are sitting on each of Duncan’s knees. Sitting on the floor by their feet are my cousins Jill, Jane and Janet, all in their late teens, with the same thick, dark curly hair and huge blue eyes. My Aunty Katherine is sitting opposite them on the other sofa, where my Uncle Pete has now joined her.

  On the coffee table are mugs of thick brown tea in chipped mugs that don’t match, a biscuit tin the size of London Town itself and a ripped open bag of Haribo which is spilling its contents on to the floor.

  I can describe all of this because it is home. But I can’t see it. Most of this is down to the position my neck brace keeps me locked in. All I can see right now is my sister, Duncan, the tops of Will and Gertie’s heads and some of the photos above their red curls. Their legs dangle into the abyss and the dark roof leans down on us.

  The kids on the floor; the tea on the table; my mam as she lifts the whistling kettle from the hob and fusses with the strings of her apron; Da as he sits at the back of the room peeling carrots to go with the mammoth joint of beef; they have all been sucked into the walls of the darkness. My family, which always feels so big, now feels small and out of reach. How am I going to tell them that I can’t see? That I’m going blind?

  The pressure of the tunnel feels heavy today, more like a mine than a passageway; its darkened walls are leaden and dense, and I feel it pushing in on me. I’m not strong enough to hold the roof above my head; I’m not strong enough to fight the gravity which longs to pull it crashing down on top of me. Every sound in the room adds an extra layer of pressure: with each voice it feels heavier, with each laugh the weight leans on top of me – the scrape of a cup, the creak of the springs in the sofa, the crack of a biscuit, the scrape of the vegetable peeler against the skin of the carrots – each sound becomes a burden and it pushes me down. The heat of the room squeezes the walls of the mine closer; the smell of the beef surrounds me like impenetrable fog. I feel like I can’t breathe the air as it mixes with the different perfumes of my nieces, which are cheap and sweet. The plug-in air freshener creeps into my mouth and my jaw aches as though I’ve eaten something sharp, like the time I made lemon curd at school – the citrus had been so strong that Mam’s eyes had squinted when she ate it, but eat it she did . . . the whole bleeding jar. I need to get out of here. The tunnel is too small for my family to fit in; they’re sucking out the oxygen.

  My mouth is dry, and as I try to reach for my crutches, my hands are shaking. Sarah’s face peers around the edge of the darkness, her eyes narrowing as she looks at me.

  ‘Get me out of here,’ I say, my breath coming in sharp bursts.

  The sounds are sliding off the roof; the chatter has stopped as Sarah shouts over her shoulder for Mam to get me a drink of water. The creaks in the sofa have stilled but the silence pushes down even harder on the ceiling, the rafters beginning to buckle under the pressure, and I’m frightened that it’s going to collapse and I will be buried here, buried in the dark, the sounds of my home suffocating me.

  ‘Don’t be so daft, you’re not blind!’ Da laughs, clears his throat and walks over to the kitchen sink to swill out his mug. ‘We’ll get you to Specsavers, they’ll sort it out.’

  ‘They’ve got a lovely range of frames, Samuel,’ Mam chips in. ‘You can get some of those designer ones, and they have two for one on. You’ll be grand, love, you’ll look distinguished, so you will. Mr McLaughlin, pop the kettle on, we’ll have a cuppa and have a look on the website.’

  ‘Da, sit down,’ Sarah orders. I see Da turn to look at her, nodding his head. ‘Right you are, Sarah love, right you are. No need to get your knickers in a twist.’

  ‘The doctors in DC have done some tests,’ I begin.

  ‘Well, there you go! You need Irish doctors for Irish eyes. Bloody Americans, always making a mountain out of a molehill.’

  I take a deep breath and try to curb my irritation at Da’s inability to listen to anything negative about his family.

  ‘I’m losing my peripheral vision, Da. I can’t see the clock over your shoulder, I can’t see the right side of Mam’s body. It’s like looking through the end of a telescope. All the edges around the centre are dark, like I’m looking through a tunnel.’ I ignore Mam’s sharp intake of breath, ‘And that tunnel is going to close. I won’t be able to see anything when it does.’

  ‘When?’ Mam asks, her voice quiet and shaken.

  ‘Within a year . . . if I’m lucky.’

  ‘A year? That’s plenty of time, Sammy, my boy.’

  ‘Plenty of time for what?’ I ask with trepidation.

  ‘To write your bucket list.’

  ‘Shush your hole, Mr M! He’s not dying . . . are you, Sammy, are you dying?’

  ‘No, I’m not frigging dying!’

  ‘But his eyes are, that’s right, isn’t it, Sammy? Let’s give them something to see before they pack in, eh?’

  And with that, D
a claps his hands together as if I’ve just told him to get last orders in and Mam makes a pot of tea.

  Week Fourteen

  Sophie

  I can’t do up my trousers. This is now a fact. I look at my bed where a cascade of different coloured material confirms this. I chew my bottom lip and stand nakedly in front of the mirror.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I say and notice the panicked sound within my voice. Turning to the side, I look at my profile where there is undeniably a bump. I run my hand over it. ‘I’m really pregnant. Oh God.’ The enormity of not only my stomach but the situation makes me feel dizzy and I slump on to the end of the bed. I take a few deep breaths and concentrate on slowing my breathing down. I know this is the beginning of an anxiety attack; I used to have them before exams and when I would hear Ian’s voice raised in the night, knowing that Mum would be ‘having a little accident’. I continue to concentrate on controlling my thoughts, on rationalising them and relaxing my muscles. My pulse slows down, and the dizziness subsides. ‘Get a grip, Sophie,’ I say to myself.

  My hands grasp the end of the bed and I push down on the mattress as I get up, pull open my underwear drawer, put on a pair of black knickers and then fasten on a matching bra. Except the bra doesn’t fit. ‘You have got to be kidding me!’ I go back to the mirror where my boobs are impressively spilling out of each cup. Typical. My whole life I’ve wanted bigger boobs and now that I have, there is nobody around to see them! I rummage through my trousers and grab a pair of leggings, then stomp downstairs into the kitchen, where I open various drawers until I find a pair of scissors and make incisions either side of the waist elastic. I pull them up. They will have to do for now.

  I fan myself with my hand – it’s the second week in May and the forecast has said that temperatures will hit twenty-three degrees this week. I sit down and pull the laptop towards me, then spend an hour ordering a vast array of maternity clothes. Satisfied that by tomorrow my wardrobe will be filled with new, comfortable clothing with hidden panels and adjustable waists, I pull on a pair of bright-yellow rubber gloves and begin scrubbing the pan from my midnight feast. I’ve been having a lot of troubled sleep this past week and came down in the early hours to make a cheese toasty . . . the odd thing is that I wasn’t really craving the cheese itself, more the burnt bits around the edge.

  My inbox pings and I lean over to see a confirmation on my delivery time for tomorrow just as someone knocks on the door. I pull at the fingers of the rubber gloves, but they feel tight and stuck. I bite the end of my right index finger and try to pull the glove off again; it moves slightly but not enough to release my hand. There’s another knock on the door. ‘Coming!’ I shout as I continue to wrestle with the gloves. I put my hand in between my thighs and start pulling against the yellow rubber. Another knock. I wipe my brow with the back of my forearm, my face becoming red with exertion. I can feel a little movement inside the glove, but my hand is still not coming free. The door knocks again insistently. Still trying to release my hand, I open the door. There – looking slightly alarmed – is Charlie, and he is holding a box full of vegetables.

  ‘Hello.’ He looks up at the sky as he talks, and I wonder if this avoiding eye contact is a trait of his. ‘I ordered vegetables.’ He thrusts the box towards my rubber-gloved hands, thinks better of his action and instead, still not looking anywhere in my direction, places the box on my doorstep. I look down at it with confusion. I haven’t seen him since the previous week when we had a stilted awkward, conversation as I thanked him for the frame. His reply had been that he had never liked it anyway. Honestly, I can’t decide whether he is rude or just odd. ‘There were too many,’ he adds, still looking up at the sky. I look into the box and see a small collection of vegetables.

  ‘Oh. Um, thanks,’ I say, still fiddling with the rubber gloves.

  ‘You’ve been away.’ He says this as a statement, his eyes still looking skywards.

  ‘Yes, I’ve been over at my sister’s for a couple of days. Helped her at the school fair.’ He snorts.

  ‘What?’ I reply indignantly.

  ‘It’s just that you don’t seem like a school fair kind of person, that’s all.’

  ‘I will have you know that it was quite a prestigious affair. ITV News was there because Gina Little was auctioning the name of a character in her new book for charity . . . Apparently, she used to go to that school when she was a kid. And I made muffins to sell – she even took one from our stall.’

  ‘OK.’ He raises his hands up defensively. ‘I take it back, you’re perfect school fair material.’

  ‘Could you do me a favour?’ His eyes glance at my face momentarily then back at the sky. I wonder if he has autism. ‘Could you help me get these gloves off? I think my hands have swollen in the heat, or maybe from the pregnancy, but I can’t get them off.’ I stretch my yellow Marigolds out towards him. He glances back at me and then down at the gloves. Charlie reaches for the wrists, still with his strange eye-darting movement. He gives it a good tug and the glove releases my ensnared right hand, folding itself inside out.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ I say, offering my other hand. It is at this moment that I realise. I am standing in front of my burly neighbour wearing a pair of cut-at-the-seams leggings, a rubber glove and a black bra from which my newly enlarged bosoms are heaving out. ‘Oh God!’ I shriek, snatching my gloved hand back from his grip and frantically grabbing the nearest thing that I can see to cover my modesty: a Savoy cabbage and a head of broccoli. I hold them over my chest which is rising and falling at an impressive rate. ‘Go!’

  He takes a step back and blinks in a panicked fashion, then risks a brief look at my chest, the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. I push the box with my heel into my house and shimmy myself backwards through the door, closing it with a bang.

  Helen’s face disappears from my laptop screen before she reappears with a glass of wine.

  ‘It’s not that funny,’ I scold her lightly, even though the more I replay the image of myself holding the cabbage and broccoli, the funnier it seems.

  ‘It is,’ she laughs. It’s a relief to hear her laughing. Last week we only talked once about Alice in Wonderland, and that was as she carried my case into the girls’ bedroom.

  ‘I’m sorry about the way I just left, Soph,’ she’d apologised, her hand resting on my arm, ‘but I’ve tried long and hard to put that part of my life behind me. I’m afraid of what will happen if I start thinking about it again . . . do you know what I mean?’ I was fairly sure she didn’t remember the drunken phone call after she’d got home last time. I replayed Mum’s words and didn’t question her: giving her time. I’d nodded, just as Jessica had run into the room, grabbed my hand, and pulled me into the kitchen to show me the recipe for the muffins she wanted us to make. I’d suggested we make jam tarts instead but she had made gagging noises and said her mum hates jam tarts.

  I remind myself how horrific it must have been for Helen to find Mum, to know that her father had killed her. It’s enough for me to hold back my questions . . . for now at least.

  ‘How’s the business?’ Helen leans towards the screen as she shifts in her chair, opening a bag of crisps.

  ‘Good, I’ve got my first client.’ I look down at the pile of receipts on the table. ‘One of the B&Bs on the front contacted me. You know you’re back home when you get a reply from the card you put up in the corner shop.’

  ‘Figures.’

  ‘Muuuuuummmmmy! I’ve had a poo!’ is announced from within Helen’s house.

  ‘Give me strength,’ she sighs, rolling her eyes and draining her glass. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘OK . . . see you soon?’

  ‘Sure. See you soon.’ She kisses her two fingers and places them on the camera. I return the gesture but the screen is already blank.

  Week Fourteen

  Samuel

  I’ve come to the library for two reasons. Firstly, there is only so much tea a man can drink. God love her, but I think
Mam believes if she gives me enough caffeine my sight will be fixed. And two, I need to find Sophie and the WiFi at home has the speed of a snail.

  The walls of the tunnel are thinner today; I think the fresh air and being outdoors help to lift the feeling of claustrophobia. I’ve just been to the park with Sarah and Duncan and the kids; Sarah enjoying pushing me around literally rather than metaphorically. I can move around on crutches if it’s for a short time, but for a trip to the park, it’s back to the chair. I’m sitting in a quiet corner, searching for Helen Yates in Shropshire. So far, I’ve got two from LinkedIn, five from the phone book, and a list as long as my arm from people called Helen Yates on Facebook who don’t list their whereabouts.

  I look up at the muted TV screen that has the news subtitles running across it. The edges of the screen are hidden in the darkness. My stomach does an involuntary flip. I won’t be able to watch the telly soon, won’t be able to watch films, won’t be able to see technology advancing as special effects change. I stare at the screen for a moment. Some romance writer is buying cakes at a school somewhere; I see a hand passing her a cake, but the owner is hidden from my view. I feel cheated. I won’t be able to see the news soon, and this crap is what I get? I read the words ‘Gina Little auctions off character in latest bestseller’. I turn myself away and roll the wheels outside, so I can begin my phone calls.

  ‘Hello, is this Helen Yates?’

  ‘It is,’ replies a Liverpudlian accent.

  ‘Great, my name is Samuel McLaughlin and I was wondering if you have a sister called Sophie?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no. I’m an only child,’ is the reply.

  ‘Ah well, thanks for your time.’

  I make fourteen more calls, but the answers lead me nowhere.

  ‘Mule! Do you want gravy on your chips, Mam says?’

  ‘Yes, please!’ I reply, hobbling along to the kitchen where the smell of the deep fryer clings to our clothes as much as the food will cling to our arteries. Duncan pulls out a chair for me and I lower myself into the seat. The table is piled as it always has been with condiments; my family are condiment mad. Sarah always has salad cream with her chips, Da has brown sauce on his Sunday roast and Mam will not eat any chicken produce (even Southern-fried) without cranberry sauce. There is always bread and butter on the table – not spread, butter – and most meals are covered with vinegar.