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

by Emma Cooper

  ‘You’ve got some, um, on your cheek.’ I move the baby wipe.

  ‘Left a bit.’ I move it left a bit. ‘Up a bit.’ Upwards I go. ‘No, no, back where you just were . . . shall I just?’ He takes the baby wipe from me and he – coughing a sort of manly cough – begins to roughly wipe my face. This. Is. New.

  ‘Thanks, you’re the first man I’ve ever had a facial off.’

  ‘It’s the first facial I’ve ever given to a man, so we’re even.’ We both make guffawing noises to confirm our masculinity.

  ‘Your front tooth is chipped, but your mouth isn’t bleeding,’ he comments as I hear the bin lid clang open. ‘You might need to see a dentist.’

  ‘Ah, that’s been there years. Al Turner – illegal tackle.’

  ‘Illegal tackle?’

  ‘Yeah. I used to play rugby.’

  ‘But you’re—’ His arm moves about, gesturing my sight.

  ‘Oh, I haven’t been blind all my life. Just this year . . . I had an accident. It’s a long story.’

  A lumbering silence fills the air; it’s louder than the TV, louder than the washing machine on its spin cycle, louder than the repeating drip from the tap. ‘I’m a journalist,’ I say, ‘I work for the Shropshire Star.’

  ‘Is that so?’ he says, his voice losing the ease of a moment ago.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment with Helen Yates. Do you know her?’

  ‘Can’t say as I do.’ Something in his tone makes me think he’s not telling me the truth. I search for a glimpse of his face, but the telescopic image is now occupied by his back. I choose my words carefully, making sure that my tone sounds offhand, like it isn’t important.

  ‘Oh, well. I’ll go back to the office. I can’t believe I’ve lost the address.’ I start to get up, tilting the telescopic view around the kitchen, trying to catch a glimpse of something that will help me find Sophie, but each gem of sight is filled with clutter.

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t help you,’ he says as he passes me my cane.

  ‘Ah, not to worry,’ I reply. ‘Could I use your toilet before I go?’ His hesitation hangs in the air; I hold my breath.

  ‘Sure, I’ll just show you . . . it’s along the hall there on your right. Do you need me to . . .?’

  ‘No, no, I’m grand, thanks, if you could just lead the way?’

  I follow him and close the door behind me. I take my time scanning the room, careful not to miss anything that may help. There is a cabinet above the sink and I open it carefully. It’s filled with the usual: unopened bars of soap, some razors, a packet of plasters, cheap supermarket paracetamol. If I could see clearly, I would be rummaging through these things, but I’m struggling to see in this dim light, in what is essentially a cupboard under the stairs. I move in closer, listening to the sounds outside the door – a small girl singing badly to an advert about ponies; a response from another child screaming to her dad to get Gemma out of the way – when, just peeking out from the side of my tunnel, I see a prescription sticker hiding behind a box of Tampax. I carefully pull it out of the cupboard and reach for the container. I’m nervous about knocking it over. That man outside the door is lying, I’m sure about it, and if he’s lying, he’s not going to be happy about a nosey Irishman messing with his wife’s tampons. I tap my way back to the toilet, slide my hand along the top of the cistern and press the flush down, then return to the container. I clasp my hand around it and read the label in short bursts of letters: ‘Hel-en Ya-tes.’

  I return the container, close the door, thank my host and leave.

  For now.

  Week Twenty-Two

  Sophie

  It’s early July and I’m shivering. White ghosts hang from the curtain hooks and they twist and turn as though their task is too arduous to bear.

  Shivers slide from my body, the goosebumps ironing out into smooth, glistening skin. I kick off the blanket; Bean kicks too, the gentle bubbles of the last few weeks turning into a determined prod as I disturb its sleep with my tossing and turning.

  Samuel is here.

  ‘Sophie, you need to call a doctor,’ Samuel is saying.

  ‘I will . . . just five more minutes. Can you rub my back?’ I ask. ‘It hurts.’ I hear the duvet rustle and I wait to feel his hands on my skin, but he doesn’t push hard enough; I can’t feel him. The shivers climb back up my spine and surge across my skin. I reach for the duvet, but the bed feels too large, the duvet too far out of reach, and it takes all my energy to grasp at its slippery corners, its weight cumbersome and stubborn. Samuel helps me with it and it slides on to my body like warm silk. He tucks it around me and I smile.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ I tell him.

  ‘You need to call a doctor, Sophie,’ he replies. I’m desperate to feel his fingers clear my hair from my face, but he’s gone. I’m on my own. Bean kicks me; it’s the strongest I’ve felt it move before, and my eyes fly open. It’s morning. The room is filled with light and for a moment, as I tap the bed, I almost expect to feel his weight sinking down on the mattress.

  My hand reaches for the phone and I make an appointment to see the doctor.

  I’m scared. Not of whatever is making me ill – I’m fairly sure it’s a urine infection – but I’m scared of how much I wanted Samuel to still be here. I don’t doubt that I can have Bean without him. I’m certain that I can bring the baby up by myself – women all over the world do this. What scares me is that I have made the wrong decision. That I am not fighting for something that I want.

  The taxi journey to the doctor’s is uncomfortable. Charlie’s car wasn’t outside and I’m glad that he is getting out and about. The hour it takes between my arrival at the doctor’s, the diagnosis of the infection and being passed the white paper bag filled with my prescription, is leaden with gaps of time. Gaps that I can’t help but fill with my memories of Samuel.

  I flick through the channels but my mind won’t settle. I’ve not been able to push Samuel from my thoughts for the last two days. It’s as though that dream of Samuel has woken me up. I pick up my phone and FaceTime Helen. She’ll tell me what I already know, I’m sure: that I should be fighting: for him. It’s ridiculous, but I just need to hear it.

  ‘Hi, Aunty Soapie!’

  ‘Hello, sweet girl, I love your hair . . . did you do it yourself?’ I bite my lip and look at Jessica’s hair, which is tangled on top of her head.

  ‘I did, but Caitlin keeps calling me pineapple head. Dad! Soapie is FaceTiming!’

  ‘Pineapple Head’ begins to be chanted from somewhere in the background.

  ‘Is Mummy home?’ I ask as the screen tilts and Caitlin’s face – covered in chocolate and something that could be tomato sauce – pushes into the corner.

  ‘Mummy’s not here but Dad is,’ she whispers loudly. ‘He’s talking to a blind man at the door . . . look, I’ll show you.’ The image of Helen’s lounge jumps up and down and then is concealed by a door, some carpet, until I see Greg’s feet.

  ‘Oh. He’s gone. I wanted to show Aunty Soapie the blind man.’

  ‘Give me your mother’s phone. I’ve told you not to answer it.’

  ‘But Aunty Soapie’s face was on it!’

  ‘Just give me the phone.’

  The screen is filled with a whiskey bottle being pulled out of a plastic bag, then by Greg himself, his nose looking even larger than usual this close up. I hold my phone away from my own face.

  ‘Hey, a little early for the hard stuff, isn’t it?’ I ask.

  ‘Some weird blind bloke has just given it me.’

  ‘Blind bloke?’

  ‘Never mind. How are you? Are you feeling better?’

  I put on a bright smile, ignoring the pain in my back and the flush in my cheeks where the last of the temperature I’ve been battling hangs on.

  ‘Much better, thanks. I was after Helen, but I’ll call back later.’

  ‘I’ll tell her, she’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Dad!!! Tell her my hair does not look like a pineapple!’


  ‘Sorry, Soph, I’ve got to go.’

  The screen returns to my home screen, my question still needing validation.

  Week Twenty-Two

  Samuel

  I’ve left it a few days before returning to this house, trying to think of a way to get back in there, but I’ve run out of time and I’ve run out of ideas. This is the best I can do.

  The plastic handles from the shopping bag are digging into my palms, and I can feel their imprint leaving their mark on my skin. The bag is filled with chocolate bars and sweets for the kids and a large bottle of whiskey; he looked like a whiskey kind of man.

  I unfold my cane, who I have decided to call Michael; the feedback vibrates through my wrist as he rolls down the steps. Following his guidance, I step on to the road, scanning the street through my tube of sight. The houses are all the same shape: they all have a door, they all have a bay window downstairs and two windows above them. The street stretches away from me, coating the inside of the tunnel, each house straight-backed and ready to salute: a parade of uniformity. But inside, they are filled with the chaos of people I don’t know, people with different lives, different problems, different hopes.

  Michael follows the cracks in the pavements; he warns me that there is a bin next to the lamp post and he tells me where the edge of the kerb is, but I still manage to trip. Michael, myself and the shopping go flying, all of us landing with a clatter on the road. I gather myself and stand back up with a groan.

  I still have enough of my sight to be able to scan the ground if I dip my chin, and I spot him lying apologetically in the middle of the road. Part of me wants to leave him there – it would serve him right – but then I see how pitiful Michael looks lying on the road amongst the contents of the shopping bag; it’s as if he’s been abandoned. My head tilts so I can push the gloom away enough to be able to see the road and the step, then follow my feet until I’m standing next to my cane. I look at my shoes, the same pair of high-top trainers that Sophie had laced up for me. That man could see his beautiful girlfriend without her being framed in a circle of darkness. That man could chase after her, throw her over his shoulder while she shrieked in protest, her feet making little kicks as he ran up the stairs. They are the same shoes, the same feet, but they belonged to a different man.

  These feet are standing next to a blind man’s white cane, this man’s feet; this man’s cane, is surrounded by shadows that are trespassing into this man’s world, shadows that will soon swallow it. The man who could run in these shoes is dead.

  A honk from a car’s engine shakes my insides as it swerves around me. I push the bottle of whiskey and the chocolates back into the bag, grab Michael and let him sweep the road in front of me until he guides me to a bench. I sit down and think of the time I spent with Sophie and then I replay it, adding the tunnel, adding the cane, adding this new person that I have become.

  I don’t belong here. I don’t belong in DC. I don’t belong in Wales, either. Maybe it’s time I went home and began to start living my life, my new life, a life that Sophie and the man I used to be don’t belong in.

  What am I doing here? Trying to get into a family home that, for whatever reason, holds secrets. He seems like a decent man with a young family. Sophie isn’t here. The message from Gemma could be wrong. Sophie might not even have a sister called Helen Yates.

  I knock on the door with my other hand, having successfully negotiated the steps without further injury. It swings open and the man from last time stares at me, the gentle, friendly manner replaced with a stern expression. His eyes seem to be drawn together by his eyebrows, and below them a deep groove cuts across the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, smiling. He responds by stepping forward slightly. His hair is brown and bushy, and I’m reminded of a grizzly bear. ‘I hope it’s not too inconvenient, I just wanted to thank you for helping me the other day.’ I stretch my arm forward; the plastic bag swings hello. ‘Just a few things, to say thanks.’

  The nose groove relaxes a little and the eyebrows loosen.

  ‘Oh. Cheers, it was nothing.’ He looks down at the bag and takes it from my grasp.

  ‘Well, thank you anyway, I really appreciated it.’

  ‘Pineapple Head! Pineapple Head!’ is being shouted from behind him.

  His head turns back towards the inside of the house as a clatter and a cry from a child forces its way through the gap in the doorway and into the street.

  ‘Look, about what I said, I’m not—’ I begin to try and explain when the scream from inside gets louder and more urgent.

  ‘Thanks for this.’ He nods towards the bag. ‘But I’ve got to . . .’ His words come out in short breaths.

  ‘Sure, I understand,’ I say. He nods, takes a step backwards into the house as though he’s afraid to turn his back on me. ‘Well, thanks again.’

  I take out my phone, the screen of which is starting to get closer to the edges of the darkness, and call for a taxi, then make my way back to the bench. Two women are walking towards me as I follow Michael along the path. One of them is holding a lead, a pug trotting lazily beside her. They are looking over at me and I smile at them. I turn my head where I can see the bonnet of my taxi and its indicator flashing as it turns into the street. I stand, extend Michael to his full height and let him tap the edge of the pavement, checking for the edge of the kerb.

  ‘Cute dog,’ I say to the woman.

  ‘Sicko!’ she gasps.

  ‘Yeah,’ the other adds, ‘some people really are blind. It’s not a joke!’ and off they totter on their air of self-righteousness, leaving me and Michael watching their retreating backs with a blank look of disbelief.

  Week Twenty-Three

  Sophie

  It has taken days for the infection to abate. Now I feel fine again physically, but the longing I had felt for Samuel after my night of fevered dreams hasn’t been cured. I keep thinking of the yearning I experienced during that moment when I thought he was here, and I question again if I should be fighting for him. I’m a woman who has spent her adult life fighting for what she wants: is an assumption of his betrayal, or the fear of being hurt again, enough to justify letting him go?

  ‘Of course you should find him!’ Helen had said, exasperation mocking my question.

  ‘But what if—’ I had begun.

  ‘What if what? What if he listens to you and realises why you left? What if he finds out he’s about to be a father with a woman who loves him, what if he realises he should never have betrayed her?’

  ‘I told you, I deserved that.’

  ‘Whatever. Just ring him, Sophie.’

  I pick up the phone and dial his number, but again I hang up before it connects. Am I strong enough to hear him tell me I’m nothing to him – can I cope with that yet? I stroke the curve of my stomach and feel the shift beneath my skin. I imagine him laughing at me as I try to explain my actions. How will he react when I tell him I’m pregnant with his child and never told him? And if he can forgive me, what if I can’t? What if our betrayal sits between us . . . would our relationship ever really work?

  The sound of Charlie’s door opening and closing pulls my thoughts away from Samuel. I’m worried about him. You know how they say that the eyes are the window to the soul? Well, if that’s true then Charlie’s soul is disappearing. Our roles seem to have changed; I seem to be cooking for him, visiting him, and he puts up with it.

  I balance the tray tottering with sandwiches and chips on my bump and knock on the door. He opens it without greeting.

  ‘Hi, um, ham salad OK? I was making some for myself and . . .’ My sentence trails off like a reluctant bride’s train: there for decoration, hanging on but not necessary.

  I overlook the mess in the kitchen, step over the discarded tea towel on the floor and ignore the smell from the stagnant water sitting in the sink. He eats the food I put in front of him and he answers my questions, but rather than his answers being delivered in his usual curt manner, he answers them sl
owly, as though he can’t process his thoughts quickly enough.

  ‘Can you believe it’s mid-July already?’ I ask, the sandwich halfway to my mouth. He blinks slowly and slides his focus away from his food and up at me. His eyes are bloodshot and his eyelids heavy.

  ‘July,’ he repeats in reply. I swallow my food and worry that there is some significance to this month and Charlie’s actions.

  I try to make small talk about the weather, about what has been happening on the news, the latest gossip about new restaurants that have opened in Mid Wales, about new dishes that the critics are raving about, and he listens, and he comments, but it’s like he’s not really here. Charlie pushes his food around the plate as though he’s not going to eat it, but somehow he does. He is functioning in the same way that we all do – his chest is moving up and down as he breathes, his feet take one step after another the same way that mine do. He can see the seasons changing; he is seeing the new flowers that are showering my garden with summer; he can see the beauty that the world has to offer – but then he’s not seeing it at the same time. He gives every appearance of living and breathing, but it’s as if, inside himself, he is dead.

  Week Twenty-Three

  Samuel

  When I woke up this morning, in the house where I grew up, with the familiar sounds and smells of home, I felt happy. This is a strange feeling to acknowledge when even in the last week I have noticed how much darker my world has become. I feel like I can start to live again now that I have left behind the person I once was.

  I have spoken to Bob Golding, my boss from Greenlight, and I imagined his pallid chins rolling over the top of his collar as he talked; his voice even sounded fat – how is that possible? The investigation found that I hadn’t broached any infringements, as I knew they would. This means that they can accept my voluntary resignation and I will now receive the severance pay that I had been denied the last time I had made this offer, that morning while Sophie lay asleep in my bed, the morning I had called Bob and told him I wanted to take voluntary redundancy.