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

by Emma Cooper

  ‘More fool you, Sammy. I’ve told you before, when you meet a girl like that you shouldn’t let her go.’

  ‘I did meet a girl like that . . . and you’re right. I shouldn’t let her go.’

  ‘I’ve got her address . . . she’s living in Wales.’

  I think of how hard it was to negotiate my way back from town and the fifteen apologies I’ve said today. I don’t want to ask, but I know I need help.

  ‘Da . . . do you fancy a trip to Wales?’

  He slaps me on the back. ‘Now you’re talking, my boy!’

  Happiness nudges me from out of the dancing shadows. Michael catches my eye and Da farts. Loudly.

  Week Twenty-Eight

  Sophie

  I’m waiting. I’m waiting for the minute hand to pass the numbers on the clock-face, so another hour has passed. I’m waiting for my tea to cool so I can drink it. I’m waiting for the sun to set so it’s the beginning of another day: the day when he gets in touch.

  My waiting is disturbed by a knock on the door.

  Charlie is standing at the threshold. I haven’t seen him since I walked out of his house that day, and his appearance triggers an emotion far harder than the slap across the face I had given him.

  His clothes hang from his body; his hair hangs limply from his head; his skin hangs from his face: he is hanging on to life. I take a tentative step forward and he collapses into my arms. The noises he makes are primal and it’s like I’ve just stepped into a storm. Charlie’s body convulses as he tries to let go of me but then he clings on a second later.

  I guide him into the lounge, to the sofa; where he curls up into a ball and continues to gasp and battle for air. I sit next to him and begin to stroke his hair. I tell him he’ll be OK; I tell him he will be OK; I tell him he will be OK.

  August screams outside, the clouds smashing tears against the windows as my fingers weave their way through his hair, untangling it, smoothing it down. I watch the storm outside throwing leaves across the garden, the branches bending in submission as Charlie’s sobs turn into gentle snores. I stroke his hair while he sleeps, and I wait.

  My back begins to hurt, Bean fidgets, and so I shift myself and quietly step away towards the window.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ His voice is hoarse and brittle. I turn around. He is still in the same position, curled up, just as Bean must be, I suppose.

  ‘You’ve nothing to apologise for,’ I say.

  ‘I . . . I—’ He begins to pull himself up from the sofa, but I return to his side and crouch down as best as I can with Bean in the way.

  ‘Shush . . .’ I answer. ‘Let me make you a drink, OK? Then we can talk.’

  I pass him his tea and he drains the cup, even though it must be scalding.

  ‘Let me help you, Charlie.’ The time for small talk has long since gone; it left the building the minute he stepped into my house.

  ‘I don’t know if you can,’ he says. ‘I don’t know if anyone can.’

  ‘So, let’s find out.’ But he just stares at me blankly. ‘I’m not sure being here on your own is what you need.’

  ‘I don’t want to be anywhere else.’

  ‘OK . . . so let’s see what we can do from here to help you.’ I don’t know how this new relationship works, so I take my first step towards being the person who tells him the things he needs to hear, even if he doesn’t want to hear them. ‘You need to eat, Charlie. When was the last time you ate something?’

  He shrugs his shoulders, but the way he has just drunk his tea makes me think that maybe he hasn’t been drinking either.

  ‘OK, well I think our first step is to at least get you eating and drinking.’

  ‘I should go,’ he says, looking away from me. I begin to panic; everything in me thinks that letting him out of my sight right now is a bad thing, so I use an old tactic.

  ‘Good idea.’ He looks up at me, his eyes still haunted and hurting. ‘You go and have a shower and a shave, and then I’ll cook us dinner.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Is an hour long enough? For you to get cleaned up, or shall I do dinner a little later?’

  He digests my words, he takes in my plans, but as I watch him, I’m not sure if I’ve pushed him too much.

  ‘An hour is plenty.’ Charlie starts to get up, his back stretching out from the broken curve that his spine had formed, but his shoulders remain stooped, his head still balancing on top of his neck, still hanging on even though his chin is almost sunken into his chest.

  Charlie returns with a gently closed front door and an air of reluctant defeat. We sit and eat; I put on some classical music in the background and I fiddle with the tear-drop pendant hanging from my silver necklace. His mouthfuls are small, and he eats as though he has tonsillitis, like every mouthful that is swallowed hurts.

  ‘Are you waiting for a call?’ he asks, sipping a glass of water to help dislodge the mouthful of pasta that he is struggling with. Now is not the time to tell him about Samuel. He is barely surfacing above the grief that is wrapping around his body and squeezing the life out of him – how can I tell him that not only have I found Samuel, but that he is alive after I’d thought he was dead? How can I tell him that I have everything that he has lost? Instead I push my phone away from me, the constant refresh of the screen an addiction that I need to break.

  ‘Oh, I was waiting for a call back from a gas company. I’m thinking of changing supplier.’

  He places his knife and fork together across the plate. He hasn’t eaten much, but he has drunk two glasses of water. It’s a start at least.

  ‘Charlie, I think that maybe . . . maybe you should see someone? A doctor?’

  ‘A doctor can’t bring them back.’ He looks into his glass of water and swills it around in circles.

  ‘No . . . but a doctor might be able to bring you back.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to be brought back?’ he asks.

  ‘You must do, otherwise you wouldn’t have come here.’ I reach for his hand. ‘Let me help you.’ His hand feels cold to my touch and he moves it away from me.

  ‘My wife . . .’ he dips his finger into the water and circles the rim of his glass with his finger, ‘could get a can of Coke to balance on its edge when she took her hands away. It was her party trick. Jack used to think it was magic, but it was more to do with having the balance levels right.’ He doesn’t smile as he says this but his face changes, like the memory is hidden just below the surface. It evens out a few of the lines in his face, but it doesn’t quite reach a smile. ‘And she could hula-hoop.’

  ‘Hula-hoop?’

  ‘Yeah, she did it on our first holiday together.’ The memory irons out the tension around his eyebrows, around the deep crevices that surround his eyes. ‘There was a huge pile of them in the kids’ area. She picked them up and began looping them around her arms and her waist; she could do it for ages at a time without dropping them, all the kids on the campsite loved it.’ Pain returns, digging itself back into the muscles around his mouth, pulling back the softness that had formed in his lips. ‘She did it when she was pregnant, too. She was about four months gone and Jack was only just starting to show, but the hoops still glided around her, Olivia’s hips were barely even moving.’ His head lifts involuntarily and his gaze is almost challenging, as if he’s daring himself to look at me while he is saying the words. ‘She was wearing a bright pink crop top and it kept riding up, her bump was sticking out beneath it.’

  ‘She sounds like an amazing woman.’

  ‘Not really, not to anyone else. But she was to me. And now she is gone and no amount of trips to the doctor can change it. No trip to the doctor’s is going to change that she decided to have a drink when she knew she had to drive later. She was pregnant . . . thirteen weeks.’ The words are barely a whisper, but they taint the atmosphere, their meaning dulling the light in the room, sending it scampering away.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘If I’d
have known, I would never have asked you to come to the hospital.’ He shrugs as if it was no big deal.

  ‘Was she over the limit, Charlie?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Then was it really her fault? I’ve had a glass of wine while I’ve been pregnant, lots of women do. If she wasn’t over the limit, then maybe it was just an accident.’

  The word ‘just’ fires around the room, his face changing from hurt to anger in the time I realise I shouldn’t have said it.

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I know what you meant.’

  ‘No, Charlie, I don’t think you do. I know that “just” isn’t the right way to describe what happened . . . it was an awful, awful tragedy. But an accident means that it wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just an accident. Maybe you need to forgive Olivia before you can start to get better?’

  I have said enough. I may have said too much, but if I’m going to help him, I need to be the one strong enough to say the things that maybe he doesn’t want to hear.

  Bean is getting bigger by the day. My stomach is starting to feel larger and I catch it on the side of the table as I stand. I walk to his side and reach for his plate, but he takes my hand. The feel of his skin on mine jolts the stillness of the room. The shock of this connection holds my feet to the ground; it makes the noises inside the kitchen louder than they were. The hum of the fridge is a loud vibration; the sound of his laboured breathing fills my ears; the dripping tap is so piercing that I wonder why I have never heard it so acutely before. My hand finds his hair as he lifts his head and looks at me. I meet Charlie’s eyes, which are scanning my face. They follow the shape of my nose, my cheekbones; they are watching the way I’m biting my lip; they trace the shape of my neck, and they don’t stop until they reach my stomach.

  His hand begins to move, a small twitch at first. His eyes look back up at mine, an unspoken request, an unspoken answer; it reaches for Bean. His is the first hand to touch my child other than a midwife or a doctor. His warmth radiates through my skin and Bean squirms beneath it. A flicker of a smile pulls at Charlie’s mouth as he begins to move his head towards my stomach. I want to tell him that it is too much for me, but as I watch his smile, as I watch him close his eyes and slip into the past where he has his hand on Olivia’s stomach, where he has his family in his arms, it makes me stand still. He reaches his face forward and lays the side of his head on Bean. I close my eyes and join him in this precious moment and let myself pretend that it is Samuel who has his hand around my waist, Samuel’s head leaning against our child, Samuel’s lips that are giving my unborn child its first kiss. I run my fingers through Charlie’s hair and pretend that his coarse waves are softer and finer; as I run my hands down towards the nape of his neck and twirl his hair around my finger, I let myself believe that I’m a normal woman, who is holding the man that she loves, while he embraces me and kisses our child.

  The gate outside slams and reminds me that the real world is carrying on outside, but we keep our eyes closed and we pretend that our lives are just the way they should be, that Charlie is holding his pregnant wife and that Bean and I have Samuel.

  All of us waiting for our lives to begin again.

  Week Twenty-Eight

  Samuel

  Wales is a much darker place than I was expecting, but inside I feel light. Checking in to the small B&B had been a blast from the past. The elderly lady who had probably run this since the fifties still uses a carbon copy credit card machine. Da jumped into a conversation about how things should stay as they are, much safer, these things, than all of this contactless malarkey. We were asked if we would like a full English breakfast in the morning and Da smiled; that would be grand, he replied.

  While he guides me by the arm to the room, he moans about three things: firstly, that he can barely understand her accent and why does Britain have to have so many? I roll my eyes and Michael taps his way up the stairs, while Da moans about the Geordie accent, the Cockney accent, the Manchester accent and that’s before we’ve got into our room.

  Michael and I are exhausted, and so we lie back on the bed and close our eyes. With my eyelids shut, the full expanse of the room widens; I push the walls of the tunnel away and I fill in the blank spaces. Da continues to prattle on and so I picture the small window that looks on to the seafront; I widen it, making it so large that it almost fills the wall. Outside, the long stretch of Aberystwyth promenade stretches alongside the Irish Sea; I squint and wonder if I can see the coast of Ireland. The day is so clear, the sky so blue that it looks as though I could swim to its shores.

  ‘Sammy!’ My eyes snap open. The room fills with dancing shadows, the blue of the sky replaced by a heavy grey. I leave Michael lying next to me: no need to wake him just yet. ‘I said when are we going to fetch this girl of yours?’

  ‘I need to get ready, I need to have another look at the map before I go.’ I close my eyes again and my world fills with light.

  ‘You’re not suggesting you’re going to go into the back of the Welsh beyond on your own, are you?’ I sigh and open my eyes again, leaving the great expanse of the room behind and instead accepting this claustrophobic life that I can’t escape from.

  ‘Well, I’m not very well going to turn up on her doorstep with my da holding my hand.’

  ‘I’m not holding your bloody hand, you great big arse wipe! But you’ve got to admit, Sammy, it’s one thing walking through our town with Mikey boy guiding the way, but it’s another thing traipsing up bloody mountains. What if you get lost? You’ll not be able to understand the locals even if you ask for help.’

  ‘I can understand them just fine, stop being so melodramatic.’

  ‘Right . . . and what kind of first impression are you going to make if you fall flat on your great behind? Hardly going to be bowled over by you, is she? If you’re crawling around on your hands and knees trying to find Michael, you’ll look like a right numpty.’

  ‘Thanks for the confidence, Da,’ I say, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I shake Michael awake and he stretches into his full height. Together we walk over to the window, but Da has left his case on the floor; Michael tries to warn me, but I don’t react quickly enough and we go flying over it.

  ‘Fuck!’ I shout, throwing Michael across the room. Da bends down and grabs my arm, but I shake him off. ‘I can do it,’ I snap and pull myself upright.

  ‘And you want to go climbing mountains?’

  ‘It’s your fault, you shouldn’t leave your shit everywhere.’

  ‘Well, I hate to be the one to tell you, Sammy, but there will be shit everywhere on the Welsh hillsides. There’s fecking sheep all over the shop.’

  A small grunt of amusement escapes me, and I begrudgingly reach up to take his hand.

  ‘We’ll get in the hire car,’ Da goes on, ‘and I’ll drive you up the fecking hill, then we can park somewhere discreet and I can tell you where you need to mind your step and what you need to look out for. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go holding your hand right up to the doorstep, but whether you like it or not, you need a little bit of help, so stop being a stubborn arse. The last thing your gal will want is you knocking on her door covered in sheep shite.’

  He is right. I know that I have no choice, really, but it doesn’t stop me from being angry. Actually, angry isn’t the right word – defeated, possibly? Although that makes it sound as though I’ve given up, and I haven’t. Maybe there isn’t a word to describe how someone in this situation feels. I’m lucky to be alive and yet I don’t feel lucky. I’m grateful for the small amount that I can still see and yet I resent that that is all I get. I’m happy, but every little bit of happiness I get is tinged with something dark. Happiness isn’t something clear-cut any more; it is, and always will be, smudged around the edges. I will always be surrounded by that fire and no matter how far I travel away from the big smoke, this smoke will continue to spread, however hard I try to contain it.

  ‘Do you think you need to change g
ear?’ I ask, as the hire car screams up the hill.

  ‘Giving me driving tips, are we now?’ He crunches the gears and they lower their aggravated sounds into a more compliant grumble.

  Michael taps nervously on my knee as I look out of the window. It’s like summer has stayed behind in Ireland. Rain lashes down against the windows and the bright green that I saw in the pictures before we left home is dull and grey . . . the colour of old navy ships. I haven’t thought about how the changing seasons would affect me. The sun, and the colours that summer brings, filled my vision with bright tones – even if they were seen through the tunnel – but what happens when winter draws in? What happens when there are weeks and weeks of weather like this? But then I think about how long it is until winter is here. My sight will be gone by then anyway . . . Christmas trees will flicker in the shadows and the faces of the people I know will become ageless; their images will be unchanging for me. ‘Jesus, will you put a smile on your face? She’ll likely slam the door on you if you keep that sour expression on your mush.’ The road is narrow, and the hedges scrape the sides of the window as though they are trying to clamber in to escape from the harsh elements. Autumn is starting to wake up . . . will I get to see the leaves turn colour?

  ‘So, your woman, Sophie. Tell me what is the best thing about her and the worst thing.’

  I smile at Da; this is the way that they used to start dinner-time conversation when we were kids: ‘Tell me the worst bit about school today and the best bit.’

  ‘The worst thing is that she’s defensive, she keeps people at a distance . . . it’s hard to break through that, it’s hard to know who she really is.’

  ‘And the best thing?’

  ‘Once she lets her defences down, once you break through, it’s as though she’s been waiting for you her whole life and only you get to see who she really is. It’s like winning a trophy – no, not a trophy, an Oscar? It’s like winning a . . .’ I rack my brain. ‘It’s like winning.’