Chapter 6: Saturday Morning
Brenda dropped the cake off Friday evening.
She carried it in a tin — an old one with a faded floral pattern that she said had been in her cupboard for thirty years.
She'd lined it with greaseproof paper and nestled the sponge inside like it was something that mattered, which it was.
She stayed for a cup of tea.
The kids climbed on her.
The baby fell asleep on her lap, which the baby almost never does with anyone other than me, and Brenda sat very still so as not to wake her and talked to me in a low voice about Carol.
She didn't know her.
She only knew what Pete had passed along through Ryan.
But she'd been thinking about her all week, she said.
About what it meant to know you were running out of time and to spend it making sure your kid had enough of you stored up to last.
"She must have been a good mum," I said.
"She sounds like she was a wonderful mum," Brenda said.
"The Victoria sponge every year.
The writing on the lunchboxes." She looked down at the baby.
"You don't do those things unless the child is the whole point."
I didn't trust my voice for a moment.
"He's going to be all right," I said.
Eventually.
More to myself than to her.
"He is," she said.
"It'll take time.
But he is."
Ryan left at half seven Saturday morning.
The kids were still asleep.
I heard him lift the tin carefully from the counter, heard the front door close quietly behind him.
He was back by eight twenty.
I was in the kitchen with a coffee when he came in.
He set his keys on the counter and stood there.
"How was he?" I said.
"Still in his pyjamas.
Hadn't been awake long." Ryan looked at the table.
"He opened the door and I held out the tin and said Brenda had made it, my mum, and that we just wanted him to have it.
He looked at it for a second and then he looked at me and I thought he was going to say something but he didn't."
"What did he do?"
"He took it with both hands.
Really carefully.
Like it was—" Ryan stopped.
"Like it was the cake his mum used to make," I said.
"Yeah."
We stood in the kitchen together.
Outside, a bird was going at it in the garden.
The baby monitor was quiet.
"He said thank you," Ryan said.
"And then he said — and I don't know why he said this, maybe he just needed to say it to someone — he said, 'She used to sing while she made it.
I could always tell when it was nearly ready because she'd start singing.'"
I put my coffee down.
"What did you say?"
"I said, 'That's a good thing to remember.'" Ryan's voice was steady but only just.
"And he said, 'Yeah.
I think so too.'"
The baby started making sounds through the monitor.
Small, waking-up sounds.
I didn't move straight away.
"You did a good thing," I said.
"We did," he said.
"Mum did."
I went to get the baby.
When I came back down Ryan had made me a fresh coffee without being asked and was standing at the window looking out at the garden, the same way I had stood two Sundays ago when I was trying to hold myself together.
He looked different now.
Lighter, maybe.
Or just more like himself.
I stood beside him.
The kids' bikes were still on the lawn.
The dinosaur was still in the birdbath.
The grass still needed cutting.
"You should ring Pete," I said.
"Ask how Danny got on today.
Not to make a thing of it.
Just so someone knows to ask."
May you like
"I was already thinking that," he said.
We drank our coffee standing at the window, and neither of us said anything else, and it was one of those mornings that doesn't announce itself as anything special but stays with you anyway.
