Strawberry Ice cream

Chapter 4

I sneak into the house. The place is dead quiet and dark- signalling everyone is in bed. I creep up the stairs and that darn floorboard I always forget about, creaks under toe. 

Mum's door opens and she stands in the doorway, her silhouette prominent from the lamp light in her room. "Louis, is that you?" She quietly says. 

I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my fists in defeat. "Yeah mum, it's me." 

She sighs- relieved. "Oh thank goodness. Where have you been? I've been worried sick! I've called you six times!" She hisses

I look down at my phone and sure enough there's six missed calls from when I was in the car. 

"Sorry mum, I had my phone on silent." I go over to her and give her a hug. She squeezes me back.

"Clifford's waiting for you in your room. I'll see you in the morning, try to get some sleep, you look tired."

I'd get sleep if you stopped being sick in the bathroom. I hate myself for even thinking that, it's no way in hell her fault that she's ill. 

...

A few weeks have past and I always find myself laughing and smiling every time I get served by Harry in the ice cream parlour. He asked me yesterday if me and Zayn would want to hang with him and his friends sometime. I told him I'd think about it and we exchanged phone numbers. 

Mum's still the same, not getting better but fortunately not gotten worse yet either. It's Saturday and the girls are all with their dad, leaving mum and I alone. 

"Want to go have a mother son day out?" She asks. "My treat!"

"Will you be well enough?" I ask.

She sighs, "I'm not dead yet Louis, don't get too excited to be seen with me in public," she sarcastically says but I can see the hurt behind her eyes, causing me to wince. 

"N-no! I didn't mean it like that. I just don't want you getting worse."

"I know. Listen, if I feel tired, we can come back home and watch a movie, how about that? But I'd like to take my son for lunch and a bit of shopping before he leaves home for good!"

I cave in and I drive us to the shopping centre. 

Shops file along the cobble pathway of this street, two shopping malls stand either side of said street, filed with more shops inside from top to bottom. Mum drags me into Superdrug, searching the shelves for something in particular. 

"Ah," She mutters, pulling the box from the small metal rail. She dangles the box in front of me. "Fake eyelashes, so at least then I can have some sort of beauty on my face."

I sigh. "Mum, you're beautiful anyway, with or without." I search her face, her hair swept into a pink headscarf today making her look paler than usual without the brown contrasting her skin. 

"I know, but it'll make me feel more confident. Now should I go for these ones or the extra long ones?" She takes another box and shows me the plastic window, revealing the contents. 

I snort. "Mum, those ones look like the ones people put on the lights on their cars. No, go for the smaller ones." The ones she picked up look ridiculous, thick bristled eyelashes that would poke the eye every time it closes instead of keeping things from going in them. She giggles and replaces the weird lashes with the more natural looking ones. 

We pay and make our way out the shop onto the street. The small breeze nips at bare skin. 

"Should've brought a jacket, it's cold out here." Her teeth begin to chatter.