Forever, maybe - a grown-up story about love, life, friendship and family

Forgetting and remembering

When Nell arrived at their home the next day, Cate and Bobby didn't question her announcement that she would be staying a while.

Cate's deterioration shocked her. The day she arrived, her mother greeted her, face wreathed in smiles. "Hello, my darling! I didn't know you were coming! How long are you here for?"

"I dunno, Mum. A few weeks, maybe?"

Cate nodded. Nell had called her the night before to remind her that she was driving down to see them. Two minutes later, Cate asked the same question, wondering aloud if Nell should be spending so much time away from the School of Art when she should be preparing for her final art exhibition.

As Nell gently corrected her mother, Bobby met her gaze with a sad smile. "No, Mum, I'm no longer in art school, remember...?" Cate agreed at once. Of course. She knew that.

"Is... thingie, oh, what's his name?"

"Danny?"

"Yes, him. Where's he?"

"Back in Glasgow, Mum," Nell answered, diverting her gaze from her father, who, Nell could work out, was biting back questions before deciding that he didn't have the stamina to cope with whatever was wrong with her while also dealing with Cate.

"Oh, yes! He's the sandwich man." Cate replied, nodding a few times. This must be what she did now, condensing people into two-word descriptions in order to remember them. Funnily enough, Nell had heard Danny referred to as the sandwich man.

There were worse things to be known as.

Cate was thinner too. The picture of her Nell carried in her head was of a middle-aged woman with rounded arms and stomach, hips that Nell had inherited and dieted her entire life to get rid of. Now the flesh of her body had moved around, as if someone had shaken her like a sand timer, redistributing the bulk in all the wrong places.

Everything had drained downwards, leaving Cate's top half disjointed from the rest of her, with loose skin hanging from her jawline and neck, her arms emaciated, while her bottom and legs sucked up the vanishing flesh and her ankles enlarged to uncomfortable proportions.

Bobby had heaved her suitcase out of the car. Nell took hold of it.

"Am I in my old bedroom?"

He nodded, and she returned the gesture, heading inside. Her mother muttered something about the Hardys, wondering if they wanted to come over for dinner.

Nell, dragging her heavy suitcase upstairs, paused. The Hardy family. Her mother mentioning them after all this time. She awaited her father's reply.

"No, love. They don't live here anymore. They moved away, remember?"

"Yes, yes, of course. We shouldn't talk about them, should we?"

"No."

Nell's heart, beating in double time, slowed once more. She heaved the suitcase the rest of the way up the stairs and pushed open the door to her former room.

Mention of the Hardys brought memories flooding back. The room had altered, but not enough though, for it to stop it flashing back to the 1990s, when a fourteen-year-old Nell laid on the bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering what on earth she should do next.

She dumped her suitcase on the floor. It tipped over immediately, landing at an angle on the edge of the purple blanket covered single bed. Single beds, at least for adults, were no longer in common use. But there was something comforting about sleeping in a smaller space, especially when a partner wasn't about to join you.

The view from the window remained unchanged. The sun that would eventually set in the east—its position now in the top right, a soft gold glow behind the starkness of foliage. The willow tree with its drooping branches sagging sadly towards the ground and the fence demarking what had once been the Hardys' garden.