Lachrymose Love

03 | the little boy stopped crying

I stood in front of an average sized house. It had bare brick walls and a few windows dotted around from what I could see. A small wooden gate surrounded the house. It was pretty the type of house I could only hope to live in.

I then turned my attention to a bungalow, opposite to the house I had at first looked at. Moss reigned dominant on the roof and the grass outside it was long overgrown. What may have also been a metal gate had been eaten up with rust and the paint corroded away by heavy weather.

I heard the door of a car shut behind me and then footsteps.

"This is the place." Came the policeman's voice, who I had learnt to be called Officer Dixon (or to me, Matthew, at least that's what he asked me to call him).

The bungalow my eyes were seeing looked nothing like my childhood family home and even I could decipher that, despite having seeing it in years.

I watched as Matthew walked to the door and knocked on it. As he knocked I saw the vibrations from his hand transfer onto the door itself and was quite surprised that the little door was still standing.

I moved closer behind Matthew not wanting the first thing for the owner of the house to see, being a scruffy, homeless teenager.

A woman came out onto the door frame when the door finally opened. Her black-brown hair was pulled back, yet small parts of it were slowly coming undone. Her oriental features were only noticeable if you happened to be close up and her clothes, baggy on her slim figure.

"Yes." She said, before realising that she was talking to a policeman. "Oh, what seems to be the problem officer?"

"Am I speaking to Mrs Blythe Harvey?" He said, in a formal tone, distant from the friendly voice I had talked to in the car.

"I prefer to be called Miss Melslee now." She answered, taking notice of my presence, behind Matthew.

"Alright, Miss Melslee, may I ask you a few questions, regarding your past?"

She nodded, opening the door wider, inviting the Matthew in. She raised an eyebrow at me and gave Matthew a questioning look, which he ignored.

I followed Matthew into the house and to avoid boring descriptions, I can sum up the interior by saying that it was as flattering on the inside as it was on the outside.

Matthew sat on the couch that stood at the far end of the main room, without invitation while I stood beside him, uncomfortably. Miss Melslee took seat on a chair opposite the couch glancing back and forth between the two of us.

The woman that was meant to be my mother didn't even recognise me, then again, if I saw her in the streets I probably wouldn't have recognised her. After all, I've been gone for four years, maybe more. I've lost track.

"Miss Melslee, am I correct in saying that four years ago, around about July, your daughter was kidnapped?" She nodded in response, looking concerned about Matthew bringing up a subject that had probably been ignored for some time.

"And her name." He continued.

"Vanessa." She answered still looking at me. Matthew looked at me with an encouraging smile.

"Well, I think I might have her standing beside me, miss."

+++

Grandmother Harvey had originated from China, but to pursue her dreams of medicine, she travelled to England, in hopes of a better education than the town she lived in. There she met my dear grandfather, in her medical course. Together they made a mixed Caucasian and Chinese baby girl, aka. my mum. And, of course, she and my father made me. Thus making me a quarter Chinese, a quarter English and half Irish (thanks to my dad).