Songs For Your Mother by Gordon MacMillan (first color ebook reader .TXT) 📕

first time. He’s my son. The word ‘son’ sounds so alien in my head. Yesterday, I had no one. There was me. I had friends, family, I occasionally had Rachel (although she would dispute this), and now there is Luke, who is my son. He has a birth certificate with him and a letter from his mother that I absolutely, in my heart, in my bones and in my soul, know is true, every word of it.

And yet, I still can’t fit myself into this picture, into this new family album, with its few memories and even fewer pictures. The one that Luke has of me from that night in Santa Cruz, and the one that I now have of him and his mother, who I knew for less than twenty-four hours, and who I fell for hard. I’m blown away by that number. I’m blown away by the less than twenty-four hours of time we had together, of which Luke is the result. I find myself counting like Luke. I count the hours from when Lauren and I met, to when she looked over at me, to the moment we parted in the morning and left it all to fate. I only get to twelve, and twelve hours is nothing. That was it before Will and I were on the road and taking our final drive. I lost Will, and I lost Lauren and part of myself as well. That is all I have of her, plus her picture and the letter, and now Luke is sitting opposite me. That isn’t enough, twelve hours is hardly anything at all, it’s barely enough time to swap stories.

‘Johnny, come back,’ Susan says, and she snaps her fingers. ‘You zoned out on me.’

‘Yeah, sorry, lost in thought.’

‘You know who you should call don’t you?’ Susan says.

When she says this, I know instantly who she means. I don’t want to say it out loud as I worry what all of this will bring up. I worry about the past and the survivor guilt that I carry even though years have passed.

‘My mother?’ I suggest, even though I know very well that this is not who Susan is talking about. Although, I really need to call my mother as well, as I am going to need her help. I’m not sure she will believe that I can do this on my own, and I am not sure that I do either. Lauren took a massive gamble on me, and I have to try, I have to give this all that I’ve got.

‘Yes, you should definitely call her. She is not going to believe this and will doubtless see it as a further sign of the general disorder and lack of clear goals in your life. Your sister, on the other hand, is going to find this hilarious. Please, can I be there to see her face?’

I roll my eyes at Susan for obvious reasons. She is enjoying this too much. Susan is right about my sister, Dani, who will enjoy this. She’s the one with the long-term boyfriend and is far more likely to be a parent in everyone’s eyes. I, on the other hand, am the parent least likely. Except that is, Dani has shown no signs of broodiness whatsoever.

‘You know I am not talking about your mother,’ Susan says.

Susan is talking about TSP. To say that TSP surprised us after we lost Will is a vast understatement. It was more shock and awe. She got together with a guy she worked with, another lawyer called Andrew, and was pregnant with her first child in months. The second one came three years later. It wasn’t only the speed it all happened at that was surprising. It was the fact that TSP chose Andrew at all. He was, like me, the man least likely. No one said anything. To do so after everything felt wrong when it was still so raw. We’d all met Andrew once or twice before, and then they were together. It happened so quickly, and Andrew wasn’t anything like Will. He wasn’t fun or creative. He was dull and decent, a production line model from a long line of rugby-playing Andrews.

If Andrew had been anything at all, he should have been a transition guy. Someone who TSP went on a few dates with before finding the one. Or the second one, given that the one was Will.

In retrospect, TSP knew this or knew something. Because after four years and two children, they split up. She said he cheated on her, although I don’t think it mattered, not by then, as increasingly I had the feeling that TSP was not at all interested in him. I always thought that was why they never got married, despite Andrew asking her three times. I also know that he desperately wanted to stay together, and that was something TSP didn’t want to do. It was never an option. Her time with Andrew came with an expiry date. Andrew fought for that relationship, and he struggled in vain. I think TSP just wanted an excuse, and Andrew gave it to her.

In the process, Andrew learnt the hard way that it’s impossible to be with someone when they are still in love with someone else. He could see it every day in the ring that TSP wore on her right ring finger when she would never wear a ring of his. I know that TSP wearing Will’s ring was something Andrew found hard to accept, and it must have hurt. It’s hard to compete with the dead; no one can ever measure up to an unimpeachable ideal.

That said, they made two beautiful children, and TSP’s daughter, Georgia, is such an amazingly bright girl. Dan, her almost two-year-old brother, is always smiling. Knowing that doesn’t change the fact that I’m anxious my news will dredge up bad memories and drag us inexorably back to the darkness of the past.

‘I worry how this will hit her; it’s California,