The Marriage by K.L. Slater (any book recommendations TXT) 📕

on hold for the past ten years. A career, reacquainting himself with friends and, eventually, meeting a nice local girl and starting his own family, with me standing at his side to love and support them all.

After years of putting my own life and dreams on hold, this wasn’t just Tom’s fresh start. It was mine, too.

Five Bridget

I folded the small, checked blanket beneath me and sat on the dewy grass next to my son’s grave, then reached out and pressed my fingertips to the smooth biscuit-coloured headstone that a local stonemason engraved a week after his funeral – ten years ago now.

Somewhere down there, way below the dull grey slate chippings, lay the bones of my beautiful boy Jesse.

There had been so many impossible decisions to make, when I’d been half mad with grief. Wood or fibreglass for the coffin? What colour silk for the lining? Many times I’d simply let some faceless person at the funeral parlour make the final call on my behalf. But I’d steadfastly refused to have him cremated as they’d suggested. I’d wanted to keep him whole and substantial. I didn’t want my strong, handsome boy, who had been so vibrant, so full of life, reduced to anything.

I couldn’t bear the thought that his strong young body would be diminished.

I slid my free hand into my coat pocket and pulled out a small, ornate silver frame: my favourite photograph of Jesse I’d taken about a year before he died, which I always brought here. We lived in the grubby two-bed semi on the rough side of town then that we’d called home since he’d been two or three. I couldn’t afford to buy a house back then, but I’d worked two jobs and rented the best place possible.

When I’d had the film processed, he’d looked like a rock star, with his handsome face and mischievous grin. He’d liked the photo and had kept it on his bedside table.

When he died, kind locals set up a GoFundMe page and raised what to me as a struggling single mother seemed like an enormous amount of money. Enough for a deposit on a house in a better area. But I still didn’t want to move from the home I’d shared with Jesse. The mere thought of doing that had felt disloyal, as if I’d somehow be leaving his memory behind too.

Coral McKinty, Jesse’s girlfriend of about a year, was six months pregnant when he died. Coral was a local girl, pale and skinny. She’d been in the year below Jesse at school and had been around to the house a handful of times with a bunch of other kids for one of Jesse’s pizza and movie nights, or just to chill and listen to music in the scraggy square of grass we called a garden.

Coral looked attractive when she made an effort, but was so meek and unremarkable that Jesse’s choice had baffled me. He’d had his pick of local beauties, but had chosen to date a fairly ordinary girl he’d known for years.

‘Coral’s OK, Ma,’ he’d told me one time. ‘She lets me do what I like and doesn’t give me any trouble. She’ll do for now, anyway.’

‘Hey, cut that out!’ I’d said, shocked at his attitude. I’d raised him to have respect for women. Goodness knows, he’d seen me struggle enough as he was growing up. ‘You’ve made your choice and you’re committed to Coral and your baby now.’

Coral was an only child and estranged from her own widower father, so when baby Ellis came into the world three months after his daddy’s death, Ellis and Coral would stay with me regularly overnight, sometimes several times a week. The time felt right to move on to a modest but slightly bigger house in a better area.

They lived with me for a few months until I got Coral sorted out with a new-build terraced townhouse, just a five-minute walk away from my place. My grandson was the part of Jesse that lived on, and the bond I built with him encouraged me to grow strong again, helped me to start the healing process. Through Ellis, I still felt Jesse’s presence in my life, and I needed that like the air I breathed.

When Jesse was alive, my love for him had been like a dazzlingly bright butterfly. Now, it was a quieter, darker love, a dull-winged moth.

A chilly breeze skimmed over the flat ground and crept under my layers of clothing. I shivered now and clutched Jesse’s photograph to me, seeking comfort. I knew that today, after Tom’s release from prison, there would be stormy seas to cross.

Just before Jesse’s funeral, lonely and utterly bereft, I’d reached out to Jill Billinghurst. I’d dialled her landline number and then cut off the call before it connected. I did that what seemed like a thousand times before finally plucking up the courage to allow it to ring.

‘Hello?’ Her voice had sounded as empty as my own.

‘Jill? It’s … it’s Bridget,’ I’d said hesitantly.

‘What do you want?’ she snapped.

‘Look, we need to talk.’ I was sure she must have thought the same thing herself. As two grieving mothers, we had to gather strength from each other. We’d been friends for too long not to find a way through the tragedy together. ‘Talk about everything that’s happened.’

She’d been my closest friend for fifteen years and yet now I’d finally drummed up the courage to make contact, I couldn’t seem to string a sentence together that articulated how I felt.

‘There’s nothing I want to say to you,’ she’d replied coldly.

We’d each known the other’s son as well as our own. We’d raised our boys together. I knew Tom’s likes, his dislikes. I knew about the strawberry-shaped birthmark on his left shoulder. I knew he’d had two wisdom teeth removed and that, up to the age of about fifteen, he sometimes used to sleepwalk when he felt anxious about anything.

I knew Jill was capable of reeling off similar personal knowledge