Happiness
Your child isnt welcome in my home, said Mums new boyfriend. And Mum agreed.
Eight-year-old Andrew felt as though his world had shattered when the official car arrived for him. Mum promised shed bring him back soon. But days blended into months; months stretched into years…
Only one small figure in an old coat stood at the gate every Sunday. Rain or shine, freezing or windy. Always.
Can happiness be built on the ruins of betrayal? How do you let go of pain when youre thrown away by the person who should love you most?
***
Andrew will always remember that summer. Not because anything special happened July felt like every July; hot, dusty, with dandelion fluff drifting everywhere, catching in nostrils and the corners of stairwells. You know the sort of small English towns. Everyone knows everyone elses business, grannies gossip on benches from dawn till dusk.
Come evening, the aroma of frying potatoes wafts out the windows, and the same old songs drift out from every garden radio. Dull, really. But for an eight-year-old boy, it was the entire world.
He was eight. And he was happy. Thats it happy, for no particular reason. Only later do you realise it was happiness at all. Back then, he was simply living.
Andrews dad, Simon, was a lorry driver.
Hed be gone for long stretches, then come home weary, unshaven, smelling of long roads and diesel. He always brought presents: perfume in funny little bottles for Mum, toy cars, chewing gum for Andrew, and once a real Swiss Army knife with all sorts of gadgets.
Mum gasped, scolded that it wasnt suitable for a child, but she didnt take it away. Andrew treasured it, keeping it in his pocket like the crown jewels.
Simon was tall, a bit stooped you know how some big blokes are, almost apologetic for taking up so much space. His eyes were dark, his voice gentle and warm, not what youd expect for such a large man. He didnt laugh often, but when he did my word, Andrew would have done anything to make him laugh just a bit more. It was low and resounding.
Mum Margaret was beautiful.
Andrew was certain of it because everyone said so: neighbours, the cashier at the corner shop, even the local bobby when he checked the post. Golden hair, delicate features, and a sort of elegance that didnt belong in that tired town even in a simple summer dress, she looked as if shed wandered in from somewhere finer.
Perhaps it was partly true. Mum would often stand at the window, gazing outside with an expression Andrew couldnt describe then but never forgot. Later, he realised: longing.
Longing for something imagined, something life never gave her.
His Granny Jean lived just two roads away. Andrew was sent there when his parents needed to have a chat hed quickly learnt that chats meant arguments, banging doors, and his mums tears.
He loved being at Grannys. It always smelled of pies and geraniums. Jars of homemade jam lined the sills, strictly forbidden, though now and then hed sneak the lid off and swipe a taste of the sugary foam. Granny always pretended not to notice.
Youre the image of your father, shed say, peering at him with mingled pride and sorrow. My Simon was just the same as a lad. Just as wild.
Andrew wasnt sure what wild meant, but he liked being like his dad.
And then his dad didnt come back.
It happened in late August. Andrew remembers the sticky, sleepless night, the open window, the fading scent of phlox from the flowerbed below. He lay awake, unable to settle.
First came a phone call. Then his mums voice strange, unrecognisable. Next, the silence, a long one, the sort thats all wrong. Through the wall he heard:
Simons not coming home. His lorry was in an accident.
He remembers almost nothing from the funeral. Just the heat, the choking scent of lilies, and Grannys dry, tough little hand locked around his own. Mum stood in black beside the coffin, beautiful even then, crying. But she never reached for Andrew, didnt hold him, didnt stroke his head.
It was as if she didnt see him at all.
***
A year went by. The strangest year of Andrews life not only because his dad was gone, although that was hard enough. Stranger still was how Mum gradually, almost imperceptibly, grew distant.
No more Sunday pancakes. No one checked his homework. She didnt tuck him in at night. She lived in a sort of parallel world, where Andrew simply didnt exist.
Then came Richard.
He showed up six months after the funeral. Tall, broad-shouldered, moving about as if the world owed him something. Expensive car, expensive watch, the smell of aftershave filling the room and no doubt pricey, too. Always well turned-out. Chirped on about business in Birmingham, a flat with a river view, restaurants, sunny holidays. He made it sound wonderful.
We met through friends, Mum said. Andrew hadnt even asked. Hes a good man. You must respect him.
Andrew wondered, why should he respect some strange bloke? Hed waltz into their home, chat with Mum, and look straight through Andrew as if he were invisible. But Andrew kept quiet. By then he was used to silence.
Richard would bring flowers and chocolates for Mum, not Andrew. Every so often, as if remembering, hed toss Andrew a bar of chocolate, but with the air of someone swatting a nuisance fly.
Mum seemed transformed beside Richard. She laughed again, wore her best dresses, dabbed on lipstick. There was a fevered gleam in her eyes, a hungry, reckless hope for that other life shed always daydreamed about at the window.
Then came the conversation.
Andrew wasnt meant to overhear it. He was meant to be in bed or at least pretending but the voices in the kitchen were loud, angry.
He crept to the door and heard:
I dont want another mans son in my house, Richards voice, cold and commanding. Hell always remind me of your past. Sort him out send him to a boarding school, wherever. Otherwise I leave.
Silence. Andrew waited for Mum to say something. To shout, to throw him out, to defend her son.
Instead, he heard her reply, wavering and small:
But what will I do without you?
He didnt listen for more. He went back to bed, pulled the duvet over his head, froze barely breathing.
He already knew what would come next. Knew it, and could do nothing about it.
***
Granny came round the next day. Andrew had never seen her like that such a tiny, gentle woman suddenly fierce, desperate.
Are you mad? her voice shook. Margaret, think! Hes your boy! Your flesh and blood!
You dont understand, Mum said, dull, as if reading an old script. Its just for a while. Ill bring him home when things settle down, its only a year or two.
A year or two! Listen to yourself!
Ive got no choice!
Theres always a choice! Let him stay with me! Ill look after him!
Silence. Then again, Mums voice distant, foreign:
Richard doesnt want that. He says youll turn Andrew against us.
Richard? Whats he got to do with my grandson?
Hes going to be my husband. Its his decision now.
Andrew heard it all from behind the door, and inside, something broke. Not with racket, not with pain it was quiet, like thin ice melting under spring sun.
A week later, the car came.
Mum packed his things in a big checkered bag. She went on about a good place, about new friends, about it being only temporary. Andrew wasnt listening. He watched her face beautiful, yet a strangers and tried to etch it on his memory. He didnt know why. Just knew he must.
Granny stood beside the gate.
She cried soundlessly, the way people do when theyve run out of tears. Andrew hugged her close, breathed in the scent pies, geraniums, something else, something deeply familiar.
Ill come, she whispered. Ill find you, I promise.
He nodded. He wanted to believe her.
The car pulled away. Andrew kept his eyes on the rear window. Granny ran after him… hunched, wrapped in her worn-out scarf. She ran… then stopped, dropping to her knees in the dust of the lane.
God, how she knelt there alone, in the middle of the road.
He didnt cry. Couldnt. Just emptiness and silence inside as if all the furniture had been dragged out of a house.
***
The home was large and grey, smelling of bleach and boiled fish. Special Facility for Children Without Parental Care, it said above the gates. The children, though, just called it the care home.
Andrew was placed with the younger boys. Twelve to a room. Metal beds, tired bedside tables painted council green, a faded poster with the school rules.
For the first week, he spoke to no one. Just sat by the window, staring toward the road. Watching. Waiting.
Mum said she’d visit soon. He had no idea how long soon might last a day, a week, a month? Each car coming through the gates had him on edge. He studied every womans face.
A month passed. Then two. Then six.
She did not come.
***
Mrs. Turner had been a carer there for years. Slightly plump, with warm blue eyes and a gentle smile.
Once, she had a son too.
He died in a car crash at seventeen. Since then, Mrs. Turner had lived alone.
She spotted Andrew by the third day. Well, how could you not notice? Sitting by the window, eating nothing, jumping at every sound. So small, so lost.
She didnt ask questions or prod. She just sat by him one evening, and set a book on his table.
Jules Verne. The Children of Captain Grant. Like adventure stories? she asked.
Andrew shrugged.
Well, give it a go at night. If you like it, Ive got more.
He started reading out of boredom, just to fill his head. He was hooked before long. Within a week, he was back at Mrs. Turners door asking for more. Then more. A strange, out-of-place friendship blossomed a grown woman and a nine-year-old boy.
She taught him chess. Helped with homework. Occasionally, when the other carers werent looking, she slipped him a biscuit or an apple from her own stash.
Most important she talked to him. Not like a child who needed raising, or lecturing. She spoke to him like an actual person.
Its not your fault, she told him once, when he finally let everything spill. Remember this, Andy. Whatever happens, whatever anyone says, it was never your fault. Adults should have protected you.
He listened, and tried to believe. It was hard.
***
Mike Granger arrived at the care home a year after Andrew. Ginger, skinny, freckles everywhere, knuckles perpetually grazed hed scrap almost daily. With other boys, with staff, once even with the head teacher.
His mum drank. Not just a bit, like many parents back home but seriously, sometimes days on end without remembering her son. Neighbours called social services, and Mike was whisked away.
He hated everything furiously, openly, never hiding it. He hated staff, rules, the iron beds, the tatty green walls. Most of all, he hated boys who cried at night.
Wimps and softies, he called them.
Why he and Andrew became friends remains forever a mystery. Perhaps because Andrew never cried. Maybe because he never asked daft questions. Or just possibly because one day, Andrew stood up to some big lout from the older group who tried to snatch Mikes most treasured thing a photo of his mum.
Youre all right, Mike said after their scrap, dabbing his bloody lip with a wet rag. Not like the rest.
And so they became mates. Or brothers, depending how you see it. Two against the world.
***
Granny kept her promise.
She turned up three months after Andrew had been taken away she just appeared by the gate until one of the kids called a carer. The guard tried to move her on, but Mrs. Turner intervened:
Shes not doing any harm. Let her be.
Andrew saw her from the window, and could barely believe it this little figure in an old coat, headscarf knotted, parcel in hand.
He ran outside, racing to the gate, heart pounding. He squeezed his hand through the railings, grabbing for her sleeve. He clung on.
Granny Jean!
She laughed and cried at the same time, passing him the parcel homemade biscuits, woolly gloves shed knitted, a card with a hand-drawn ship.
I tried to bring you back, she said, choking on her words. Ive gone everywhere, right up to London. But they say not without your mothers consent. I sold my house, Andy, tried to get a lawyer, even looked at buying a flat so youd have a proper address. Still no luck.
Andrew couldnt fathom selling the house, the house with geraniums and jam, for a grandson you can never bring home.
Im living here now, just nearby, Granny said. Rented a room in a shared house. Ill come every week. Every single week. You hear me?
And she did come.
Sometimes the guards shooed her off, sometimes they let her stand by the gate. She always brought something food, hand-knitted things, books. Once, she handed over the Swiss Army knife his dads, which Andrew forgot in the rush.
Keep this, she whispered. From your dad. Remember him.
He did. He remembered.
***
The years slipped by.
Andrew grew, changed. A silent child became a reserved teen, sharp-edged, letting no one get close. He studied hard, but only because lessons and books filled the aching emptiness inside. He played chess with Mrs. Turner, fought shoulder to shoulder with Mike when needed, waited at the fence every Sunday for Granny.
She grew older before his eyes.
Hair whitening, deep lines etched into her face, a walking stick appearing a few years back. Still, she came through rain, sleet, bitter cold. Always.
***
At seventeen, Andrew learned his mum had had a daughter. Mary. Mrs. Turner told him, having seen a photo in the local paper. Margaret was at some charity event. All dolled up, smiling. Richard next to her, with a little girl in a frilly dress.
Andrew stared at the photo for a long time. Tried to feel something anger, hurt, pain. Inside, there was nothing but emptiness.
That day, he decided to write a letter. His first and last.
Mum. Im leaving the home soon. I dont hold anything against you. Maybe we could meet? Just talk. I dont want anything from you, I promise.
He got her address from Granny. Sent it. Waited.
A month. Two. Three.
No reply.
***
Then Mike died.
He ran away from the care home in November, when it was damp, cold, with an early frost and bitter wind. Hed heard his mum had sobered up, got herself a job and sorted things out. He only had six months left, but he simply couldnt wait anymore. He desperately wanted to go home.
They found Mike under a bridge, thirty miles away. Exposure. Hed never made it home.
Andrew heard from Mrs. Turner.
She spoke softly, gently, the way you do to someone ready to fall apart. He barely heard anything, just the distant roar of a waterfall in his head.
Later, he punched out a window. With his bare fists, not feeling the pain or noticing the blood. He screamed, he couldn’t recall exactly what something like, Why? He just wanted to go home!
Mrs. Turner held him while he cried. She didnt say a word. Just held tight.
The next day was Sunday. Hed lost track of days since learning about Mike, but that morning he remembered. He went to the fence.
Granny was there.
Standing in her old coat, leaning on a stick, parcel in hand. When she saw his face, she cried already in the know. Mrs. Turner had phoned her the evening before.
Granny Jean, he pressed his forehead to the cold rails. Why didnt you give up?
She stroked his cheek through the bars, her hands scented with biscuits and apples, as always.
Because youre all I have left of my Simon. I promised him at his grave. And because youre my grandson. My bit of this world. Thats enough.
He closed his eyes, resting his cheek on her palm.
Mike had searched for a mother whod abandoned him. All along, Andrew had Granny who never did.
***
Andrew left the care home the following year, with school behind and a decent set of grades. Ahead lay life one nobody prepares you for.
The council gave him a room in a hostel. Bed space among others like him: care leavers, rootless kids, adults no one needed. He enrolled at the local college orphans got a leg-up there.
He studied, held jobs as a porter, builders mate, whatever he could get. Saved every penny, determined that college wouldnt be the end he aimed higher, to become an engineer, like Dad once dreamed.
And every weekend, he visited Granny.
She was still in the same tiny room, creaky sofa, an old family photo propped by the telly, a pot of geraniums on the sill. Shed brought those from her old house, the one shed sold for him. The last bit of before.
Theyd drink tea with her cakes baking wasnt so frequent now, but shed make the effort when he came.
She told him about his father; how hed loved cars as a boy, how hed wanted to see the whole country. Andrew would listen, trying to imagine the young, lively man he could barely recall.
Youre so like him, Granny would say. Not in looks, inside. Stubborn, strong.
Andrew never quite felt strong. But he didnt argue.
***
He got into university part-time, because he was still working. Earned his engineering degree. Found a job at a factory. Bit by bit, he built a life from the ground up.
He met Katherine.
She was a nurse at the onsite surgery. Andrew went there with a scraped hand (hed caught it on a machine), and met her. Petite, dark-haired, warm brown eyes. Her voice was calm and gentle.
She bandaged his hand.
Come back tomorrow Ill change that for you.
He did. And then again, and again. The wound was long healed, but he kept returning for the chat, to see her smile.
Katherines family was normal. Mum, dad, younger brother, apple trees in the garden, Sunday dinners at her nans. All those small things Andrew never had. He worried she wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t accept his past. He kept it from her at first.
When he finally told her, he braced for anything pity, squeamishness, discomfort. But…
She simply took his hand:
What happened to you isnt your fault. What kind of man you are I already know.
They married a year later. Simple registry do, small family lunch at a local café. Granny, of course, was there, beaming, shedding tears, wearing her best dress (which must have been older than Andrew himself).
Im so glad, she whispered, kissing his cheek. Thank God, I lived to see you happy.
***
The phone rang in the middle of the night. Andrew and Katherine were already asleep she, five months pregnant, went to bed early. He picked up, half-dreaming.
Mr. Andrew Simon? Your grandmother, Jean Smith, has been brought into hospital. Stroke.
He has no memory of getting dressed, hailing a cab, running through the corridors. Only her face white, still, one skinny arm with a cannula.
She was awake.
Andy, she whispered. He bent close. Call your mum. I want to go, forgiving her. Not for her sake for yours. Let you not carry that burden.
Granny, you mustnt worry. The doctors said youll get better.
Dont be daft. I know when its time. Call her. For me.
He looked at her the woman whod been his whole world for so many years, his anchor, his proof that love could exist for its own sake.
Okay. Ill call her.
***
Hed found his mothers phone number years before, when he wrote that letter. Saved it, never really sure why. Never dialled it before.
Now he did.
The ringing tone. Then another.
Hello?
The voice was unfamiliar, older, raspier but he recognised it instantly.
Its Andrew, he said, and the line fell silent. Granny is in hospital. Shes had a stroke. She wants to see you.
A long pause. He could hear her breathing heavy, unsteady.
Ill come, she said at last. Whats the address? Ill come.
***
She arrived the next day. Andrew saw her at the door and barely recognised her. The elegant woman of his memory, of that newspaper clipping, was gone. Standing before him was someone else: drawn, tired, streaks of grey in her lifeless hair.
Later hed learn: Richard had left her the year before. Hed run off with someone younger, taken the business, left her penniless. Mary, her daughter, had grown up and moved to London didnt call often anymore.
But then, at Grannys bedside, Andrew knew none of that. He just watched, searching for a feeling.
Mum, he said.
She flinched. Looked and looked at him, hungrily, as if trying to push his face into her memory. Her lips trembled, eyes filled.
Forgive me, she fell to her knees right there. Please, forgive me. I was a coward, selfish. Forgive me, son.
He said nothing. He didnt know what to say.
I forgive you would have been a lie. I hate you not that, either. He felt almost nothing. Just weary. And some sort of odd, misplaced relief that at least the silence had finally broken.
Jean Smith looked at them both from her hospital bed. At the daughter-in-law whod turned away from her boy so long ago, at the grandson she could never take home, but never stopped loving even so.
She smiled, contented, and closed her eyes for good.
***
Years have passed.
Saturday morning. The flat smells of pancakes Andrew makes them every week, using Grannys recipe. Thin, lace-edged, just right.
Dad! Dad! I want strawberry jam on mine!
Simon, seven. Named for his granddad. Dark-eyed, full of fizz. He sits on the big kitchen stool, legs swinging, nowhere near the floor.
I want cottage cheese! Thats Jean, four, named after Granny. Blonde, her mums looks, a serious stare beyond her years.
Katherine sets the table plates, mugs, napkins. Shes filled out a little since the two babies, but to Andrew, shes more beautiful than ever.
The doorbell rings.
Its Grandma! Simon blurts, running to answer.
Andrew watches his son fling open the door and throw his arms around Margaret. She comes every weekend these days bringing toys, helping around the flat, reading to the grandchildren before bed.
She doesnt try to be the perfect grandma. Shes just there, as much as shes allowed.
Andrew has never said, I forgive you. She no longer asks. Something rests between them not forgiveness, not a grudge, something brittle: a truce built on children, shared tea, unspoken agreement never to unravel the past.
Gran! Look what I drew! Simon tugs Margarets hand, showing her his drawing. She praises him, touches his hair.
Andrew watches, recalling the boy sitting by a window, waiting for a mother who never arrived.
Hes not that boy anymore.
***
Evening. The children are asleep. Andrew and Katherine are in the kitchen. Shes sipping tea, hes watching the night.
Have you forgiven her? Katherine asks quietly.
He ponders.
Im not sure thats the word, he says after a while. I havent forgotten. I remember every minute by that window. Every Sunday with Granny at the fence, and Mum not showing up. You dont forget it.
Pause. Streetlights toss patterns through the glass, the hum of traffic drifting over rooftops.
But I realised hate is like a constant ache. I want to live, to be happy.
Katherine says nothing, just takes his hand firm, silent.
Thats more than enough.
***
On the living room wall hang three framed photographs.
Simon. Young, smiling, in a checked shirt. Andrew found the snap among Grannys things after her passing.
Jean Smith. In sunlit garden, holding a pie. Andrew took it, years ago, with his first camera phone.
And little Andrew between them. A relic of that old life a boy unaware of whats to come.
Next to them, a new photo: Andrew, Katherine, Simon, Jean. And at the edge, not quite in the centre Margaret. Not central. But there.
***
Monday morning.
Andrew walks Simon to school. The boy prattles about dinosaurs and his best mate Harry, and how he wants a dog which hell name Patch.
Dad, is it true you didnt have a mum when you were a boy? Simon suddenly asks.
Andrew falters. He and Katherine had discussed this when to tell the kids, how much to say. Simon must have overheard something or worked it out.
Its true, Andrew says. But I had Granny. Granny Jean, your sisters namesake. She loved me loads.
And now youve got us!
Yes, now I have you.
They walk on. A little distance behind, Margaret follows today, she asked to walk with them. Andrew nodded, silently.
Simon looks back and waves. Margaret waves back, shyly, a careful smile.
Then Simon looks up at Andrew:
Dad, why do you always hold my hand so tightly?
Andrew glances down at the small hand in his, those trusting fingers. This precious, fragile bond.
He answers, steady:
Because Ill never let you go.
Somewhere far behind, a woman watches them go.
Ahead, an ordinary day. An ordinary English life. That quiet happiness Andrew painstakingly built, brick by brick, over the ruins left by those who should have loved him.
He built it himself.
