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The Lie - First Prize Winner “What’s Needed Now....”
The winning story is once again by Linda Mitchelmore, of Paignton, Devon, showing that excellent writing always shines through. This story shows masterful writing and a wonderful control of characters and plot.
Very well done, Linda!
I love writing short stories! But while I write quite a few for women's magazines I like to write competition stories too - with mixed success I have to say, but that's the challenge of it! Writing a competition story gives me, I feel, more scope - I'm more able to dig deeper into emotions and into darker themes that women's magazines are reluctant to take.
I'm often asked where I get my ideas for short stories. A tough one to answer because writers tend to absorb things they hear or see or read without realising it. And then one day it will all come out in a story and it comes as a surprise to find I've remembered so much about something that happened, quite often, years ago. But the emotion in a story is almost always mine......something I've felt albeit in a different situation to the one in my story.
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What’s Needed Now....
“Grandma!”
The child’s voice is loud, compelling: it stings me – like hail on freshly scrubbed cheeks - as I step into the busy shoe shop. I’ve come in because my feet are hot in socks and loafers now the sun has come out. Sandals. I need sandals. I’ve seen the perfect pair in the window, and if they’ve got my size – four – I can just pay for them and go.
“Grandma!” the child says again.
No one looks his way. But then, when women are trying on shoes we become trance-like as we sashay up and down - turning this way and that taking in the heel height, the colour, the way they make our legs look – don’t we? The shop is full of happy, noisy, female chatter. I risk just the briefest of glances at the child.
A boy. Aged five, or thereabouts. He’s sitting on the floor beside a pile of shopping bags, mostly with designer logos. He’s waving at me now and I let my eyes slide from his cheeky grin and his chubby arms. Perhaps he thinks all women with silver hair are called Grandma?
“Grandma! It’s me!”
So like Matthew and the way he used to call me from wherever he was in the house; whether he was standing beside me in the kitchen or two floors above he always yelled at the same volume.
I wrestle with myself not to allow my eyes to make contact with his again, to make my ears deaf to the calling of a title that once was mine, but is no more.
You’ve made a mistake, I want to say, I’m not your Grandma. I’m not a grandma anymore, full stop. Even though I can still feel the softness of Matthew’s arms when he twined them around my neck. Still feel how his three year old legs wrapped around me like apron strings when I carried him wet from the bath.
And I can still smell the distinctive burning-toffee aroma of the special shampoo we had to use because Matthew’s skin was so sensitive.
“It’s like, mad, in here, Grandma,” the child says. “I’ve been here ages.”
Maybe he has, maybe he hasn’t – children often have a false sense of time. Unlike me who knows just how long it’s been since Matthew last called me Grandma – fourteen months, two weeks and three days.
He sensed it was going to be our last time, too.
“When I’m big and better,” he said, “I’ll come back.”
Except I knew he never would. Never could. If I thought my heart would break then, it was nothing to what I’m feeling now. Forget the sandals. I’ll have to go. I take a deep breath, willing my legs to move, but they won’t. I could be forgiven for thinking I’ve had a stroke.
I couldn’t move the day Matthew was taken away either. A policewoman – Gemma; kindness itself, and in tears herself – said she’d make us both a cup of tea. She did. But neither of us could drink it.
All I could see in my mind’s eye was Matthew, his face battered and bruised. Bloodied. The cigarette burns like livid boils on his back. The teeth missing at the front, long before milk teeth should go. Gemma said she was sorry she was crying, it was very unprofessional of her, but kiddies – you know – it just broke her heart. And I loved her for saying it.
I should have trusted my instincts about my daughter’s partner. Not believed her lies that Matthew had run into the door-frame/fallen from the trampoline/been scratched by the cat. But I did believe them. I trusted her to see no harm came to Matthew, just as I never let any harm come to her. I look at this little boy now, searching for signs of abuse – I can’t stop myself. Please God - if there is a God - don’t let anyone harm him.
“You can wait with me,” the boy says. He pats the floor beside him.
I try a smile, but it threatens to turn downwards into a sob.
“The floor’s clean enough,” he says. “The lady did it with a brush just now.”
And I remember the three second rule we had, Matthew and I. If he dropped a sweet, or a biscuit, or a crisp on the floor and could pick it up before I counted to three then he could eat it – it was considered clean enough.
Two girls – about fourteen – walk towards the door, arms entwined, stick thin legs wobbling on impossibly high heels. Mobiles clamped against their ears, giggling. They’re made-up, dressed up, as if for a night out, and it’s not lunchtime yet. I could follow them out, couldn’t I? – before the door closes. But I don’t.
I check my watch. The coach driver said we’d have four hours to see the sights of Norwich. Half that time has gone already. I could have gone to the Cathedral with Jane and Barbara. Or to the market with Maggie. But I said no thanks to them all. The conversation with new people always goes down the same route.
“Widowed?” someone will ask.
“No. Divorced.”
“Children?”
“Three.” And I brace myself for the next question.
“Grandkids?”
“No.”
Too many lies would be needed to cover the unpalatable truth.
“Shame. They’re a joy, grandkids. Better than having your own.”
Is it better? Are they? I don’t remember the pain of childbirth being anywhere near how intense the pain of losing Matthew was.
“Grandma,” the child says now. He has that look that children have when they want to tell a secret. “I made buns today.”
“That’s nice,” I say, my voice finding its way across my tongue, past my lips, at last.
I remember making buns with Matthew. Four, four, four and two eggs. Matthew could reel off the weights of flour, sugar and butter and how many eggs needed to make a tray of buns before he turned two.
He loved putting the paper cases in the bun tin. Then he’d sit on the floor, the oven light on so he could see the buns cooking through the glass door. And then, when they were cooked, he’d wait – not very patiently it has to be said – for them to cool. More icing went on Matthew than ever went on the buns. And more chocolate buttons went in his tummy than on the icing. But I’m glad he had the happy memories of doing that. I hope they helped cancel out the terrible things that monster did to him. And my daughter for letting it happen. I haven’t spoken to her since.
“I put icing on the top,” the child says. “You do remember, Grandma, don’t you?”
The lie forms in my mind – ‘No, I don’t remember’. And he has to forget. This is Matthew. He’s older, taller, and his hair has darkened since I last saw him, but I’d have known those eyes – green with amber flecks in them so like my own – anywhere.
Who’d have thought, when the authorities took Matthew away for enforced adoption, that I’d see him again in a shoe shop on a coach trip to Norwich four hundred miles from home? Or that he’d remember me?
As our access meetings became more widely spaced apart, Matthew would place his hands on my cheeks and look at me, tell me he loved me, and I’d tell him I loved him too. And would forever. But already he was being prepared for his new family, his new life – the one where memories of me would fade like a photograph left out too long in the sun. And I think he knew it. He liked to make prints of the paintings he did and he said he was making a print of my cheeks on the palms of his hands so he could feel me there when the ‘other’ Grandma tucked him up in bed.
“Making buns with me?” Matthew prompts now.
A lie would be the kindest thing for both of us. But can I tell it? I have to consider what’s needed now – for Matthew.
“And chocolate buttons?” I say. “Did you put chocolate buttons on too, Matthew?”
It’s only a hunch that whoever adopted Matthew kept the same Christian name. When he nods I know my hunch was right.
“You remember!” he says.
He jumps up, flings his arms around my waist and hugs me tight. Gently I prise him from me.
“I’ll never forget,” I say.
And then a young woman rushes over. She’s all smiles.
“I hope Matt isn’t making a nuisance of himself. He’s such an affectionate little chatterbox, aren’t you, darling?”
She ruffles his hair.
So I ruffle Matthew’s hair too and he pushes his head into my hand the way a cat does. I’m making a print of him on my palm before I go.
I was right not to lie.
But I don’t need sandals now …
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