Like This, for Ever

25




‘DAD, CAN I go into the attic?’

His dad looked up from the ironing. ‘What for?’

Barney had planned for this. ‘Sam’s younger brother is into Lego,’ he said. ‘I don’t play with mine any more, so I thought I’d let him have it.’

His dad looked surprised but pleased. He was always nagging Barney that they had too many toys and that he really should give some of them away, especially stuff he hadn’t played with in years.

‘You be careful near the hatch.’

Barney agreed that he would and left the kitchen. On the way out, he had to move the laundry basket because it was half blocking the doorway. Three loads of washing had already been done, the fourth was in the machine. The first load had dried while they’d been at football, and Barney had folded and piled everything up according to colour and pattern. Plain, darker colours at the bottom, brighter colours next, and stripes and whites at the top. His dad had long since given up asking what would happen if he ironed the dark stuff first, he just got on with the ironing in the order Barney gave it to him.

As Barney climbed the stairs, he realized the striped sheets his dad had washed the day before hadn’t been in the ironing pile.

He found the Lego quickly, and put it next to the hatch so that when his dad came looking for him he’d be able to claim he’d just that minute found it. Then he started looking for photographs. Barney knew he was going back seven years, at least. That meant starting towards the back.

The attic was in the roof space of the house, low ceilinged, with exposed beams criss-crossing the space. Barney made his way round cardboard boxes and plastic crates, past an old bookcase full of paperbacks no one could ever possibly read again, they were so completely covered in dust and cobwebs and insect husks. By the time he reached the far wall, there were cobwebs in his hair and dust in his throat and his eyes were stinging. This was the place, though. The boxes were cardboard and looked damp in places. He pulled open the first and took a ball of old newspaper off the top, flattening it out until he could read the date: 20 December, six years earlier. The box was full of old china, nestling safely down in newspaper. The next one he opened contained old textbooks of his father’s. Next box – toddler clothes. Barney’s heart started to beat faster. Dads didn’t save baby clothes. That was definitely the sort of thing mums did. His mum had packed this box. Next box – baby books. She’d saved his books and his clothes. Some time when she’d lived in this house, his ultra-tidy mum had hoarded away things she’d never use again, because she couldn’t bear to throw them away.

Four boxes later, he found the albums. He lifted the first, a faded crimson colour, out of the box and sat with it on his lap. This was it. It was like exam results, or waiting to hear if you’d been picked for the cross-country team. Just a second away from information that would change everything.

The first page had nothing on it but three Polaroid-style pictures on thin, shiny paper. Each was in black and white and showed a hazy mass of nothing. Black space, grey shadows and something that might just, if you screwed up your eyes, resemble a human face. They were of him, photographs of an unborn Barney, in his mother’s stomach.

‘Not quite what I had in mind,’ he muttered, turning the page.

Oh God!

It was as if someone had hit him hard in the chest. How could a picture cause so much physical pain? He couldn’t even see her face properly. She was in profile. The picture was mainly of him as a tiny baby. But she was so beautiful. That was obvious, even in what little he could see of her. Her hair was short and a shiny dark brown, the colour of conkers. It curled around her chin, showing off her long neck. Her hands and her wrists looked large for a woman’s and she was holding him close to her face, smiling down at him. He was looking back up at her, as though her eyes were the most fascinating thing he’d seen in his short life. They looked like they might be the only two people in the whole world.

‘Barney, you alright up there?’

For a second, Barney didn’t trust himself to speak. He gulped, tried to sniff without making a sound and ran his hands over his eyes. He had no idea how long he’d been in the attic. He’d turned the pages of the album, watching tiny baby Barney turn into bigger baby Barney and eventually toddler Barney. Most of the pictures had been just of him, but his mum had been in several and his dad in one or two. Her hair had got longer, sometimes she’d worn it pulled back in a ponytail. He thought she looked less happy, even less pretty, in the later photographs, but she always seemed to be smiling at Barney. She always seemed to love him.

‘Barney!’ Steps on the ladder. His dad was coming up.

‘Coming!’ Barney managed, shoving the album back into the box and turning to face the hatch. His dad’s face appeared.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ Barney replied, hoping his dad couldn’t see past him to where the boxes were disarranged. ‘Just the dust up here. It’s been making my eyes water.’

‘I see you found it,’ said his dad, who was looking at the Lego. ‘Shall I carry it down?’

His dad climbed back down the ladder and Barney followed. Next time, he’d take a couple of the pictures of his mum out of the album. He’d learn them, until his mum’s face was as familiar to him as his own, and then he’d go out looking for her. He’d go to supermarkets and busy shopping centres on Saturday afternoons. He’d let his focus drift and concentrate on finding his mum’s face. He could do it, he knew he could. In any crowd, he could find that face.