Page 92 of If We Were Young

He did it like passing me his milk delivery was the most natural thing in the world. I grasped them in my already cold hands. Edinburgh was the coldest city in the world.

The door, a pale purple, made me ache with longing. What it would be like to have my own front door again, to not walk through Ma’s vibrant red and glass classic thirties semi every day?

Maybe my own front door could be like this? Worn and scratched but with a shiny chrome knocker and a round handle centred in the middle.

“Shit. The heating isn't on again.” He pushed through and flipped the lights. I followed behind, my eyes wide like a child in Santa’s grotto. The ceiling hung low, studded with round lights. The floor glowed like warm honey from the oak floorboards. Our feet echoed, but it didn’t ring with emptiness. It was as though the house had been waiting for him to just step back in through the door. The walls of the hallway were the same colour as the front door.

It was cold inside, maybe colder than outside, and I wiped at the tip of my nose.

“Sorry. The boiler is a nightmare.”

I snorted a giggle. “Not a problem.” Funny to hear Matthew talk of mundane things like boilers. He sounded like a grown-up.

I needed a reality check fast. We are grown-up, Ronnie.

“I can get you some extra jumpers down and light the fire in the sitting room?”

I grinned at hearing him say ‘sitting room’. It rumbled all foreign and exotic. He’d become an adult in my teenage fantasy.

“I’m sure I will be fine. I never have to worry about things like boilers at Ma’s. She still runs the house.” I tried to look past him. This was his home, not the rented apartment a few streets along from my own house. This was the place he chose to live in.

He cocked an eyebrow, his cheeks still stained with red from the cold. “Let me guess, you still have your childhood bedroom?”

“Well, maybe.” I straightened up a bit. “It’s the nicest room and looks over the garden.”

“Did your parents tell you that when you were a child? Everyone knows the master bedroom is at the front.”

I pulled a face. “Okay. Homeowner extraordinaire. So you never lived here with Julie?”

Gah, I hated her name on my lips.

“God no. I bought this once we separated.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thankfully I’d put some money aside, so I had something to fall back on. I wanted somewhere the kids could feel at home when they were with me.” He paused, his gaze on my face. “They were very young. Trying to leave their mother was a bastard thing for me to do. They didn’t ask to get pulled into the middle of it.”

I nodded. There were so many things I still didn’t know. I’d been so wrapped up in finding him again, in the magic of our reconnection. I hadn’t thought much about what he’d been through. Well, apart from when I hung out the bunting and flags at the news of his divorce… but in my selfishness I’d forgotten he had children who’d been hurt.

It wasn’t my fault, but I could feel for them all the same.

I guess if the truth be known, I found it hard to imagine Matthew as a dad. It hadn’t crossed my mind that he might have felt that way when he helped me pick up Hannah the night before.

Complications seemed to jump out at me from every direction. I tried to bat them away, but they danced just on the edge of my consciousness.

“It must have been hard.”

His gaze became all-encompassing. “Yes. And in some ways no.”

I slid myself against the hallway wall, torn between hearing his answer and wanting to run through his house and looking at all his belongings.

“In what way no?”

“I’d rather my children knew me happy. I tell myself that it will be better for them in the long run.”

“And are you?”

I held my breath for his answer.

“Yes.”

Suddenly the pale purple hallway took on a different meaning. This was his happy place, the colour of the walls he’d chosen in his bid for his own happiness away from a failed marriage.