Page 23 of When We Are Old

“I brought you some breakfast.” Typical Mam, she never probed, never dug for information, but I knew she’d get it anyway. The woman was on level with spies—actually they could learn something from her.

“Well we can’t eat in here.” Not where we could barely breathe, let alone put food in our mouth.

Mam shook her head, her face crumpling a little as she looked at what was once Carling’s Savers but had since become a cheap budget frozen supermarket.

I wished I could see it with her eyes. Wished I didn’t just see my dad with his arms folded across his chest and a shadow of disappointment on his face.

“We could go to the park down the road, if you’ll be warm enough?”

Mam tutted. “Of course I’ll be warm enough, I’m not a fecking doddering old lady.”

I snorted and grabbed my keys off of what was once a cash desk with a conveyer belt and till but was now an empty desk. “Did I even say that?”

“Your face did. You all think I’m ancient with one foot in the grave.”

“No one thinks that. Come on, let’s go eat and then I’ll have to come back and work out a plan.”

Ma shook her head, but bit back any deep insight she had into the moment and followed me to the door.

Of course in true Carling style, it wasn’t just Mam and me. No. Ryan arrived with his youngest, explaining that it was Lennie’s day at the salon, and he was on childcare duties.

“So when you have the kids you just turn up at Mam’s and hope she looks after you?” I shot Ryan a critical glance.

“She loves it.’ He threw a cheesy crisp into his mouth.

“Ryan, come on.”

“Matt!” Ma nudged me with her elbow as we all crammed onto one picnic bench—a bench not catering for large Scots.

“Sod off, Matty. It’s not like you don’t take the piss out of Mam. She’s been looking after your kids for weeks while you sorted out that shit shop.”

I kicked him in the shin with as much traction as I could manage in the limited space. “It’s not a shit shop.”

“You’re deluded. Have you seen the state of it?”

“Smelled the state of it,” Ma added, and after a pause, despite trying my hardest not to, I started to laugh.

“It smells like an abattoir right now.”

Ryan gagged into his sandwich. “How are you going to make money, Matt? Have you even thought about that?”

“I’m going to follow Ronnie’s branding advice. I think she’s onto a good thing with the organic greengrocer idea.”

“Yeah, but how are you going to fund it?” Typical Ryan. Always one to rain on anyone else's parade.

“Go to the bank. I’ve got some money from the divorce.” I didn’t meet their gazes. I didn’t want anyone to know how much money I’d received. I mean I had the house I could sell if needed, all wasn’t totally lost.

Both Mam and Ryan’s faces fell. Mam spoke. “What are you going to do with those kids, Matt? They're miserable.”

My heart plummeted. “I know.”

“Ronnie lives a long way away. How are you going to do this?”

I scrubbed at my face. “I don’t know.”

Ryan analysed me from under his thick eyebrows. “So, she’s the one, hey? The girl.”

My bite of sandwich got stuck in my throat. My heart swelled until I could barely breathe at the thought of Ronnie. Ronnie in my house, in the bedroom coloured just for her… in my bed.