The First Time I Saw You: the most heartwarming and emotional love story of the year

by Emma Cooper

  ‘No, thank you. I’d rather wait.’

  I turn to look at Charlie. I’d almost forgotten that he was there, but his face looks different, and I realise that I shouldn’t have let him come in. His own despair is written on his face. I think about that feeling that I had just minutes ago and realise that what I have just experienced is a fraction of the pain he deals with. How does he have the strength to make it through each day?

  ‘Charlie, I’m so sorry—’ I begin, but he is already rising from his chair.

  ‘I have to go.’ He drops my hand and walks out of the room.

  ‘Charlie!’ I call, but the door closes behind him.

  Week Twenty

  Samuel

  I have visited a new eye specialist. She is officially called a consultant ophthalmologist, but I have named her Mrs Cheerful. Mrs Cheerful gave me a series of tests, some testing how much of my sight (the picture at the end of the tunnel) I could see clearly, and another where she checked my field of vision (the tunnel walls). I came out with a score that put me firmly in the severely sight impaired bracket. I have a certificate saying this. This irritates me. Shouldn’t certificates be to celebrate something? This thing should be a . . . a sentence.

  She has confirmed what I already know: I’m losing my peripheral vision and I’m losing it quickly. Mrs Cheerful tells me (like it’s a good thing) that I will get concessions for public transport use, as though the fact that I can never drive my car again is actually a good thing because I’ll get money off bus fares. I even get money off my TV licence, she tells me in her cheery voice; I mean really? That should be free – I won’t be able to see the TV!

  I can still see a fair amount, really; if you make your fist binoculars again but leave a small gap about the width of a tiddlywink to see through, you can get the gist of what I can see.

  Once I had my ‘certificate’, suddenly I was visited by people from various disability departments. I’ve had white cane training. I’m not joking; someone came around to the house to show me how to use it, even though I keep telling everyone that I can still see. It has an end that looks a bit like a marshmallow and it rolls against the floor.

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t need it yet,’ I told the woman as she showed me how it concertinas in on itself, so I can carry it inside my pocket.

  ‘You may not, Samuel,’ she said, ‘but it helps people around you. If you bump into someone and they see you’re holding a cane, they know that you are sight impaired . . . If they don’t know the reason you have bumped into them, they might just think you’re being an arsehole.’ I wasn’t entirely sure if she was implying that I was, in fact, being an arsehole – she had a point – but I still hate it. It prods about inside a world that is shrinking: darkness surrounds my every move, my every action; it’s swallowing me whole. But. As I walk through the busy airport, I know it hasn’t eaten me yet. I’m still alive.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say for what feels like the hundredth time as I bump into a teenager; the girl is wearing denim and the strong smell of cheap perfume clouds my senses. As I track my vision upwards, gigantic headphones fill my circle of light.

  ‘’S’OK,’ she answers as I bump into another person, then another, until reluctantly, I pull out the cane from inside my pocket.

  Da wanted to come with me; Mam wanted to come with me; Sarah and even Duncan had wanted to come with me . . . they don’t get it. I don’t need their help. I want to do this by myself; I need to do this by myself. I have to believe that I can be blind and still independent.

  You watch the news and it is full of poisonous stories of the decay of mankind, but as I tap my way through the airport, seven people have stopped to ask if I need any help. Because as much as I thought I could do this on my own, I’m realising that I can’t do it without the help of others. This is not a bad thing: people are generally happy to help me, and I start to think that maybe my life isn’t being taken away from me after all.

  At the check-in desk, I’m offered a guide. I decline again. I can still see a small amount, I explain. I’m trying to do all the things I would normally do. I walk into the bar. I can hear Da’s voice: ‘A blind man walks into a bar . . . and a table . . . and a chair.’ I smile to myself as I order a pint and sit at a table where I can watch people pass me by. From here I drink it all in: the woman in an orange puffer jacket that completely swamps her; the tired children swinging from their parents’ hands, the garish holiday shirts; the crumpled business suit hanging over the arm of an overweight man. I try to commit it all to memory so that when my sight does completely go, I will be able to still picture it.

  My flight is called. I drain my drink, extend my cane and tap my way towards the gate. A flight attendant appears by my side, making me jump.

  ‘Would you like some help boarding the plane, sir?’ her eyes and perfectly outlined eyebrows ask me.

  ‘That would be great. Yes, please.’

  ‘We’ll get you on before the other passengers if that’s OK?’ She has a small hooped earring and I think of Sophie and why I’m doing this.

  ‘That would be grand.’ I smile. You know, as I take her arm, I’m thinking that if I didn’t have Sophie, then this blind thing might have its benefits after all; my eyes might be broken but it looks like my smile still works.

  This is the part of the journey I have been worrying about, stepping on toes and knocking into people, not being able to find my seat, but I needn’t have worried. The perfect eyebrows help me on to the plane first; I fold up my cane, listen to the chatter of the other passengers and then watch through the window. As Belfast shrinks away, and the plane heads towards the middle of England, I’m reminded of the telescopes that line the seaside promenade, the ones that you have to put twenty pence into: the view black until you hear the clunk of the shutter opening, the horizon revealed inside a small circle . . . How long will my twenty pence last? When will the shutters close and the out of order sign be hung around my neck?

  When we arrive, I’m guided out of the building by Ken, who tells me about the house in Italy he is renovating; through passport control I learn that his mother is Italian, and he has always wanted to move there. As he walks alongside me to the taxi rank, he tells me he is going to propose to his girlfriend. I shake his hand, wish him well and then give the address of the hotel I’m staying at to the taxi driver.

  The room is small. Really small, but this is a blessing in disguise. I can navigate myself around it without too much bother; the bed takes up most of the space. My head is killing me from the airport beer; I’m guessing that my brain has to work twice as hard to be able to keep me on the straight and narrow . . . Will I have double tunnel vision if I get plastered?

  I’m drifting off to sleep, my head sinking into the pillow, as my sight returns to me. My eyelids block out the darkness as my mind’s eye opens and smashes down the tunnel walls. Jumbled up stories of myself fill me with technicoloured pleasure, but my pleasure is stolen from me by the siren, the sound forcing through the walls and into my room, shaking me and opening the tunnel door. I look around the room, the disorientation of sleep mixing up my childhood memories of pretending to hunt the horizon for bandits with the inside of a kitchen roll. I feel along the bed for my cane and sit up. I can’t find my shoes, panic fills me as I hear the other rooms in the hotel opening and closing, rushed footsteps descending the stairs. I decide that I’ll have to go barefooted. The memory of the white-hot light scorches my body and terror propels me from the room, my hand skimming walls as the kitchen-roll tube leads me outside. I don’t know where to go; I have no idea where the meeting point is. I follow the sounds of others until I look down and see a hand, the wrinkled skin paper-thin, resting on my forearm.

  ‘This way, I think,’ he says. I open my mouth to thank him, but no words come out.

  It was only a fire drill. We all return to our rooms grumbling about the inconvenience, but for me it was a lesson. My life is changing, and I need to accept it. I need to learn how to cope with a life with
out sight; I need to find out the types of things that I can use, the types of things that can help me.

  The next time I go anywhere on my own, I will ask about the escape routes . . . or fire could take more from me than just my sight.

  SUMMER

  Week Twenty-One

  Sophie

  I frown up at Charlie’s house: windows with heavy eyelids are closed against the summer’s day. The wind drags fingers through the wispy leaves of the trees surrounding our building, and the house groans but stays asleep. I tread quietly back to my door, trying not to feel alone, trying not to miss my old life, trying not to become that girl who was desperate to be noticed.

  The fear I felt when I stared at the screen, before the spark of Bean’s heart, has stayed with me. It has taken me by the hand and pulled me towards the new person that I must become. In London, I needed to be good at my job, to succeed, but now I need something different; I need to be a good mother, to be independent, to enjoy my life.

  Bean and I go for a short walk in the mornings, then work on the accounts until lunchtime. Our evenings are made up of stories about Samuel. I talk about the man I fell in love with and it’s becoming harder to defend my actions to Bean: why isn’t Dad part of our life?

  But then I think of my own father, the note – it wasn’t the right life for him, what’s to say that this would be the right life for Samuel? I think of Ian’s hands around Mum’s throat, of Samuel’s betrayal, of how much happier Mum and I were when it was just the two of us. Around and around my head the thoughts go.

  And so, our summer nights together, looking at the table and chairs, sipping iced tea, are now becoming harder to bear, because deep down I know that no matter what he has done . . . he has a right to know about Bean, and Bean has a right to know Samuel.

  I pick up the phone and dial Samuel’s number again, but again, I hang up before it has a chance to connect. Each time I ring, I stay on the phone a fraction longer. Soon, I tell myself, soon I will. The Book says that Bean will be practising facial expressions, raising little eyebrows when I tell it about the way Samuel had taken me for a midnight picnic; I imagine my baby smiling as I retell some of his jokes. I’ve started calling him ‘Your Dad’. Your Dad likes eighties rock music, Your Dad took me on paddle boats even though he gets seasick . . . next to you, Bean, Your Dad was the love of my life.

  Charlie has been distancing himself. I knocked on his door again yesterday, but he didn’t answer. I peg out the washing and notice that the curtains are still drawn, but with the size of my new knickers, I can’t say that I’m not a little grateful that he won’t be seeing those bad boys billowing in the summer breeze.

  I smirk at my reflection as I walk past the mirror in the hall. My reflection is rubbing her back. She looks like a real pregnant woman: not the woman of a couple of months ago who just looked fat, but a real pregnant woman, like the ones in magazines and films. How would this woman look if she were still in her London life with her designer clothes and heels? Would she still be working? Her stomach resting against a desk covered in numbers and rich coffee? Would she notice the small nudges from inside telling her that Bean is just waking up or would she be too engrossed in her work to care?

  I wink and grin at the pregnant woman then close the door behind her.

  My fists knock on Charlie’s door. His curtains are drawn still; I knock again but I worry that it’s useless. I turn my head to where his car still sits and give his door a final thump. But again, there is no answer.

  The next morning, Charlie’s house seems to have woken up. His door yawns open, his curtains are stretching widely, and Charlie is carrying bags of shopping into the house. I hesitate when I get out of the car, not knowing whether to try and carry on the way things were before the scan or to return to the position of slightly awkward but friendly neighbour. I lock the car as he comes back outside and make my way towards the house.

  ‘Your guttering.’

  ‘My guttering?’ I question.

  ‘It’s leaking.’

  ‘Oh right . . . I’ll ask Huw if he can fix it.’

  ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, um, thanks. That would be great.’ He nods at me and turns to walk away. ‘Do you—’ He stops still with his back towards me. ‘Do you want some dinner?’

  ‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ I say, unnecessarily loudly, making a fool of myself in my eagerness to please him. I clear my throat. ‘As long as it’s not too much trouble?’ I add, my voice fading to a murmur.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he says over his shoulder but the way he says it, the seriousness of his response, makes me think he wasn’t talking about the dinner. Charlie strides back towards his house. He’s spoken the right words, but the hunch of his shoulders and the state of his appearance does little to comfort me.

  Week Twenty-One

  Samuel

  I get out of the taxi and look up and down the road. I reckon there are about eighty houses along this street. The grey clouds are miserable, looking down on me with glum faces, and lazy drizzle leaks from their eyes.

  I feel like Hugh Grant in Love Actually trying to find Martine McCutcheon. I clench my hand into a fist and knock on door number one. If it was good enough for Hugh, then it’s good enough for me.

  I know I must be out of my mind and that it’s a long shot, but it can’t just be coincidence that Sophie’s car ended up in Shropshire, the exact same place as her sister lives. I know it’s a big place, but it feels like fate.

  The reaction to a blind Irishman knocking at the door asking if they know where Helen Yates is, is not going as well as I’d hoped. Door number thirty-two has just been closed in my face by a worried-looking elderly lady. I must change my tactic. I can’t just keep asking if they know her; I hadn’t really thought about how odd that may sound. I could be a jealous ex or a stalker for all they know.

  The sun comes out; I can hear the rain scampering away down drains as my cane splashes into a few puddles which hang about like bored teenagers around a local shop. I need a way of shedding my stalker-like approach; I need to make them feel important. My eyes focus on the black door and I reach for a knocker shaped into an owl’s face. Weird.

  ‘Hi,’ I say as I’m met with a small, hairy-chested man. I get the feeling that he isn’t wearing trousers, but I don’t want to look down and check. ‘I’m a journalist and I work for the Shropshire Gazette,’ I say, keeping my fingers crossed that there is a newspaper of that name. ‘I’m due to interview Helen Yates.’

  ‘There is no newspaper called the Shropshire Gazette,’ the hairy-chested man tells me.

  Feck.

  ‘It’s new,’ I say, making a mental note to google local newspapers before I try the next house.

  ‘Sorry, you must have the wrong address, mate.’

  ‘Ah, thanks for your time anyway.’

  The street is long; so, so long. Numbers forty-one to forty-five are a miscellany of the British public. Number forty-one belongs to a man who opens the door a crack, revealing a key chain, still fastened; his suspicious eyes making me envisage a shotgun hidden behind the door. Number forty-two is a woman in a top so low-cut that my whole field of vision is filled with her cleavage; I chat with her for a while and tell her all about my job at the Shropshire Star (thank you, Google); the next house along, I’m met by the deep voice of a man encased inside a large woman’s body . . . notwithstanding my limited field of vision, all I can focus on are the four protruding hairs on her chin. Number forty-four belongs to a tired-looking woman, desperate blue eyes ringed with dark shadows. Her children are arguing in the background and the look in her eyes makes me think that if I offered to take her children off her hands, she would let me, without a second glance.

  The sun is relentless. I roll my neck around and shake the edge of my collar to let some air in, then follow my stick and the cracks in the block-paved drive to the next house, but there is a step that my stick doesn’t find; I’m too busy looking at the strange gargoyle that has s
nuck into my vision. I fall flat on my face and my teeth bite into my lip as my chin scrapes the slabs. For God’s sake, this is the fifth time I’ve tripped over the steps on this street. I hear a door fly open and the toe of a black work boot kicks through my absconded peripheral vision.

  ‘God, mate, are you OK?’ I pull myself into a sitting position as the man helps me up. He lets go of me and then pushes my cane into my hand. ‘You’re bleeding. Do you want to come in and get cleaned up?’

  ‘Thanks, if it’s not too much bother?’ He walks off ahead as I begin to beat the cane along the drive. I hear that his footsteps have stopped and then his large nose is all I can see.

  ‘Do you need me to, you know, help you?’ I can hear in his tone that this is awkward for him. It’s the first time really that I’ve felt like I’m different to everyone else. It’s not that he is being rude or unkind, but there is that hint of the uncomfortable, of how to ‘deal’ with me.

  ‘Would you mind if I grabbed your elbow?’ I ask, swallowing down my pride.

  ‘Right, I mean, sure . . . it’s just up these steps.’

  ‘How many steps?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, I’ve never really counted them . . . four, four steps and then another small step up into the porch.’

  The house smells and sounds like a home: the lingering smell of a hot oven, the sounds of the telly blaring kids’ programmes from where I presume is the lounge. He leads me into the kitchen; the tunnel lets in images of kids’ crayons, of discarded sweet wrappers and crockery draining on the sink. I can smell laundry detergent and a bin that needs emptying as the man guides me into a chair at the table. I hear him ripping sticky plastic back from something that I then realise is a packet of baby wipes. He hands it to me and I begin to wipe at the corner of my mouth. I feel awkward doing this; I have no idea if there is blood all over my face.