by Anna Bloom
“What are you talking about? I spoke to you about Freddy, right back at the beginning, I told you how it would be.”
“I'm nine Mum, you just said it, and how am I supposed to know what I'm agreeing to?”
“What are you saying, Isaac?”
“Maybe I'm saying I don't want another daddy.”
“Freddy has never been like that with you, Isaac, and you know it. I think his feelings would be really hurt if he found out you were implying he'd over stepped the mark.”
“And?”
Oh my God. That does it.
Catching hold of him by the arm, I drag him in the direction of the parking lot and our car. The race is forgotten about, everything is forgotten about. It's just my son and me.
“Buckle up,” I shout, once we are in the car. He doesn't mess around; he slots the seatbelt straight into its socket.
Flinging the car into first, I drive at speed down the winding roads away from the track. It's only when I see Isaac gripping onto the seat that I ease the tension on the accelerator and reduce my speed to a more sedate cruise. I don't know where to go, I need to calm down and clear my head but if I go home I will lose Isaac to his room again, and that will be the end of our conversation. I'm not ready for it to end yet, and I need to sort it out for both our sakes. If Isaac is fighting at school and dropping his best friend, and getting into trouble, and the reason behind it is me, then I need to fix it.
Isaac comes first.
I find my way to the woodland area where Freddy and I had our first date, where I brought him not that long ago on his birthday, the night my mum died. A solid lump of hard rock starts to build in my chest.
“What is it, Isaac? And without being rude? It's just you and me, it's only ever been you and me.”
“That's not true anymore, though, is it? It's exactly what Elliot said, you came home here just so you could be with Freddy again.”
I grab Isaac's hand. “No, I came back here to look after my mum. Why are you so anti-Freddy now? Christmas was just a few weeks ago and you guys were getting on fine. Why are you being like this?”
He pulls his hand roughly away form my touch. “I want to know about my real dad, the guy you never told. I want to know who he is, mum, I can't keep putting up with you giving me all these fake dads.” Isaac is a vibrant shade of red, his anger making him appear combustible.
I can't inhale any air into my lungs. “Isaac. Elliot and Freddy, their feelings for you have never been fake. Elliot and I may not have been able to make it work but he loved you, he still loves you.”
“But you didn't love him, did you? You've only ever loved Freddy.” I tingle of pink warms my cheeks when my son bares the truth for me in black and white.
“That's Elliot talking and he's kinda cross with me right now.”
“But you came back here hoping that Freddy would still be here.”
“No! The opposite.” Large rolls of tears slide down my cheeks. “I came back here hoping I'd never have to see him again.”
“Why?”
“Because he broke my heart and made me want to run away and leave. I was very unhappy until I met you.”
“But you forgave him so easily, it doesn't make sense.” Isaac's eyebrows knot together and he worries the rag of his nail.
I offer a bitter laugh. “I think forgiveness is different when you're older, Isaac. He had to forgive me things, too. Worse than what he did to me.”
A steady silence fills the car.
“Mum. Who's my dad?”
A terrible weight hangs heavy on my heart. “I can't tell you.” The words kill me to say. I want to tell him, but Freddy's waited all these months. Patiently waiting for the right time. I can't not let him be here when Isaac finds out the truth.
“You are such a liar,” he screams at me, flinging open the door and running off into the woods. I jump out and chase after him, leaving the car unlocked and open behind me. Stumbling over tree roots and sliding on thick mud, I try and catch up with my son.
“Isaac wait!” I holler after him but he doesn't slow down, his steps taking him deeper and deeper into the unfamiliar woods.
I should be faster than him, I'm bigger after all, but Isaac is able to weave with dexterous speed through the skeletal winter trees. The spindly branches drag and tear at my sleeve and jacket as I run past, one vicious thorn hooking itself into my cuff. Cursing, I turn and unhook myself and then again search for Isaac's path, following the sight of his blue jacket. But the blue jacket is gone, and Isaac is gone, his anger driving him away from me. I know I should use my ears to listen for footsteps, the crack of twigs, something useful, but all I can hear is the sound of my breath and the wild beating of my heart as I realise that I've lost my son, the one thing I've been killing myself not to do.
TRUTH
Seconds tick past and I'm stood rooted to the spot. Try as I might, I can't get my feet to move, I don't know where to send them. There is no signal that my brain can send my feet and an empty static fills my body in their place.
Think, Amber.
Think, Amber.
Think, Amber.
Crouching onto the floor and place a balancing hand on the mud, I try to focus my thoughts. If I was ten and pissed off, what would I do? If I were ten, pissed off, and a boy, what would I do?
I skim through the last few months of being home, flicking through my mental roster of memories. Isaac playing with the cars, laughing with Freddy, playing his computer games. Come on, Amber. THINK. Isaac and Bailey hiding in the tree house, Isaac asking Freddy is he can build him one.
If I were ten, pissed off, a boy and wanting to hide, I'd go up.
He's going to be up.
That's it. It's all I need to get moving again. I've probably only been still for a mater of seconds but it feels like my world has been spinning in slow motion while I searched for a clue.
Back on my feet, I start my search slower, all the time keeping my eyes focused on the bare branches of the trees. I trip over endless grasping roots as I search the desolate skyline for the flash of a blue jacket.
“Isaac,” I call softly. "Just come down and we can talk, just you and me, the way it's always been."
Silence.
I keep calling, letting him know that I'm not giving up, that I'm not leaving these woods without him. A quick glance around me tells me that I probably wouldn't be able to get out of here without help anyway. I have no idea where I am. I reach for my phone in my back pocket. I should probably tell someone where we are so we can both get rescued.
Shit.
No phone, no rescue, no Isaac. Just darkening woods, a million unsaid words and a lifetime of mistakes and bad choices.
“Isaac,” I shout again, my tone far more urgent. "Isaac, this is serious now, I know you're cross but we can sort this out, I'll tell you everything, anything you want to know, just come down. Please," I'm pleading now, begging. It's February, and darkness looks like it’s going to fall in a matter of minutes. I don't even know what time it is and no one knows where the hell we are.
“How can I know you will?” shouts a small voice. Isaac sounds unsure and scared, but the tone of challenge is still there.
My heart thuds loudly in my chest as I search for the direction of his voice. If my heart would just shut the fuck up, it would be far easier.
“Isaac?” I try to erase the urgency from my tone so I don't push him further away. “I'll tell you all about Freddy, I'll explain everything, but I can't shout it into the trees, you need to come down, then we can get home, warm up and sort this all out. Isaac, Freddy's going to be worried sick when he can't find us.”
Panic washes over me again and I think I may add my sick to the sticky mud at my feet.
“He'll be worried about you, not me.” He shouts back. He sounds quite far off, and very, very high. A nervous tremor twitches my hands, jerking my fingers this way and that.
“That's not true, he loves you and if you would just let me explain, this would a
ll start to make sense, you'd know how much he wants you."
“Wants me?”
“Yes, Isaac, wants you, it's not just me that Freddy wants around, I promise."
I feel like I'm getting somewhere. He's going to come down and we are going to get this sorted.
“Is Freddy Bale my dad?”
A flash of frustration hits me. I'm being dominated by a not quite ten year old. “Come down and I'll tell you, I'm not shouting it out.”
A loud snap of branch makes me jump as it reverberates around the empty woods. I run in what I hope to god is the right direction as Isaac starts to scream my name. His voice makes my blood run cold and a sweat breaks along my skin when I recognise that he's in pain.
“Isaac?” I scream into our gloomy surroundings my lungs close to bursting with the effort it takes for me to shout that loud.
I still run, my eyes sweeping this way and that no longer sure whether to look up or down.
“Mum?” Isaac's voice takes me by surprise when I hear it much closer than I expect.
“Isaac?” Something’s not right. Cold fingers of fear seep into my stomach.
“I'm here.”
I spin one last time, looking for the boy with the voice filled with remorse and fear. My boy.
“Oh my God.” My legs nearly give when I spot him on the damp floor with his face is covered with scrapes and mud. In ten paces I'm across the space separating us and grabbing him into my arms. He screams in agony at my touch and as my eyes rove across him I see his left leg is bent at the wrong angle, a twig or stick sticking out of his leg. Bile rushes into my mouth.
“I'm going to pull the stick,” I whisper, kissing him all over his dirty face and hair. I place my hand on the splinter and give it a tug, Isaac screams like a hit animal in reaction.
“Mum, I don't think it's a stick.” Isaac turns white with his words and I scrabble in the dirt to get closer to the wound. I just thought that if I got the splinter out, I could staunch the blood, but now I see it's not a stick, it's Isaac's bone.
Bile rises rapidly and I swallow the acid fluid back down.
“I'm so sorry, baby.” I say the words over and over again, cradling his head on my lap as I scramble through my mind trying to work out what to do and how to do it. “Okay, I need to move you.” I'm talking to myself really Isaac is fading in and out, his eyelids fluttering, a frown line furrowing between his eyes.
My voice brings him back and his eyes open a fraction. “My side is sore.”
“Don't worry, baby, it's just where you landed.” Tears slip down my face, escaping faster and faster until sobs are constricting my chest.
Think, Amber.
Think, Amber.
Think, Amber.
Running a hand I under his left ribs I try to work out where he hurts least so I can get a hold of him. That's when I find the pool of blood forming under his body.
My mind goes totally blank as I stare at my sticky red hand. It makes no sense, the leg I can make sense of, the blood is eluding any part of my brain still functioning. Rolling him onto his other side I try and keep in my cry of devastation when I spy a jagged flint rock that's sliced Isaac open like a knife gliding through butter.
They say that when you are faced with the impossible, you surprise even yourself, and I cling onto that thought as I rip my jacket off my shoulders using the sleeves to tie tight around Isaac's ribs, a crude pressure pad that will hopefully staunch the blood flow. Once that's in place I glance again at the leg. That needs a splint, but where the hell am I going to find something like that?
Come on, Amber. THINK.
Kissing Isaac on the forehead I crawl away for him on my hands and knees, searching for twigs or branches I can use. Finally, after what feels like an age, I find two birch branches that I can snap to the right length. Back at Isaac's side I place them as carefully as my haste will allow on either side of his leg and then try and work out how to tie them. Eventually with nothing else to use I pull off my boots and wriggle out of my leggings using the flint to hack at them below the knee. I pull back on the shredded remains. It will be of no benefit to Isaac for me to freeze to death because I'm running around a wood in my knickers. Using cautious, shaking fingers I tie the branches around his leg, keeping the natural pattern of the fall. The doctors can fix that, just as soon as we get to the hospital. That final thought fills me with the strength I need to squat next to my boys body and lift him into my arms.
I turn us in the direction we came and start to walk. There's got to be a path somewhere, I've just got to find it.
Isaac is heavy and limp in my arms but I keep going, my determination moving me forward. I keep losing people to accidents. I can't lose another, not my son.
Mum's gone.
I lost Freddy for ten years because a freak accident tore us apart.
I will not lose my son.
It's all I can think. I will not lose my son.
When darkness falls and I can no longer see where I'm going, my optimism starts to fail. Isaac hasn't opened his eyes for hundreds of steps.
“Wake up, baby," I murmur. "Wake, up. We are going to be at the car soon.”
I'm lying, but I know now my parenting rule of never lying to Isaac has been the biggest failure of my life. I've always been living a lie with him, never telling him about his dad, even though I could have done, never telling him how much I loved his dad, and then recently, not telling him that he was sharing a home with his dad.
What have I been doing?
I fall to my knees, holding Isaac close, I can't get us much further in the dark, it's hopeless.
“Isaac, wake up.”
His eyes flutter and I snuggle him onto my lap, wrapping my arms around him, trying to keep him warm. “Isaac, Freddy is your dad. I'm so, so very sorry I didn't tell you before. I should have told you the day you were born and every day ever since. He loves you and I've messed up so badly trying to do the right thing. He wanted you to know, but I didn't want to upset you.”
My cries become hysterical. “But I did that anyway.”
Isaac's lips which are pale and tinged with blue flicker at the corner. “Does he really love me?”
Tears slide faster and faster down my cheeks. “How could he not, you two are like two peas in a pod. I've always been able to see it.”
“But you hated him, he hurt you? Isaac's voice is a bare croak. I lean my ear right next to his mouth so I can hear.
“How can I hate anyone who gave me you?” I kiss his mouth, his nose, his eyelids, just like I did when he was a baby, back when I used to make him giggle with my incessant kissing and tickling.
“Listen,” I lean into his ear, wanting him to hear the promise I’m going to make. “We will go, we can pack up and go, just you and me. If you don’t want to be here with Freddy, then we will go, you’ve just got to get through this.” My words turn to pleading. “Please get through this and I promise we will go anywhere you want.”
“You’d leave him for me?” I can just catch a hint of his words as the sounds of the woods try and steal them from me.
“Isaac, I would do anything for you, go anywhere for you. You are the love of my life.”
Isaac fades again and I nestle myself against a tree trunk holding my one true love on my lap, as winter comes to steal us both away under the darkness of night.
THIS LOVE
I've been sleeping, exhaustion and shock claiming my unwilling body, when a voice calls me from my nightmares. One glance at Isaac tells me that the pressure pad I tied around him is failing, the warmth spreading across my lap only confirms this.
“Amber!”
My mind snaps to attention, pulling me far from my cold slumber. I know that voice, I know it in my very soul. And now that I've heard it in the dark, empty woods, I know that it would never not find me, no matter where I went.
“Freddy?” My voice is stiff with disuse and I cough to free my vocal cords so I can do what I can to save my son. “FREDDY!”
&
nbsp; “Keep shouting,” he calls back, and now I'm focused, I can hear other voices alongside his.
I do, I shout and shout until my throat is screaming in protest. Isaac doesn't stir once, despite my noise and that desperate, panicked, clawing sensation builds up my throat again. It's worse than anything I've ever known. Worse than at the racetrack all those years ago when I watched Freddy's car spin, engulfed in flames. Worse than a few months ago when I held my mum's cool hand, unresponsive in mine. This is the worse feeling I've ever known and I know in my heart I will never survive it.
I don't think it's going to happen but just when I think Freddy is going to circle me all night, our voices passing in the dark, I see a beam of light sweep across the tree one across from where I am.
“I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.” I start to weep uncontrollably as Freddy steps through the trees, his tall frame filling my whole vision. He's at my side in a flash, falling onto his knees next to me. His hands grab my face roughly, his lips crushing against mine.
“I thought I'd lost you.” I remember the promise I made to Isaac that if he would survive this I would leave. Freddy may have lost me anyway. Lost us. My sobs turn into painful wrenches that tear through my chest.
“Freddy, Isaac needs you, please help, please help.” Hysteria rises again and I start to shake uncontrollably.
Freddy's dark gaze sweeps along Isaac, his expression calculating as he works on a plan. “I've got him, Amber.” He tries to prize Isaac out of my hands but I can't let go, my grip on my son is so tight my fingers won't relax. “Amber, I've got him.” Freddy repeats his voice low and his meaning clear.
In that one defining moment, I let go of my son and let the man who should have always been in his life take control. Exhaustion washes over me.
Freddy stands, his jaw firmly set. “The others will be here in a minute, don't move and hold the light up into the sky.” He tosses a spare torch onto the floor next to me. "She's here, she's here." He booms through the dark night. Before the answering calls can be heard, he starts to run through the woods with Isaac held tight in his arms.