Free Finding You by Giselle Green

my dad a long time ago.’ My voice sounds strange. Croaky.
    ‘Oh,’ she says, as if that is a difficult thing for her to take in.
    ‘I was a boarder when I was at school, don’t forget,’ I tell her quietly. ‘He was rarely in the country and I didn’t get to see all that much of him. You get used to it.  And these days, I’m never quite sure when I go up to Thirsk ... if I’m really going to see him at all, the real him.’
    She nods, understanding. ‘Still,’ she insists. ‘Deep down. I know you must miss him.’
    ‘Maybe. Maybe I’m just ... not a very good son?’ I offer blithely.
    ‘Oh, Charlie.’  She shakes her head, dismissing this as obvious nonsense. ‘You changed our flights over to today because you wanted to get home urgently to see about your dad, didn’t you?’
    I nod.
    ‘Well then. Don’t pretend that you don’t care about him.’
    I avoid her gaze now.  A man’s muffled voice echoes out from the tannoy, delivering some garbled information, and there’s a strained hush. We look up, wondering if it’s our flight that’s being called but the guy only tells us that our ‘Flight information will shortly be available, but only on the notice board nearest the Arrivals Gate.’
    Julia gets to her feet. ‘I’ll go,’ she offers. ‘Hadyn’s so comfy there with you holding him. I’ll be back in a moment.’
    ‘Um.  Could you also check what gate the three p.m. flight out of here to Frankfurt is boarding from?’ The woman beside us glances down at her swollen lower legs and Julia nods at her sympathetically.
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘I’m very grateful.’ Once Julia is gone, the woman turns to me and adds, nodding at the child on my shoulder. ‘He’s very pretty isn’t he? An extraordinarily beautiful child.’
    ‘Thank you. In the looks department, I’d say he takes after his mother.’
    ‘I’d say he takes exactly after you ,’ she says shyly. I see her gaze flicker momentarily over my mouth, my chest and I hear her small sigh, recognise the slight invitation in her eyes before she turns her head away. I am glad Julia is not there to see it.
    All my life, women have been like this with me. Will they be like it with you too, Hadyn? One day, when you are a grown man?  I hope, when that happens, that you will be better prepared; that you will understand women better than I have ever learned to do.       
    I lower my face to take in the scent of my boy and I kiss the top of his head, cradle him close to me. Of course you will , I think. Each generation stretches out a little more, learns a little more than the one they’ve left behind. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? I’m changing, too, my darling son. I  abandoned you once in your hour of need. I wasn’t the father I could have been, but I swear that will not happen again. I’m here for you now.
    And in time, you will become everything that you were born to be. 
     
    9 - Julia
     
    Home.
    I’ve been waiting for this moment for so very long. Just to be here again, in our house in Richmond which Charlie and I moved into three months before Hadyn was born. I still have such good memories of routing around for all of the beautiful things we bought when we were still building our new home together. This beautiful five bedroom Edwardian house was going to be the foundation from which the three of us built the rest of our lives. We’d had so many exciting plans ... and then  the shock of the abduction on the New Year before last happened and disrupted the lot. 
    We arrive back as it’s coming up to six p.m. The evening’s drawing in already and it’s getting chilly.
    Home; I am home . I want to feel ... the way I once felt. That I belong here. That I have come back to a place that is mine. It’s the beginning of April and there are all the tell-tale signs that it must have rained earlier; when I brush past the overgrown bushes along our front drive, all the leaves are shiny and I can feel my legs getting