Free Finding You by Giselle Green Page B

look pleased and proud as punch. She gives me a tentative hug, mindful not to wake him.
    ‘We still had the key. I hope you didn’t mind us coming into your home unannounced?’
    ‘On the contrary.’ Charlie gives Mum a hug. ‘We couldn’t give you much notice, I’m afraid. But we’re very glad you’re here.’ 
    ‘You’ve brought our grandson home. Wild horses couldn’t keep us away,’ Dick smiles.
    ‘We’ve got Hadyn’s bedroom all ready for him upstairs,’ Mum whispers to me now. ‘Do you want to take him up?’
    I look towards Charlie, in case he wants to come up with me but he just smiles, kisses the ends of Hadyn’s fingers.
    ‘You go on and take him up, hon. I’ll be along in a bit. There’s still the rest of the luggage to bring in from the taxi, yet.’ The luggage. And then we’ll have my parents to entertain for the rest of the evening. I’m happy they are here—of course I am; I wouldn’t have had it any other way—but it does mean I’ll have to put off all the things I wanted to talk to Charlie about for a little longer. Still. We’ll each have plenty of time to say what’s on our minds in the days to come. We will now that we are back home.
    I hope so.
    Dick goes out to the taxi with Charlie now and as I go up the stairs, I hear my step-dad reminding Charlie that his own car will be out of battery. It is such an ordinary thing to bring up at such a momentous moment that it seems to me almost surreal .
    ‘If you intend to use it tomorrow, you’ll need to go ask your neighbours for a jump-start,’ I can hear Dick saying.  I hear the sound of the front door going as the men go out, and then Mum coming hurrying up the stairs after me.
    ‘You know we’d have stayed with you in Spain for longer,’ Mum’s saying in a sotto voice, two steps behind me. ‘But Dick’s not good abroad. He suffers so from prickly heat.’
    ‘I know he does, Mum. It’s perfectly okay.’ I’m barely listening to her, really. I’m concentrating on the familiar feel of the plush stair carpet beneath my feet. I left my shoes at the bottom, just like I always do. It is all so comfortable and well-known to me. Three years ago, I helped choose this carpet; I picked out this wallpaper. I was the one who scoured through the catalogues for those light fittings. I bought those picture frames.
    Upstairs, when we go into Hadyn’s room, the wood on the sides of his old cot have been washed down and it is practically gleaming. The fresh scent of his laundered sheets is filling the room. The window’s been left slightly ajar, and Mum hurries over to close it now.
    ‘Don’t want him catching a chill,’ she worries.
    ‘No, Mum.’ I lay him down to rest in his cot and he sprawls out immediately, his elbows and knees touching the wooden bars at the side. He looks so big in that cot, I think. She is right. He has grown so big. Did I imagine he would look the same as he used to look in it? Of course I did not, and yet ...          
    ‘Will Hadyn be all right in his own room? We weren’t sure if you’d prefer to have him in your own bedroom.’ I catch the anxious undertones in Mum’s voice.
    ‘He’ll be perfectly all right.’  I look around at his bedroom now, at all the toys he has long since grown out of, the teething rings and the pile of teeny-tiny clothes Mum’s fetched out and laid on top of the chest of drawers. God, I didn’t even realise we still had those. It brings home the fact that the son we have brought home is a different child from the one who left.
    ‘I didn’t know if any of those would still be any good?’
    ‘They won’t.’ I shake my head. She must have known that they wouldn’t be. She wanted to empty the drawers for his new things, and didn’t know what to do with the old ones so she’s left them to me.        
    ‘Are you pleased to be back, Julia?’ It’s a rhetorical question.
    I laugh, realising that I haven’t said too much up to now, and letting