Free Learning by Heart by Elizabeth Cooke

mother forget a phone call she had made only twenty-four hours ago. She tapped her hand against her thigh in confusion. What time had she said she would be here? Lunchtime? Early afternoon? Suddenly, she couldn’t remember. Perhaps she had said early afternoon. Two, or half past.
    She went back to the car and released Joshua from his safety seat. He wriggled out and ran for the door.
    ‘Grammy isn’t in,’ she called after him.
    He swerved, arms held out in imitation of an aircraft. Two fat pigeons on the path that led to the side of the house launched themselves upward in protest. Joshua roared after them, yelling at the top of his voice.
    ‘Don’t go into the fields,’ she called.
    He glanced back at her.
    ‘Don’t,’ she repeated.
    His pace slowed. He tripped a couple of times over his feet, and began to kick at the dust.
    Resignedly, she trotted after him and took his hand. ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘We’ll just go to the top of the hill.’
    She walked through the orchard trees. She had been recruited every year, from the moment she could walk, to harvest the seemingly endless tons of apples. It had been her job in particular to crawl under the low-sweeping branches and attach the thick canvas bands to each trunk, so that the crop could be shaken down. No need to take care with cider apples: bruising was immaterial. Just hours later they would be crushed in the factory forty miles away.
    The smell of the trees, almost sickly sweet, the pungency of the ripe and overripe fruit, the sticky residue of juice on her hands and clothes had characterized those weeks at the end of each summer. Sometimes, in bed at night, she could not get the smell out of her mouth and nose; it had permeated the bedclothes and her own skin, no matter how hard she scrubbed her fingers and arms before she went to bed. Today, as she took the left-hand path and climbed the incline towards the woods, she looked appraisingly at the bare rows below her.
    Joshua stood uncertainly by the stile at the entrance to the woods. Reaching him, Zeph helped him over. The ground under the trees was damp, the first blades of bluebells and wild garlic showing through. The trees looked spindly, almost cold: between them, Zeph could see the other side of the low valley. If they climbed to the top, they would see the Sherborne road, the way they had come, the route back to Nick.
    It’s the past , she told herself severely.
    But he was in her mind anyway.
    She watched Joshua run down the path. All morning she had avoided looking at her son because he reminded her of his father; she stopped now, out of breath, and watched him ahead of her. It was a terrible admission, that she could not look at Josh because of what Nick had done. She put her hand to her face. No, that wasn’t right. The truth was that she couldn’t bear to look at Nick because she was angry and vengeful. Because she would prefer not to imagine him on the planet, prefer not to have met him, not to have any memories.
    Yesterday she had wanted to hit him. If Nick had walked through the door during the afternoon she would have done so, whether Joshua was in the room or not. She had wanted to draw blood. It wasn’t until later, as she made something for Joshua to eat, that it had occurred to her that this might be wrong.
    What am I doing ? she had thought, while she was laying Joshua’s place at the table. What am I thinking ? The realization that she had spent three or four hours waiting for Nick to come back so that she could attack him was like being hit herself or, worse, violated.
    Suddenly she felt so sick that she had to sit down. She was all churned up inside. There was a knot in her stomach, constantly tightening and releasing, tightening and releasing. And violation wasn’t too strong a word. The person she had been before had been degraded; everything they had together was degraded.
    Joshua had come in and stood at her side. He had been in the hallway, watching her through the