Free The Cilla Rose Affair by Winona Kent Page A

remembered his older brother, eight years old, pleading: “Lift me up—I want to see.”
    And after Ian had had his look, Anthony would say, very seriously: “I want to see, too.” He had taken life very seriously when he was three. People used to say to his mother: he’s got a terribly grown up little face, hasn’t he?
    His father would swing him up onto his shoulders, and there Anthony would perch, the king of all of Primrose Hill, watching the trains.
    He got down. He was taller than Evan now, by a good three inches.
    He continued his journey through Chalk Farm Village, stopping at Mr. Dhaliwal’s shop on Regent’s Park Road for a chilled orange Fanta, then crossed the road and entered the park.
    Anthony’s mother, reminiscing, had once told him she used to push him up this hill on a daily basis. Anthony wondered how she’d ever managed it; the path was steep, and there were very few trees along the way to provide shade from the beating summer sun or shelter from the winter rain. The reward for such perseverance, however, was great: the view from the top was insurmountable.
    Anthony stood for a moment, observing the magnificent vista of distant spires and towers and scaffolds, breathing the crisp air, savouring the brisk, cooling breeze. Below him, a small child was rolling down the face of the hill, his delighted laughter catching the stray strands of wind.
    He remembered hill-rolling. He remembered wall-walking, too—childhood preoccupations in a country where childhood was still an imaginative indulgence. Somehow, in the process of moving back to America, all those years ago, that magic had vanished.
    He’d been quite unprepared, at the age of four and a half, for the culture shock of Southern California—for the large cars and the miles of concrete and the sprawling suburbs. For not terribly well-behaved children with loud American voices.
    He’d been something of a curiosity to them, with his earnestly polite English demeanour.
    He’d been singularly unhappy there.
    He was happy now—a kind of happiness, anyway—an unfinished emotion, like a work of stained glass, its glittering pieces cut and wrapped and soldered into an exquisite pattern—all of the pieces but one, in the very centre, in the very heart.
    He’d been walking a few days earlier through Hyde Park. It had been cooler then, a hazy, grey afternoon; the mist had hung in the trees, and the grass was that brilliant green you don’t find anywhere except in England. He’d wandered down from Marble Arch, skirting the curious and the obsessed at Speakers’ Corner, and the clutter of deckchairs. There were teams of American footballers and joggers, and further down, at the Serpentine, a regatta with rowers and loudspeakers and prizes.
    He’d trudged along Rotten Row, and just before he’d turned south to leave the park, he’d caught up with a family. There were five of them—mother in a skirt and comfortable shoes, father in shirtsleeves, a girl and a boy on small, two-wheeled bikes, and a little boy, very blond, being made to walk as far as the gates, while his mother wheeled the push-chair.
    A tiny pique of delight had suddenly taken hold of the woman. “Come on,” she’d said, tossing her head, laughing. “I’ll race you.”
    “Now there’s a treat for the eyes,” the father had remarked, as the two older children pedalled furiously in the direction of Coalbrookdale Gate. “Mummy running.”
    At that single instance, a pang of something had shot through Anthony’s heart, so swiftly and so deeply, he barely had time to catch himself. He’d stopped, and, aching and angry, had rubbed away the sudden tears with the heel of his hand.
    Why now? he’d wondered. Why now?
    Something, somewhere, had been lost, denied. Something he’d once had, but only in the very deepest recesses of his memory—a faint blur, like a photograph taken at the wrong exposure.
    Old wounds.
    Places you thought had healed a long time ago, edges knitted