Our recycled-fashion empire, ShayKi, was born.
Kieran came up with the name. None of us liked it particularly, but we were sixteen and couldn’t think of anything better. Also, my parents were strenuously opposed to my name being included in the branding. I think they thought it would make it harder for me to leave, once I regained my senses.
It didn’t. After walking – limping – away, I discovered that as swiftly as I’d joined their trio twenty years earlier, Shay and Kieran had wiped all trace of me from their online presence, seamlessly reforming as a power-pair. That young girl who’d lingered inside me, knowing I was something of a third wheel, regretted not making a fuss about being included. It wouldn’t have made it harder to leave – nothing could have made that any worse. But they might have tried harder to convince me to stay.
10
MARY
On Monday, I faced down the ongoing, internal whine of anxiety and mental paralysis that would prefer me to remain hiding in the forest forever, donned my stretchiest pair of jeans and a gorgeous pale-pink cashmere sweater that was large enough to hide my deflated-balloon belly, and braved an outing to Sofia’s house. Apart from walking to the farm shop down the road a few times, and an appointment at the baby clinic, this was my first proper solo trip as a mum. As tempting as it was to use Sherwood Taxis in the hope Beckett was somewhere nearby waiting for his next job, I knew it was important for me to manage this alone. The pram hadn’t arrived yet, so I carried Bob in the papoose on my front and a rucksack crammed with baby supplies on my back. The balance of weight sort of worked, as long as I didn’t have to negotiate any narrow spaces.
It was a twenty-minute walk to the bus stop on the outskirts of the nearest village, Hatherstone. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d made it as far as the village since moving here, thanks to online deliveries and a local takeaway.
This morning, the promised snow had never appeared, but there was a thick frost on the ground, and, allowing my post-birth body to take it slowly, for the first time I bothered to notice my surroundings.
I’d spent the whole of my old life living in a city, considering a jog in one of the parks or watching a fox rootling through my bins to be experiencing nature. This was like stepping into an alternate reality.
The forest was eerily quiet, the only sound my boots crunching along a path littered with crisp leaves, acorns and pine cones, and the occasional scuffle of a bird in the undergrowth. I’d grown shamefully unfit, so soon grew breathless, sucking in lungfuls of exhilaratingly fresh November air, ripe with earthy decomposition. Tendrils of morning mist weaved amongst the tree trunks, in contrast to the occasional dapple of sunbeams that breached the canopy of scantily clad branches above my head.
I felt as captivated as Lucy Pevensie, finding herself in Narnia. Strolling through the dancing shadows, all my senses alive for what felt like the first time in forever, ideas for new fabrics, textures and embellishments cascading through my head. I had to remind myself that the days of bringing my creative concepts to the collaborative table were over. Well, unless the Christmas Day Twins had written some sort of Forest or Nature Santa into their script.
Before I knew it, I could see the kissing gate leading to the edge of the village up ahead. In just under a mile, it was as if the anxiety and apprehension about not only today, but tomorrow and the next day, and a lifetime of days stretching out after that had somehow dissolved with the last wisps of mist.
I turned a slow circle, wobbling slightly due to the weights on my chest and back, head tipped up to scan the tops of the oak trees, the pastel sky beyond.
Who knew that a change in scenery, twenty minutes of forward motion, getting lost in the moment instead of wrestling with the past or panicking about the future, could shift something inside that felt somehow deeply significant?
Once I’d found a seat on the almost empty bus, angling sideways to make room for the rucksack, I pondered what that shift might be.
Perspective, maybe? That morning, something had started to become a little unstuck.
And the something, I realised as we rattled along the main road into Nottingham, was me.
After getting off the bus at the stop nearest to the church, I walked for another fifteen minutes through the city suburb before arriving at Sofia’s address. The street reminded me of the estate where Shay and Kieran had grown up. A couple of the terraced houses had boarded-up windows; lots of them projected that aura of neglect that accompanied poverty. Ill-fitting, yellowing net curtains in random windows, a pile of scrap metal in a front yard, chipped paintwork and rusty gates.
Then I arrived at the last house before the road came to a dead end, the only one with a proper front garden. This house was Victorian brick like the rest of the street, but detached, with three storeys and a garage.
I climbed three wide stone steps up to the traditional front door and banged twice using a brass knocker in the shape of an owl. Waiting for someone to open it, the peace of Sherwood Forest far behind me, I couldn’t help wishing I’d stayed stuck. Stuck on my sofa, in my pyjamas, by myself, with no one to ask me uncomfortable questions about the current state of my non-life, or how I’d ended up living it.
After I knocked again, someone eventually opened the sunflower-yellow door.
‘Hello?’ It was a young woman, maybe late twenties, with auburn hair even more bedraggled than mine and a smear of what looked like mushed-up banana down her purple hoodie.
‘Is this Sofia’s? She invited me for coffee.’
The woman’s face lit up. ‘Yes, of course. I was confused because everyone just walks straight in. I was going to the toilet when I heard the knock. But I’m guessing you’re Mary, so you wouldn’t know that, and this is Bob.’
She paused to offer a coo to the back of his head. I’m sure he’d have appreciated it, had he been awake.
‘Come in, before all the good cake’s gone. We’re dying to hear everything. You are literally our heroine. Oh, I’m Rina.’
I tentatively stepped into a beautiful hallway with sanded floors and dark red walls covered in a mix of family photographs and kids’ drawings in colourful frames. Slipping off my rucksack, shoes and the coat I’d put on over the top of the papoose, I shuffled after her, trying not to panic at who ‘we’ consisted of, and what precisely they wanted to hear.
‘Hey, everyone. She’s here! The living legend that is… Mary!’
There were three other women sitting in Sofia’s family room, so it could have been worse. Although, it should have been better seeing as Sofia never mentioned inviting anyone else along, and we’d only arranged it the night before.
There were also two babies and two toddlers, plus Mimi, Sofia’s three-year-old. She was currently offering a plastic teacup to a golden retriever, who gazed back at her adoringly. The room was beautifully cosy; woollen throws lay across the women’s knees, a wood-burning stove crackled and the scent of candles glowing on a high shelf mingled with the fragrance of freshly brewed coffee and pumpkin spice.
