I knew it probably wasn’t my place, but the others were all distracted and I felt like I had to wade in.
‘Benji, honey,’ I called softly and he paused at his position on top of the windowsill to look at me. ‘Sometimes words can hurt more than hitting, you know.’
Benji rolled his eyes. ‘No way,’ he said, sliding down the wall to sit on the chair next to me, shaking his head.
I smiled at him. ‘What kinds of things make you sad, Benji?’ I asked.
‘Um … when Daddy has to go away, that makes me sad,’ he told me in a small voice.
‘And how do you feel when you’re sad?’
He paused to ponder the question for a minute, then said, ‘My tummy feels squishy and my nose feels stingy.’
‘Okay, so when you call someone a name, that’s how they feel inside. It’s worse than when someone hits you because then you only feel that pain in one place, and only for a little while. When people hurt you with words you feel it in all your insides, and the pain lasts longer.’
‘I don’t know,’ Benji said doubtfully. ‘Monty Peterson can thump pretty hard. I bet that hurts more than words.’
I smiled at him and took a deep breath. Maybe Monty Peterson was beyond help, but if I opened up to these children and made them understand, I might be able to make a difference.
‘Trust me, sweetie, words hurt more. I know because when I was younger people thumped me, and called me names, and were mean to me with words, and the words hurt me for longer.’
Jack had come to stand in front of me and was staring at me intently. ‘Did they make you sad?’ he asked solemnly. He looked so serious, his little-boy face hard.
I nodded and cupped his face in my hand, adding, ‘Yes, very sad indeed, but it was a long time ago, honey.’
To my surprise Benji had moved right next to me and taken my hand.
‘Do you still feel sad?’ he asked, his tone worried. I didn’t want to worry him, but did want them to understand.
‘Sometimes,’ I replied honestly, ‘but I have lots of kind friends now.’
‘Like Uncle Tom,’ Jack said confidently.
‘Um, yes, like your uncle.’
‘Uncle Tom’s kind,’ Benji told me, ‘and he’s big and tough. He won’t let anyone be mean to you.’
‘We won’t either,’ Jack declared, his face still hard. It seemed that I had scored myself a couple of self-appointed bodyguards.
‘I’ll try not to be mean with my words any more, Auntie Frankie,’ Benji said quietly, bypassing Finlay to put his arms around my neck and give me a cuddle.
It was then I realized then that there was a suspicious lack of background noise, and turned my head to see Sarah, Tom and his parents arrested in what they were doing and staring over at the kids and me. I was sitting on one of the dining chairs, Finlay was in my lap, I was still cupping Jack’s face in my hand, and Benji had his arms wrapped around me. Tom was looking at me with a warm possessive look in his eyes, his dad with open affection, and, bizarrely, his mum and Sarah both looked on the verge of crying.
‘Right,’ Sarah cried in a slightly choked voice, cutting through the uneasy silence. ‘Everyone, coats on, then we’re off.’ After herding the kids out the door she turned to me and laid a hand on my arm.
‘Thank you,’ she said forcefully. ‘I’ve been trying to get through to him for ages. You don’t know what it means to …’ Her breathed hitched.
‘I think he’s a lovely boy,’ I said, smiling at her.
Mary was standing just behind her and I could see that she was no longer guarded in the least. In fact she had the same warm, possessive look on her face as her son.
Chapter 23
Heartbreak soaked in Special Brew
Tom was smiling as he approached Frankie’s building. This was because, after some considerable effort on his part (something which had been a completely new experience, seeing as things usually came very easily to him, especially women), he was breaking through.
He’d been worried that his stroke of genius to involve his family had backfired on him big time after his mum nearly messed everything up. He understood why she would jump to the wrong conclusion about Frankie, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t royally pissed off at the time.
