The First Time I Said Goodbye by Claire Allan Page B

father, every hug for the last few months had felt like a countdown. I hadn’t wanted to let go and every time I did a part of me died because I knew we were on borrowed time. As I hugged my mother and felt her get frailer, her hugs a little colder, I felt her slip away from me too. In a different way of course. It was always my mother’s way to put on her best practical face and get done what needed to be done. She didn’t have time for hugs. Not because she was a bad person but because she didn’t want to let even one chink of emotion in her armour. She had to stay strong.
    With Craig, it had been almost worst of all. He hugged me and I wanted to hug him back but, well, I suppose I had a bit of my mother in me. I didn’t want to let my emotions out. I probably was a cold fish to him, I admit it. As the weeks went on and every ounce of my emotional energy was focused on my father, I didn’t have it to give elsewhere. The more I pushed Craig away the closer he wanted to be, until every hug felt like a precursor to some greater need of his that I couldn’t meet.
    When my father died, of course people hugged me, in that perfunctory, pat-on-the-back, sorry-for-your-loss kind of way. But not a real hug. Not one where I actually felt an ounce of warmth.
    “You don’t need to do that,” I sniffed.
    “What? Take time off work? Look, Annabel, I’d have offered before you even got here but I wasn’t sure you weren’t going to be a complete pain in the ass. I’ve sized you up a bit now and I think I could tolerate a little more of your company. Besides, I can’t have you going back to the States remembering this as the worst holiday of your life, ever. I think there is a law against letting people leave this country with anything less than a good impression of it. You stick with me, kid. It’ll all come good.”

    Chapter 9

    You’re going to think I’m mad, and I probably am. But I can’t be apart from you one moment longer.

    * * *

    Hugh was snoring in an armchair when we got back. Dolores and my mother were back at the table, all dishes and traces of the dinner cleaned away. They were sipping from china cups and still talking in hushed tones when we arrived.
    My mother looked at me, her faced filled with concern. “Anna, are you okay, pet? We weren’t sure where you had gone.”
    “Sam here looked after me,” I said. “I’m fine.”
    “I’m sorry about that – about you hearing about Ray like that.”
    “Mom,” I said, “I didn’t hear anything except that you once loved a man called Ray and he didn’t bring Spam around to your house. As far as I’m concerned that’s in the past.” I really didn’t need to hear the details – I didn’t need to think of my mother as anything less than perfectly happy with my father.
    She sighed and Dolores gave her a strange look – a look which made my heart sink to my boots. They weren’t going to let it go.
    “Annabel, why don’t you have a seat?” Dolores said.
    I felt a slight panic – the same slight panic that Sam had just helped me over – rise in me again as I sat down.
    I looked at my mother, whose face was blazing, and back at Dolores who was staring at my mother with her eyebrows raised and face contorted into some sort of strange expression.
    “The thing is,” Dolores started when it was clear my mother was not going to say whatever it was Dolores wanted her to say, “it’s not strictly entirely in the past. We’ve heard that there is a Naval Base reunion next week. Of course only a fraction of the men who served in Derry over the years will come to it . . . but he might well come.”
    I shrugged my shoulders. “That’s no big deal. The fact he might be there doesn’t affect us in any way.”
    My mother raised her head and looked at me. “I want to see him, Anna,” she said softly. “I want to see him again.”

    * * *

    Derry, September 1959

    She wasn’t meant to be there. She had never been before and hadn’t been at all