Laura’s den

by Super Fun Hannah

Laura’s Den.

The sound of the train rumbled through the bedroom like a thunderstorm, but Mary slept on. Colin gazed at her slightly parted lips and her softly closed eyelids and marvelled once again at his luck.

He had met Mary at the school gates around 6 months after Laura’s death, as he broke down over a forgotten lunchbox. She had taken Lucy’s hand and led her into the classroom with her own niece, Seren, and then come back, slid down the wall next to him, and gently enfolded Colin in her arms. Stroking his head in a way which might have seemed belittling or patronising but actually transported him back into his own mother’s arms, as a seven year old boy crying over his Grampy’s heart attack, she had uttered gentle nonsenses, ‘there, there’, ‘there we go’, ‘shhhhhhh’, until he finally stopped sobbing. He had surreptitiously wiped his nose on his sleeve and tried to gather the dignity to face his rescuer.

As he looked up he saw the kindest face looking at him, vaguely familiar, endlessly sympathetic. ‘It’s Mary’, she had said, ‘we met at the funeral. I was friends with Laura’.

They’d gone for coffee, then lunch, then a walk, then back to the school gates. From there a friendship was born, developed, and eventually blossomed into a love he never thought he’d find again.

Colin snuck from the bedroom, and down to the kitchen, intending to make the coffee before he woke Mary. The kids were still sound asleep. It was amazing, he reflected, how you could spend so many years wishing they’d sleep past 5am, to then find yourself having to wake the buggers up to get them to school by 9.

As he entered the kitchen he saw the trail of muddy footprints leading from the the lounge to the back door. ‘Bloody kids’, he cursed. Morgan must have snuck out in the night again to see Kathy. Then he noticed the drag behind the left hand footprint. And why was the mud leading out of the house, he wondered, opening the door and looking out into the garden.

He immediately noticed the door hanging off Laura’s shed, her den in which she had crafted at the weekends, which he had locked and left untouched these last 2 years. As he crept down the path towards the ominously broken padlock, strains of Portishead came from the shed, Beth Gibbons’ soft beautiful voice and the resonating bassline calling him in, dragging him back to the night they had met in Bristol all those years ago. His breath caught in his throat as his pulse quickened. The shadows in the darkened room seemed to dance in time to the music, the trail of footprints leading to the passaman chair in the corner, Laura’s favourite spot; empty, dusty, but emanating a tangible chill on that mild July morning. He turned to leave, shivering, as the door slammed behind him, the padlock clicking audibly...

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