Chapter 2
Dinner was usually quite an ordeal. His mother was an excellent cook. Much better than one of those horrible chefs Leo saw on the television. She knew how to cook, because she'd been doing it her whole life. Her mother had taught her to help in the kitchen when she was very young, and so she had taught Leo to cook too.
Normally he had a lot of work to do after school, but at weekends he could spare the time to help her in the kitchen. She believed that everyone should at least learn the basics, because you have to eat for the rest of your life, so if you don't know how to cook, it may just be a problem.
So at weekends he helped, and he enjoyed it. There was a lot more talent in choosing the right herbs and putting in the right quantities than Leo thought most people suspected. It wasn't just a case of bunging it all together and getting something good. You needed to have an affinity for it.
Leo was particularly disappointed in some of the people his age that didn't know how to cook anything more than chips, the boys who were just too stubborn to think about it, and the girls, who'd rather party. He rolled his eyes mentally at that thought, as he delicately balanced the sugar and salt in his carrots and set them on the heat.
It was getting late. He'd have to leave in an hour, and he had yet to eat, wash up and get ready. The carrots would still take another twenty five minutes. And worst of all, he hadn't yet found a way to tell his mother that he was actually going anywhere.
She seemed quite relaxed now, spreading the homemade stuffing on the half cooked pork chops, but he decided against it, turning away and heading out into the next room to lay the table instead.
Later, as they sat together eating, Leo took his chance, starting with a compliment, to soften the effect of his words.
"These are wonderful, as usual."
"Thank you, Leo," replied his mother, so he went on, conversationally.
"I have to get going in half an hour or I'll be late."
His mother set her fork down on the table and looked up at him. "Late? You're going out now?"
"Yes…I have to meet someone at six."
"Someone..?"
Leo looked down at his food. "Michaela... You haven't met her."
"...A girl?"
"Yes… Does it matter?"
His mother couldn't have looked angrier. "You can't go out tonight."
Leo looked up at her questioning, with an edge of fury building within him. "Why…? What's so special about tonight?"
"Nothing!" she barked in reply. "But I absolutely refuse you to go on a date. I don't know what you might get up to."
"You don't have any right to stop me," Leo snarled, narrowing his eyes.
"Oh, don't I? How old is this girl?"
"Fifteen," Leo said firmly.
"So she's below the age of consent then?"
Leo flushed brightly. "I don't…" he started.
"Don't you? You can't promise me that, so you're not going!" She banged her fist down on the table.
"That's not fair!" Leo barked, coming up to his feet.
The table moved as he went. All the food, the bottle of wine, the plates – everything went flying backwards as it pivoted over with incredible force, sending plates smashing to either side of his stunned mother. She fell back under the weight of it as it went, he head hitting the tiled floor of the dining room before the table concealed her from Leo's view.
Leo stood in shock. He hadn't touched the table – he just hadn't. He stepped forwards, suddenly not angry at all, his red face quickly returning to a freckled pale. He pulled the heavy table off his mother and knelt down beside her, ignorant of the mess.
She was very still, but she was still breathing shallowly. He reached up to touch her throat, checking her heartbeat, and swallowed hard. "Mum? Can you hear me?"
There was no reply. She simply lay there silent, and Leo regained his senses in a flash. He had to phone the emergency services. With one last glance at his mother he turned and dashed out of the room to where the phone was, putting to the receiver to his ear even as he dialled '999'.
The phone clicked on at the other end and a woman's voice said. "Good afternoon. Which service do you require?"
"Ambulance," Leo barked into the phone, and it clicked off again, and suddenly another person took over, this time it sounded like an older woman.
"Who is it calling?"
Leo couldn't quite remember his name at the moment, but after half a second the panic subsided enough for him to reply, "Leonard Black."
"And where are you calling from?"
His address took a second longer to remember. "Err…24 Perch Avenue. That's in Rochester, Kent."
"Okay, what's the emergency?"
"It's my mum…" Leo paused. What could he say? He didn't want to get into trouble. "She had something fall on her, and fell over…and now she's unconscious."
The woman on the other side of the phone soothed him. "Okay, just relax. There's an ambulance on the way." She went quiet for a moment, and then said. "It'll be there in five minutes. Don't move her. Open your front door and wait for the ambulance to arrive."
Leo went to do what the lady had said, then went back in to his mother. She looked so still lying there. He paced back and forth until suddenly the sirens caught his attention, and he turned towards the door.
A man and a woman in green rushed in, and one of them sank down next to his mother. The other, the woman, distracted him away from what the male paramedic was doing. "She's your mother?"
"Yes," Leo nodded glumly. "Will she be okay?"
"We'll do our best, but right now I need to ask you a few questions," said the paramedic. "It might help us."
Nodding again, Leo waited for her to start.
"Okay. First of all how did this happen?"
Leo wasn't looking forward to this question. He looked down at his mother. "We were eating dinner. I stood up and there was…the table kind of…flipped over and landed on her."
The woman looked at him, suspicion showing on her features. "Did you throw the table over?"
Leo shook his head vehemently. "No. No I didn't touch the table. I don't know how it happened."
The woman looked at him as though he was lying, and Leo felt for a moment like he would break down in tears. He hadn't touched the table – it had just happened. The paramedic talked to her partner for a moment, and then the questioning began again.
"You didn't move her?"
"No," Leo replied shakily. "No, just the table…"
"And you phoned straight away?"
"Yes. Yes of course I did."
The woman seemed satisfied. She turned her back on Leo and talked into her radio as she went back out the door. Leo looked back at the man with his mother, his shoulders trembling visibly.
After barely a few seconds the female paramedic returned with a stretcher, and together they gently lifted her onto it. Then they stood up, lifting her with them. "You can come in the back of the ambulance. You'll have to lock up here, I think."
Leo nodded, and then realised that he'd need the keys, he scrambled to get them, and then dashed out after the two paramedics, pulling the door shut and making his way to the back of the van, where they were lifting his mother in slowly. She was rolled into place, and Leo climbed up at a gesture from the female paramedic.
It took four minutes, thirty two seconds to get back to the hospital. Leo kept looking at his watch. The seconds seemed to stretch out forever, and trapped in a distortion of time, Leo realised with no care at all, that he was going to miss his date with Michaela.
Sitting alone in the waiting room, Leo could only reflect on how awful things had turned out to be. He hadn't been allowed to see his mother, and it must be ten now.
Musing over his flat can of Coke, playing with the ring pull with his left hand, Leo found his mind wandering back on memories of his mother.
She had always been a strong figure in his life, especially since he had grown up without a father. She had always been there for him. She'd taught him to read and write, even before he had gone to school. She had taught him to cook and tend the garden. She taught him to ride too.
His horse had been nothing special really, a red roan - young too. It could have been no more than four – recently trained, when his mother took him to buy her at a country market.
There hadn't been many horses there – not really of a kind that they wanted. He was seven, and his mother wanted a safe ride, but he wanted more – something that could test him as much as he could test it. There were one or two particularly good horses there. Half purebreds that showed their blood in their faces – racy, powerful creatures - too much for a first ride, definitely. There were a few tired old nags, that looked as though they might not last much longer – their backs broken from excessive work and pulling heavy carts up the windy streets. And then there were some young ponies; nothing of the well broken in pony that his mother had wanted.
Leo had seen his pony – knew instantly it was the one he wanted. It had tossed its head when he had looked at it, flicking its ginger mane back over its withers and making a whickering noise at him.
He had spent the rest of the market chasing his mother around and begging to have the red pony. Eventually she gave in, asking her owner just how much she was. Leonard had found himself walked home by his mother on the back of the pony, to his surprise. It had been the first time he'd ridden.
Leo had named her Espoir, after the French word for 'hope', after spending several nights sitting in his room, with his mother's dictionary spread out in front of him.
After that, it came easily. Within a few weeks they were jumping in what there was of the back garden, racing up the hill after a weekend ride, to get back so that Leo wouldn't be late for his weekly cooking lesson - even entering in the tiny village gymkhana, and winning prizes.
Leo realised, as he leant back in his chair that that was one of his cherished memories – all gone now, with poor Espoir probably being pulled around all day now.
The door flicked open and a nurse came in carrying a clipboard. She moved over to stand in front of Leo, who rose to meet her expectantly.
The nurse opened her mouth, but Leo beat her. "How is she?"
"She's…in a stable condition, Mr. Black. Please…sit down."
Leo sank back down, his eyes fixed on the nurse. She sat down close next to him and looked at him gravely over the top of her tiny pink glasses.
"I'm afraid she's comatose. We've done all we can to make her comfortable."
Leo took in a painful breath, speaking brokenly. "A coma...? H-How bad?"
The nurse didn't look up at him; she pretended to study the numbers and scribbles on her notepad instead. "I'm afraid that we don't expect her to wake up."
Leo felt shell-shocked. He sat pinned in his seat and staring in the direction of the nurse, but not actually registering her at all. Everything seemed blurred around him. His mother…she couldn't be… Something touched his shoulder and he came to his feet swiftly, afraid of being comforted.
The nurse let out a little cry, but Leo didn't react. He was too caught in his own misery. It was his fault! He must have moved that table and not remembered. He'd done this to her!
"My glasses!" The nurse exclaimed, her voice bursting the bubble that Leo had built up around himself – frustrating him. He turned on her, and then stopped. There she was, holding the frame of her ridiculous pink glasses in her hands.
The lenses were smashed into millions of pieces, which had fallen over her clipboard, and the dark blue carpet, like a cache of stars, glittering in the dull light of the room. The frames themselves were broken in the middle.
Concerned, Leo stepped closer. "How did they break?" He asked, tentatively.
"I…I don't know!" she replied, her voice high and uneven.
Leo had never seen glasses break like that. Sometimes they cracked…but they didn't just fall into tiny pieces, like shattered safety glass.
The woman seemed to regain a lot of her composure, although her shoulders still shook. "You can go and visit her. She's in room twelve." She turned and headed out of the room, and after Leo stepped out after her she fumbled with the lock blindly.
Not caring, Leo made his way straight to the room she had given him the number of, slipping in quietly, to find no-one there, just his mother, lying as though asleep on the bed, a bandage across part of her forehead.
He went over to the bed and sank down beside it, reaching up to take her hand sadly. He sat there for hours, listening to the soft beep of the monitor, and feeling the dull heartbeat dance in time.
At some point he must have fallen asleep, because he was roused when his mother was checked on, and escorted home in a taxi.