Meant-To-Be Mother

Sunlight gleamed off thick tousled blonde hair. Rows of neat white teeth beamed from a wide smile. Brown bedroom eyes looked not at the camera but at the person behind the lens.

‘Siena?’ James said from somewhere out of sight.

‘Coming!’ she called out, quickly placing the photo back on to the piano lid.

‘Through here,’ he called back.

She followed the sound of his voice and found Kane sitting on a closed toilet seat while James was on his haunches searching through a cupboard in an airy bright white downstairs bathroom where her dingy old laundry room had once been.

And, though there was a picture of a beautiful blonde on his piano, and she had almost hit his son with her car, and she had somewhere else to be, and it was none of her business, she couldn’t help taking a moment to reconcile James with the guy in the photographs.

Okay, so there was definite gorgeousness still there, only in sepia rather than full Kodak-colour. He looked up to find her staring at him and his grey eyes flickered and narrowed.

Siena blinked several times over, before doggedly turning her attention to the job at hand. Around a dozen different antiseptic creams, lotions and bandages lay on the wide bench top at his side.

‘Are you bunking in for a nuclear winter?’ she blurted out.

‘Somehow I don’t think this part of the world is at the top of the nuclear hit list, if it ever comes to that,’ he returned, his voice unexpectedly laced with sarcasm. And, since Siena was quite partial to a bit of that herself, she felt her stomach flutters returning.

‘Fine. But then what’s with the personal pharmacy?’ she shot back.

‘I’m thorough. Is there something wrong with that?’

‘Hey, I’m not complaining. Only a silly woman would put down thoroughness. Just making an observation.’

James’s brow furrowed ever so slightly, his mouth hooked up at one corner, and he blinked long and slow. And, just like that, she sensed the game was on.

‘And what else have you observed?’ he asked, moving to sit back on his haunches, one muscular arm leaning casually along the top of the cupboard door.

She glanced at a much safer Kane, who was watching her with big sad puppy dog eyes, completely trusting. ‘Well, I’ve learned that it’s always the big strapping ones who fall apart at the sight of a bit of blood. Now, are you going to sit there with your head in the cupboard all day or will you just move over and let me do it?’

She gave James a little shove on the shoulder and he duly stood and moved to the far side of the room. She then grabbed a bottle of familiar brown liquid, which Rick had preferred when Siena the tomboy had come inside crying after getting in the middle of scrappy fight with local boys.

She felt the temperature in the room change as James moved to sit on the tiled edge of a neat oval spa bath—watching her.

‘If I drop a dollop on this perfect white floor,’ she said, not looking his way, ‘I’m scared that sirens will blast and water will stream from jets in the ceiling.’

‘Don’t panic,’ he said. ‘We have a cleaner.’

‘Oh, do we now?’ she asked, pulling a la-di-dah face at Kane. Kane grinned back at her, all too-big teeth and goofy dependence, and her stomach flutters coagulated back into that odd sensation of longing.

‘His name is Matt,’ Kane explained. ‘He comes in most days and vacuums and gardens and turns on the dishwasher.’

‘The dishwasher?’ she repeated, sneaking a look at James. ‘My, oh, my. Whatever would we do without him?’

She was surprised to find that the engaging half-smile had not left James’s face. She looked determinedly away.

‘And he picks me up from school,’ Kane continued, oblivious to the undercurrents swirling about the small room. ‘And he stays on sometimes when Dad has a job to finish or has to go out to see clients.’

‘I see,’ she said, though she clearly didn’t. The image of tousled blonde hair came to mind and she wondered briefly what the sunshiny, piano-top woman in their lives did when James had to finish a ‘job’ or see clients.

But that hardly mattered. She was feeling decidedly better about being in the house of teenage hell than she would ever have expected—and there was no point in pushing her luck.

She picked up a cotton swab.

‘Ouch!’ Kane was already wincing before the swab was within a foot of his elbow.

‘You are making me feel mean, Kane!’

‘Matt did a first aid course because he used to be an ambulance driver,’ Kane, said, his eyes growing huge. ‘Why did you?’

‘I am a Cabin Director with MaxAir—you know the airline with the light blue planes? And I have to look after any people who become unwell whilst flying, so I do an extensive first aid course every year. Did you know that way back in the beginning, the first ever flight attendants were actually nurses?’

Obviously Kane was not nearly as impressed with her qualifications as he was with Matt’s so she decided on another tack. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I have taken a zillion other courses too.’

‘Like what sort?’

‘I have taken lessons on fixing leaking taps, self-defence, I have a scuba licence and I can speak four languages.’

‘Four?’ Kane asked, his pale brown eyes growing large.

‘Yep. My parents were both born in Italy so I knew Italian before I knew English, but I can also speak conversational German and French.’ I can also juggle, even soft drink cans, which would have sent Jessica into a fit had she been told; I can do the splits and tango with the best of them, she thought, feeling a bit like a circus clown.

Kane’s eyes all but popped out of his head.

‘Would you like me to teach you how to say one to ten in Italian?’ she asked.

Kane nodded.

‘Excellent. Okay. Uno…’ Siena dabbed at the scrape with the soaked cotton wool, wiping away specks of dried blood and gravel and doing her dandiest to keep Kane’s eyes on her mouth as she spoke, not on her hands as she tended his stinging wound.

‘Due…’ Siena cleaned the scrape and patted it dry.

‘Tre…’ Siena unwound the child-proof lid of the top of the antiseptic bottle.

‘Quattro…’Siena tipped a healthy amount of antiseptic on to a fresh hunk of cotton wool.

‘Cinque…’Siena dabbed at the scrape, turning Kane’s arm a dull brown.

‘Sei…’ Siena put the lid back on to the bottle.

‘Sette…’ Siena tore a hunk of bandage.

‘Otto…’ Siena placed the bandage over Kane’s arm.

‘Nove…’ Siena ran a soft hand over the bandage, making sure it was in place.

‘Dieci! Well done! To the both of us. Now, can you remember them all?’