THEN AFTERWARDS ...

The house was quiet now, but it was not peaceful. The heated words between her husband and son were still echoing around the room desperate to escape. Both men had gone now, but the atmosphere lingered and seeped into Sarah's every pore, ran through her veins and attacked her heart like a chemical burning away at the surface. She rocked gently as she sat on the edge of the sofa, her arms hugging her chest as if to protect her heart from further pain. Her left hand stroked her right arm, softly, gently, offering a gesture of comfort. Her mother used to do that, stroke her when she became upset as a child, but she was alone now and her body seemed to instintivley try and comfort itself. The quietness of the room was lost to her, her mind was struggling to contain the flashes of harsh words spat in anger between the two men she loved. Her shoulders stiffened as if the reflex would somehow stop the tears burning behind her eyes. The rain lashed against the lounge window and Sarah wondered briefly whether Sam had taken a coat when he had stormed out of the house rather than raise his fist to his son. He would come back she knew that, and she knew why he'd gone, but he always just left her when she needed him, needed his arms around her. The floorboards above her creaked under the footsteps of her son James walking across the landing to the bathroom, probably to throw his guts up down the toilet. She wanted desperately to go up to him as she would have when he was a little boy, then she would have held him close to her and stroked his forehead until he fell asleep, safely in her arms. Now, they didn't touch, oh they were close, but they didn't touch, not anymore. Not since his grandfather had told James he must be a 'girl' still wanting a hug from his mother. Sarah understood, but understanding did not give her comfort. As she tried to remember the last time they had hugged each other,the tears that had been building behind her eyes began to fall.
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