Vera pushes her way through the crowd to get to the airport’s arrival lounge. A crackly voice announces the next flights. Children cry. Suitcases roll. Voices and sounds, the aircrafts’ whirring and droning blend in low-pitched yet deafening noise. Her eyes jump from one face to another and another. She tiptoes to see the arriving people in the distance.
She will recognise him. Her heart will.
A tall young man faces her. Eyes behind dark glasses, unkempt hair, slouch jeans. That is him.
‘Hello, Evan.’ Her voice breaks. She twists hands as to pray, her knuckles white.
Evan turns his back on Vera and swaggers following the car park signs.
His silence spread over the airport and drowns all the noise. Cold fingers creep up and clutch her throat and panic sets in her chest. It all turns black in front of her eyes.
Vera has her eyes fixed on the black road ahead. She has thought of thousands of questions to ask him, and now she does not know where to start.
‘How was –‘ A police car, flashing and wailing, speeds by them.
Silence, thick and sombre, hangs in the car.
‘How was your journey, Evan?’ She turns to him. Oh! how she wants to see his eyes still hidden behind the dark glasses!
‘Fine.’ He says and looks through the side window.
‘That’s London Bridge. I’ve sent you a postcard with it, remember? Do you want to take a photograph?’
‘No.’ He takes a pad and a pen out of his bag and starts sketching with skilled short strokes. London Bridge with the cars buzzing and people busing along. The Thames with the boats. All grow on the paper in minutes. He has grasped the soul of the City, Vera thinks, but it is black and monstrous.
‘Don’t you like photography? I’ve always thought you like taking photos.’
‘What makes you think I like photography?’ His hand becomes quicker and wilder. With the last two strokes he rips the drawing and thrusts it in his bag.
They have arrived at a street with small shops and a row of terrace houses stretching almost to the horizon. Vera has made her home here. A second-hand sofa and a bookshelf in the living room. A table with two chairs squeezed in the boxy kitchen.
‘Come upstairs, Evan, I’ll show you the room I’ve prepared for you. Do you like it? It’s small, only a bed and chest of draws, but in time you can put your stamp on it.’
Evan looks around and shrugs. He takes his sunglasses and meets her eyes. The blue eyes Vera remembers.
‘You look older than I thought’, he says. ‘Nanna had kept your wedding photo for seventeen years. I binned the photo after Nanna died.’ The blue eyes turn to grey stare.
The ghost that has been haunting her for all those seventeen years has caught her now.
‘Look!’ Vera points at a photo laid on the chest top.
A boy with bright hair and missing two front teeth smiles at the camera. He sits in a garden on a patchy children’s blanket with a ball in his hands. Vera holds the photo and touches the glass where his hair is. She wishes she could stroke his head and listen to his giggles now as she did then.
‘That’s you Evan, when you’re 6. We had lunch in the garden. You don’t remember—’
‘Yes, I do.’
A spring day it was, and Evan, Vera and Martin were having lunch in the back garden. The cherry tree blossomed in white with the first fruits popping up, and sparrows and bees were busing themselves around. Evan was chasing the bees.
‘No, Evan, no! Bees will sting you!’ Vera screamed but Evan did not listen and kept running after them. A bee stopped on a daisy, and he knelt and cupped his hands to catch it.
The next day Vera had a call from the district hospital. She had just sent off Evan to the nursery and was washing up after breakfast.
The phone rang and she answered it with hands still wet.
‘Your husband has had an accident…’ the voice kept talking but she could not listen to it any more.
Ever since, this day stays in her memory like a silent film. Faces, eyeless and voiceless, jerk and jump before her eyes. Comical appearances at which she could not laugh.
She ran along the corridor to the intensive care. Her husband lay on a stretcher. ‘Martin! Martin…what happened?’ Under the blood-stained sheets, his body looked like a loaf of bread, torn and gnawed at.
Hours upon hours dragged on and on. The man brought back from the operating theatre was not her husband. That man was twenty years older than Martin, with a sharp nose and hollow eyes.
She rested her head on Martin’s shoulder and choked in tears.
How would they live? Few years after the political turbulence of 1989, Martin had opened a small shop to support the family. With her meagre teacher’s salary, Vera could not meet the ends now.
She knew of people, many people, who had left the country. Like a festering wound, the idea had grown on her.
The last evening with Evan… Vera could not find the words to tell him. She read the bedtime story and kissed him goodnight on the forehead, and just before closing the door she snatched his photo.
And she waits for the day, the day of her second chance.
Back from her cleaning work at Hilton, Vera sits and watches the telly. A phone call jerks her out of the routine.
‘Hello Martin—’ Vera listens to the cold even voice with no chance to say a single word. In less than two minutes the low drone of the disconnected line rings in her ear. She sits down with the phone in her lap. Her mind plays every word back.
It’s not Martin. It is Evan—Evan—Evan—
Evan is coming to England to study and wants to see her.
What does he look like now? How tall is he? His eyes and hair?
Vera paints the spare bedroom and buys furniture. Evan will stay with her while he studies. That is why he called, didn’t he? She will help him with her savings.
Vera makes plans for a lunch in the back garden. She will cook for Evan. What would he like most? She has no idea. But it will be a sunny day, she is sure of it. She will see him and hold him and explain. The memory of Evan chasing the bees springs to her mind. She laughs. And she could not remember the last time when she laughed like that.
Vera prepares the table under the lime tree in the back garden. She pulls out a chair and sits. Evan leans on the door frame and gazes at the birds circling above.
‘Sit down, Evan, please.’
‘Dad died.’
Her shoulders jump. Those two words are like stones Evan casts to her face.
The boy with innocent and brilliant eyes has changed. He has grown into a man with a dark hardened mask instead of face. Beneath that mask Vera cannot find a trace of forgiveness or a glimpse of hope.
‘What happened?’ Vera closes her eyes in a vain attempt to stop the tears.
‘Well…he died. He asked me to come here and give you this.’ Evan takes an envelope out of his bag and puts it on the table. He takes out another envelope the same size as his drawing pad. ‘And this’s from me.’
‘Was he ill?’
Evan’s shoulders shake in convulsions. Vera gets up and stretches a hand to stroke his head and comfort him in his grief. He pushes her hand away.
‘Ill? No, he wasn’t ill. He was happy and healthy when you left, remember? He’s absolutely bloody happy to live the rest of his life in a wheelchair…with you always by his side…’
‘Evan, that’s been the hardest decision in my life…but I had no choice…think of it…I had no choice…’
‘How very convenient! You left because you didn’t love him anymore…or me…’
‘Evan, please, I’m your mother—’
‘Yeh, what makes you my mother?’
‘I’ve been sending money all those years—’
‘No one needed your money…no one.’
Evan flings his bag over his back, and strides out of the garden through the kitchen to the hallway. Not a look back to Vera, not a slightest glance over his shoulder. He slams the front door behind him.
‘Evan, come back, please…’
It starts raining. A big hard drop falls on the table. Another one on her shoulder.
Evan’s shoes rattle on the drive gravel. Vera counts. Her heart beats with the rhythm of his steps. One, two, three…seven. Evan is out on the street. He has gone.
7With numb fingers Vera opens Evan’s envelope. His drawings. Dozens of them, collected through the years, mostly in dark colours. With an uncertain hand Evan has drawn balloons and an image of a woman and written ‘Happy Birth Day, Mum!’, but later he has crossed it all with a thick black pencil. Another drawing of a crashed car. It is all black – the car, the trees, the sun. Only the spot next to the car is in red.
Vera opens the letter from Martin. He does…did understand her…
It starts raining. One drop on the table, one on her shoulder. In minutes the rain turns to hail. The first piece of ice, big and hard as a pebble, hits the window. It is a sharp and sudden blow. Her shoulders shudder in cold and fear, and pain. A small woman in a big cruel world.
Vera presses the envelopes to her chest and rushes indoors. The wind gusts from north. It knocks over the garden table and chairs, and piles them against the hedge like a forgotten wreck.
© 2026 Homo Ignoramus. All rights reserved