Family Matters

It had been seven years since Clive last visited – how would Sandra react?

- AMY FOSTER

HE SWITCHED off the radio when he entered the curling driveway. Something about the crunching of gravel beneath the car tyres soothed him. He felt the anticipation grow as the house rose in front of him.

Suddenly seven years felt like one day. If it hadn’t been for the phone call he’d received yesterday, it could well have been the day before Christmas seven years ago.

As he stood waiting for the door to be opened after ringing the doorbell, he turned and allowed his eyes to take in the once-comforting surroundings now only filling his heart with dread.

The sound of the latch moving in the door behind him made him turn to find a middle-aged woman smiling at him.

“Hi, I’m here to see Sandra. Uhm, Mrs Burnett,” he corrects himself.

The woman stepped aside and replied with a cordial smile, “If you wouldn’t mind waiting in the foyer, sir.”

He entered the more-than-spacious front room and impulsively glanced at the door to his left, their father’s old study. He wondered what Sandra had done to the room.

“Who shall I say is calling, sir?” his thoughts were interrupted.

“Oh, tell her it’s Clive. Townsend if she needs a surname.”

He glanced at the various decorations and listened as the clicking of her heels on the tile floor progressed into silence.

ALTHOUGH he’d spent 23 years of his life living in this house, he now felt like a stranger. He knew every hidden room and cupboard, every doorframe his mother had leant against for support, every space that became a fantasy world when reality drove him and his sister there.