Modern Life Short Story: The Way It Was

MODERN LIFE SHORT STORY BY DELLA GALTON

Everything had changed since Danny and I went to Tenerife…

Hey, what’s this?” It’s dim along the edge of the towpath, but I can just make out Jason’s curly dark head bent over something in the bushes just up ahead.

“Leave it alone, love,” I call out. “It could be any old rubbish.”

He’s eight, so my warnings fall on deaf ears.

He’s still rummaging when I catch up with him.

“It’s an old photo album,” he says triumphantly, dragging it out into the daylight so I can see.

“A wet photo album,” I remark.

“You’re so unimaginative, Mum. In here is somebody’s life.”

My eternally curious son unpeels the first few pages, which are empty, apart from a few sodden leaves.

Disappointment grows on his face.

Then he gets to the middle section and his persistence is rewarded.

The photos are long – the kind that give you a panoramic view of things. In this case, it’s the sea.

A turquoise sea, somewhere that’s obviously not England.

Cliffs rise in the background, dark and brooding.

There is a beach with volcanic grey sand and a girl.

She is wearing an orange wrap over a tiny bikini and has straight, blonde hair.

She is smiling directly into the camera.

“Cool,” Jason says. “What do you think, Mum? Is it Spain?”

I shake my head.

“No, I don’t think so.”

But as I speak, a little shiver of recognition runs down my back.

It’s somewhere Jason’s father and I once visited before Jason was born.

“Tenerife, I think. Or somewhere like that.”

Although my voice is casual, I know it’s Tenerife.

I remember another photo, taken in almost exactly the same spot.

Later, at home, when Jason is engrossed in his phone, I slope off up to the loft.

It takes ages, but finally I find them – a pile of dusty old albums of pictures of our life before Jason was born.

I find Corfu first, with its olive groves and half-built white hotels and blazing hot beaches.

Then there’s Scotland, with its cool, dark green forests.

The island of Alderney is next, where Danny and I sat inside the walled garden of a pub, a suntrap of a garden with tropical plants climbing over the walls.

We could only afford to go further afield than England every two or three years – on special occasions.

Finally, I find Tenerife.

There’s a beach with volcanic grey sand, cliffs rising sharply beyond.

A girl in a red dress is smiling directly into the camera.

Me. We were on our honeymoon.

A time before Jason came along and mortgages and all the other domestic bliss that slowly became routine.

I look back at the photo. It’s important because of the smile on my face.

It’s a smile of pure joy.

When this photo was first taken, Danny carried a smaller version of it in his wallet.

I love this picture

he once told me. “You look so happy.”

The memory of his words brings a tightness to my throat because it seems that those times are gone.

We don’t talk the way we did when our relationship was young.

Somehow, those days slipped away.

They got buried beneath housework, school runs, all the nine to five routines we once said we’d never have.

We were so determined to hold on to the romance no matter what.

When did it slip away?

I get up stiffly, leaving the dusty albums where they are.

The photograph, though, is in my pocket.

Maybe later I will show Danny.

The front door slams and Danny comes into the hallway, stamping the dust of the roads from his feet.

He’s been doing overtime again. He never says no when it’s available.

“I haven’t started tea yet.”

I feel a prickle of guilt, having been in the past all afternoon instead of the kitchen.

“No worries – I’ll have a beer.”

“I don’t like those new fish cakes,” Jason says from the doorway.

I wonder how he can say something so ordinary when this morning he thought an empty photograph album was a reflection of somebody’s life.

I think that maybe we used to be like him before we got sucked into everyday routines.

The sort with dusty boots and fish cakes that nobody likes.

Danny comes back into the kitchen and clinks his glass of beer on the side so that some of the froth spills across the work surface.

“Danny,” I say automatically as I turn on the air fryer.

“Sorry, love.” He mops it up with his elbow and grins at me.

In my pocket, the photo of me as a young girl with dreams in her eyes burns.

I want to take it out and show him, but I’m scared.

Have those days really gone? Have we really changed so much?

In the end, I leave the photo casually by the kettle.

Machines bleep, telling me food is cooked.

I’m vaguely aware of Danny moving across the kitchen.

He stares down at the photo, a half frown on his face.

I pretend not to see. Maybe we won’t have tea on trays tonight.

Maybe we’ll sit at the table like we used to do. Be a proper little family.

Danny rummages for something in his wallet.

Eventually he finds it – a tattered, dog-eared picture of a girl in a red dress.

He holds it up.

“Snap,” he says.

There’s something in his face that makes my throat ache. Something from long ago.

“Can I have sausages instead, Mum?” Jason asks from over his shoulder.

I nod to both of them. And I realise those times aren’t gone forever.

We still feel the same, but maybe we’re out of practice at putting our feelings into words.

We both adore Jason, and we still love each other. I’m sure we do.

Then Danny hugs me.

There’s dust in his hair, and I think that a speck of it must get in my eye because suddenly I have to wipe away a tear.

I turn away before anyone can see.

That night, as I slide between the cool sheets beside my husband, I touch his arm.

“Danny, are you happy?”

“What kind of a question is that? Of course I am.”

He turns to look at me.

Suddenly the tears are back, and this time I can’t seem to stop them.

“Amy, love, what is it?”

“Nothing,” I sob into his shoulder.

“It must be something. You’ve been acting funny since you found that photograph.”

“When I was young and pretty.”

“You’re still young and pretty.”

“I’m fatter.”

“Don’t talk rubbish.” He kisses my nose.

It’s high time we went back to Tenerife.

“We could afford a classier hotel now, too.”

“Could we?”

“You don’t think I’ve been doing all this overtime for nothing, do you? We haven’t been abroad for ages.”

I smile through my tears.

“We could ask Jason what he fancies, too. He’s old enough to have a say in where we go. He might not want to go to Tenerife.”

Danny nods thoughtfully.

“I’ll look online tomorrow. We might be able to book something for half-term if we’re lucky.”

Three weeks later we are sitting on the sun terrace of an apartment in Los Cristianos.

Jason had been really keen on Tenerife.

“I want to see black sand,” he said firmly. “And I want to see somewhere you went before I was born.”

“It’ll have changed,” I told him, laughing.

But it hasn’t changed much.

There are a few more apartment blocks than I remember.

The gleaming, white buildings extend slightly further along the coast, but the tourist part of Los Cristianos seems much the same.

Tiled pedestrian precincts are dotted with palm trees and lined with shops selling lace tablecloths, T-shirts and jewellery.

We spend the first few days exploring the beach closest to our apartment or relaxing by the pool.

On the third day we take the chair lift up Mount Teide.

It’s a mountain so high it affects the climate – the north of the island is a verdant green and the south is arid and hot.

Today, the sky is cerulean blue.

It’s odd, going from the hot sun at the base of the lift to the chilly heights at the top of the mountain.

Snow lies in patches across the black rocks, testimony to how high we are.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Danny says, asking a passer-by to take a picture of the three of us in the snow with our shorts on.

“I think I’d be more worried if there wasn’t any snow,” I say. “It might mean the mountain was heating up – you do know it’s a volcano, don’t you?”

“So it might explode at any moment?” Jason asks, wide-eyed. “That’s pretty cool.”

“I’d quite like this volcano to remain dormant for a bit longer, thank you very much,” Danny says.

We laugh and take more pictures on our phones.

It feels amazing being here with my son and my husband, the two people I love most in the world.

I wonder how I could ever have doubted that I was happy.

Back home a week later, we look at the photos on the family laptop.

“There’s a lot of pictures of sand,” I say curiously, as Jason scrolls through the selection he took.

“I wanted to show my mates how black it was. I thought they might not believe it if I didn’t take loads.”

“Forty-two.” Danny raises his eyebrows and we exchange smiles. “Not that I’m counting.”

Danny’s photos are mostly of places, too: Mount Teide, our pretty apartment, and the restaurant where we had lunch on the last day.

Mine are mostly of people: Danny and Jason snorkelling, Danny and Jason sitting on the terrace in the apartment, the two of them paddling, us all in the chair lift.

Rather to my disappointment, the pictures I took by the pool aren’t as good as they’d looked on my phone.

Their faces are so shadowed you can hardly see them.

The photos on Mount Teide are the best, and the one of us in the snow that the passer-by took is the best of all.

Jason’s in the middle and we have our arms around him.

All three of us are smiling.

“That one’s great.” Danny peers over my shoulder. “I think I might have a print made for my wallet.”

“We could get a bigger print to go in a frame on the kitchen wall,” I suggest.

“Good idea.” He scans the wall, which is dotted with pictures of Jason growing up. “We don’t have enough of the three of us.

“We should get more printed out instead of leaving them on our phones.