Another Paradise | T Shelby

TWENTY - A SUMMER'S MORNING

"Do you think Daddy will ever get a big picture of you on the wall? You know like the one we have of my Mummy?"

Blair was taken aback by Charlie's question that morning. They had been playing outside together since just after nine o'clock, kicking a football to each other for over an hour.

It was a Saturday, but Tommy had been working down in London the past two nights and wasn't due back home until later on that afternoon, leaving Blair and Charles to spend the first morning of the weekend together without him.

Blair had grown somewhat used to Charles asking questions like that out of the blue, but the emotional depth of them always seemed to stun her. It made her wonder what else was occupying his growing mind all the time to prompt him to ask such questions.

"I'm not sure, Charlie. Maybe one day."

The child sat down on the grass, unscrewing the lid on a flask filled with water and pouring himself a cup, Blair sitting down beside him, sighing in delight at the warmth of the sun on her skin.

"I think you should. I used to think Daddy was talking to Mummy sometimes, after she was gone. He had a picture in his office that he'd look at and talk to, I only saw when I had to get up for a drink in the night. I looked at the picture one day when he wasn't there, that's when I saw that it wasn't her, it was you."

Blair swallowed, pursing her lips as she stared out at the endless green beyond the gardens of the estate, the sky disappearing over the tops of hills in the distance.

She wondered if Charlie felt sadness about his father loving a woman that wasn't his mother, the things he told her making even her feel guilty for taking on a role that wasn't hers. Blair didn't want to replace Charles' mother, as much as the woman had replaced her once upon a time, a mother was a mother, and she was Charlie's, even if she wasn't still around.

Blair knew Charles told her things with innocence, but the weight of his stories played heavily on her mind. She wondered just how long Thomas would spend talking to a photograph of her after the death of his wife, and what it was he'd say. There was no way for Thomas to know whether Blair was dead or alive at the time, and she wondered whether he'd sit and think about what she was doing and where she was in the same way that she'd spared those thoughts on him.

"Do you and Daddy talk about your Mummy often, Charlie?" Blair asked.

He shrugged his shoulders, "We used to. He'd show me pictures of her and tell me stories to make sure I don't forget about her. We don't do that anymore, though."

"And how does that make you feel?"

Blair felt a sudden guilt, terrified at the thought of her arrival into their lives being the reason Thomas stopped talking to his son about his late mother.

Charlie tilted his head, holding his hand above his eyes to block the sun, "I don't mind. I remember everything he's told me and I see her picture on the wall by the stairs every day. I'm just glad that you're here, Blair, you remind me of her a lot."

As painful as it might've been to be compared to the woman Thomas had left her for, it was equally as heart-warming to hear that she was doing a good enough job at loving Charlie to hold even a small flame to his actual mother.

All Blair wanted to do was shower the child in love, give him everything that she would've given her own child if the world played a different hand. She knew Thomas wasn't the most natural father in the world, but she was trying her hardest to help the two of them bond properly. Seeing a father and a son have a loving relationship was something she'd dreamt about Jamie having with their child before the path changed, and now knowing just how precious a child was, Blair was determined to make sure Thomas didn't regret not relishing in every moment he had with his own.