More Today than Yesterday

Best of Friends

Benedict Bridgerton, or Ben as he was sometimes called, was almost done unpacking from the trip back home when he heard the ring of his doorbell. He checked his watch for the time and as he began to make his way to the door, he wondered briefly who it could be this late in the evening.

He opened the door to find his best friend, whom he had said goodbye to in the taxi not an hour earlier, standing with the same bag she had used for their trip.

It looked a lot like it did just a week earlier when they had set out for the train station, but with three differences; firstly it was evening, not morning, so it was a bit darker, secondly it was raining, but the most important difference was that this time around she was not smiling and it was obvious that she had been crying.

"Can I stay with you for a while?" was the only thing Sophie said to him before starting to sob, her voice trembled with sadness and her eyes were pleading for his help.

~*~

Roughly Twenty-Five years earlier, on the fourth of July, Violet Bridgerton gave birth to her second son Benedict. Violet was a secretary at the law firm her husband Edmund owned. Twenty days later, on the 24th July, all three of them were back at the hospital to share in the birth of Sophie Marie Gunningworth.

Sophie's mother, Elizabeth, was a dance teacher, and her father, Richard, was a mechanic.

Edmund and Richard had been best friends since the first years of school and now lived next to each other in the same town they grew up in. Their wives quickly became friends, even best friends, and when they became pregnant at the nearly same time, Violet for the second, Elizabeth for the first, it was clear that the two families would never drift apart.

The hedges between their two back gardens were removed shortly after the birth of their children. It had been at the request of the two new mothers, who had grown tired of having to walk around it carrying their newborns.

Richard and Edmund had protested at first since they had loved standing on either side of it with a beer talking to each other, but once their wives had pointed out that they could just put up a table or leave a little of it standing, they got their shovels and got to work. While they worked they talked, trying to figure out how their wives always ended up getting their way.

As Ben and Sophie learned to crawl, their fathers quickly forgot about standing on either side of a bush, since sitting together looking at the children playing on the grass was much better. In fact it became their favourite thing to do on the weekends for the first few years even as Violet's brood continued to grow, Elizabeth was told after losing her second child 20 weeks into her pregnancy that she wouldn't have anymore children, she never harbour any ill will and she was godmother to the rest of the Bridgerton brood and they were all her surrogate children.

Violet and Elizabet had never wanted to squander their precious time talking over a hedge, but preferred a quick cup of coffee or talking over a dinner, found the time to just watch what they loved more than anything, playing in the sun.

Most of the photographs either family took at that time were of the children playing together in the garden.

All too quickly the garden became too small to hold the growing children and instead of crawling on the grass they began chasing each other on two feet, rarely without also showing the world just how much noise two children can make when they are having fun.

Ben and Sophie still ran around the garden when they played catch, but also everywhere else they had access to, be it either house or in the surrounding fields and forest, so it was no longer possible to sit and watch the children for hours.