Hugo Styles

Chapter One

Chapter One

Trying to get your three-year-old son into the car for a three-hour drive is no small feat.  By the time I had made breakfast he had already asked me twenty-five questions.

“Mum, what is toast made out of?”

“Mum, where does Gran live?”

“Mum, how do cars move?”

And by the time I have gotten him to get dressed he’s told me fifty things I didn’t know before.

“Mum, octopuses are kind of mean.”

“You call them chopsticks, but I call them chompsticks because I use them to chomp things.”

“That bug is creepy creepsters. Oh my goodness! I love it.”

When you finally get them into the car and you’re on the outskirts of London and he’s asleep peacefully in the back -  that’s when you can take a moment to appreciate the beautiful human that you grew inside yourself.  Whenever I introduce Hugo to people as my son I can see them doing the math about how old I must have been when I got pregnant. I always feel like saying, “Yes, I was sixteen when I got pregnant. How scandalous.”  But I never do. Eventually you just get used to the side ways looks and the way their mouths form the silent oh when Hugo announces that he’s three.   Amazingly, since I’ve cut my hair shorter I don’t look as young and the looks have actually slowed down a little. I feel like saying, “Ha! Tricked you into thinking I didn’t make a mistake when I was a child.”

But no, I could never call Hugo a mistake. He was never a mistake. He was an accident, yes. He was a life changing, world rocking, and beautiful accident, yes.  He could never be a mistake. 

Sometimes, like now, when I look at him while he is sleeping, and his face is so peaceful, so innocent and vulnerable, I feel the sting of tears.  I always used to say that I wouldn’t be one of those sappy mothers. But oh, my stone walls turns to dust around that little boy.  In that way, he is so much like his father.

We were on our way to Holmes Chapel to see my Grandmother. Hugo has never met her before. She hates London and refuses to go there even to visit and I have refused to go the Holmes Chapel.  There is something about it that brings up memories. It was bad enough that Hugo had to inherit his father’s dusty green eyes and I had to look into them every day. The thought of being in the place where we met, conceived our son, where I fell in love,  it was all too much. It was far easier to just never go there again.  

In reality, it was never going to be that easy.  I think, no I know, that if most people had a baby by an international superstar they would be knocking down his door in a second.  But for me, after I didn’t tell Harry I was pregnant when I first found out, and then he went on X factor, and the rest is, well, history. After I a little bit of success I thought – well I can’t tell him now, what if Hugo ruins this opportunity for him, and then after a lot of success I thought, well I can’t tell him now,  I’ll look like I’m just coming forward because he’s successful. 

And now that Hugo is here all I think about is his wellbeing. What would his life be like? Would Harry even care about the product of a one night stand when he was sixteen? Would he be kind to him? Would he disappoint him?  And then there is the other side the side that keeps me awake at nights and sends a cold knot in to my stomach. What if he hates you for robbing of the chance to meet his father? What if you’re denying him something that he fundamentally needs?  What if you’re doing the wrong thing?

My anxiety only increased every moment the car brought me closer to Holmes Chapel. Harry’s family still lived there. I knew he wouldn’t be there. I knew that he lived in London and even though I lived there too I felt safe because a city of 8.3 million people gives you a kind of secured anonymity that a town of 5,000 just can’t offer you.  I feel like his family will take one look at Hugo with his green eyes and mop of curly brown hair and see the truth.    I had practiced a thousand lies in my mind and none of them sounded any good but the truth seemed to get hitched in my throat somewhere between my heart and my mouth.