That Sort Of Thing

I was forty-seven when I felt my first real hug. Not the stiff kind you endure at weddings or funerals — all elbows and air. A real one. The kind that melts something inside you that you didn’t even know had hardened.

Until then, I’d never let anyone get too close. Not even my children. I held them, fed them, rocked them — but I didn’t hug them. Not really.

I raised them well. Mostly alone. But always at arm’s length.

I couldn’t give them the touch they needed.

Not after…

That sort of thing.

Then one day a hug came along and cracked my prison open — just enough to let in a little light. Enough to make me think there might be something worth loving.

**

This morning, I open my bedside drawer to check the letter is still there. The fourth time today. Since it dropped through the letterbox last week, I’ve memorised every stroke of Amy’s neat handwriting. She’s written to me for more than forty years – letters, never emails. I’ve never had much time for computers — I try for my daughter’s sake.

I keep Amy’s letters tied with ribbon, tucked beside the tiny knitted clothes from when my children were small. Her latest letter gives me a date for her visit.

The last time she came back to her hometown was for her mother’s funeral. I was miles away then, travelling with my dear friend Ernie — gone now — on a late-life adventure.

Amy was glad I’d found happiness.

Sad we’d missed each other.

My daughter must have told her about my health. I wouldn’t have wanted to trouble her.

Not with…

That sort of thing.

**

I can still picture her mother, Theresa. Bright, quick, full of life — the closest thing I ever had to a best friend.

Over teacups in her kitchen, we’d laugh like guilty teenagers, as if the walls might whisper our secrets. I brought my fairy cakes — wings made of iced sponge — mostly for her eldest, Amy, who adored them.

When Theresa’s husband, Paul, lost another job, the whole house dimmed. Dark circles under Theresa’s eyes, Paul pacing underfoot. Yet she always welcomed me in. They both did.

**

Amy was a thoughtful child — always reading, always dreaming of university. I saw in her a version of myself — the one pushed off course before it began.

I’m not proud of it, but she seemed to be everything my daughter Sally wasn’t. And Sally was determined to be everything I wasn’t.

Hard to blame her, considering my silence about…

That sort of thing.

**

After visiting Theresa, I’d return to an empty house.

My sons were grown; Sally spent every hour with the boyfriend I wasn’t supposed to know about. The TV filled the quiet. Memories hung in corners like dried-out moths. My husband’s snooker trophies collected dust — I kept them so the children wouldn’t think I was bitter.

Truth was, I didn’t miss him. I’d never given him what he wanted in “that way,” and he never cared enough to ask why. Not when it came to…

That sort of thing.

**

“Sounds like your husband didn’t know how to show affection,” Theresa once said when I hinted at my marriage and my childhood.

I told her my family didn’t “do hugs.”

Not…

That sort of thing.

But she saw through it.

Because the truth was this: my father, after a skinful, beat my mother — and worse. Behind closed doors. Behind silence.

**

When Mum was out and I heard his step on the landing…

The sickly yellow flecks in his green eyes. If I didn’t look, maybe it wasn’t happening.

Shame worn like a hair shirt.

The girl I’d been — dissected, thrown away.

That sort of thing.

**

Even now, lying here, I hear old conversations replay.

Mum mocked for being a woman.

“What’s wrong with you? Got the curse?”

Why didn’t she leave? But where could she have gone?

The curse.

Woman gone wrong.

Something to hide.

That sort of thing.

**

My brothers played football in the yard the first time the pain came. I hid in the bathroom, crying quietly. When I stumbled out, Mum guided me to her room, returned with a hot water bottle and a paper bag. In it, pads with little loops. “Your secret’s safe,” the box said.

Another secret.

Another lie.

“You’re a woman now,” Mum said. “You can grow babies. So be careful with boys. Keep your distance.”

A quick pat on the knee.

“No need to tell your brothers. You’ll get used to it. That’s how it is with…”

“With what?”

“That sort of thing.”

For one moment, I felt she might have loved me if life had been kinder to her.

But by then it was far too late. Brenda, the girl, no longer existed.

**

Years later, Amy turned up at my door in tears — dishevelled, shaken. Always so self-assured until that day.

Without thinking — despite how much I hated being touched — I pulled her close. I expected to flinch, feel the old panic rise, but instead I felt her shaking against me. Solid warmth. For the first time in forty-seven years, I didn’t want to let go.

“He shoved me,” she said. “I got between him and Mum. They act happy for visitors, but behind closed doors…” She trailed off.

“Oh, my poor Amy.” We sat on my old leather settee. She sipped tea.

“You make it just how I like it,” she said.

Other people’s tea always tastes better.

“You won’t tell anyone I came?”

“I won’t breathe a word.”

“I want to go to university,” she whispered. “I want a way out.”

My inner voice — the one buried for decades — rose up:

“Don’t do what I did, Amy. Don’t let anyone destroy your dreams.”

“I won’t,” she said.

**

The last time I saw her before today, she was climbing the grassy verge to catch the train to her new life.

“I won’t come in, Brenda. It’ll be too hard.”

“I understand.”

And I hugged her, letting her go as if hundreds of tiny daggers were being drawn from my heart.

**

Her leaving spurred me on. When Sally found herself expecting a baby, I wanted to do things differently. And when my granddaughter was born, I felt joy I hadn’t known before. I found I loved holding her. Imagine that.

**

Now there’s a knock at the door — my heart knocking with it.

“There’s a lady to see you,” my carer says, eyes smiling above her mask. “Very smart. Important-looking.”

“Amy?”

“She said that was her name.”

“Bring her up. And offer tea. Medium. Not too much milk. No sugar. And don’t forget the fairy cakes — she’ll be hungry after the journey.”

**

The woman at the door has the same warmth she had as a child. Blonde hair clipped back neatly. Senior lawyer, now. No children, but I don’t recall her wanting them.

The daffodils in her hands are bright as small suns. New beginnings, even if not for me.

My carer takes the flowers, gives my hand a gentle squeeze before leaving us. I don’t flinch.

“Amy,” I say.

She steps forward. I open my arms.

She hugs me tightly, and for a moment the years fall away — all the silence, all the fear, all the things never said. Through Amy, I’ve learned something about letting go, and how love — real, steady love — can reach even the deepest wounds.

As I dip, she will soar.

And I will be glad.

The sort of thing that saves us.