The Comfort Zone

As they approached the centre of town, Jenna glanced at Luke in the back seat. He was hunched over his ipad, stabbing at it with his finger like a bird pecking at a worm. A frown wriggled along his soft, childish forehead as he concentrated on the screen.

“Not far now,” Jenna trilled, the tone of her voice just one pitch above genuine.

Luke didn’t respond, didn’t even look up. The only answer she received was the intermittent shrieks and yelps from the ipad.

They reached the shopping centre and parked the car. As they walked through the car park to the main entrance, Jenna tried to take Luke’s hand. He ripped away from her grasp, growling, "No. I'm not a baby."

Rejection quickly ripened into anger and Jenna stamped ahead of him, calling back, "Fine. Just don’t get lost.”

She marched through the shopping centre, checking occasionally that he was still following her. He was dragging several paces behind her, lazily navigating his way through packs of people without seeming to raise his eyes from his ipad.

They reached Jenna’s favourite department store and she waited for Luke to catch up with her.

“I need to get some things,” she told him. “Can you just wait over there please until I come back?”

She gestured towards a corner of the shop, where a couple of sofas and a coffee table were clustered into a waiting area. Without answering her or looking up, Luke drifted in the direction she had indicated.

She watched him go, biting hard on frustration.

When Steven had told her that Luke would be coming to live with them, she had felt a gentle fluttering of the maternal feelings that she had long ago squashed into a dark corner of her heart. Like animals waking from a long hibernation, these feelings had yawned and stretched, then quickly started to thrive. She had indulged herself with images of stepmotherhood - birthday parties, building sandcastles, baking cookies - swaddling these images with the love that for so many years had had no outlet.

Her hopes had been bruised within days of his arrival and had gradually collapsed over the last three months. Steven had chided her that he was a confused little boy, that it would take time to develop a relationship, but she was pummelled by Luke’s silent rejection. Disappointment had fused with frustration to breed an angry resentment that had rampaged through her heart, recklessly smashing her maternal dreams.

She spent fifteen minutes or so wandering around the shop, picking things up and then putting them down again, finding herself in the food aisle when she was looking for the ladies’ department. She eventually forced herself to concentrate long enough to find what she needed, pay and then walk back to the waiting area.

He wasn’t there. Annoyance tugged at her sleeve. Where was he? Why wouldn’t he listen to her? She glanced around the immediate area, but he was nowhere to be seen. She circled the nearby clothes stands, stomping loops of irritation.

“Luke!” she called. “Where are you? It’s time to go!”

She began zigzagging across the shop floor, peering down aisles, checking mannequin displays, even poking her head into the changing rooms. She called his name over and over, each repetition an angry brick placed on top of the last.

As she was about to take the escalator to the next floor, she was stopped by a sales assistant, polite concern painted prettily across her face with blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick.

“Can I help you madam?”

“I've lost my stepson,” Jenna said, spitting some of her anger at the lady. “I’m really at my wits end with him, he just won’t listen to me.”

The sale assistant touched her arm. “Don’t worry madam, I’ll help you find him. You must be very worried. But I’m sure nothing bad has happened to him.”

Jenna turned sharply to face the lady. Fear crept from the shadows to feed on the force of her anger and then spread, ravenously, through her body. She breathed in sharp gasps of panic, images of birthday parties and sandcastles slapping her in the face.

She clutched the lady’s arm, trying to press the poisonous words back into her body.

"What do you mean?” she said. Why would anything bad have happened to him?"