‘How are you feeling now?’ Cameron asked, handing Nancy a drink. She looked up from her seat, smiling weakly at him. She didn’t answer his question; she didn’t know what to say. ‘Don’t beat yourself up over it; honestly, he’s absolutely fine now, isn’t he?’
She looked over to Jack. He was sat on a chair next to Aiden who was busy doing something with the cakes and biscuits on the table. Jack had his back to her so she couldn’t see his face, but she could tell he was on his iPad. As usual, always on that damn iPad. Frustration from the whole situation seeped into her mood.
‘I know it’s easy for me to say and I know no amount of words will change how you feel but please don’t beat yourself up – you’re doing a great job with Jack. I have only known you a few days but already I can tell this.’
‘You’re just trying to get in my good books with your compliments again.’
‘You mean because you yelled at me.’ She looked at him and he smirked, drinking his drink and looking at her over the top of the glass, eyes creased in a smile.
She felt embarrassed as she recalled the moment. ‘I’m sorry for shouting at you.’
He held up his hand. ‘It’s fine – you were stressed.’
‘No it’s not fine; I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I just…’ She hesitated. ‘I just feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.’
‘But you do.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I really don’t. I start to feel like I am getting a grip on this bloody condition and then he has a moment like that and I feel helpless. I can’t do anything and most of the time I seem to make it worse and that absolutely kills me.’ She exhaled. ‘I really felt I’d made progress over this holiday. He spoke to Aiden, he was doing things socially that he had never done before and especially after our first day when he kicked off at the kids’ club – I thought we had cracked it.’ She sipped her drink. ‘And then this happens and I feel like I’m back to square one.’
‘That’s not fair, he has made progress. You’re focusing on the negatives because of what just happened. You’re stressed and so it all looks bleak to you but trust me, he’s doing great.’
‘Is he? I don’t feel like he is.’
‘Look at him now – what’s he doing?’
She felt the disappointment settle in her stomach. ‘He’s playing on his iPad – again!’ As much as she realised that was his thing – that he found comfort in the things he could do on there and it was his type of escapism – she so desperately wished that he would put more time into interacting socially.
‘Yes, he’s on his iPad but he’s sitting next to Aiden and they are talking – look.’
She glanced over to him again and Cameron was right, he was talking to Aiden. He wasn’t looking at him, but he was clearly talking. ‘Well, we assume he’s talking to Aiden, he could just be talking himself through whatever game he is playing at the moment – neither of them are actually looking at each other, Cameron.’
‘That’s true, but come on, it’s definitely progress, and you can’t deny that hey?’ She shrugged. ‘What are you afraid of?’
She didn’t look at him, her gaze fixed on the back of Jack’s head. ‘That I will fail him as a parent. That I won’t be able to make anything better for him and he will suffer when he gets to adulthood because I won’t have prepared him adequately for the real world when he doesn’t have me behind him every step of the way.’
‘That’s quite a list.’ This time she did look at him and he was smiling at her. ‘You are doing the best job that you can.’
‘But it’s not enough, Cameron. Today just proves that. It’s not enough to just try and see what happens. He is struggling and I don’t know what to do to help him.’
‘Have you got help or support back home? The school? Consultants? Friends?’
She shrugged. ‘I have Harriet. The school aren’t being very supportive so I think I’m going to have to look into either changing him – which will be horrendous for him to experience – or discussing options with them on a more serious level.’
‘Then do that. Arrange the meeting and lay it on the line for them. You are entitled to help.’
‘I know but it’s not as straightforward as that, there are so many boundaries and challenges and rules when it comes to education and additional needs. I feel lost when I try and decipher it all. All the words sound like a foreign language to me. And I feel like I should know it all and that I’m letting him down by not equipping myself better but it’s just so hard to do it alone.’ Anger at Pete leaving reared its ugly head again. She was forced to think about what would happen when they got home. Would Pete decide to turn up again? She really hoped not. Up until this holiday she had been desperate for Pete to show up and own up to his responsibilities. Why should she have to deal with it all alone when Jack was his son too? But now her anger had converted to determination to succeed in spite of him walking away. If he showed up now, when they got home, she wasn’t 100 per cent sure she would even answer the door to him.
Cameron nodded. ‘I don’t doubt for a second that it is hard. Being a single parent is no picnic.’
Nancy felt a twinge of guilt. ‘I’m sorry, here I am ranting about it all and you’ve got your own issues to be dealing with. I shouldn’t be unloading all of this on you too.’ She tried to swallow down the torment that was twisting inside her stomach at the prospect of going home tomorrow and still not being any further along with knowing what to do for Jack.
‘Oh, be quiet! I would rather you talk about this than bottle it up and while I can’t help with things on the autistic side of things, I can be here as a friend to support you when you’re feeling low.’
‘You don’t have to do that, its fine.’
‘Nancy, stop pushing help away.’ His voice was firm but friendly.
‘I’m not. I’m just saying I don’t want to ruin your holiday by being a moaning myrtle.’
‘You could never pull off being a myrtle – you’re too pretty.’ She blushed at his compliment and laughed a little. ‘There we go, that’s better. It’s nice to see that smile back again. I was worried it had disappeared for good.’
She looked over to the table where Jack and Aiden were. ‘So what exactly are they doing?’
Cameron shifted in his chair and used his hand to gesture over to the board on the far side. ‘Well over on that board is a picture of some structures; a house, a skyscraper, a bridge and a statue. And the children have to use the ingredients they have in front of them to either recreate one of them or design a new one.’
She craned her neck to try and see what was on the tables.
‘It looks like they have cake cut offs, biscuits, icing to use as glue, various sweets and chocolates to decorate … I don’t even know what those long things are but I’m guessing they’re edible.’
‘Maybe you can try one first,’ she said and he poked his tongue out at her. She sat up straight and looked over at Aiden’s creation and gasped. ‘Oh my God have you seen what Aiden’s doing? His structure is amazing!’
Cameron peered over, ‘so it is. They’re doing well – what a team.’
Nancy looked at Jack with his head still in the iPad. ‘Well, I think Jack might just be there as moral support but as you say, at least he is sitting next to Aiden and the two of them have exchanged words so what more could I ask for, hey?’ She smiled to try and make her comment more relaxed, but she was hiding her disappointment. She so desperately wanted Jack to enjoy tasks like this and to engage with something where he had to work as a team, and she really thought this would be right up his street because it was building, creating structures. It couldn’t have been more suited to his interests. But teamwork and social skills were not his thing and maybe that was why he had pulled back. She just had to accept that.
After what felt like hours but was, as they were told by the event leader, just twenty minutes, the children were asked to step away from their sculptures so that the judges could go round and inspect them. It was a brutal process. The guy judging it was a tall man in a suit with a stern face. He looked to be better placed in a Michelin star restaurant giving the chef a mouthful for not providing food worthy enough for the Queen – not judging a children’s baking competition at a holiday resort.
As he approached Aiden’s table, Nancy noticed that Jack had lowered his iPad and was listening to what the man was saying. ‘Aw that’s sweet,’ she said, leaning over to Cameron. ‘Jack’s interested in how Aiden is doing – look how intently he’s listening to that guy.’ She felt a bolt of happiness hit her as she saw his engagement with something his friend had done. Maybe Cameron was right, maybe he had made progress, she was just too close to see it.
Aiden stepped to the side and Nancy and Cameron were able to see the true grandeur of his creation. They stood up and went over to have a closer look as the judge moved on to the next table.
‘Wow Aiden, this is awesome.’ Nancy took in the structure. She could see immediately what he had chosen to do – it was a bridge. And not just any bridge, it was the Queen Elizabeth bridge. He had all of the different elements covered, each section looking like a scaled down version of the real thing. He had put all the pillars in and some railings and even the wires. ‘Matchmakers – that’s what those stick things are,’ she said, laughing and pointing them out to Cameron. ‘Can you believe he did this? And look, the attention to detail is incredible, those dots for the nuts and bolts and that little gate there which I’m assuming is some sort of emergency exit gate thing.’
‘Actually, it’s there for the workers so they can access it.’ Nancy and Cameron both looked over to Jack, surprised at his sudden input.
‘Jack is the ideas man.’ Their attention went back to Aiden. ‘He created the design and I made it – we worked together.’
‘Hey that’s great – good work boys.’ Cameron looked at Nancy. ‘Isn’t that great?’ he prompted, obviously noticing her confused expression.
‘Show them, Jack,’ Aiden said excitedly.
Jack stood up and gave his iPad to Nancy, swiping the screen to light it up.
Nancy felt a sudden rush of emotion as the screen displayed what could only be described as a to-scale in-depth drawing of the QE2 Bridge. Jack had used an app on there to design it to scale, adding diagrams, labels and various different points of review to work out how they would do it with the materials they had.
‘Oh my God,’ she breathed, unable to contain the tears that sprung to her eyes. ‘Jack’
‘Mummy, do you like it?’ His little face looking up at her waiting for a reaction. ‘Are you sad?’
‘No baby, I’m not sad.’ She sniffed.
‘Mummy is very happy, sometimes people cry when they are happy,’ Cameron said, putting his arm around her shoulder and squeezing it gently.
‘Jack, show me that other part you did, I want to check that I did it right.’ Jack walked over to the table and handed Aiden his iPad.
‘Here.’ Cameron gave her a tissue. ‘You OK?’
‘He helped,’ she squeaked.
‘He more than helped, Nancy, he was the mastermind behind the design. You have a very talented son there.’ Cameron’s smile was as big as Nancy’s.
‘I thought he was playing on his iPad because he wasn’t interested.’ She breathed, unable to believe what had just happened.
‘He was working as a team – design and construction. They work well together, don’t they?’ Nancy nodded and wiped her face with the tissue. Maybe he was making more progress than she gave him credit for. Maybe she needed to accept that he was allowed to have setbacks because he was still moving forward in between them.