OLD WIVES TALE (One)

A short story.

Of course Jenny knew it was an Old Wives Tale.    

So why was she standing on the other side of the canal staring across at the tree?   

Jenny shook her head and smiled at what remained of hundreds of scraps of paper pinned to the peeling trunk.  Stuff and nonsense.   

Robbie would be in from school soon.  She hadn’t even made his lunch yet.  Every day she gave him money for school dinners. Every day he brought the money back home. 

He was so like her at his age.  She remembered how her mother had despaired of her.

‘You’ve got to make the effort. You’ve got to talk.’

All the way through Primary School she’d hugged the corner of the playground in silence.

Jenny stood before the tree holding onto the piece of paper in her fist. 

Ten minutes and Robbie would be walking sullenly through their back door. He would sit and watch cartoons and not say a word, waiting until the very last minute before crossing the road to the school.  And like every day she would watch him walk alone into the mass of chattering schoolchildren.  His head down, bumped and buffeted, as the other children pushed past him.

She shivered as she remembered.

Jenny pinned the note on the tree.

She wouldn’t tell her husband or anyone or it wouldn’t work.  That was the rule.

She turned and headed home. 

She reached her back door as the school bell sounded. 

She didn’t make any lunch.

She waited.