Patricia was in a good mood today, and for that she was immensely grateful. It’s not so much that she was ever a particularly sour person, but when you were married to a man such as Chadwick, days grew tired, and optimism was often hard to come by. Today, though, she was excited. She was on her way to collect Charlie from school, with a bag full of goodies to surprise him with. See, as much Charlie was loving his new adventures at school (he often claimed that his teacher – a stout man with horn rimmed glasses and a curly moustache – was ‘not as cute as Prestie but much much nicer than daddy’), he knew he was even more excited about the fast approach of Easter. Not because they were a particularly religious family – indeed, they weren’t at all – but because a girl in his class had introduced him to the idea of Easter Eggs. Patricia hadn’t met the culprit just yet, but Charlie had been talking up and down, back and forth, over the hills and far far away about his new friend Grace, and Patricia couldn’t wait to surprise him with a chocolate bunny for himself, and one for his friend, too. She’d also gathered a collection of different sweets, too, for herself and Charlie to share over movies and adventures over the coming weeks, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t dying to dive into multipack of Cadbury’s mini eggs she’d acquired.
That said, she knew she was running just a little late to pick him up – timekeeping was fine until you found yourself in an aisle full of chocolatey goods and not an ounce of self-control to claim for yourself – and by the time she scurried through the gates, there was only a couple of children still waiting.
Of course, Charlie didn’t seem to have a single care in the world, and Patricia grinned as she spotted him, sitting on a bench with his teacher and a sweet little redhead, the three of them chatting and giggling amongst themselves. Charlie often found it hard to open himself up to men, finding them untrustworthy, and she knew he’d had a hard time fitting in with the other boys in his class. It had come as no surprise to her that he’d grown fond of some of the girls he went to school with, but she’d been overjoyed to learn he liked his teacher so much, too.
Just as she was about to make herself known to her son, her entrance was foiled by the sound of bells jangling behind her. Raising an eyebrow in confusion, she barely had a chance to question the noise, when Charlie himself burst into a fit of giggles and jumped to his feet, pointing and laughing with glee.
“Mama, look! Look! He’s got jingles on his jacket and hat is taller than me,” her son cried out, a sentence that did absolutely nothing to ease her confusion.
Baffled, she turned on the spot, her eyes finally landing on the source of the disturbance.
“Blimey, I thought he was exaggerating about the hat, but that thing could give the Empire State Building a run for its money,” she teased, cocking her head to the side as she smiled at the stranger.
