"Christ..." came equally deflated response, the last bits of air squeezed from a crumpled balloon as it escaped his lungs. Instantly left Jon feeling a touch headachy from breathlessness, arms and fingers and toes gone all empty and numb. "He never said a word..."
His poor, poor, darling babe, sat in an empty house on a day already prone to loneliness. And Mrs. McLellan, too, continents apart from only sprog with plains of existence forever separating her from the man she’d called husband; father of her child; best friend; lifelong companion. Dawn of enlightenment which made Jon a right selfish tit at the pang and pluck of heartstrings noodling a lamenting harmony for his own mother. Nameless and faceless, Robb at least had known his father, grown up in his shadow with an impatient, naive hope to someday fill patriarchal shoes.
“I’ll be as tall as you are, da’, won’t I?” Jon could just about see that wee nipper behind pinched eyes, nothing but knees and freckled cheeks beaming up at its father. He imagined a bright spring afternoon on Arran, tromping about verdant garden patch with mud suckling and nabbing at the soles of matching wellies.
“Of course you will, son, with a big whiskery beard to tickle-kiss your children!”
And if he was having emotionally-charged fantasy thoughts about a lad and his papa whom he’d never met, could feel physically ill at the best of times caught woolgathering over Her, was there ever a wonder Robb had kept that flappable mouth shut? Such a saint, his better half, no doubt martyring himself as to spare boyfriend the empathy so keenly felt despite best efforts.
“Fuck, he never said a word-” repeated privately at a reflex, “-and I’ve gone and left him with the telly this morning. Blimey, I am so sorry, Mrs. McLellan, I should never have done that.”