The Oldest Friend

As she entered the room, she couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen it this bare. Not since moving in, she thought to herself. Boxes piled high at either side of the huge bay window, where pink curtains and a white lace window blind had once hung. She could see more carpet than she’d ever known existed in her room, and the only things left on the wall were the greasy marks left behind by years of blu-tac hung posters, that were now all in the recycling bin.

Her laundry basket was empty; her chest of drawers was empty; her wardrobe was empty. The clothes that had survived her mass clear-out were bundled into two bin-liners, and next to those sat a box full of the books she’d decided to keep. Every worksheet, school report, revision sheet and essay she’d ever gained from her eighteen years in education had been taken to the dump, never to be thought of again.

The only things that remained of her time there were the bare duvet, pillows and mattress on top of the mock-oak Queen-sized bed frame. Even the bedding sets had been stripped away for her to take away. Her bedding box sat empty and naked at the bottom of the bed that used to be her own.

Sian was moving out.

Through five years of growing up and nursery, seven years of primary school, five years of secondary school, two years of college, two of her four years of university, and two years previous to all of that, this had been her home, her room, her sanctuary.

As her parents and siblings wandered in and out, fulfilling their part of the job by removing the boxes she had packed single-handedly, Sian wandered around the room that looked bigger and bigger the emptier it got.

The boxes gone, there was only one item left that Sian would be taking with her, no matter how embarrassing it seemed or how hilarious her younger brother found it.

Atop the pillows on her side of the bed sat a ragged old stuffed cow.

Sian sat at the edge of her bed and turned to face her toy. She picked him up and sat him on her knee, playing with his little stuffed hooves. She smiled as she made him wave at her, the stitched smile on his cotton face one of the most permanent things in her life so far.

Fobble was as old as she was, and she couldn’t remember a single day in her life where she hadn’t looked at him. Most of those days, she’d made his little stuffed hooves move in some way, and a lot of the sad day’s she’d experienced, he had been the one she’d squeezed to make her feel better.

The story went that her dad had bought him from a duty free at the airport in Newcastle when he’d received word that his wife had gone into labour. By that technicality, Fobble was seventeen hours older than Sian. She smiled at the idea.

He’d had his little ears and horns chewed by baby and toddler versions of Sian; even his hooves and snout hadn’t been able to escape the wrath of her gums and milk teeth. She had never needed a teething ring – Fobble had always been on the case.

He’d been through the washing machine more often than any of Sian’s clothing. She used to take him nearly everywhere she went; he’d been covered in mud from the garden, covered in paint from school, covered in saliva from her chewing. No wonder he was looking so tattered and abused.

He’d been thrown off the bed and walls more times than Sian could count, mostly because he was usually the closest thing to hand that wasn’t stupidly expensive. Because of this, there were many part of him that’d had to be re-stitched and re-patched by her much more sewing-able mother.

He’d been with her through more things than Sian dared to admit. He’d been the one she’d cuddled those nights before big exams, the nights before results day, the nights of her grandparents funerals, the night she’d had fights with people. Through all of this, most of the fluff inside him had been either pushed up or pushed down; his head lolled vaguely on his shoulders, his neck practically stuffing free.

Sian held Fobble close to her.

This stuffed cow meant more to her than most people did. She was ashamed to find that he was her most prized possession, her most beloved friend and the only stuffed animal she’d ever owned because she’d never had an interest in any others.

Here she was, hurtling towards the tender age of twenty-five, and still cradling her childhood toy like a toddler would and reminiscing about all the times they’d shared. Fobble was her biggest confidant and always would be, wherever she went.

She would never let him go.