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‘Don’t you get it? Our son is in danger. That man has got to him.’ She holds out her phone and plays Nick’s message. It is heartbreaking. Tears come to Robert’s eyes.

‘This is your fault. You have done this!’ He spits the words at her and she turns away, but he carries on. ‘I don’t recognize you any more. What did you expect?’ He pulls her round so she is facing him.

‘Are you surprised he’s upset? The lies, all the lies over the years. It was inevitable he would find out in the end – I just wish it had been me who had told him. You didn’t care about him, did you? You were so caught up with your lover that you left our child alone in the sea when he couldn’t swim. What is he supposed to make of that? He was a kid – you were the adult. You were his mother. You were the one who should have saved him, but you’ve never put him first, have you? It’s always about you!’

She pulls away from him, turning her back, refusing to defend herself. She needs to concentrate on Nick. She can feel Robert’s eyes on her, despising her. She had never expected it to come to this, but she can’t think of that and instead goes through her phone, searching for the number of the local hospital. She calls it, waits for an answer.

‘Hello, I’m trying to track down my son – I’m worried something may have happened to him … he called me very upset … he’s twenty-five … yes, but he has a history of drug problems and he was in a terrible state on the phone … he may have done something to himself … Nicholas Ravenscroft …’ She can tell they’re not interested. A twenty-five-year-old man with a mum phoning to check where he is. It sounds absurd.

She runs upstairs to the spare room. He could be anywhere – any hospital in London – on any train out of London – on any railway line … She calls the police, but they brush her off. Her son is twenty-five. She heard from him two hours ago. Did he say he was going to harm himself? No, she has to admit that he didn’t.

She starts searching through his things. His laptop reveals nothing. She finds his wash-bag with tell-tale signs of his drug-taking. Please, no. She runs to the top of the stairs and screams down:

‘Did you know he was taking drugs again? Did you?’

Robert comes to the bottom of the stairs and screams up at her: ‘Don’t start trying to tell me how to parent our son!’ But she can see she has got to him.

She goes back into the spare room, gets down on her hands and knees and crawls through Nick’s mess, sifting through it for God knows what. She finds a letter from John Lewis. A letter of dismissal, dated two weeks ago. She snatches it up in triumph and rushes down the stairs with it.

‘He’s lost his job. So where’s he been every day when you thought he was at work?’

Robert can’t answer that. Now he is as shocked and frightened as Catherine and she feels ashamed. How could she have felt triumphant? She looks down at him and says in quiet desperation, ‘Don’t you have any idea who he might be with? Hasn’t he mentioned anyone?’

Robert doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know. Neither of them do. What a state of parenthood, she thinks. Neither of them knowing who to call – neither of them knowing who their son might be with. Does he have friends? There are none left from his teenage years, she is pretty sure of that.

‘He mentioned a girlfriend, but I’ve never met her, I don’t know her name. I’m not sure whether she even exists …’ He tries Nick’s number but it goes straight to voicemail: ‘Hi, mate. Give us a call when you wake up. Let me know you’re OK … Love you …’

Then Catherine’s phone rings; she doesn’t recognize the number. Her fingers shake as she presses
Answer.

48

Summer 2013

It’s time to begin tidying up – to wipe our fingerprints away. I have closed down Jonathan’s Facebook page. Nancy had wanted me to leave it up, but I felt it best to take it down. She is feeling frustrated, I can tell. She doubts that my softly, softly approach, as she calls it, will achieve the outcome she desires. I ask her to be patient. Look, I say. Look at little Nick’s Facebook page. He hasn’t touched it. That means something. There has been nothing new on his page for twenty-four hours. That is unusual for him. He can’t keep his mitts off his page. Status. What a very grand word. His status hasn’t changed. How good that must make these young people feel. To have status. Jonathan never had any doubt about his – he didn’t need Facebook to endorse him. He never had to doubt his importance in his mother’s life.

I can say it now. I was sometimes jealous of Nancy’s devotion to Jonathan. Our relationship changed after he was born, of course it did. Not at first. At first it was us and our new baby, but as he grew, as he became more defined, I felt at times that it became me and them. They had a special bond and there were occasions when I found myself competing with him for her attention. I must have seemed needy to her, weak. Naturally Jonathan needed her more, and it was unfair of me to ever try and pull her away from him. The only times we ever rowed were over Jonathan: over how best to manage him. We didn’t row often; less and less, in fact, the older he became. I started to back away from decisions about him. Nancy was unwavering in her belief that what he needed was unconditional love and support. That’s what every child needs, she said, and it was hard to disagree with that.

Oh, Nancy, how brave our son was. When I heard how he had died, saving a child, I was surprised. How shameful is that? I didn’t know he had it in him to save another life. And you suspected me of that, didn’t you? Although you never accused me of doubting his courage, you knew that I would have had a problem matching his death with his life. I am sorry it has been left until after your death for me to try and make amends. When I discovered that the little boy he saved was his lover’s son, it made more sense to me. He wanted to please her; he wanted to show her how brave he was. He was in love.

I leave the computer open on Nicholas Ravenscroft’s Facebook page and go into the garden. I have already started building the bonfire. It was something Jonathan and I used to do together when he was a boy. He loved Bonfire Night, staying up in the dark, throwing things on to the fire, writing his name with a sparkler. It is dark now and I flick through a notebook, not reading it, watching Nancy’s handwriting dance before me, and then I place it on the pile of wood, along with the others. I light a taper and hold it against the firelighter; watch it catch with a satisfying flicker and lick. The leather smells and curls as it burns, darkens and smoulders, the paper hungry to swallow the flames.

When I go inside I see Nancy. She is sitting in front of the laptop and she turns to me and smiles and I think it’s because the smell of the bonfire has conjured up happy memories of Jonathan and I together on Bonfire Night, but I am wrong. There is a message from the father on Nicholas’s Facebook page.

49

Summer 2013

Nicholas was left outside St George’s Hospital in South London. A body dumped in the entranceway. The doctor told Catherine and Robert their son had had a stroke. Cocaine, probably injected. Too early to say how much damage had been done. They’d know more over the next twenty-four hours. Catherine and Robert stood side by side at their son’s bed. Opposite them, on the other side, were the machines that were keeping him alive: helping him breathe; checking his heart; vital liquids dripping into him, trying to restore the balance. The Intensive Care Unit was quiet, almost silent. Rows of bodies on beds, wired-up eyes closed, frozen, waiting to be reborn. Or not.

Catherine stares at her boy, whom she failed to protect. The doctor was wrong. It has been more than twenty-four hours, two days in fact, and they still don’t know how much damage Nicholas has done to himself. She and Robert are no longer able to stand next to each other, so they take it in turns to sit with their son. Robert won’t allow Catherine to be there at the same time as him and so she has to wait for him to leave before taking up her position. She resents the time Robert is there, denying her those hours she could be with her son, but she doesn’t fight him. In a way she is relieved not to see him. She has no room to think about him, all she wants is to be with Nicholas. She is with him now and every moment is precious.

She finds herself wondering if her son has always been vulnerable to an early death. He has been saved once already, but she is frightened that this time they will not be so lucky. When she looks at him, helpless like a premature baby whose system is not able to function independently, it is as if she is newly born too. Her mind and body are raw. Strangely, it feels good: good to feel the outside world touch her at last. She is able to look at her son and really see him as she had seen him when he was first theirs: those first few years before his presence became tangled up with the mess and filth that she deposited on him. Yes, she must accept her part in how they came to be where they are now. She cannot push it away, it must be thought about. And when – if – Nicholas is strong enough to bear it, she will tell him what she should have told him years before. She touches his cheek, gets down on her knees and kisses his forehead, resting her head on the side of his bed.

Catherine has told her mother that Nicholas is in hospital and her mother was distressed at first, but immediately neatened up the information, tucked in its corners and reassured Catherine that people rarely die from measles these days. Better that he has it as a child. She is almost envious of the way her mother’s mind works. It is deteriorating and yet with it comes a determination to put a positive spin on nasty intruders. Her mother seems content: she is creating, for the time being at least, a much nicer world for herself.

‘Why don’t you go and get a cup of tea, something to eat? I’ll sit with him for a bit.’ A nurse puts a hand on her shoulder. Her kindness brings tears to Catherine’s eyes. She is grateful, but she cannot leave Nicholas.

‘I’m fine, really.’

‘Go on. I’ll be here. You look exhausted. You should have something to eat. Get some air.’

And she is persuaded, getting up from the floor. There is a chair she could have sat on, but it wouldn’t have allowed her to rest her head so close to her son’s. She needs to be as close to him as she can get.

She leaves the ICU and walks towards the hospital entrance, passing the darkened café, bookshop, newsagent’s. She buys a coffee and some chocolate from a vending machine and takes them outside.

It’s four in the morning but there are a few people outside smoking. One patient, a couple of visitors like her. She sits on a bench, the cold seeping through her jeans. This is where Nicholas was dumped, washed up on the doorstep of the hospital. They still don’t know who dropped him there: strangers who cared only enough to get him to hospital.

She can’t face the chocolate and puts it in her pocket, taking out her cigarettes instead. One with her coffee. A few minutes to smoke it. She looks at her phone. There’s a text from Kim. It sits among a couple from friends, female friends who’ve been in touch since they heard that Nick was in hospital. Catherine had telephoned work and told them, letting them know she was taking extended leave. And she had called one friend, asking her to pass on the news, but she didn’t want to see anyone. They send messages now and again, telling her they are thinking of her, letting her know they are there if she wants to talk. She doesn’t. She wants to keep them all at a distance. She reads Kim’s text:
I’m so sorry. Let me know if there’s anything I can do. Thinking of you all. Kx.
Catherine stubs out her cigarette, and sips her coffee. It tastes of plastic and is of no comfort or sustenance. Kim’s message gives her some though. There is no blame in it. She has read the book, but it doesn’t matter any more. Whatever happens, that part at least is over. If Nick survives, and she believes he will, there will be no secrets. He will know everything. And Robert? She pushes him to the back of her mind.

She gets up and drops her cup into the bin, returning to the inside world. The low throb and buzz of the heat, the light, the monitors, the machinery that keeps this place, and those within it, ticking over. As she walks towards the ICU she studies the pattern on the glossy linoleum floor. Even the black scratches have been buffed and she imagines someone sitting on yet another machine, whizzing up and down the corridors. She thinks she has seen this image, but can’t remember whether it was real or on the television.

She presses the buzzer and the nurse looks up, sees her, and lets her in.

‘Your father’s here,’ she whispers, smiling. Catherine’s tired eyes follow the nurse’s. She looks at the skinny figure hunched over Nicholas’s bed. Her father has been dead for ten years. She doesn’t scream: she yells, running at him. She grabs him, pulling him away, digging her fingers into his bony shoulders. He is so light. She turns him round to face her and pushes him as hard as she can until he falls, banging against a chair, landing on the floor where he stays and looks up at her. But then she is grabbed from behind and held. The nurse who had been so concerned before for Catherine is now concerned only for the old man lying in front of her. She crouches over him, talking to him, checking he is able to stand. She helps him to his feet as Catherine watches, a second nurse restraining her. This isn’t right. She struggles against her.

‘He shouldn’t be in here! Get him out of here!’ she shouts. ‘He is not my father. You shouldn’t have let him in. Get him out. Get him out of here!’ Her hysteria makes the nurse tighten her grip.

‘If you don’t calm down, I’ll call security.’

‘It’s OK, I’ll go. I’m so sorry …’ The old man trembles, his voice shaking as he says: ‘I only wanted to see how Nicholas was. I’m so sorry.’ He is in control. Catherine is not. He has a small cut on his head, but he doesn’t want a fuss. She watches him being helped to the door, the nurse compelled to support this frail, injured old man. Catherine hears him playing a part, stuttering out more apologies. All he wanted was to see Nicholas. The doors hiss shut behind him and Catherine cowers down on her knees, her head resting on Nicholas’s bed.

She is being watched now. The second nurse stays near by. Catherine cannot be trusted. She begins to cry, tries to explain through her tears: