Too Close For Comfort (20 page)

I looked at the digital alarm clock, numbers glowing, on the bedside table. ‘Let’s not argue, OK? It’s gone midnight. We should get some sleep.’

‘Yeah, I need to leave by 6.30 at the latest,’ said Patrick, and I felt a stab of sadness. I miss you already, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. I lay there in the
darkness, my heart pumping.

When my phone beeped, it made me jump. I crawled out of bed.

I quickly texted back, telling him I’d call first thing to arrange a time. Patrick was propped up on one elbow watching me as I knelt on the scratchy carpet, my naked body hunched over the
glowing screen.

‘Lysette? I knew it’d be all right.’

‘No,’ I said, still typing. I was sending a second text by now, suggesting some potential times: parents are often push – pull about the idea of someone else having a part to
play, and I wanted to lock it in as fast as I could.

‘Billet-doux from Lawrence Krall?’

I put the phone back in my bag.

‘No. Max’s dad – he wants me to see him as soon as possible.’ I could hear the unattractive note of triumph that had crept into my voice.

‘Good job,’ said Patrick, collapsing back down onto the bed. ‘You know, if you do think there’s more to this, it’s Lysette you should be talking to. She’s not
an ogre. She loves you.’

It was funny how a ninety-minute train journey had started to carve out as big a distance between us as a flight to Alaska might’ve done. There was so much I hadn’t told him, and now
it was too late.

‘Yeah, no. I know.’ I lay down, awkwardly curling myself around the plank of his body. ‘Goodnight,’ I said softly, my thoughts fizzing and erupting.

‘Night,’ mumbled Patrick, already slipping into unconsciousness.

I didn’t follow him there. I could have counted every one of his inhalations that night, sleep a foreign country. Perhaps I knew. Perhaps I knew what was coming.

Max’s oversized glasses were teetering on the end of his nose, threatening to fall off, a dog-eared copy of
The Gruffalo
held up like a tent
around the bottom half of his face. We were in the reading corner of the school library. The school – the catalyst for so much – was the last place I’d wanted to take the session,
but it had been there or the police station, and I didn’t think an interview room would be the thing at all.

I’d had a flurry of phone calls once Patrick had made his dawn flit back to London, and Joshua had eventually delivered Max to me mid-morning. Max had grinned at me as he climbed out of
Joshua’s black estate car, and my heart had melted a little.

‘Hi, Max!’ I’d said, smiling at Joshua over his head, thinking of how Max had whispered to Woody to confide in his dad. I’d been filled with a sense of shared purpose, of
enthusiasm, but Joshua’s face didn’t reflect any of that. He was wearing a dark suit, his lined face as closed and forbidding as prison gates.

‘Thanks for doing this, Mia,’ he’d said, his voice flat.

‘It’s . . . well, not a pleasure, but it’s a privilege,’ I said quietly, taking Max’s hand. ‘I’ll take good care of him.’

‘I’m sure,’ he’d said, already turning back towards his car. The crowd of photographers had gone in search of better picture opportunities, mercifully missing out on this
painful tableau. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to your session. It might be Lisa who comes and gets him.’

I’d taken Max to the library, asked him to give me a tour of the shelves, but he’d thrown himself down on a shabby green beanbag and hidden behind the book. Had he watched that
awkward exchange and decided that trusting me would be some kind of betrayal of his dad?

‘Is
The Gruffalo
your favourite book?’ I asked. Silence reigned. ‘Did you hear me, Max?’ I asked gently.

He nodded, then nodded again, which I took to be a yes to both questions. The book stayed in place. The library had a musty kind of smell, the reading corner surrounded by high metal shelves,
tucked away. I’d plonked myself down on a small wooden chair which barely contained my woman-sized bottom, and I gratefully slid down onto the carpet. I didn’t want to encroach on his
space, but nearer felt like it might be more promising.

‘We didn’t have
The Gruffalo
when I was little,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could read me some?’

Max swung his head back and forth so hard it could’ve almost swivelled right round, then proceeded to bury his nose even deeper in the book. I examined his pale profile from this new
vantage point; the subtle smattering of freckles that stretched across the bridge of his nose, his brown hair, which had been cut in a little-boy bowl cut when I first met him at the funeral but
had since grown shaggier, the lengths at different levels. My heart squeezed tight in my chest, wondering what Sarah would think of it – if anyone was noticing the tiny details of his life in
the brash chaos of grief.

‘You didn’t have
The Gruffalo
?’ he exclaimed, suddenly animated. It was clearly an inconceivable state of affairs. ‘My mummy can do all the
voices. She does the mouse like
this
!’ he said, his voice squeaky and high. ‘And the Gruffalo like this,’ he said, making his voice suitably gruff. He
lowered the book to his knees, waiting for my explanation.

‘Sounds like your mummy . . .’ I paused a second, weighing up the tiny bridge of a word I needed to pick, ‘is very good at telling stories.’

‘She can make them up too,’ he said, earnestly. ‘She makes up the best stories.’

I saw her then – that wild glint she’d had as the children ripped the paper off the parcel, the way she’d made us all clink our Prosecco glasses so hard they could almost have
smashed when Lysette had cut Saffron’s cake. ‘And does your daddy tell you stories?’

‘Sort of,’ said Max, considering. ‘Or he puts one on for me to listen to.’

‘Do you like it best when he stays and reads to you?’ Maybe it was something I could pass on to Joshua, an easy way for the two of them to stay in connection.

‘Yes, but I like it better when it’s my mummy,’ he said, his face earnest.

She wasn’t just his mother, she was the heroine of his own personal fairy story: he was still holding out desperately for the happy ending that all fairy stories promise.

‘It must be very hard that your mummy can’t do that any more,’ I said.

‘Mrs Carter next door said she was sorry I’d lost my mummy,’ he said, looking hard at one of the pictures of the mouse. ‘But I didn’t lose her. I lost my red Toyota
car which has two exhaust pipes.’

People don’t understand how confusing these twee analogies are for children. ‘No, you definitely didn’t lose her. It’s just a thing that grown-ups say. What do you think
happened?’

It’s so important for children to tell their own story as they see it, not have adults always imposing an acceptable version of events. I wished I’d had time to have some props sent
from London – my sand tray, my dolls. Staging things can be much easier for little children than finding the words. At least he knew I’d been there for his makeshift funeral.

‘Mummy was very high up and then she slipped and fell,’ he said, eyes turned towards me now, watching my face. ‘And then she hit the ground very hard and it made her bleed and
die.’

I nodded at him, acknowledging what he’d said, thinking all the time how random and unfair it must feel, and how much more heartbreaking information was liable to force its way into his
life. I’d worked with a number of children who’d had parents commit suicide – I’d witnessed their anger, helped them to believe there was nothing they could’ve done.
The problem was, there was no definitive truth to get to grips with as yet. His small, freckled face was angled up at me, expectant. I could tell that he was proud that he’d told me what had
happened with such clarity. Without crying.

‘Does it feel unfair that that happened to your mummy?’ I said, keeping my focus on him tight. I wanted him to know that I was really listening. ‘Does it make you want to shout
and scream?’

‘Sometimes when you go to hospital, they can make you better,’ he said.

‘That’s right. But they couldn’t with your mummy.’

‘When I went to the hospital they made me better,’ he said, picking up
The Gruffalo
again. I waited to see if he’d say more. A distraction often tells
me there’s something very important a child’s trying to smuggle out. ‘The siren goes
nee-na
,
nee-na
and there is a blue light
and everyone gets out of the way because they have to.’

‘So did you go to hospital too? A different time?’

‘Yes. I was very, very ill but they made me better.’

‘What was wrong with you, Max?’

Max threw down
The Gruffalo
almost violently. He jumped up.

‘I need a pee pee,’ he said, barrelling out of the classroom. I went after him, wanting to make sure he wasn’t just making a break for freedom. He wasn’t: he went to the
boys’, then came back down the corridor, more slowly this time. I resolved to go more gently, ensure I wasn’t pushing him. He made a beeline for the beanbag, little shoulders hunching
as he sank his way into it.

‘What do you like best about
The Gruffalo
, Max?’

Max chose to ignore the question.

‘Everyone has to go to hospital. When you’re a baby, and you get born, you go to hospital.’

‘That’s true. Most babies do get born in a hospital. Not every single one.’

He looked up at me – just halfway, like Lady Di charming an interviewer.

‘I went there when I was a baby.’

‘So you were ill when you were a baby?’

‘No!’ he said. ‘Because you didn’t have
The Gruffalo
when
you
were a baby, I am going to read it to you.’

‘Thank you, Max, that sounds lovely,’ I said.

I stared down at his dark head, dropped low over the ragged pages. I could hear his voice rising and falling with the characters, desperately trying to do Sarah justice. I could feel tears
prickling behind my eyeballs, and I forced them away. It’s rare I let that kind of unbridled emotion into my work – I need to be the rock, not the sea – but it was hard that day.
We both sat there a second.

‘Did you like it?’ he asked.

‘I loved it,’ I told him. ‘And what I liked best was how you read it to me. You made the mouse all mousy and the Gruffalo very gruff.’

Max climbed out of the beanbag’s embrace and came over to stand close enough to me to touch me.

‘Were you scared?’ he asked me.

‘I wanted the mouse to be OK,’ I said. ‘I thought he would be. He had lots of things that we call resources. Things inside him he could use to help him, like being
brave.’

‘Yes, he is brave,’ agreed Max, sinking back into the beanbag. He kept his body close to mine.

‘But brave doesn’t mean having to rely on yourself. Brave can be telling people how you feel and asking them to give you cuddles and talk to you.’

Max considered that.

‘Also the mouse is clever,’ he said.

‘When is he clever?’

‘He has to tell fibs, but not because he’s naughty. The fibs are clever. They stop the bad things from happening.’

I heard a firm knock on the door. We both looked up: Joshua’s square-jawed face was framed in the glass square at the top of it, a perfect headshot. Max looked back at him but didn’t
immediately get up. I held up my finger, smiled in a way that told Joshua we were nearly finished.

‘We’re going to have to stop now, Max, but it was lovely spending time with you today.’

He gave a little nod, eyes trained on the worn carpet. I longed to say more, to tell him I’d be here if he wanted to come back, but I couldn’t make him a promise just yet. Instead we
both got up, his hand automatically reaching for mine, and went and found his dad.

Joshua and Max said their rather formal-sounding hellos, and then we all walked down the corridor towards the entrance.

‘How did it go?’ asked Joshua, as Max ran ahead.

‘It was good,’ I said carefully. ‘Do you have time to talk? I know you said Lisa might be collecting him.’

‘I felt it was important I did it,’ he said stiffly.

‘I’m glad she told you what I said last night. I didn’t want to seem interfering.’

‘Oh no, Lisa didn’t tell me,’ he said. ‘It was Max who brought it up. He was full of it at bedtime. He’s been so quiet most nights, just wanting a story played, but
it was Mia this and Mia that!’

‘Oh,’ I said, trying to compute the information. I thought of the way Lisa’s car sped off, Kimberley framed in the window.

Joshua was suddenly brisk, his eyes seeking out Max. ‘I can’t talk now, but I’ll ring you at four.’

The tone of it was oddly jarring – it felt more like an order than a request. Max was hopping his way down the hopscotch grid, calling out the numbers to himself. I got the sense that he
would always look alone, even in a teeming mass of children.

‘Yes, do. I might not have finished my three o’clock, but I’ll pick up if I can.’

‘Fine,’ he said, mind elsewhere already. ‘Come on, Max, we need to get going,’ he shouted, striding off towards his car with barely a backwards glance.

*

As I made slow progress back to Lysette’s, the muggy day wrapped itself around me like a second skin. I was doing the journey I’d done with Saffron at the start of
all of this, in reverse. Now it all looked so different, gnarly and twisted. The last thing I wanted was to lose Lysette to that darkness – Patrick was right, I should sit down and talk to
her. If anything happened, if things got worse for her and I hadn’t done all I could to protect her, I’d never forgive myself. Was that how she felt about Sarah’s death?

I did a strange combination of knocking and key turning, apologetic and familiar all at once.

‘Lys!’ I called, keeping my voice deliberately warm. ‘Honey, I’m home.’ Silence. Perhaps she wasn’t here. I heard footsteps: here she was, stepping out of the
kitchen and into the hallway, her face cold and still. ‘I’ve been thinking about you so much . . .’ I started, the sparkle in my voice starting to tarnish.