Solstice

A story by Bard Boy [bard_boy(at)protonmail(dot)com]

Disclaimer: The following is a work of fiction about an inappropriate relationship between a man and a preteen boy. One of the boundaries crossed in this relationship is engagement in sexual activity between the man and the boy. If you do not want to read such a story, or it is illegal for you to do so because of your age or where you live, you should stop reading now and go do something else instead. The fictional depiction of an inappropriate relationship between a man and a boy is by no means encouragement to any man who would seek to forge such a relationship for real. This story is not set in the present day, so rest assured every aspect is fictional.

This story is the property of the author. Do not repost it elsewhere without their prior consent.

Nifty relies on donations. If you can contribute, do so here.

The dry disclaiming out of the way, I hope you enjoy reading the story (in which ever way suits you best). Feel free to contact me on the email above.

 

Part Nine: Hunter

 

The weather was worsening, and the nights were growing longer. We stayed in and settled metronomically into a rhythm. Reading and listening to music in the morning, TV in the afternoon (we watched Shrek and Shrek 2, twice), then reading, or telling each other stories, or generally messing about and playing games in the evening. I finally bothered doing all the maths on the various wattages around the house, and realised that even with a couple of hours of TV and a few hours of the stereo running, plus a couple of lights on during the evening, we probably weren’t getting close to using up all the power we were generating, so I was more liberal with letting us use things. I felt more secure. We were settled and it didn’t seem that anyone was going to bother us. There was nobody around to care.

There was sex too. Of course there was sex. Nothing to out of the ordinary; at least not as far as we were concerned. I continued pushing James to take two of my fingers, and he continued to complain. Sometimes he’d make me withdraw one, or both. Other times he’d get off in the sort of mad frenzy I’d witnessed after the time we played doctor. He was becoming more insistent about being the boss; about taking control. It had been happening for a while; at least from that moment with the teddy next door, if not longer. I put it down to his age; that he was starting to grow up. Still, there was always a part of me wondering if I was trying to push him too far, too fast. I dreaded the idea that he felt he had to force me to do things before I forced him into things he didn’t like.

I caught a bit of a winter cold for a while. I have no idea how. James and I barely ever got ill because we never had any contact with anyone but each other. He was very sweet about wanting to look after me for a couple of days when I was at my most shitty. A bit obsessive really. “You will get better, won’t you, Jake?” It’s okay. I understand why he’s like that.

But mainly, the longer we’d been stuck cooped up together in the house, holed up against the rain and hail and snow and wind, the more he’d started to act like a little shit. He was never like this at the farm. He hadn’t had the energy during the past couple of winters, for a start. And I guess the animals were always there as companions to play with in a pinch, even in the bleak midwinter. And that was fast approaching. Solstice was coming, so I reasoned I had to do something festive to ease the boredom of my tetchy, stir-crazy kid. There are only so many paddies over games of Sherlock Holmes or Zombie Dice a man can take, even when they do come each time with apologetic kisses and naked cuddles in bed afterwards. Don’t even get me started on Snakes & Ladders.

I realised I had to take him out and do something. Something that would make him feel useful and special. Most of all, something that would tire him out. Plus, I was sick of canned ravioli and spaghetti hoops and noodles and the like. If we were going to break into our special stash and put on a party spread to celebrate an old-fashioned Yule, we needed something more festive to go with it. It was time to take James out on the hunt again.

It was hard to judge how much time had passed since we arrived, since James’ illness, since his recovery. The days were a spectrum rather than fixed units of time. One second dominoed into the next until all we could discern was the unholy mess of scattered rectangles on the floor, like a forest felled one twig at a time. It could have been only a month since we arrived. It could easily have been two. I didn’t care. I was happy we didn’t have any more dramas or big adventures for our reckoning of time to hang its threadbare cap on. Just the two of us was how it always seemed to have been. Same as our splendid isolation on the farm. Just James and me, and the rest of the world may as well not exist.

At any rate, on that morning, as the solstice approached, I decided I’d take him out. It was freezing outside, but the sky was clear. The weather was dry. It wasn’t even particularly windy. When I woke up it was already light, and James was already downstairs. I found him on the settee, watching Shrek again, without permission.

“Did I say you could watch the– hang on, are you eating dry pasta?”

“Yep.”

“Why? We have plenty of other food that you know how to prepare.”

“It reminds me of this time of year,” said James, still not taking his eyes from the screen, brittle stalk of spaghetti in hand, “It’s what I ate through midwinter the last couple of years, and it’s an easy snack and I was hungry, so…”

“Last year we barely had enough food to make it through the winter,” I said. “We ate dry pasta because we had to. We don’t have to do it now.”

“But it’s a tradition!” he laughed, smiling at me before returning his focus to the television screen.

I used the fingers of one hand to rub my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Whatever you say, donkey.”

“Stop calling me donkey!” he whined. “I’m not a donkey.”

“Stop acting like an ass, then,” I said.

James huffed. “You think you’re funny,” he pouted, “but you’re not.”

“And you’re loafing around wasting electricity without my permission.”

He huffed again, theatrically, and folded his arms firmly.

“I just wanted to watch the film,” he whined, squeakily, almost as if addressing some third party who would confirm that I was being totally unreasonable.

“That’s a shame,” I said. “I was thinking we could go out and have some fun today. Maybe even find some nice meat to have for a little midwinter party. Shame I’ll have to do that without my champion hunter.”

“Really?”

“Yeah really,” I said, ruffling James’ bedhead and squeezing his shoulder. “I’d be lost without your help. We’re a team, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” said James, looking at me over his shoulder. “Yeah. I suppose we are.”

“But I’m the captain,” I said, “so you have to remember to follow my lead when we work together.”

“Don’t worry, Jake. I will.”

 

**

 

We were walking up the street. James skipped off ahead, bundled in his coat, gloves, the Tom Baker scarf, and my brother’s old woolly hat from his football club training kit when he was twelve. He had his bow on his back. I’d thought ahead and brought out the shopping trolley we’d collected at the DIY warehouse, ready to load any kill. It was difficult to push through the snow, but easier than lugging a carcass around, for sure.

James clung one-handed to a spindly roadside tree ahead of me, spinning himself round the trunk to face me. “It’s nice to be outside,” he smiled.

“You were going a bit crazy being trapped in the house, weren’t you? Too much energy to burn.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” he said.

James waited for me to draw alongside him, then walked in step with me. “Sorry if I was being annoying,” he said, after a while. “You were being annoying too, though.”

“I know,” I said. “Sometimes it’s too intense, spending all that time together with one person in a small house. Especially here, where there’s more to do but not more people to do it with.”

“Yeah,” said James, “Like, it was good to be able to have some baths by myself and stuff.”

I shrugged. “We’re not short of water right now. We have a whole separate room for it. Plus, it’s good for me to have some time to do my own thing while I know you’re relaxing, or vice versa. That’s teamwork, right?”

“Right.” James crunched slowly through the snow alongside me a while longer. “Love you,” he said.

“Love you too.”

“How far away d’you reckon I can throw a snowball into the trolley from?”

“I dunno. How about you try from up on the corner, by the post box, and I’ll gradually get closer to you anyway.”

“Easy!” said James as he ran off up the road.

 

**

 

I was taking us to a nearby country park, which ran around the perimeter of the airport. The fastest way to get there, after reaching the post box at the end of the street and James throwing several snowballs into the trolley, was to turn left and follow the road to a crossroads where the old local pub stood on one corner, turning right to head towards the park.

James and I were in no rush. We took our time, forcing the trolley steadily along in the snow. We passed the place where there used to be a back entrance to my old primary school, now a row of abandoned houses built sometime when I was an adult and had long since moved away. Afterwards, that side of the street was just fences of back gardens from the houses on a street behind. Snow clung to the wooden boards. James ran off a little way ahead and – disgustingly, delightfully boyishly – peed his initials into the fence, melting and staining the snow where it landed.

“What do you think?” he grinned as I pulled alongside with the trolley.

“The notorious JM strikes again!” I said. “One day we will catch this mysterious two-letter bandit, but for now this man of mystery remains at large.”

“I nearly froze my willy off doing that.”

“Maybe you want to keep it in your pants until we get home, then. Or else it might snap in half like an icicle.”

“You’d sew it back on for me.”

I laughed aloud.

“I wouldn’t be so sure, cheeky monkey,” I said. “Maybe I’d prefer having a little girl around.”

“I wouldn’t be a girl,” countered James. “I’d still have balls.”

We laughed together as we came alongside the pub and turned the corner. It struck me as a little odd. It was one of those sprawling 1930s two-storey neighbourhood local designs, will several ground floor rooms around a central bar area, and living quarters on the smaller upper floor for the proprietors. It looked empty enough – several of the ground floor windows were broken – but patches of the roof were bare of snow, which seemed to have collapsed in drifts to the ground beneath it. One of the main entrance doors hung open. I was about to dismiss it and continue, when James spoke.

“Can you hear something?” he said.

I stopped walking and listened. There was the sound of a soft breeze in the eaves, and the occasional croak or flutter of a crow or magpie.

“It’s going again. Can you hear it, Jake?”

I strained my ears hard. James rested his hands on the wall of the pub car park, gazing at the ground with his brow furrowed. I could hear the whistling of a robin, high and fluting, and the rattle of a magpie. It fluttered over our heads from the rooftop of the pub, blue and green sheens on its black plumage shimmering in the reflected light of the snowy ground. As the magpie passed, I heard the robin again. Then, almost imperceptibly, something else. A low sound contrasted against the tiny red bird’s trill.

“I hear it,” I said.

“What is it?” asked James. “Is it coming from in there?”

“I think it must be,” I said, stepping away from the trolley and taking a few steps towards the pub. James pressed himself against a high pillar at the end of the wall, which once supported a large, spherical lamp, peering around the corner at the open door. I offered him my hand.

“Do you want to go inside?” I asked. “It’s probably not a good idea for you to stay outside on your own.”

“Okay,” he said, taking hold of my hand and letting me lead him onward.

We heard the sound much more clearly as we approached the doorway. It was a deep, gurgling moan that rang out for a few seconds at a time, then went quiet a little while longer. I felt James shiver from head to toe. I pulled him through the door and into an entrance area I vaguely remembered from having visited the pub in the distant past. To our right, doors for the toilets. To our left, access to two of the rooms. The closest, ‘the Snug’, seemed to be in darkness from what I could make out through the window of its closed door. The other door was slightly ajar, leading to the main lounge. I let go of James’ hand and began to push the door fully open. He drew his bow.

James strangled a shocked gasp as I opened the door and walked into the room. The lounge looked like a bomb had hit it. Tables and chairs were strewn everywhere. A television that had been mounted on a high wall ledge had crashed to the floor just in front of us and split in two. Parts of the floor shimmered with broken glass caught in the light flooding through the back windows. Most dramatically, the centre of the ceiling had caved in from the rooftop above, its debris forming a mound of mangled wood and plaster and brick that spilled out in all directions from the middle of the room. And there, half-buried, amidst the middle of the mountain of rubble, was a man.

“There’s a man there,” whispered James, lowering his bow.

“I know,” I said. “We’re going to see whether we can help him, okay?”

“Good,” said James, gingerly following my lead into the wrecked lounge room.

“Hello?” I called, treading carefully closer to the stricken man. “Are you badly hurt?”

“We’re here to help; don’t be scared,” added James, sounding far from convincing.

I looked up. There was a gaping hole where the middle of the ceiling should’ve been. It really did look like a bomb had fallen square through the middle of the roof. The whole place seemed ready to collapse in on itself at any moment.

The same low moan rang out in response to my question. Clambering a little way onto the rubble pile I realised just how stupid my question had been. The man’s right leg protruded from the wreckage in front of me, but everything below the midpoint of his shin hung limply at completely the wrong angle. There was a delay in my mind processing what my eyes could see. Tearing the fabric of his trouser leg, which was sodden with thick, brownish blood, was the jagged tip of his broken shin bone.

I gagged and felt myself break out in a cold sweat. “James,” I called, my voice a magpie warble, “You don’t have to look, but this man has a very badly broken leg. I’m still going to try to get him out, but it’s really important now that you help me.”

“Okay,” said James, somewhere behind me, out of my view, but sounding very pale. “What do you want me to do?”

“I need you to find me something straight and sturdy to keep his leg in place, but light enough to carry. Something to tie it on would be good too.”

“Umm, you mean like the handle of a broom or a mop?”

“That’s it; clever boy! If you look behind the bar there should be a kitchen area or something. That’s probably a good place to search. But be as careful as you can because I don’t think this building is safe.”

“I can’t see a bar, Jake.”

“The long counter with all the taps coming out of it. That’s what I mean.”

“Okay.”

The man moaned again. It sounded as if he was on autopilot; like it was pure reflex, regular as a foghorn. I feared we were too late.

I climbed up amongst the debris as far as I could; close enough to begin gently lifting bits of brick and wooden beam from the man’s body, and then to hurl them to the floor behind me. The air was thick with brick dust; colder than outside. I could hear the robins again, somewhere beyond the hollow reaching skyward above us. I could hear the robins and my own heart, pumping adrenaline to every muscle as I worked them on the pile of masonry before me.

I uncovered the man’s head and my heart skipped a beat. His face was covered in cuts, his hair matted with blood, but I’d seen it before. I’d even cut it before, wrestling him to the ground in my hallway that first night, smashing him into our terracotta urn. This was the man who’d been in our house when we arrived; the drifter who moved from house to house looking for a warm place to sleep. He opened his eyes as I pulled the last of the debris from his head and chest and brushed his face free of splinters with my gloved hands. Somewhere in the pub, a glass smashed.

“Hey,” I said. “Can you hear me? It looks like you’ve had a nasty accident. Your leg is hurt, and I think you’ve lost a lot of blood. Can I help you?”

“Yeah…” he panted, his mouth a desert, “I don’t know… am I still at the pub?”

“We’re at the pub. We’re in the lounge. It looks like you must have fallen from upstairs.”

“I was trying,” he said, between grunts and laboured breaths, “to get in the flat. Thought… maybe… some food hidden away…”

“Is the food any good here these days?” I said. “I haven’t been here in ages. It always used to be full of racists if I remember rightly.”

He smiled, grimaced, moaned again, then eventually could respond. “Shit service… couldn’t get in. I think… the outside stairs… fire escape… collapsed. Then nothing.”

I heard James running somewhere below and behind me.

“Jake!” he called. “Jake, I got it!”

“Give me a sec,” I said to the man, rubbing his cheek with my hand. He gripped my wrist weakly for a moment before letting go. I climbed back down to James. He was proudly holding an old blue wooden broom towards me with his right arm. A cut on his cheek dribbled a crimson trail toward his chin.

“Clever lad,” I said, taking the broom from him. “What happened to your face?”

“Oh…” he said. “I sort of smashed something, a really long glass that looked a bit like a thermometer.”

“A yard?”

“I dunno. It was really long and bits of it flew up everywhere. I guess a bit caught my face.”

“Are you alright?”

“Fine.”

“Well done, James,” I said. “Did you find anything to tie it with?”

“I thought maybe use this scarf,” he said. “I mean, if you don’t mind. It’s definitely long enough.”

“You’re a clever, clever boy,” I said, kissing him on the forehead and undoing his scarf. “For our next trick, we need to break this broom handle in half.”

I bent my knee and tried to snap the broom over my thigh, but it didn’t work. I was just hurting myself. Then I looked at James again and had an idea.

“Hold the broom steady for me against the bar.”

I reached into James’ quiver and pulled out one of his older, blunter arrows. With James holding the broom steady, I hammered the point of the arrow against the middle of the broom, quickly shattering off the upper portion of the handle.

“Result!” said James, offering me a hi-five.

“Teamwork!” I said, meeting his hand.

The broom head broke from the handle quite simply now that its original integrity had been compromised, leaving me with two roughly evenly sized wooden splints.

“Okay James,” I said. “Next job is to go and get a big glass of water. Not a yard or a jug; just a big pint glass will do.”

“Got it!”

I climbed back up the rubble pile to the man with the splints and scarf in hand. I looked at his leg and waited until I heard James had left the room.

“Bite on this,” I said, stuffing the scarf into the man’s mouth.

Shaking all over, I gripped hard on his thigh with my left hand, grabbing the limp end of his leg by the other. I took a couple of deep breaths, narrowed my eyes and went for it, bending and snapping his shin back into place. The man screamed into the scarf, his whole body convulsing. I heaved and wretched some more, squatting in a jacuzzi of sweat, head swimming on the watershed of blackout, pins and needles in my skull. The man was still whimpering into the scarf, his body now trembling softly as opposed to jerking violently. I let go of the two halves of leg and pulled the scarf away from him.

“I’m going to strap your leg up now.”

He said nothing, continuing to whimper softly to himself as I lined up the two halves of broom handle on either side of his leg, holding them in place with my knees as best I could. I tied the scarf tightly around the site of the break, fresh blood oozing to the surface to be absorbed into the wool. I used its length to tie a second knot slightly further down, to fix the splints firmly to the worst-affected area.

“I’ve got the water, Jake!”

“Alright, James. Carefully as you can, see if you can get up here with us.”

“Okay!”

James climbed amongst the rubble as best he could while holding a pint of water out in front of him. As soon as he was close enough, I reached out and took the water from him, freeing his balance to climb more quickly the rest of the way. I took a sip for myself and handed it back to James as he pulled himself alongside me.

“Feed him the water,” I said. “Be gentle; we’re not trying to drown him.”

James obediently knelt in front of the man’s head and put the glass to his lips, helping to support the man’s head with his other hand. I ran my hands along his body, feeling for any other possible broken bones.

“Um… My name’s James. What’s yours?”

The man took a few gulps of water and pushed the glass away.

“Shaun,” he said. “Shaun Lucas.”

“Wait a second…” I said. “Shaun Lucas? I swear I taught you at school. I was part-time maternity cover for – what was her name – Miss Davies, while I was a student writing up my MA thesis.”

“Really?” he said, between gulps of water dutifully offered by James. “Did you teach me?”

“I think so. Were you in Year Eight at the time? I was Mr Baker, remember?”

“Oh my days!” he coughed, taking another swig of James’ water, “Sorry, sir. I didn’t recognise you at all.”

“Nor did I. It has been nearly twenty years, Shaun. I don’t think you need to call me ‘sir’ anymore.”

“His name’s Jake,” said James.

“Jacob Baker, that’s me,” I said, slapping Shaun on his hip. “Now see if you can move your good leg.”

I held down the thigh of his broken leg so that he couldn’t damage it further by trying to move. With effort, he raised and kicked his left leg.

“No pain?” I asked.

“Nah… I just,” Shaun began. I noticed James was having to hold his head up more. The sudden lucidity of having something to drink and talking about his school days – probably from the hormone rush of having his leg bent back into shape – was quickly fading again. “I’m tired. That’s all. Feel sleepy.”

“Alright; I’m guessing your back hasn’t been damaged by the fall then, so we’re good to move you,” I said. “James, could you do another big favour and go and get the trolley from outside.

“No problem,” said James, gently lowering Shaun’s head and leaving the empty water glass to one side. As James went to collect the trolley, I endeavoured to keep Shaun awake.

“Okay, big man,” I said, sitting beside his head and slapping his face. “I need you to keep your eyes open and stay with me. We’re going to load you onto a shopping trolley and push you back to our house. You know where that is, don’t you?”

“Yeah…” he said, but he seemed to be drifting.

“Alright, look at me. Focus on me. You don’t need to sleep now.”

James clanked through the door with the trolley. Now I just had to figure out how to get Shaun into it.

“Come on,” I said to him. “You’ve got to help me. I don’t think I can lift you by myself.”

I grabbed Shaun by the armpits and tried to lift him up. I could drag him like this, but it wouldn’t be ideal with his leg so badly mangled.

“Can you use your good foot, Shaun? Can you push yourself along towards me with one leg while I hold the rest of you up?”

Shaun mumbled something and vaguely complied, allowing me to pull him down from the rubble pile without entirely having to drag him. I lay him on the floor next to the trolley. Blood had started to ooze once more from the wound on his leg. His entire body was a patchwork of scratches and scrages, but I realised there must be a big gash on his shoulder from the fall, which was now also pouring blood, as was a cut on the back of his head.

“James,” I said, “you don’t need a wee again at all, do you?”

“Not really,” he said. “Why?”

“On Mediaeval battlefields, warriors used to clean and disinfect each other’s war wounds by piddling on them. It’s still going to be a long way back to ours with pushing Shaun in the trolley. Maybe if we did that, we could stop him getting any worse for now.”

“You want me to wee on him?” James said, looking wide-eyed.

“We’d be helping him,” I said. “Plus, it might wake him up a bit.”

“I can try,” said James, “but I don’t know if I’ll be able to make anything come out.”

“Good lad,” I said. “You do his head and shoulders. I’ll do his leg. You don’t want to have to look at it.”

I untied the scarf from around Shaun’s leg and tore his trousers further to expose more of the gore hole in the middle of his shin. I took a deep breath and unzipped my fly. James had pulled his bits out over his waistband.

“Here we go,” I said, with a sigh. “Though I guess I will get to see you wee after all.”

“No you won’t,” said James, turning his back to me to face Shaun’s head and shoulders diagonally.

In the cold it wasn’t too difficult to get going. I aimed for Shaun’s leg and let fly as best I could. Shortly after, I heard James’ higher-pressure stream, from his smaller apparatus, start up. Steam was rising from beneath us. Shaun must have been roused by the warm liquid splashing on his face, as he murmured again and moved around.

“Sorry,” said James. “Please don’t open your mouth.”

If nothing else, the piss was doing a good job of washing away all the caked-on blood and brick dust, leaving the wounds exposed to the air, exuding a little trickle of fresh blood and other shiny bodily fluids. James finished and shook off just as I was able to do the same. I retied the splints and scarf around Shaun’s now partially cleaner leg, while James turned away and blushed to himself at what he’d just done.

“Right, Shaun. More awake?” I asked, grabbing him under the armpits again.

“Mmm…” he groaned. His hair was dripping with James’ piss, the scent soaking into his skin, but at least he wasn’t wearing a layer of dry blood and dirt anymore.

“Another important job, James,” I said, snapping him out of his little embarrassed daydream. “Put all your weight on the handle of the trolley. It’s really important that you don’t let it start to tip forwards.”

“Okay, Jake.”

“One… two… three…” I lifted Shaun by his armpits and staggered with him towards the trolley. He was taller than me and it took all my effort to keep him upright. I held him against the end of the trolley and rested. James grunted with effort, trying to keep the trolley steady in place against the weight of two adult men. I realised I didn’t have time to waste, and heaved to lift Shaun’s hips over the lip of the trolley, so as to be able to drop him in. I tried my best to lower him gently but couldn’t hold on any longer. Shaun fell arse-first into the trolley, his legs flying up in the air and nearly kicking me in the face. James groaned and was forced to trot a little way backwards with the trolley, but he made a good brake and prevented it flying off with its passenger. I watched Shaun’s legs vibrate in the air. The crudely done leg brace kept his damaged leg straight.

“Open the doors for me, mate,” I said to James, panting. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

 

**

 

Getting Shaun back to the house had been long, hard work. I had to drag him up the stairs by myself, the man barely conscious, James trying his best to hold Shaun’s trailing broken leg up so as it didn’t bump on each step he passed. I put him in my parents’ old bed and sent James away. I did my best to clean his wounds and tore up some of my parents’ old clothes to use as bandages for him. Shaun slept and barely moved or made a sound.

I made to take the bowl and bloody washcloth I’d been using back to the bathroom. I was only half-surprised to find James awkwardly sat at the top of the stairs.

“Is he okay?” he asked.

“Better than he would have been,” I said. “How about you?”

James shrugged.

“Come with me,” I said. “Let’s have a look at that face of yours.”

James followed me into the bathroom. I put down the bowl and flannel and washed my bloody hands.

“Come here,” I said, sitting myself on the toilet and pulling him close between my thighs. I was shorter than him while sat in position, allowing me to look up into the light at his cut face. “It’s not too bad. Just a little cut; hopefully it won’t scar. Go and bend over the sink.”

I filled the sink with warm water and gently bathed James’ face. A few little splinters of glass freed themselves as I dabbed at his cheek.

“You’re lucky they didn’t catch your eye,” I said.

James nodded forlornly. I handed him a towel to dry his face and told him to join me in the bedroom when he was ready. I sat waiting on the bed with the antiseptic spray I’d used on his finger.

“Sit next to me,” I said as he entered the room. “Cover your eyes.”

He moaned a little at the sting on his face, but the spray quickly formed a transparent film over his cut.

“Is Shaun going to die?” asked James, rubbing his eyes.

I moved to sit back against the headboard and motioned for James to follow. “Maybe,” I said. “He lost a lot of blood and we don’t know how badly his insides could have been damaged.” I put my arm around James and felt his body melt into mine. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to have fun hunting today,” I said, nuzzling his hair. “You were a real hero, though.”

James squeezed himself a little tighter against me. “Thanks,” he said. “I just wish…”

I kissed the top of his head. “You wish things could be better.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “We keep seeing people in trouble, or worse.”

I sat holding him a little while longer, riding the silence. The pub was a lot for anyone to process, let alone a small boy.

“Jake,” said James, eventually. “What were schools like?”

“That’s a big question,” I said. “Probably a bit like how you’ve read about them in books. Could you be more specific?”

James thought for a while.

“Did the children like it?” he asked. “Was it fun for them, and for you?”

“It’s complicated, James,” I said. “Most children enjoyed seeing their friends every day, for example, but they didn’t necessarily all enjoy learning all the time.”

“Why?”

“School isn’t like sitting and chatting with me, or reading about things that interest you,” I said. “It’s more… There’s a lot of training involved, I guess. Training kids to perform certain skills, to be able to answer certain kinds of questions. Not everybody likes learning that way, nor necessarily all their subjects. Plus, most kids aren’t as intelligent as you. They might have more difficulty learning, or not like having to follow rules and behave in a certain way.”

James was silent again, trying to absorb this new perspective. After a while he sighed heavily and lay his head on my chest.

“You want to be around kids your own age, don’t you?”

“Even just one friend would be nice,” said James. “I mean, one my own age. You’re my best friend, Jake, but…”

“But I don’t get excited by all the same things you do?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s it.”

I cradled his face, taking care to avoid the cut on his cheek. I felt the breeze of his breathing against my wrist.

“Do you want to watch Shrek again?” I asked.

“Yes please,” he said.

 

**

 

I spent the rest of the day trying to keep James distracted. We watched movies; he zoned out. I read to him; he wandered off. We played games; he didn’t care that I won. I managed to rouse Shaun enough to force some painkillers and a glass of water down his throat, but it was a waste of time and food to try to wake him up enough to eat that evening. James picked at his dinner too, then practically dragged me to bed straight afterwards.

“I want a cuddle,” he said, as soon as we were together with the lights out.

I put my arms around him and drew him to me, holding him tight, his back spooned against my front.

“Touch my willy,” he demanded.

“James,” I said, holding him a little more loosely and stroking his arm, “I don’t think we should do that tonight.”

“Why?” he said, trying to yank my arm back towards his crotch.

“It doesn’t feel right while there’s someone here.” I pulled my arm away from James and rolled onto my back. He spun around and propped himself up on his elbow, leaning over me.

“It doesn’t matter,” said James. “He can’t move by himself.”

“What if he hears us?”

“He’ll know we love each other, silly.”

“James,” I said, stroking the side of his head, “the world doesn’t work that way, mate. I don’t think most people would like it if they knew what we do together.”

“What?” said James. “That’s stupid. Why not?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

James fell silent for a little while. I imagined him as he had been outside the pub, brow furrowed, staring at a fixed spot on the ground.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Of course you didn’t,” I said, pulling James into an embrace on my chest. “I just don’t want to risk losing you over something silly like letting the wrong person hear us having fun.”

James lay limply on top of me. “I don’t get it, Jake,” he said. “Have we been doing something naughty? Are we not supposed to do all that stuff?”

“I’m sorry, Jamey,” I said, stroking his back.

“Is that why you said we couldn’t do anything while we were travelling here?” I could hear him welling up. “And why you stopped me telling Iram and Aaliyah’s dad that you’d sucked my willy?”

I silently stroked James’ back, trying to soothe him. My entire body ached with tiredness, and now my stomach was in knots. Part of me wished I’d just told him I was too knackered to do anything that night. “It was always only us before. There was no need to explain it was a secret because there was nobody else to tell it to.”

“You should have told me,” James sniffled, punching my chest. “You were keeping a secret from me.”

“Oi, don’t do that,” I snapped. “You know you should never hit people on purpose.”

“You hit Shaun, before, on the night we got here,” said James, coldly. “And you said you’d kill him.”

I lay for a moment in silence, my hands still on James’ body. He lay against my chest, our ribs rising and softening together as we breathed. It was warm, and intimate, and icily distant.

“You worked out it was him, then.”

“I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”

I wanted to hit him back. “You know I don’t think you’re stupid. You know I adore you. Don’t you?”

“Mmph,” he said, burying his face in my chest.

“James, everything I do is to keep you safe. You have to understand that.” I was running my fingertips through his hair, tickling his scalp. “Shaun had taken over our house. He came at me first. I had to protect you. I couldn’t let him stay. We talked about this, remember?”

“He got hurt because of us.”

“He didn’t,” I sighed. “It turned out he was harmless, but we couldn’t know that for sure. I couldn’t bear it if you got hurt, or someone tried to take you away. I’d rather die.”

“Nobody could take me away,” croaked James, muffled against my body. “You’re like… my dad or something.”

“Don’t say things like that.”

“But it’s true!”

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “You already have a dad.”

“It’s no good having a dad you can’t even remember!”

“You don’t mean that.”

“But it’s you who’s looked after me, and loved me, and…”

“James…” I sighed. “What are we going to do with you?”

“I don’t know,” he said weakly, turning his head away from my chest. “Whatever we want. But no lies, Jake.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, hugging James around his middle. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Now sleep tight, little hunter. You’ve had a tough day.”

“Promise you won’t leave me.”

“I promise.”

“Promise you won’t lie to me.”

“I promise.”

“Do you love me?”

“More than anything. Now let’s sleep. It’s been a horrible day for us both.”

James turned his head back to my chest and the dam finally gave way. “It’s not fair!” he cried quietly, his tears trickling into my armpits. “It’s not fair.” I held him as he sobbed into my chest, feeling his body slowly grow softer as he slipped into an exhausted sleep.

 

**

 

We’d been maybe a week or so without Nell. Jamey was a scared little pup. After we took her out to the woods and said our goodbyes, he spent days alternating between wandering around the room aimlessly, clinging to my every move, and sitting on my lap sobbing his little heart out. He insisted on sleeping with me at night. It shattered me to hear him crying in the night; to cuddle him to me and feel his miniature frame heaving with grief.

I once read that there’s an old Turkish saying for when a baby is born. It translates to English as ‘may they grow up with a mother and father’. It seemed strikingly morbid to me when I first came across it, in safer, more comfortable times. Now I understood what I meant. Now it made sense. Most of all, I felt the crushing weight of responsibility, and its good-for-nothing sibling, helplessness. I knew this day would come. We had all known it was coming for some time. Even James. But it hadn’t made matters any easier.

Ritual is important. Ritual is what has always kept us going, grounded us, despite the horrors all around us, from the savannahs of East Africa through a hundred thousand years and forward into the kaleidoscopic shimmer of glass towers, in our great cities of great solitude. Ritual is where that Turkish proverb was born. Ritual gave us Baptisms – the symbolic induction and validation of new lives into the community – no less bizarre a rite of passage than any circumcision party, or hunting ceremony, or tribal hair-tearing to mark the passage into adulthood. When we had the water for it, James always had a bath on a Wednesday night. I was never one to keep calendars or know the date, even when doing so was easy. If my mindset then was ‘where the fuck did Monday go?’, now I had no conception of what a Monday even felt like. But I knew it had been a week since James had last had his bath, and that he must have it; that he must have some sense of normality. So, while he slept in the chair after having cried himself out again, I went and fetched water from the well and heated it over the fire in the living room of the farmhouse. I stuck the old tin bath in front of the fireplace and filled it up.

“James,” I said, gently stroking his puffy face and lifting his chin with the crook of my finger, “wake up mate. It’s time for your bath.”

He groggily pushed himself upright and hopped off the chair. I went to help him undress.

“Stop it, Jake,” he moaned. “I’m not a baby. I’m nine.”

He shed his clothing and climbed into the water. I let him relax for a while without me hovering around. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a drink. We’d brewed a cider and it was nearly all gone.

After I’d hung around in the kitchen, taking a few sips and tidying around just for something to do, I made my way back into the living room. James was lying in the bath, not playing, not splashing, not washing, just lying perfectly still and staring into space. I’d seen James in the bath plenty of times before. When he was little, I’d even helped bathe him. I’d never seen him looking quite so vulnerable – so naked – as he did at that moment. I took my cider and sat beside him, in front of the fire, my back resting on the side of the bath.

The silence continued forever. I heard the crackle of the fire in the place, the occasional trickle of water in the bath as James’ body moved, however slightly, and the boy’s breathing alongside my own. That was all.

“Jake?” said James, epochs later, “What’s going to happen to me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… now. Now that…” His voice was wobbly. I didn’t have to turn my head to see the tears in his eyes. I could hear them; sense them through the vibrations. “Will you stay with me? Please?”

He started to sob again. Big sobs. Bigger than a nine-year-old boy sobs.

I turned and held his wet head against mine.

“Of course I will. I was never going to leave you. I’ll always be here.”

“I don’t want to be on my own, Jake. Please don’t go away. Not like everyone else.”

He was crying hard; harder than I thought was possible. I pulled him up by his armpits, half out of the water, and held him to me. He gripped me as if he’d be swept away if he let go; as if my ribs were all that were keeping him from drowning. He gripped me like a barnacle on a distant stack in a midwinter Atlantic storm.

“I’m not going to leave you Jamey. It’s okay. Let it out. Let all those bad feelings out.”

“I wish my mom was here,” he sniffled into my cheek.

“I wish she was too. But you know she didn’t choose to leave us. Nor did your dad, nor anyone else.”

“But they’re still gone.”

“I know mate, I know.” I tapped on the back of his head with my finger as I cradled him. “They’ll always be in here, though. That’s how you keep people with you forever. Nobody is gone as long as you keep remembering them; keep thinking about them.”

“You’ll stay with me and help me remember Jake? Please? I love you. Please don’t go. I’ll be the best boy I can be; I promise.”

“You don’t have to promise me anything. We’ll always have each other. That’s my promise.”

We certainly would. Where else would either of us go? Who else would I go to, let alone him? He might not have realised it, but the truth was that he was the only thing I had left in the world too. The only thing that made any sense. The only thing that offered any reason for me to keep living.

I sat with him and offered to wash his hair. With everything going on over the past weeks, his mousey brown locks had grown out, covering his ears and giving him a long fringe, half-suspended by his cowlick, half cascading over the left side of his forehead. I felt him relax as I massaged his scalp. He moved his body in the water a little more. Made himself just a touch more comfortable.

“Jake, could I listen to some music while I’m in the bath?”

That was a good sign. He hadn’t wanted to do anything like that for near enough a fortnight. He’d been too upset to want to do normal things.

I left his hair lathered up and went to fetch the CD player. For some reason, one of the four discs he had was Bloc Party’s first album, Silent Alarm. I’d had the little CD Walkman since the Christmas I was about to turn twelve, and probably hadn’t used it since I was sixteen. It was likely that album had been sitting inside it since then. Hardly what I’d nominate as a desert island disc, but I could listen to at least the first four tracks over and over without getting bored. I brought it over to the bath.

“What’s the CD?”

“Bloc Party.”

“Okay, would you skip to track four please?”

I did as he said and handed him the earphones.

“Listen with me,” he said, handing me a bud. I took it.

James sang along in his piped little voice. He’d listened to all four CDs often enough since I brought the player back with me to know the lyrics of every song. I sat close to him and danced a little with my upper body, in a silly way, bumping my shoulder against his. For the first time in a long while, James smiled. He joined in, splashing in the bath as he sang in the quiet room, the music only existing through half of our ears, somewhere between our two heads. It cut through the silence. It cut through the night and our mourning, coursing through our veins like a first hit of caffeine over breakfast, shaking our souls awake.

I sang along with James as the song came to its conclusion.

“And if you feel a little left behind, we will wait for you on the other side!”

I had tears in my eyes corroding my sinuses, and I put my head to his and I sang with him.

“If you feel a little left behind, we will wait for you on the other side. Cos I’m on fire! Cos you know I’m on fire when you come. Cos you know I’m on fire! Cos you know I’m on fire so stomp me out!”

James turned his head to rest his forehead against mine, his eyes smiling into mine.

“I’m on fire!” he sang at me.

“Cos I’m on fire!” I laughed.

“I’m on fire!”

“I’m on fire!” I let the song die out and pulled the buds from our ears. I pinched James by the chin, turning his head to me, our wet eyes locking together. I began, finally, to rinse out his hair.

I let him get out of the bath and put his pyjamas on. I didn’t care that he hadn’t washed himself properly. I threw the water outside and douted the fire.

“Bedtime,” I said to James, running my hand through his damp hair.

“You’re not going to ask me to go to my own bed, are you?”

“Silly Billy,” I said. “You can stay in with me as long as you want.”

He climbed into my bed ahead of me, leaving me to blow out the candles and climb in alongside him. He immediately rolled over and hugged his whole body – arms and legs together – against me.

“Sleep well, Jamey. Wake me up if you need anything or get scared, okay?”

“I will,” he whispered, squeezing me tightly again.

I felt something hard pressing against me. My heart skipped a beat.

I wanted to say nothing. I truly, honestly, only wanted to cuddle the poor boy until he fell asleep. I couldn’t do it. Despite knowing how lost and vulnerable he was, and that I was all he had left in his whole world – perhaps because I knew that – my strength to hold back failed me. Failed him.

“Are you excited about something?” I whispered into the dark.

“What d’you mean?”

“Feels like something’s gone stiff between your legs.”

James giggled. “It does that sometimes. Especially when I wear my jama bottoms without pants like this.”

I put my hand on his bum and pressed his body closer to mine.

“You can rub it against me if you want. It’ll feel really good.”

James giggled again, nervously, under his breath. Took a couple of beats to answer. “For real?”

“Let me help you,” I said, and gently slid his pyjama bottoms down until they were a third of the way down his thighs. Then I guided his bare buttocks with my hand, pushing them forward and releasing to guide James back, making him grind his nakedness against my body.

James found his own rhythm and began to breathe heavily. I slid my hand slowly up his spine, under his pyjama top; felt him begin to perspire. He pumped away at me, silent but for his laboured breaths.

“I feel like I’m gonna wet the bed if I carry on,” James whispered into my ear.

I held him gently, firmly against me, with my hand at his back.

“Keep going, trust me. You won’t wee. It’ll feel better than anything you’ve ever felt before.”

James obediently kept going. He was panting, squeaking as the tension built, the sensations overtaking him. Eventually, his entire body stiffened, and he let out a little grunt and then a strangled, half-silent breath, catching in his throat for seconds before he rolled off onto his back and began panting again. He rubbed his hands over his face and laughed to himself.

“What was that, Jake? It felt really good. Really, really good!”

I kissed him on his sweaty forehead. “That was so impressive, James. You just had an orgasm. It’s a massive intense feeling you get from doing sexy stuff, especially with your willy.”

James exhaled forcefully and giggled.

“Did we just have” – he whispered the next part – “sex?”

“Kind of,” I said. “How do you feel?”

“Weird. Funny.”

“Happy?”

“Yep. And excited.”

“Cool.”

James went silent for a little while. When he spoke again, it was in a breathless whisper.

“Jake? Could we do that again another time?”

 

**

 

I woke up in the darkness with James wrapped around me, head still resting on my chest, thighs squeezing my hips. I gently rolled him onto his back. He stirred slightly.

“I’m just going for a wee. You sleep tight.”

I left the room and went to check on Shaun. There was no sound at all in the front bedroom. Shaun lay stone still. I reached out and touched his arm. It felt like touching the wall.

I took a deep breath and pulled the bedcovers up over his head. It was going to be another difficult morning.

 

**

 

I came to in the morning with James already awake, resting his head in my armpit and playing with my chest hair, his lips touching my skin.

“Morning, James,” I said.

“Morning,” he said. “Can we check on Shaun?”

I wrapped my arm around James more deliberately and pulled him to me. He’d given me pins and needles from lying on it.

“I’m sorry, James. I checked on him in the night…”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn,” he whispered, flattening his palm on my breastbone, feeling my heart beating just beneath it.

We lay together like this a while. James was warm and there was a clamminess where our bodies touched: his ribs against mine, his flat tummy on my flank, my hand on his hip, his thigh over mine, and his soft little bits squashed against my hip.

“What do we do now?” asked James.

“I’ll wrap him up in the sheets from that bed. Then I think we should take him to the woods by the ice rink – remember? We’ll put him near the moat and from there he can look down over where he grew up.”

“That sounds nice,” said James, then paused for a second. “Do I have to help carry him?”

“No, James. I’ll work it out. You go and have some breakfast.”

 

**

 

The way to the woods with the old Anglo-Saxon moat was not long, but it was another crisp day, snow thick on the ground, which made travel on four disobedient little wheels quite difficult. We progressed largely in silence, trapped in our own worlds. Under his filthy coat, James wore his best clothes. So did I.

I wish I could say I’d been more ceremonious in laying Shaun to rest, but I was so tired. I didn’t have the mental energy to even approach lifting him again, let alone the physical strength to do it. I just turned the trolley on its side and watched the man-sized bundle of bedsheets roll into the dry ditch of the ancient moat, now half-full with snow. James sprinkled more snow on top.

“Shall we say a few words?” I said.

“We don’t know his last name,” said James.

“We do. It’s Shaun Lucas, remember?”

“Oh,” said James. “I was thinking we could call him Shaun the Survivor, or Shaun the Scavenger… you know, after what he did.”

“Shaun the Survival Scavenger. I like it. You go first then.”

James took a deep breath.

“Goodbye Shaun,” he said. “You were very talented at surviving on your own in the city. I’m sorry we were scared of you when we saw you in our house. I hope you’re happy we were there for you in the end. I’m happy we were there for you… but I’m sad you had to leave us. Rest in peace.”

A gust of wind whipped across our faces, causing the trees around us to creak and wave. I waited, enjoying the peace.

“That was beautiful, James,” I said quietly. “Well done.”

James nodded and stared at the bundle of Shaun in his resting place.

“Like most kids around here, you were a cheeky boy, Shaun, and hard, because you had to be,” I began. “We all had to be survivors, in our own way. You showed those traits then and used those skills now, and I’m so proud of you for it. When I think back to the playfully naughty young boy I knew, it’s hard to imagine how it has come to this. I’m so sorry, Shaun. I’m so, so sorry. Sleep tight with your friends. Rest well.”

I looked at James and saw his eyes were red, his cheeks damp. I passed behind him, squeezing his shoulder, and pulled the trolley back upright. I hugged James around his waist and lifted him into the basket, sitting him down on his bum against the mesh of the metal.

“Ready for the ride home?” I asked.

James nodded. “Why does it have to be this way?”

“You can’t change the world, James,” I said to him, beginning the walk back downhill through the trees. “All we can do is rebel against it by keeping each other safe and happy.”

“I think I understand what you were saying last night now,” he said. “I know how much you want to keep me safe and make me happy, because I’d do anything for you too.”

That was when I started to cry.

 

**

 

Nell hadn’t wanted to talk about the lump in her breast for a long time. She preferred to ignore it; wait to see whether it went away by itself. It was only when James mentioned, sitting on her lap with his head against her chest, that he felt something weird, that she was forced to come clean.

My mom had been the same. She didn’t have any external lumps or bumps, but she kept the extent of her internal aches and pains a secret for as long as she could. My dad had been the first to go. He’d been on blood thinners and god knows what else for years. As soon as the production and supply of meds started to drop off, he was sure to be a goner, whether or not he caught something else in the meantime. I think he’d given up by that stage anyway. He’d had enough.

I don’t think my mom was particularly more equivocal either. Who could blame them? Plus, the C-word was always difficult to grapple with in the good times, when people got better. How could we face it now? As it was, pneumonia took her in the end. It’s always the way when they’re too weakened to fight it any longer.

That was when I first moved up to the farm. Jon wouldn’t move; he had a girlfriend nearby, and he’d never been too comfortable around Nell and Ross, for whatever reason. I just hoped he wouldn’t make me an uncle while I was away. I had no idea how we would care for a child, things being as they were.

James was a toddler at the time; maybe three years old. I’d met him a couple of times before, as a baby, but now he seemed more real. This little person, who was all smiles and giggles and big sloppy kisses. My last visit had been when Ross died – avian flu, I believe, transmitted to their chickens by some birds that never used to come so far north. They were lucky Harriet was there. Lucky that it didn’t pass to any of the children, especially baby James, who was maybe eighteen months old. I still had a photo, from my only previous visit before he was gone, of Ross grinning from ear to ear, proudly cradling and feeding his infant son. Moving into the farm I felt his loss like an amputee.

When I moved back there for the second time, James was seven, going on eight. I’d only been away for a few months, but I felt like I’d missed half his lifetime. He was so big and clever. He followed me around for days, telling me how much he’d missed me, all the things he’d done while I’d been away, making up for lost cuddles, asking whether I knew how Harry and Cerys were…

I’d raided the nearest charity shop for books on my way back. Stuff we could read with James in the evenings, stuff that would keep us entertained while he slept, CDs for the player (alas, like most charity shops, the second-hand media was largely rubbish, so I could only bring myself to select three). One of the things I’d picked up – perhaps by mistake – was a Molière anthology, probably once some teenager’s A-Level French set text. I’d been working my way through it in the week before that evening, when eight-year-old James rested his head against his mother’s breast and was surprised to find it wasn’t the shape he had expected.

Presque tous les hommes meurent de leurs remèdes, et non pas de leurs maladies, Molière wrote. Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses. As in seventeenth-century France, so today, on our little farm, all alone. Perhaps there was something Harriet could have done, had she been there. We discussed taking a knife to it ourselves, but together conceded that we may ultimately do more harm than good. I don’t think Molière meant it quite so literally, but it was a metaphor from bitter experience, to say the least.

Nell got worse over time. Slowly at first, but eventually to the point where I was keeping the farm by myself while she rested indoors, the aches and pains and tremors spreading to new parts of her body, little Jamey playing nurse. Little Jamey, the big, clever boy who read us Harry Potter before bed each night and had begun to complain that the storyline was too predictable. If he were a wizard and went to magic school, he’d train to make his mom better again, but not his dad – because as Harry learnt, you can’t escape death, magic or not.

As winter gave way to spring, Nell retreated to her bedroom, lacking the energy to leave her bed. James kept her company, brought her food and drinks, read to her, sang to her, asked her questions. She had a little chamber pot under the bed, and her sweet boy had even offered to help her with that. She wouldn’t – couldn’t ­– let him. No, James. That’s private. What little strength she had, she spent it sending her son from the room and getting out of bed to squat over a bowl, just so that he didn’t have to see his mother lose her dignity. I emptied it in secret, while James was distracted with other things, or on the toilet himself.

As spring imposed itself more fully outside – James brought some fresh bluebells into Nell’s room in a tall glass – we decided that it must be late March, and James must have turned nine. There was always an element of guesswork to it. We held a birthday party for him in Nell’s room, with some brownies I’d improvised with margarine, cocoa powder and artificial sweetener. James loved it all the same.

“Remember the song, Jake,” he’d giggled, chocolate brownie crumbs around his mouth. “As if to say! As if to say! As if to say he doesn’t like chocolate!”

“He’s born a liar, he’ll die a liar,” I smiled. “Some things will never be different.”

Nell fell asleep before the party was over. I took James to his bedroom and had him read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to me.

Over the following weeks, Nell was asleep more than she was awake. She caught a cold that made her chest heavy, and it lingered and lingered. I couldn’t find the words to speak to James about it, but I think he understood that his mom wasn’t going to get any better. I could see it in his eyes when they were together. He stopped listening to music. He stopped singing. He’d let me read to him, but he wouldn’t read to me, nor to himself.

I remember their last conversation. It was so normal. They chatted away about nothing in particular, until eventually they both were tired, and she sent him off to have his bath and head to bed.

“Remember,” she said, “be a good boy for Jake. I love you more than anything, James, my baby boy. Sleep well.”

“I will, mom. Love you too!”

Nell motioned for me to close the door behind him as he left the bedroom, hooking his top over his head ready for the bath I’d left him in front of the fire. James always sat on the bed with her. I pulled up a chair to the side.

She placed a weak hand on my knee. I took it in mine.

“I think this is it, Jake,” she said, wheezing.

I had tears in my eyes. “You’d tell me off if I was ever that matter-of-fact,” I said.

“I tell you all the time,” she smiled. “It never seems to work.”

“Please don’t give up.”

“I think,” she said, “it’s rather too late for that.”

“Helen…”

“Very formal, Jacob.”

“I don’t know how to do this.”

Nell smiled to herself. “You’ll work it out. You’re the best improvisor I know.”

“Please…” I was bawling, sobbing as spoke. “You’re all I have left to lose…”

“What about James?”

“I can’t… I love him, you know that, but… I’m not a parent. You know that too.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” she said, squeezing my hand as best she could. “He adores you. All he wants is to be like you.”

“He’s a silly boy…” I laughed, tears and saliva catching in my throat.

“Well, you’re not perfect. But he could do a lot worse as role models go.”

“How can you be so calm?”

“Remember when we were in first year at uni and I had that allergic reaction, and in the end when I thought I was dying, when I’d accepted it, I said I just felt at peace?” she said. “Or when you nearly drowned in the river? How did you feel then?”

“Like I’d shaken the devil by the hand.”

“Exactly.”

I growled into my fist and nearly bit through my knuckles.

“Stop it,” she said. “We don’t want James coming back in here.”

“I don’t know what to do.” I whined.

“You don’t have to change anything,” she said. “Just look after him. And yourself especially.”

I didn’t say anything. There was the sound of my sniffling and Nell’s breathing. Somewhere in the farmhouse, James splashed in the bath and exclaimed something to himself in a cartoonish voice.

“Jake,” she began again, “I trus– no, that’s…” She broke eye contact and looked at the bed instead, stroking the sheets with her free hand. “Just… don’t…” She sighed deeply, squeezing my hand again, as strongly as she could. “Don’t ever force him,” she said, finally, and turned her gaze back to mine. “Keep him safe and happy and keep him with you. Never, ever let anyone else take him.”

My face burned and my head throbbed. My mouth had gone dry.

“I’ll take care of him,” I whispered.

“I know you will.”

I left the room to usher James to bed. When I returned, Nell was sleeping again. I sat with her through the night, until the wick burned down and the last of the light flickered out, leaving only a quicksilver trail of smoke for a second in the darkness.

I was perched, exhausted, at the end of James’ bed when he woke in the morning. He sat up and stretched, his pyjama top riding up and exposing his bellybutton, his mouth yawning wide. He looked at me quizzically for a heartbeat. My eyes must have given me away. I remember the look on his face in that instant. Shock. Fear. Something else. Only later did I realise what it was. Bewilderment. He had no idea what it was that was happening to him, or why it was happening to him. He was lost.

His body crumpled. I held him as he wailed and kicked and punched and screamed. I sat on his bed, stiff and upright, and cried noiselessly.

James had ended up lain on his front across my lap, limbs stretched out in all directions, my hand resting gently on his bottom. “Can I see her?” he sniffed; voice muffled by his now-damp bedcovers.

“Of course you can,” I said, gently helping him to his feet and guiding him, hand between his shoulders, to his mother’s bedroom.

I’d pulled the bedcovers up to her neck, so only her face was exposed, pale against her golden-brown hair on the white cloth of the pillow.

“She’s so pretty,” said James, sitting on the bed beside her. He brushed her hair from her face with his hand and kissed her on the cheek.

“It’s just like she’s sleeping,” I said.

“She’s cold,” said James, still stroking her hair with his hand.

“I know, mate,” I said. “I know.”

I took him back to his bedroom and made him strip out of his pyjamas while I found him some smart clothes to wear.

“Put your favourite pants and socks on,” I told him. He was a bit slow; I don’t think he understood what was happening. Eventually I found him some dark jeans and a shirt, which was the best I could do.

I left him to dress himself and went to search for something for me. I found an old suit belonging to Ross. It fitted me well enough; we were roughly the same height, though he – like his son – had the proportions of a tall person on the body of a short person. I had a torso built like a barrel. I took an extra tie for James. It would be too long for him, it wouldn’t go with the shirt, and he’d probably kick up a fuss about having it put on him, but at least the option would be there.

James didn’t wear the tie. “Why are we dressed like this?” he asked.

“Because this is how you dress to show your respects when you say goodbye to someone.”

“Can’t mom just stay in her bed, like she’s asleep?”

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry Jamey, she just can’t. You have to trust me, okay?”

“I trust you,” he said. “But what are we doing?”

“We should take your mom to the woods,” I said. “I think she’d like to rest out there, amongst nature.”

“Oh yeah!” said James. “Can we take her there, to that tree?” He pointed at a picture of a tree in pink blossom that Nell had painted the year before.

“I think that’s a perfect plan,” I said. “Come on, wait outside for me with the cart.”

We had a little wooden cart we used mainly to move vegetables around. I fetched Nell, cocooned in her bedsheets, and placed her in it. She was almost as tall as me, but she weighed nothing that day. It was almost as easy as lifting James.

As we passed through the front yard of the farm, towards the driveway and the woods beyond, James picked all the bluebells and daffodils, laying them in big armfuls over his shrouded mother. Spring had arrived, her boy had turned nine, and he decorated her with flowers. For all her forty-two years she’d been a vegetarian, and now at last she would return to the soil with the plants.

James said nothing as we walked. He stood with me, at the head of the cart, and we marched together, my arm around his shoulders.

When we reached the tree, it was in full pink blossom, just like the painting. I placed Nell on the ground beneath the tree, and between us we replaced the flowers on top of her covered body, the purple bluebells and yellow daffodils now joined by a rain of pink and white blossom petals. I stood back and held James in front of me, my hands clasped together in the middle of his skinny chest, feeling his heartbeat.

“Shall we say a few words?” I asked.

“I don’t know what to say,” he replied, stifling a little sniffle.

“Would you like me to go first?”

He nodded and leaned back into me a little more.

“Goodbye Helen. We love you very much. Thank you for your smile, and your kindness, and your care, and your love. Thank you for always trying to make us do the right thing. Thank you for being such a good mother and bringing up a wonderful son. We’ll miss you, and remember you, forever.”

Tears were running down my cheeks and plopping onto the top of James’ head. He was sobbing too, sucking snot back into his throat and soaking the collar of his shirt.

“Your turn,” I whispered to him.

“I love you, mommy,” he began, “and I’m really going to miss you. I wish you didn’t have to go. You’re beautiful, and clever, and funny, and kind, and…”

He squeaked and turned around, throwing himself into my chest, sobbing and heaving. Sobbing so hard it made him wretch.

“It’s okay, Jamey. It’s okay. You did so, so well. I’m really proud of you. So is your mom. Always.”

I stood rocking James in my arms, until eventually he had no tears left to cry. Ross’ shirt clung translucent to my chest, and, as James pulled his face away, a trail of snot stretched from the end of his nose to a huge blob in the centre of the suit tie.

“Shall we say anything more?”

“I love you,” whispered James, staring at the flower and blossom-covered cocoon at the foot of the tree.

I placed my hands on his chest again and rested my head on top of his.

“Plus on aime quelqu’un,” I said, “moins il faut qu’on le flatte : À rien pardonner le pur amour éclate.”

“What does that mean?” asked James.

“Remember I was reading that book of French plays?” I said. “It means ‘the more we love our friends, the less we flatter them: through excusing nothing, pure love reveals itself.’”

“Will you teach me French one day?” he sniffed.

“Maybe,” I said. “Would you like to pick some more flowers for her?”

“Okay.”

I held out my hand and he took it, letting me lead him through the trees.

Je le soutiendrai devant tout le monde.

Je lui soutiendrais contre tout.