Castlefields Academy to the Little Ouse, Thetford. 11:50am
——————————
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvYugXziFek
The note was in his blazer pocket.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLmo7uKbrYw
Folded twice. Along the creases first, then across. Left inside pocket. It said he was excused. It said go home and rest and come back at four. Mrs Iyer’s handwriting. Small and vertical. No space between the words.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK3SC7HXMrU
He did not go home.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0DvuzK7LnJ
He stood at the bottom of the south wing steps. The sun was where it had been this morning, slightly higher now, landing on the tarmac in a way that made everything look flat. His ribs. The sky. He looked at the sky for a second and then looked away.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMheJhX08lP
Not home. Not yet.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtIa5P5caDU
She might be in a certain kind of mood. He couldn’t always tell which one was coming. Sometimes she was fine — not fine but the version where the kitchen felt like a kitchen. Sometimes it was the other one. The room before something happened. He’d learned some of the signs. Not all of them. The way she held herself when she hadn’t slept. The kitchen when the radio wasn’t on. He didn’t always read them right. He didn’t always have time to make himself smaller before.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSmGRNDnQ7a
He needed more time.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMQpiyECm7C
He went the other way.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6iSQcYgX59
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPfnm6Dm3lU
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6h5xeONUvB
Left out of the school gate. Along the service road. The corrugated walls of the industrial units were starting to warm up, throwing out a faint dry smell of hot metal. He walked in the strip of shade along the fence.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiPGUEF8eLq
Through the underpass. Cold in there even in May. Old water smell. His footsteps flat and close, the sound going nowhere.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQpuDeDxfzZ
Out the other side. The path behind the leisure centre car park.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSlwSh9fYkQ
Quieter.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQGXf3847Ka
Two sixth formers coming the other direction, blazers off. One of them looked at his face and looked away. Ethan kept walking.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFwj0Ev69ug
The leisure centre fell away. The path got narrow. The Little Ouse on his left — brown and low, moving slowly. The surface dull except where a current caught it and threw up a brightness that was gone almost before it arrived. On his right, the backs of houses. A shed. A trampoline with the mat going wrong in the middle.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxOyOYERqLC
He went left. Down the bank. Along the water.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsOhremYMoq
The river smell. Mud and something green and the elder flowers starting. It didn’t ask anything. The sound of it was constant and low and because it was constant he didn’t have to do anything with it. It was just there.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdUbueKBZMK
He followed the bank.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7sKZ0PDxWH
Three minutes and he reached it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMSzxdhPZy7
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ3NS5Zidjq
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkZRTw4BU9p
The oak had come down years ago. He’d found it later — walking further than usual, past the point where he normally stopped. Dead but solid. The bank had eroded under the root plate and tipped it up and left a hollow underneath. Root plate on one side. Old concrete drainage channel behind. The opening faced the river. You couldn’t see inside from the path. You couldn’t see inside from anywhere unless you knew.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe7bnMU84CE
He checked both directions. Force of habit.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6cPcBrEdb5
He ducked under the root and went in.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR5GeIoiFYg
Just big enough. One person with their knees up. The flat stone he’d hauled from the river edge two years ago — forty metres, two trips, too heavy for one. It sat in the middle as a seat. Behind him, a piece of broken mirror wedged into a crack in the concrete. On sunny afternoons at the right time it caught the light off the river and threw a small bright rectangle onto the roots above. About twenty minutes and then it moved out of alignment and was gone. He’d never planned any of this. It had just accumulated. The space had become his in increments without him deciding it was his.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLlgbixrZwW
The crisp packet from last year was still in the crevice to his right. He kept meaning to throw it away.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYxD37srGWN
He sat on the stone.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡadcCPKX8B4
Bag down. Eyes closed.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡghkLMZnhIu
Earth. Concrete. River. The water going behind him, low, not asking anything. Birds in the dead wood above. Somewhere far enough away, a road that had stopped being a road and become a murmur underneath everything else.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrbtlolqJca
He sat.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC49b5U6Q2j
He didn’t count the time. There was no one to count it for.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3xIchaZEmm
The morning came down. Layer by layer. He didn’t rush it. The classroom. The punch. The corridor. Hannah in the doorway of the nurse’s office. He let each thing settle before the next one came.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVIHBT0K2jn
His shoulders came down.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡafVWTb6soR
He hadn’t known they were still up.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWPPf5mV63r
When he opened his eyes the mirror was throwing its light onto the roots above him. A small bright rectangle, moving very slowly.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0M4gv7jEpF
He breathed in. His ribs said what they said. He breathed in anyway.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnuszUctpVG
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV4dAUhdrrl
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcD0OePGEaj
He thought about Conor.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3G8KVnCNio
Not on purpose. Conor was just the loudest thing.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCJMCHQgzCI
He didn’t understand why Conor had wanted to fight him. He’d been trying to understand since break. The blazer was missing. The shirt untucked. The graze on Conor’s knuckle — brown at the edges, dried — that had been there before school, before the lesson, before any of it. But Ethan didn’t know what it meant. He kept coming back to it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEt0l0cJqC8
What he kept coming back to more was how angry Conor had been that he wouldn’t fight back. Not just angry. Something worse than angry. Like Ethan not raising his hands had broken something. Like Conor had needed him to fight and the not-fighting was the worst thing Ethan could have done.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGQs5UWL6PL
He didn’t know why someone would need that. He turned it over and couldn’t find the shape of it. But the graze was from before. And needing someone to hit you back that badly — that felt like it came from somewhere. Not from school. From somewhere else.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1O53rA0iZJ
And Conor had still hit him three times.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKpuFOGLetE
Both things. He tried to hold both things.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8u6untneD6
The sympathy and the concrete under his palms. The idea that something was wrong at home and the fact of three punches. The word Conor had used, which was sitting in him still, small and sharp. He hadn’t looked at it directly yet.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs9ldE82CfP
He was going to tell Mr Andrews. Not to get Conor expelled. Just so someone checked. Someone looked at the blazer and the graze and the way Conor had needed something from him that Ethan couldn’t give. Someone who had more power in this than Ethan had — which was everyone, every adult in the building, every person with a lanyard.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQi29CTWamO
He thought about the last time he’d told a teacher something was wrong. Not about Conor. Something at home. He’d chosen his words carefully. He’d thought about them for days. The teacher had listened and said thank you for telling me and made a note on her tablet and said I’ll look into it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7mMsi2piCM
Nothing had changed.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdLP3tRIVNH
He thought about how many adults had looked at his life and looked away.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYYVOP7hy2Y
He was going to tell Mr Andrews anyway. Because not saying anything felt worse than saying something that might not work.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYLJ2NW2gFh
He’d learned that. He kept having to relearn it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDBh7rB9k73
But telling someone wasn’t the same as fixing it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoQUPJT9ClK
It never was.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpAVJWafJWo
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVPUVUbaqHy
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWdLIquSHsp
The thought about Conor went where it always went.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfrJIh0c6Lu
His mum.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvo2UZo0Ut2
He hadn’t meant to go there. He went anyway.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW1o5WouaEG
She was getting worse.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSswlSkJCDL
He’d been thinking this for months without letting it become a thought he looked at. Looking at it now made it more solid. Like pressing on something bruised.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNMZjuy6SZF
He reached up to the root-hook. The stuff-sack. He didn’t open it. Just held it — the worn nylon, the cord pulled tight. The notebook was inside. He’d diagrammed it in there. His mum and the drinking and the way one thing fed into the next. Inputs and outputs. The places where you could theoretically change the outcome. He’d done it four times on four different pages, different versions. He’d stopped two months ago when he accepted that no version came out differently. The shape was always the same. The dead ends were always in the same places.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡttek3uD7Z6
He put the stuff-sack back on the hook.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWtm8YOXPSA
He knew about the DLA. He’d worked it out from the letters on the third step — the step where he tied his shoes — reading them before she woke and putting them back. He knew how much came in each month. He knew what the bottles cost at the off-licence on Bridge Street because he’d stood outside once and looked at the prices through the window without going in. Like going in would have made him part of it. He’d done the division. He knew the number of bottles that accounted for the gap. He carried the number quietly. In a place where he didn’t have to explain it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHKa53Hzi0P
Hannah had tried to tell people. He knew that much — she’d told him once, not the whole thing, just some of it. She’d gone to court. She’d said what was happening in the house. He didn’t know exactly what had happened after that. He knew the court hadn’t done what Hannah wanted. He knew they hadn’t believed her the way she needed them to believe her. He didn’t know all the reasons. He just knew that Hannah had said the truth and the truth had gone somewhere and nothing had changed.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWlabLI2lCb
His grandparents had asked for him too. He knew that part. They’d wanted him to come to Brandon. The court said no. Something about his school, his routine. The decision had been made over his head.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLGp0DO0OC9
He didn’t know if they’d been wrong.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSDy5WlAz63
He thought about what he’d have said if they’d asked him.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw5gua1RFQ8
He’d have said no.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7zHHp7snLX
Because if he left she’d be alone in the house. And she’d drink. And one night the drinking would go somewhere it hadn’t gone before. He thought about the tablets in the drawer. He hadn’t counted them. He was frightened of what the number would be. As if not knowing kept the number from being real.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeOdjIeWhGo
If he stayed the loop kept running. The money and the bottles and the months going past. Her getting worse by degrees so small that each day looked almost the same as the one before.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTW92xPIfPI
He’d done the maths. Both ways ended the same.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwPKSlHjA4t
Both diagrams had the same dead end.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzEkDbs14SB
He couldn’t fix it. He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t make the maths come out differently no matter how many times he tried.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRBlACsK8zU
So he stayed.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqnPmcBtqfj
Not because it was working. Because leaving meant accepting it was over. And staying meant he could still be in the house where she could see him if she wanted to. Where she could remember he was there. Where she couldn’t forget there was someone who needed her to still be alive.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfleSIrODh0
That was it. That was all of it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyjpEnhSCDr
He was terrified of a future without her in it. More terrified than he was of anything else. More terrified than he was of the drinking or the DLA or the diagram with no exit. The terror was underneath all of it. A low constant sound like the river. Always there.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeXMLb5xJ5r
He thought about his dad.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8Jjz2MpPRm
About the story. The boy. Superman standing next to him because standing next to someone was the most powerful thing you could do.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNY8BrrxjU8
He’d been standing next to her for years.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOJqe6mTdGU
It hadn’t been enough.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoGtMlfk0Kd
There was no Superman. There was just a dead oak and a piece of broken mirror and the river going past and he was sitting here thinking about diagrams that didn’t work and the price of bottles at the off-licence and he was so tired.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBzj22z8CQN
Not sleepy. The other kind.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS6ReJSDAEH
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTIY63ALYHe
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡakgcZs8Pzy
He thought about the fire.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3KNPcj0mHl
It came in pieces. Always the same pieces.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfZ0kT2xo1V
A wall of orange. The sound — not crackling, louder, a roar that ate every other sound in the house. The rug. The rug was on fire at one corner and the fire was moving across it in a way that didn’t look like fire, it looked like the rug developing a different colour. The weight of hands on his shoulders. A voice saying his name. His name again. Not understanding what the name was supposed to do. Being carried. The hallway wrong. Cold air. Snow under his bare feet. The roof going. The sound the roof made.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡygwO3Hla69
After. The silence where a voice should have been.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAf173Uqcgr
He didn’t choose to go there. The pieces came and then he was out of them again, the way a wave lifted you and put you down somewhere else.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6HMMGvfcUy
He tried to breathe.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTyK1GfFMyU
He was in the hollow. The river was running. The mirror was throwing its light.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5X92fOpxEI
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM8PsifEpou
It’s not my fault.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUAHiPPi9mr
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf73vdp8ZoR
The words were wrong even as he thought them. He’d been told they were true. Hannah had said it. The school counsellor had said it. His own mind had worked through it and reached the same answer every time. But the words never took. They sat on the surface and didn’t go in. Underneath them was the other thing — older, heavier — that said if he had moved faster, if he had understood, if he hadn’t been frozen, if he hadn’t been the way he was —
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8tQsS0XIKC
He knew that wasn’t true. He knew it the way he knew a maths answer. Knowing it and believing it were different things. They lived in different places in him. They didn’t talk to each other.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡix5n52KUS5
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrt8ID1FhgC
It’s not my —
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRMj9d2ubra
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbnHh2H3to4
He couldn’t finish. The sentence wouldn’t close. Reaching for the rest of it brought the fire back and he couldn’t have the fire back right now.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRcUbNfXBLg
He sat with the unfinished thought.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwac4bSHW9d
The water. A bird, once, somewhere in the oak above him. Then not.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLCA8fX5rqP
He cried the way he cried in the hollow — with his whole chest, the sound held inside the root plate and the concrete and the river underneath. Not quietly. Not neatly. Just the thing that was happening until it wasn’t.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAlbTkiTdah
He wiped his face with his clean wrist.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHRoktzHSRZ
He breathed in. Ribs. Out.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7by9cOZcl7
The hollow held him. The water kept moving. No one came.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc7mNrwTJD3
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKXRZdjqajY
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYDX7LnKXDN
He reached into his blazer pocket.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnpcksSpveQ
The music player. Left outside pocket. Earphones wound round it the way he always wound them. He unwound them. Put them in.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJsXDuMjiI7
He scrolled to Fix You. Coldplay. 2005. Four minutes and fifty-four seconds.The same exact year his father was born.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMJscLJ5ksK
Middle button.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtq4xSKUOo5
The organ came in first.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxPug8oWRpD
Low. One note held and then another. Filling the hollow gradually, the way water filled something — from the bottom up. He knew this opening the way he knew the fifth stair creaked and the cutlery drawer stuck and you couldn’t slam the fridge.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ7aALa2V8F
When you try your best but you don’t succeed
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr08CR41vlZ
Close. Not performing. Just there in the dark with him.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm80pNk2Weg
When you get what you want but not what you need
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdJeXlbZ8VD
He closed his eyes.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG0RchNiSOY
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcVWL4GlMUl
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9uZQ7ZrunD
When you feel so tired but you can’t sleep
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡihCttjuc2o
Stuck in reverse
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuTzpxAzGDk
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3AzbknfuZZ
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq8RqVIzQfF
His thumb found the worn edge of the player. His dad had worn it smooth. His dad had held this same weight. Pressed this same button. Put this same song between himself and whatever the day was doing.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN3k0o5UloU
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKKysclGjHx
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJecY9MNAxT
And the tears come streaming down your face
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ85T29CxVEH
When you lose something you can’t replace
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC18Bld0rPY
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGmYeCF9Gyq
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjGCeqfS0zf
Something dropped in his chest before his mind caught up. He knew that feeling. He’d been living inside it for five years.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbMHTPoheIs
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqhtlwpKuCJ
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvmIY8A09qx
When you love someone but it goes to waste
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa0db82jPPc
Could it be worse?
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpRqL1sAeXV
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSKHQdLuqDm
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXkF7P3zLYb
His mum. His dad. Both of them in the same line. He’d never been able to separate them in this song. They were both in it. They had always both been in it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOg4iToJOiK
The drums came in. Just the kick drum at first. A heartbeat underneath the organ.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlqr4CLbrvg
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8QvLL2mM9i
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB4R14NUCdO
Lights will guide you home
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq8NRLvylgx
And ignite your bones
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWn32LRF1qz
And I will try to fix you
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlenFUhRDDv
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8MnuKcE6Jw
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2KzMorbmF6
The guitar. His chest doing something — a tightness that was also an opening. He’d been holding his shoulders up. He let them drop. The ribs said what they said.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMyd6YX2ixa
He was not thinking about anything.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7UxD3JZtk0
The song had taken the space. There was nothing left over. He was just there.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8h62eUTNOd
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn5leEjs2GM
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuovSTWuoCJ
And high up above or down below
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3FK2fyGYY4
When you’re too in love to let it go
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7NUElRzaqf
But if you never try you’ll never know
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN5TOxrdIL3
Just what you’re worth
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvO9Aj2nIPD
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSnZHSuinOh
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIwhn0yQgcU
The voice was reaching now. The organ climbing behind it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCz7cXin3M1
Someone had felt this. Had felt it specifically enough to make a song about it. In 2005. Had left the song running through decades and one music player his dad had bought and carried and left behind, and now it was in a hollow under a dead oak in Thetford in 2050 and a thirteen year old boy with a split lip was sitting in the dark listening to it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeZlh5c6fCs
Less alone for four minutes and fifty-four seconds.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGQhd75JJaR
That was enough.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnKmVHv5Zut
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3J7MCw7jHH
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXiGUyudzTW
Lights will guide you home
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBTm8qjldYZ
And ignite your bones
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXuMggJNXDE
And I will try…. to fix you
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxWyqZfyWej
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD9vKdWJA2m
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbogP6jqP8o
The song crested. Everything in it at once — the guitar, the organ, the voice, the drums — rising into a single wall of sound that filled the hollow completely. He let it fill him. He had been holding himself together all morning, all year, and the song was doing the holding now and he didn’t have to do anything except be there.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE4KT6lucTH
His face was wet. He hadn’t noticed when it started.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsgGnikcANz
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVAGcP9qWxS
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXF5I454TPt
Tears stream down your face
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp8YMvZNWP7
When you lose something you cannot replace
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3EX9wbJFKW
Tears stream down your face
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxUHcYGd1NC
And I…
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf0jaoyaCEs
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡth7x6eO97p
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡijrAM4SUil
The last chords. The organ fading. The guitar fading. The voice —I promise you I will learn from my mistakes — quiet now, almost gone.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJyXn4HJeGR
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf4MbZN5tKv
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgPhABkzzy1
Tears stream down your face
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhZXZPfAruQ
And I…
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn1WogEzxds
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGVjaV3HapT
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRGX1hFDOM1
Silence.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFaPgttVeGm
The river underneath it.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvreoirFsxV
He sat in the silence and let it last. The mirror-light was at the very edge of the root. One thin line of brightness. Then it was gone.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡklxCn44SgF
He breathed in. Ribs. Out.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDKIIbDrKEJ
He sat for another moment. Not thinking. Just the hollow and the river and the birds and the afternoon outside, which was bright and ordinary and still there.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8OtcKSulUN
He stood up.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvF5WqTfjCY
Player back in the left pocket. Blazer straightened. He looked at the mirror once — just glass in a wall now, throwing nothing — and then he ducked under the root plate and out.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBEoj9ISjx2
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2BPb3mCH76
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKwaE9g5Zwx
The afternoon was brighter than he expected.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKADGplSJSC
He stood on the bank. His eyes adjusted. The river. The elder on the far bank with its flowers starting — white, small. The sky above the trees the blue of a dry May afternoon. His shadow short, directly beneath him.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaBxZjU9IPB
He started walking.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXbkPwuMrZF
The path was narrow. The grass long at the edges, going to seed, brushing his trousers. The bank on his right, the river on his left. A wren somewhere in the elder. He listened for a moment without stopping. Wrens were very loud for something their size. He’d read that once.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM4IuJmjtDg
The priory ruins through the railings. Grey stone, knee-high walls, the square of grass where the nave had been. A man with a camera standing where the altar would have been. Two women with a guidebook. An ordinary Thursday.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRgjyaEOmq0
He walked past without stopping.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3L0Vrg9lwX
The path widened. The memorial benches. The bridge further on, the road noise coming back, the town reassembling around him. He was not in the hollow anymore. He was in the world. Separate and present at the same time. Which was how he was always in the world.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOHDSHZbg4N
A woman with a buggy. A man jogging, earbuds in, not looking. An elderly man on one of the benches with a paper cup, watching the water.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvYHoPvMrAW
Ethan walked past all of them and none of them looked.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTnTckaEVLD
Which was exactly right.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFzCNZ7RKIS
He heard her before he saw her.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKipyvdcMH2
Not crying. Not calling. The absence of sound in the shape of a child who had stopped making sounds because sounds hadn’t helped. He knew that shape. He knew it from the inside.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcAxgpiEFtc
He turned.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡna0Ona5Naa
She was on a side path that cut off toward the car park, about fifteen metres from the river, where the elder and hawthorn thinned out. Standing in the middle of the path. Five or six. Dark hair in two uneven braids, one coming loose. A green jacket. Her face was wet. She was not moving. Not calling. Not looking for anyone. She had the stillness of a child who had decided that stillness was all that was left.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO6vamR0qko
Ethan stopped.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGts7BQI8v1
The set of her shoulders. The angle of her head. The hands loose at her sides. He knew this. He knew it from the inside.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJAd4p4Zq3N
He was on the second step of the stairs at home — the one where he tied his shoes. A week after the funeral. His mother on the kitchen floor, he could hear her through the door. Hannah somewhere else in the house, another room, not coming. The house full of people and full of grief and him on the second step, gone completely still. Waiting for someone to come.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN7LFHFrIS5
Nobody had come to the stairs.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGws5acwMPy
The pieces arrived — the step, the door, both sounds, the not-coming — and then they were gone.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFQteMrnqvr
He looked at the girl.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpW1WfvS28e
He didn’t go to her directly. He moved to a position about three metres to her left and sat down at the edge of the path where the grass began. His ribs. He sat anyway. He didn’t look at her. He looked at the ground.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgPvPmYE3qp
A beetle. Black with a slight green sheen. Moving across the dry packed earth with the certainty of something that knew exactly where it was going.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡElv2hH6Y26
The girl’s breathing had changed. He couldn’t have said how he knew. He just did.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbwvQvpeBPZ
She was watching the beetle.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzs2DmhKuKM
“Rose chafer,” he said. Quietly. To the beetle, or to the path, or to no one. “They eat pollen. They don’t bite.”
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1nE845GTNy
A long pause. The beetle reached a small ridge and went over it without slowing.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQo2YFB2DKg
“I’m lost,” she said. The smallest voice.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvuzs4B1kHV
“I know.”
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCju7JEhO5F
“I can’t find my dad.”
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCer1NKdocf
“Okay.”
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfTx1Qia6gF
He didn’t say it’s okay. He didn’t say don’t worry. He sat. He looked at the beetle.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS7sS25ej4c
She looked at the beetle.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMeo7kkQIvA
“I’m Ethan. What’s your name.”
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSQUe79jsrL
“Anya.”
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkl6uqxPY8P
“Anya. I know this path. When you’re ready we can walk back to the benches. That’s probably where your dad is.”
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ51glD6e8uV
She said nothing. The beetle had stopped.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9AVnlz3PBN
“It’s okay if you’re not ready yet,” he said.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa4PNYyVuWJ
They sat.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWgJUxv05eB
The river audible from here. A wood pigeon in the hawthorn above them, slow and repeated, the same two notes. Anya’s breathing had steadied. The frozen quality was gone. She was just a child on a path watching a beetle that had stopped.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnW51sWAk5f
“Okay,” she said.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6Y16Zde9u7
He stood. He didn’t offer his hand. He walked beside her at her pace — small and slightly uneven. The hawthorn in flower on both sides of the path, the blossom beginning to go over, the petals browning at the edges, falling in the light wind. The smell of it mixed with the elder and the river.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRlRbM3qpXK
They walked.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNqe2JNYyBz
They didn’t talk.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡue0uiZ4VFW
At the main river walk the path widened and the memorial benches came into view and there was a man beside the nearest bench with his phone to his ear and his face the particular grey of someone running on fear and trying to function anyway. He was looking toward the bridge.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpHdfiivNlM
He turned.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwFzvaLwgi5
He saw Anya.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBiLiIS2L5B
He dropped the phone. Didn’t look at it. Four steps and he had her, both arms around her, lifting her, holding her so tight she made a small compressed sound against his shoulder.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9E01IsZJFZ
“I’m sorry,” she said into his neck. “I followed a butterfly.”
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡADTcdxNo6n
He couldn’t speak. His shoulders were shaking.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSIy2jDjPIn
The father looked at Ethan. He took in the split lip, the bruise, the shirt with the dried blood at the collar.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWy3KnktLTj
“Thank you,” he said. “I — she was right there and then she wasn’t and I couldn’t — thank you.”
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlHcxYcNhji
“She’s okay,” Ethan said. “She just needed a minute.”
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyvziVUbxiJ
The father nodded. He held her with both arms, her face against his neck, and one hand was spread flat across her back — the way you held a child when you needed to feel them breathing, when you needed the evidence of the breathing under your palm.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMM9F2YbHcu
He started walking toward the car park. He didn’t look back. He was already somewhere else.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHE2QH9ZK50
Ethan watched them go.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc3Gm4nI3FM
The hand on her back. The way he held her. The specific weight of a small person against a chest, held there as if letting go was not something that was going to happen any time soon.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRwbULduf5A
He stood on the path.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUk5na0sumG
The river going. The wood pigeon still. The hawthorn blossom falling very slowly, the petals turning as they came down.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIKryxNQhUf
He stood there for a moment longer than he needed to.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGf7g691QZQ
Then he started walking.
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeJzodhxfAU
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUtWYK42oWV
47Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSu7yZpvWtl
The path joined the road near the priory gate. The brass plate on the railings. The noticeboard at St Cuthbert’s — the e-ink panel still showing the vigil notice for Friday. The memorial bench with the two sets of dates and the fresh flowers tied with green string.
He walked the way he walked. Neither in time with the world around him nor entirely out of it.
His father would have been at the meeting.
He let the thought go where it went. It always went to the same place. He’d been having it for five years.
He took the player from his left pocket. Earphones in. Middle button.
The organ came in.
He walked.
Magdalen Street was ahead. Home was ahead. The afternoon and the meeting and Hannah at the school gate and his mother in the chair with her coat on — coat on, like she might need to leave quickly, which was how she always came to these things.
He had time. The meeting was at four. It was not yet half one.
He walked as far as the junction where Magdalen Street went left and the road back toward school went right.
He stopped.
Home was left. The sequence was left. The note said go home and rest and come back at four and left was where home was.
He looked left.
Something in him was quiet. Not fixed — nothing was fixed. The diagram still had no exit. The number was still in him. Tomorrow was still coming. But underneath all of that, in a place the hollow had cleared out and the song had kept clear, something was quiet in a way it had not been since he woke up this morning.
He looked right.
He went back to school.
and then Add to home screen.