We Own the Sky by Luke Allnutt (1)

A triumphant story about love, loss and finding hope—

against all odds

“We looked down at the cliff jutting into the sea, a rubber boat full of kids going under the arch, and then you started running and jumping through the grass, dodging the rabbit holes, shouting at the top of your voice, so I started chasing you, trying to catch you, and we were laughing so hard as we ran and ran, kicking up rainbow showers in the leaves.”

Rob Coates feels like he’s won the lottery of life. There is Anna, his incredible wife, their London town house and, most precious of all, Jack, their son, who makes every day an extraordinary adventure. But when a devastating illness befalls his family, Rob’s world begins to unravel. Suddenly finding himself alone, Rob seeks solace in photographing the skyscrapers and clifftops he and his son Jack used to visit. And just when it seems that all hope is lost, Rob embarks on the most unforgettable of journeys to find his way back to life, and forgiveness.

We Own the Sky is a tender, heartrending, but ultimately life-affirming novel that will resonate deeply with anyone who has suffered loss or experienced great love. With stunning eloquence and acumen, Luke Allnutt has penned a soaring debut and a true testament to the power of love, showing how even the most thoroughly broken heart can learn to beat again.

“A breathtaking read that describes perfectly the joy and pain that comes with loving fully and all the compassion and forgiveness it requires. Brimming with hope to the very end.”

—Steven Rowley, bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus

“Anyone who wishes David Nicholls would write faster needs to grab this with both hands. It’s a truly stunning achievement.”

—Jill Mansell, Meet Me at Beachcomber Bay

Praise for We Own the Sky

“With literary chops and dramatic intensity, this heartbreaking story of a father’s love that defies all reason takes off on the first page and never touches down.”

—Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Deep End of the Ocean and Two if By Sea “Luke Allnutt’s astounding debut is about memory, love, and how when we are broken, we still can become whole…. The kind of book you’ll have to share.”

—Caroline Leavitt, Pictures of You

“We Own the Sky offers something remarkable: light in the darkest dark and redemption where there ought to be none.”

—Laurie Frankel, This Is How It Always Is “With grace, emotional keenness and a steady moral searchlight, Luke Allnutt guides the reader through the darkest despair and back to hope.”

—Val Emmich, The Reminders

“Luke Allnutt’s writing is full of compassion. It made me hold my loved ones a little bit closer.”

—Katie May, The Whitstable High Tide Swimming Club “Movingly tender and unflinchingly honest.”

—Isabel Ashdown, Little Sister

“A haunting novel about having the world in your hands, losing it all, and trying to recapture a semblance of life and hope one sunrise and one starry night at a time.”

—Viola Shipman, The Charm Bracelet

“Visceral [and] heart-breaking.”

—Jem Lester, Shtum

“Beautifully rendered and profoundly moving…. Luke Allnutt is a major new talent in fiction.”

—Camille Pagán, Life and Other Near-Death Experiences “A heartbreak of a novel filled with love, sorrow, pain, and—ultimately—hope.”

—Jill Santopolo, The Light We Lost

“Fearless and beautiful and inspiring. [ We Own the Sky] made me think about the kind of person I want to be. Superb.”

—Katie Marsh, This Beautiful Life

We Own the Sky

Luke Allnutt

For Markéta, Tommy and Danny

Contents

Part One

1

She read up a storm before she left. In her favorite hard-backed chair; in bed, propped up on a mound of pillows. The books spilled over from the bedside table, piling up on the floor. She preferred foreign detective novels and she plowed through them, her lips chastely pursed, her face rigid, unmoving.

Sometimes I would wake in the night and see the lamp was still on: Anna, a harsh, unmoving silhouette, sat with a straight back, just how she was always taught. She did not acknowledge that I had woken, even though I turned toward her, but stared down into her book, flicking through the pages as if she was cramming for a test.

At first it was just the usual suspects from Scandinavia—Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson—but then she moved on: German noir from the 1940s, a Thai

series set in 1960s Phuket. The covers were familiar at first—recognizable fonts and designs from major publishers—but soon they became more esoteric, with foreign typesetting and different bindings.

And then, one day, she was gone. I don’t know where those books are now. I have looked for them since, to see if a few of them have snuck onto my shelves, but I have never found any. I imagine she took them all with her, packed them up in one of her color-coded trash bags.

The days after she left are a haze. A memory of anesthetic. Drawn curtains and neat vodka. An unsettling quietness, like the birds going silent before an eclipse. I remember sitting in the living room and staring at a crystal tumbler and wondering whether fingers of vodka were horizontal or vertical.

There was a draft that blew through the house. Under the doors, through the cracks in the walls. I think I knew where it was coming from. But I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t go upstairs. Because it wasn’t our house anymore. Those rooms did not exist, as if adults with secrets had declared them out of bounds. So I just sat downstairs, in that old dead house, the cold wind chilling my neck. They had gone, and the silence bled into everything.

* * *

Oh, I’m sure she’d love to see me now, tucked into this gloomy alcove in a grubby little pub—just me, a flickering TV, some guy pretending to be deaf

selling Disney key rings that glow in the dark. The front door of the pub has a hole in it, as if someone has tried to kick it down, and through the flapping clear plastic I can see some kids hanging around in the car park, smoking and doing tricks on an old BMX.

“I told you so.” She wouldn’t say it out loud—she had too much class for that

—but it would be there on her face, the almost imperceptible raising of an eyebrow, the foreshadowing of a smile.

Anna always thought I was a bit rough, could never quite shake off the

housing project. I remember what she said when I told her my dad used to spend his Saturday afternoons in the bookie. Polite bemusement, that smug little smile.

Because no one in her family even went to pubs. Not even at Christmas? I asked once. No, she said. They might have a glass of sherry after lunch, but that would be it, nothing more. They went bell-ringing instead.

It is dark now, and I cannot remember the sun going down. A car revs outside, and headlights sweep around the pub like a prison searchlight. I go back to the bar and order another pint. Heads turn toward me but I don’t make eye contact, avoiding the stares, the inscrutable nods.

A burly fisherman is perched on a stool, facing toward the door as if the pub is his audience. He is telling a racist joke about a woman having an affair and the plucking of a lone pube, and I remember hearing it once after school, in an East London alleyway where people dumped porn mags and empty cans of Coke. The regulars laugh at the punch line, but the barmaid is silent, turns away from them.

On the wall behind her, there are pinups of topless models and framed

newspapers from the day after 9/11.

“Four pound 10, darling,” the barmaid says, putting the beer down. My hands are shaking and I fumble around in my wallet, spilling my change out onto the bar.

“Sorry,” I say, “cold hands.”

“I know,” she says, “it’s freezing out. Here, let me.” She picks up the coins from the bar and then, as if I am a frail pensioner, counts out the rest of the money from my open hand.

“There you go,” she says. “Four pound 10.”

“Thank you,” I say, a little ashamed, and she smiles. She has a kind face, the type you don’t often see in places like this.

As she bends down to unpack the dishwasher, I take a long swig of vodka

from my hip flask. It is easier than ordering a shot with every pint. It marks you as a drinker, and they keep their eyes on you then.

I go back to my table and I notice a young woman sitting at the far end of the bar. Before, she was sitting with one of the men, one of the fisherman’s friends, but now he has gone, screeched away in a souped-up hatchback. She looks like she is dressed for a night out, in a short skirt, a skimpy, glittery top, her eyelashes spiky and dark.

I watch the barmaid, checking I cannot be seen, and then take another swig of vodka and I can feel that familiar buzz, that sad little bliss. I look at the woman sitting at the bar. She is doing shots now, shouting at the barmaid, who I think is her friend. As she laughs, she nearly topples off her stool, only just catching her balance, her breath.

I will go over to her soon. Just a couple more drinks.

* * *

I flick through Facebook, squinting my eyes so I can see the screen. My profile is barren, without pictures, just a silhouette of a man, and I never “liked” or commented or wished anyone happy birthday, but I was there every day, scrolling, judging, scrolling, judging, dank little windows into the lives of people I no longer knew, with all their sunrises and sunsets, their cycle trips through the Highlands, the endless stream of Instagrammed pad Thai and avocado toast, the unfathomable smugness of their sushi dinners.

I take a deep breath, then a swig each of beer and vodka. I pity them. All those tragedy whores, with their tricolors and rainbows, changing their profile pics to whatever we are supposed to care about today—the refugees, the latest victims of a terror attack in some godforsaken place. All their hashtags and heartfelt posts about “giving” because they once helped build a school in Africa on their gap year and kissed a beggar’s brown hand with their pearly white mouth.

I change my position at the table so I can see the girl at the bar. She has ordered another drink and is laughing, almost cackling, as she watches a video on her phone, pointing at it, trying to get the barmaid’s attention.

I go back to my phone. Sometimes I force myself to look at the photos of

other people’s children. It is, I suppose, like the urge to pick at a newly formed scab, not letting up until there is a metallic blush of blood. The stomach-punches of new arrivals, gap-toothed kids starting school, with their satchels and oversize blazers; and then their beach holidays, with their sand castles and moats, and ice creams dropped in the sand. Big shoes and little shoes, lined up on the mat.

And then the mothers. Oh, those Facebook mothers. The way they talked, as if

they had invented motherhood, as if they had invented the womb, telling themselves they were different from their own mothers because they ate quinoa and had cornrows in their hair and ran a Pinterest board on craft ideas for the recalcitrant under-fives.

* * *

I walk back to the bar and stand close to the drunk woman. With enough drink inside me, I feel better now and my hands have stopped shaking. I smile and she stares back, wobbling on her stool, looking me up and down.

“Would you like a drink?” I say, cheerfully, as if we already know each other.

In her glazed eyes, there is a flicker of surprise. She forces herself to sit up straight, so she is no longer slumped over the bar.

“Rum and Coke,” she says, her swagger returning, and she turns away from

me, tapping her fingers on the bar.

As I am ordering the drinks, she pretends to be doing something on her phone.

I can see her screen, and she is just randomly flicking between applications and messages.

“It’s Rob, by the way,” I say.

“Charlie,” she says. “But everyone calls me Charls.”

“You’re local?” I ask.

“Camborne, born and bred,” she says, swiveling her body to face me. “But

I’m staying up here now.” Her eyes are like lizard tongues, darting toward me when she thinks I’m not looking.

“You’ve probably never heard of Camborne, have you?”

“Mining, right?”

“Yeah. Not anymore, though. My dad worked at South Crofty, till it were

closed,” she says and I notice how Cornish she sounds. The fading inflection, the soft rolled r’s.

“And you?”

“London.”

“London. Very nice.”

“Do you know London?”

“Been there once or twice,” she says, looking away again to the other end of the bar, taking a deep drag of her cigarette.

She is younger than I thought, midtwenties, with red-brown hair and soft, childish features. There is something vaguely unhinged about her, something I

can’t place, that goes beyond the drink, beyond the smudges around her eyes.

She seems out of place in The Smugglers, as if she has ducked out of a wedding party and ended up here.

“Down here on your holidays then?”

“Something like that.”

“So you like Tintagel then?” she asks.

“I only arrived today. I’ll go to the castle tomorrow. I’m staying in the hotel next door.”

“First time here then?”

“Yes.”

It is a lie, but I cannot tell her about the time we were here before. The three of us, the end of a wet British summer, wrapped up against the wind, raincoats over shorts. I remember how Jack charged around on the grass next to the parking lot and how fearful Anna was—“hold hands, Jack, hold hands”—in case he got too close to the edge. I remember how we walked up the steep, winding path and came to the top of the cliff, and then, out of nowhere, there was a break in the weather, an almost biblical respite, as the rain stopped, the clouds parted and a rainbow appeared.

“Rainbow, rainbow,” Jack shouted, hopping from foot to foot, the leaves

dancing around him like fire sprites. Then, it was as if something touched him, or someone whispered in his ear, and he stood still, looking up through the column of light that pierced the clouds, as the rainbow faded into the blue sky.

“You okay?”

“What? Yes, fine,” I say, taking a sip of my pint.

“You were miles away.”

“Oh, sorry.”

She doesn’t say anything and drinks half of her rum and Coke and shakes the ice around in the glass.

“It’s all right, Tintagel,” she says to nobody in particular. “I work in the village, at one of the gift shops. My friend works here.” She points at the barmaid, the one with the kind face.

“It’s a nice pub.”

“It’s okay,” she says. “Better on the weekend, and there’s karaoke on

Tuesdays.”

“Do you sing?”

She snorts a little. “Only once, never again.”

“Shame, I’d like to see that,” I say smiling, holding her gaze.

She laughs and smiles back, then coyly looks away.

“Same again?” I ask. “I’m having another.”

“Not having something from that then?” She reaches over and pats my jacket pocket, feeling for my hip flask.

I am annoyed that she has seen me and just as I’m thinking what to say, she gently touches my arm.

“You’re not exactly subtle about it, mate.” She looks at her watch and then realizes she is not wearing one, so instead checks the time on her phone.

“Go on then. Last one,” she says, chuckling to herself, struggling to get off her stool in her tight skirt. I watch her walk to the bathroom—a journey she chastely announces—and I can see the outline of her underwear beneath her skirt, the imprint of the bar stool on her thighs.

She smells of perfume when she comes back, and she has fixed her makeup

and tied back her hair. We order some shots, and we are talking and drinking and swigging together from my hip flask, and then she is showing me videos of dogs on YouTube, because her family breeds Rhodesian Ridgebacks, and then clips of people fighting, people getting knocked out on the street on CCTV, because one of her mates from Camborne was a kickboxer but he was in prison now, assault.

Then I look up and it is all a blur, a skipping CD, the lights are on, and I can hear the harsh whine of a vacuum cleaner. I wonder if I have fallen asleep, passed out, but Charlie is still there next to me and I see we are now drinking vodka and Red Bull. I look at her and she smiles with wet, drunken eyes and she starts laughing again, pointing to her friend, the barmaid, who is scowling and pushing the vacuum cleaner around the carpet.

And then we leave, via a brief little farce where she said she thought she should go home, and then we are walking arm in arm along the deserted High Street, giggling and shushing and falling up the stairs to the little flat she has above the gift shop where she works. When we get to the top of the stairs, she looks at me, her mouth shaped like a heart and I feel a rush of boozy lust, so I pull her close to me and we start kissing, my hand reaching under her skirt.

* * *

After we finish, we lie on her small single mattress on the floor, without making eye contact, our heads buried into each other’s necks. When we have held each other for what seems like an acceptable amount of time, I walk along the hall looking for the bathroom. I fumble for a light switch, but it is not the bathroom, it is a child’s bedroom. While Charlie’s room was sparse, unfurnished, the bedroom looks like a showroom in a department store. A light shaped like an airplane, mirrored by a giant stencil on the wall. Neatly stacked boxes full of toys. A desk with colored pencils and stacks of paper. And then, pinned to a board, certificates and awards, for football and judo and being a superstar in school.

Next to the bed there is a night-light, and I cannot stop myself from turning it on. I watch as it casts pale blue moons and stars onto the ceiling. I walk toward the window, breathing in the faint smell of fabric conditioner and children’s shampoo. In the corner, I see a little yellow flashlight, just like one Jack once had, and take it in my hands, feeling the tough plastic, the durable rubber, the big buttons made for young, unskillful fingers.

“Hello,” Charlie says, and it startles me and I jump. Her tone is nearly but not quite a question.

“Sorry,” I stammer, suddenly feeling very sober, my hands beginning to shake.

“I was looking for the bathroom.”

She looks down at my hands, and I realize I am still holding the flashlight.

“My little boy,” she says, a moon from the night-light dancing across her face.

“He’s staying with my sister tonight, that’s why I’m out getting drunk.” She straightens out some paper and crayons, making them symmetrical with the edge of the desk. “I’ve just had the room done,” she says, putting something in the drawer of the bedside table. “Had to sell a lot of my stuff to pay for it, but it looks nice, don’t it?”

“It’s lovely,” I say, because it really was, and she smiles and we stand like that for a while, watching the planets and stars dance around the room.

I know Charlie wants to ask me something: if I have kids, if I like kids, but I don’t want to answer so I kiss her, and I can still taste the vodka and cigarettes. I don’t think she is comfortable kissing me here, in her son’s room, so she pulls away, takes the flashlight out of my hand and puts it carefully back on the shelf.

She turns out the night-light and leads me out the door.

Back on the single mattress, she pecks me sweetly on the neck, as you would kiss a child good-night, and then turns away from me and falls asleep without saying a word. Her naked flank is exposed and the room is cold, so I reach over and tuck the cover under her and it reminds me of Jack. Snug as a bug, snug as a bug in a rug. I drink the remainder of my hip flask and lie awake in the pale amber light, listening to her breathe.

2

In the morning, it is cold but sunny and I walk down from the parking lot, past the Magic Merlin gift shop and the sandwich boards advertising King Arthur tours and two-for-one cream teas. With my equipment strapped to my back, I head down into an earthy hollow and then cross a small rocky walkway that connects the mainland to the island. To my right, there is a sloping baize of grass that leads down to the cliff edge, broken up with rabbit holes and occasional patches of sand.

I didn’t sleep at Charlie’s. She stirred as I was leaving, and I could imagine her, one eye open, pretending to be asleep, waiting for the click of the latch. The guesthouse was only a few doors down. It was strange to be sleeping in a hotel when I lived close by, but I wanted to be able to drink without having to worry about driving home.

I clamber up the rocky path, my head pounding, the taste of Red Bull still on my breath. Moving slowly as the incline sharpens, I climb the steep wooden steps up to the ruins, the camera bag heavy on my shoulder. Close to the edge, I can feel the spray of the sea, and I stop to rest and watch the tide coming in, quickly now, ruthlessly sweeping away sand castles and seaweed dumped by an earlier swell.

I climb farther up the hill to the site of the old lookout point. There are no tourists up here, just the wind and the squawk of seagulls. I find a piece of flat ground and place my wooden board down to secure the tripod, to add extra weight so it is not easily dislodged. I fix the lens and then attach the camera, testing to see if the rotation is smooth.

The conditions are perfect. The sea, sand and grass are so vivid, unreal; in the morning light they look like the colors of a child’s rainbow. With my back to the sea, I can see the natural camber of the hills, the slow descent into the valley, down toward the bric-a-brac town. It is an incredibly visceral place. From up here, you could almost reach out and run your hands over the land, feeling the bumps and indentations as if reading braille.

The wind is slowly picking up, warm gusts that blow up white crowns on the waves, and I know I must start soon. I set up the first shots for the panorama, looking northeast toward the headland, and then slowly rotate the tripod disc, stopping at regular intervals to take bursts, until I have gone round the full 360

degrees.

When the camera has stopped its gentle whir, I check the little LCD screen to see that all the images are there and then pack up my equipment and walk back down to the parking lot.

* * *

The house is about an hour’s drive down the coast. The village is deserted as I drive through. The corner shop is still closed, shuttered down for the off-season.

I drive past the church and then along the winding road across the dunes, past the National Trust information center, and then up the unpaved track toward the edge of the cliff and the house.

It wasn’t just the cottage’s solitude that attracted me, but it was the way it was exposed, utterly at the mercy of the elements. Perched on an outcrop of rock, across the bay from St. Ives, it is the only building in sight. There is no shelter, no valley to break the ferocious Atlantic wind. When the rain lashes at the windows, when the sea winds refuse to let up, the house shudders, and it feels like it is crumbling into the sea.

As soon as I am in the door, I pour a large glass of vodka. Then I go to my office upstairs, sit at my desk and stare through the dormer window that looks out across the bay. I log in to my profiles on OKCupid and Heavenly Sinful to see if I have any messages. There is one, from “Samantha,” a woman I was messaging a few weeks ago.

Hiya, you disappeared. Still interested in meeting?

I look at her pictures, skipping through the tedium of patent shoes and

discarded umbrellas and plane wings and hearts on cappuccinos, and there is one of her on holiday somewhere, and I am reminded that she is pretty, a slight, mousy brunette.

I thought it was you who disappeared! And yeah would love to meet...

I connect the camera and start downloading the Tintagel images. When the

download is finished, I flick through the photos, happy to see they are well-aligned and won’t need much retouching. I load them into the rendering program I have written, and the software starts stitching the images together, the pixels fusing like healing skin.

You can never predict the light. Some days, when I am out with the camera, you think it is just right, but then the shots all end up looking grainy or overexposed. Today, however, it is perfect. The sea shimmers, the grass on the cliffs is as green and tight as snooker cushions. In the distance, I can see the faint outline of the moon.

When the program finishes processing the panorama, and when the images are joined together like a miniature Bayeux Tapestry, I encase the final image in a layer of code, so that people can zoom in and out and spin around. When all that is finished, I upload the image to my website, We Own the Sky.

I am surprised that the website has been popular. It started as a hobby,

something to break up my afternoons. But the link was quickly shared on

amateur photography forums. People wrote to ask me about my technique, the equipment that I used. The website was mentioned in a Guardian piece on

panoramic photography. “Simplistic and beautiful,” the writer wrote and I felt a rare swell of pride.

People ask me sometimes, in the comments, in the emails they send: “What

does We Own the Sky mean?”

“Is it a reference to something?” And the truth is, I don’t know what to tell them. Because ever since I left London, those words have been bouncing around in my head, and I have no idea why.

When I am out for a walk on the dunes, or sitting at my desk looking out to sea, I whisper those words to myself—“we own the sky, we own the sky.” I

wake to the sound of them, and before I fall asleep I can hear those four words, as if they were a mantra or a prayer that was drummed into me as a child.

The image has now finished uploading and I look out of the window, drinking my vodka, waiting for the ping. It takes a little longer than normal. Ten minutes instead of the usual five. And then there it is. A comment—always the first comment—by the same user every time.

swan09

Beautiful. Keep up the good work.

The comments are always like that—“Beautiful.”

“Lovely.”

“Take care of yourself”—and always so soon after the image has been posted I assume that the user has set up some kind of alert.

The night is closing in and, before bed, I pour myself another vodka. I can feel the pull of sleep, the anesthetic effects of the alcohol, and I want to hasten it, bring it even closer.

Sometimes, I like to think it is Jack who is commenting on the photos. I know that he will recognize them, because they are all places he has been, views he has seen with his own eyes. Box Hill, the London Eye, a lookout point on the South Downs. And now, Tintagel.

Just to be sure that he remembers, that he doesn’t forget the places we have been, I leave him messages, paragraphs of text hidden in the code, invisible to browsers, readable only to the programmer’s eye—and, I hope, to his. It is, I suppose, the things I would say to him if I could. The things I would say if she hadn’t taken him away.

tintagel

do you remember, Jack, when we got back to the parking lot and you had fallen in the brambles and done yourself an injury. both hands, daddy, both hands, little red welts on your palms. so i kissed your fingers to take the owies away and you wrapped your arms around me, carefully planting two kisses on my neck. i remember, i can never forget. your kisses, like secret whispers. the gingerbread freckles on your face. your eyes, warm like the shallow end.

Part Two

1

“You don’t look like a computer scientist,” she said.

A little tipsy, I had started talking to her at the bar in a student pub in Cambridge. It was in that postexam, preresults purgatory, a lazy, sun-kissed time, squeezing out the last of our student days.

“Because I don’t have a briefcase and a Lord of the Rings T-shirt?”

She smiled, not cruelly, but knowingly, as if this was the type of joke she had heard about herself. As she turned back to the bar to try to get a drink, I stole a glance at her. She was petite with black hair neatly tied back off her face. Her features were sharp but softened by her pale skin.

“I’m Rob, by the way.”

“Anna,” she said. “Pleased to meet you.”

I almost laughed. She sounded so formal, and I wasn’t sure if she was making a joke. “So what are you studying?” I fumbled, trying to think of something to say.

“Economics,” Anna said, squinting at me through her glasses.

“Oh, cool.”

“Actually, you’re supposed to say I don’t look like an economist.”

I looked at her neat hair, so black it was like looking in a mirror, her bag stuffed with books, the strap secured to the leg of the stool she was perching on.

I smiled.

“What?”

“But you do a little,” I said. “In a good way, I mean.”

Her eyes sparkled, and she opened her mouth as if she had thought of

something to say, something that amused her, but then thought better of it.

I knew she was friends with Lola, the person whose birthday we were

celebrating. They seemed unlikely friends. Hippy-dippy Lola, who loved to tell everyone that she was named after that Kinks song and would always sing it on request. Lola, who was known around town as the girl who got naked at the summer ball.

And then this Anna, with her sensible clothes and sturdy shoes. I had seen her around campus, often with a musical instrument strapped to her back. Not

casually slung over one shoulder, but carefully and firmly attached. She always

seemed to be walking with pronounced intent, as if she had a very urgent appointment.

“So what will you do with computer science?” she asked.

I was flustered, looked toward my friends at the quiz machine, not sure how to answer a question I thought was normally reserved for people who studied

ancient history. There was something almost Edwardian about Anna—her

puckered vowels and pristine consonants. She spoke with the precision and bearing of a character in an Enid Blyton novel. A little bit of a Goody Two-shoes.

“Maps,” I said.

“Maps?”

“Online mapping.”

Anna didn’t say anything. Her face was blank, unreadable.

“Have you heard of this new Google Maps?”

She shook her head.

“It’s been in the news a little recently. I’m writing some software connected to that.”

“So you’ll join a company then?” Anna asked.

“No. I’m going to start my own.”

“Oh,” she said, lightly touching the rim of her empty glass. “That sounds ambitious, although, in fairness, I don’t really know much about such things.”

“Can I see your phone?”

“Sorry?”

“I can show you what I mean...”

Anna looked confused, rummaged around in her bag, and produced an old

Nokia.

I smiled.

“What?” she said, her grin revealing two almost symmetrical dimples on her cheeks. “It does everything I need.”

“I’m sure it does,” I said, taking it from her, my hand brushing her fingers.

“So...imagine in the future, you’ll have a much bigger screen here, perhaps even a touch screen, and somewhere here you’ll have a map. People, anyone, will be able to add things to the map, restaurants, their running routes, whatever they want. So I’m working on some software that lets you do that, where you can add things, customize the map how you want it.”

Anna looked bemused and touched the blue screen of her Nokia. “It sounds

interesting,” she said, “although I am something of a Luddite. Will I still be able

to send texts?”

“Yes,” I said, laughing a little. She was so dry, so straight-faced, I couldn’t tell if she was joking.

“Good. That’s a relief. So are you friends with Lola, as well?”

“Yes, a little bit,” I said. “I knew her in the first year. She lived on my floor.”

“Ah,” Anna said. “So you’re that Rob.”

That Rob. I thought back. Had I done something when I was drunk? I

remembered talking to Lola one night at Fez a few semesters ago. She went on about her upbringing in Kensington as if it was a curse, a leper’s bell around her neck. I found her tiresome, a bit of a bore, but I didn’t think I had been rude.

“That Rob?” I asked, smiling nervously.

“Oh, no, just Lola mentioned you,” Anna said casually, trying once again to get the bartender’s attention. “She said you were some kind of computer genius, a whiz kid, and from public housing to boot.” She gasped as she said “public housing” and contorted her expression into one of mock outrage. “She said it was wonderful that you got a chance to come here like the rest of us,” Anna said with a little giggle.

“That’s good of her,” I said, smiling. “The boy done good.”

“Sorry?”

“The boy done good.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s a football reference.”

“Ah, sorry, I don’t follow the sports,” she said, as if it was a category in Trivial Pursuit.

The pub was filling up, and we were pushed closer together, our bare arms occasionally touching. On the side of her neck, she had a small birthmark shaped like a heart. I was lost for a moment, looking at the gentle grain of her skin, when her eyes caught mine.

“So how do you know Lola?” I said, quickly looking away.

“We went to school together,” Anna said vaguely, as if she was thinking about something else.

“To Roedean?”

“Yes.”

I had figured Anna was posh, but not Roedean posh. “And what about you?” I said.

“What about me?” she said. She sounded terse, suddenly defensive.

“After we’re finished with this place I mean.”

“Oh, I see. Accountancy,” Anna said without pause. “I have five job offers in London, and I’ll decide by the end of the week which one to take.”

“Wow, cool.”

“Not exactly cool, but it’s what I do. Or rather what I will do.” She smiled weakly. “We’re never getting a drink, are we?”

“No. Especially not now.” I nodded to a group of men in rugby shirts. One of them was just wearing underpants and protective goggles.

“Quite,” Anna said, and looked away. She seemed suddenly uninterested, and I could imagine her weaving her way back to her friends and then never seeing her again.

“Would you like to go out sometime?” I said.

“Yes,” she said almost instantly, and her reply was so quick I didn’t think she had understood.

“I mean that...”

“Sorry,” she said, “maybe I’m confused. I thought you were asking me out.”

“I did. I was,” I said, leaning a little closer so I could hear her above the music.

“Very well,” she said, smiling again, and she smelled of soap and newly

washed hair.

“Sorry, it’s loud in here,” I said. “So can I have your phone number or email or something?”

Anna took a small step back, and I realized I was leaning into her. “Yes, although on one condition.”

“Okay,” I said, still thinking about her “that Rob” comment. “What is it?”

“You give me my phone back.”

I looked down and realized I was still holding her Nokia. “Oh, shit, sorry.”

She smiled and put her phone in her bag. “Okay,” she said. “It’s Anna

Mitchell-Rose at yahoo.co.uk. All one word. Two l’s in Mitchell, no full stops or hyphenation.”

* * *

A week later, the cinema. Watching the trailers, I could feel the warmth of her body and I wanted to reach out and touch her, to put my hand on her bare leg. I glanced at her a few times and hoped she might turn toward me and our eyes would meet, but she just stared at the screen, her back straight as if she was sitting in church, her thick-framed glasses perched on her nose. The only movement she made was to silently take sweets from her bag of pick ’n’ mix. I had watched her count them out when she bought them: five from the top row, five from the bottom.

I fidgeted through the movie, about an insufferable drifter who hitchhiked around North America and then died in Alaska. I couldn’t wait for it to end.

Anna, however, seemed to be enjoying it—judging by how still she sat, how her eyes never left the screen.

When the movie ended, I thought that she might be one of those people who sit in a reverential silence until the last of the credits rolled, but the moment the screen turned black, she stood up and picked up her coat.

“So what did you think?” I said, as we hurried down the stairs toward the cinema bar.

“I hated it,” Anna said. “Every single minute of it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It was absolutely awful.”

In the little lobby bar, we sat down at a table next to an antique piano. “It’s funny,” I said, “I thought you were enjoying it.”

“No, I hated it. I found him to be very unpleasant. Traveling all over the place, not letting his family know. He didn’t give two hoots about anyone but himself.”

Two hoots. I imagined for a moment introducing her to my friends back home.

“You didn’t think it was cool when he renounced all his possessions and

burned his money?” I said, enjoying egging her on. Anna took her glasses off, wiped the lenses with a small cloth, then put them in an ancient-looking case.

“What on earth was ‘cool’ about that?” she said, her cheeks flushing. Then she squinted a little, as if she needed to put her reading glasses back on. “Oh, you’re joking,” she said, smiling. “I see. But really, though. His family worked hard for what he had and he gave it all up, because of...because of what, some tedious teenage philosophy. He was utterly, utterly self-indulgent.” She suddenly seemed a little self-conscious and stopped speaking as the waitress brought over our drinks.

“Did you like it then, the movie?” she said, when we were alone again.

“No,” I said. “I absolutely hated it.”

Anna beamed. “Good. I’m so glad.”

“What was it he was always telling people? ‘Make each day a new horizon.’”

“God, yes,” Anna said. “Preachy New Age rubbish.”

“And you know what was funny?” I said.

“What?”

“The one thing—the only thing really—that he wanted to do, which was live in the wild, well, he wasn’t very good at it, was he? He failed.”

“Exactly,” Anna said, laughing, her blue eyes flashing in the dim orange light of the bar. “God, you’re right, he was even rubbish at that. The thing is, if he had actually listened to advice from those who knew better, people who had experience living in the wilderness—wilderness experts, for example—then he might still be alive.”

“Wilderness experts?”

“Yes, wilderness experts,” she said, looking at me sternly. “I believe that’s the official name for them.”

I looked at Anna as she took a sip of her drink. She really was beautiful, her mouth always on the cusp of a smile, her eyes sparkling like a promise. She was too good for me. She would go to London and end up with the type of guy who was invited to her high-school dances.

“And what about you, where do your parents live?” Anna said, and I realized I was staring at her.

“My dad still lives in Romford.”

Anna hesitated, took a sip of her drink. “Are your parents divorced?”

“My mom died. When I was fifteen.”

“Oh,” Anna said. “I’m very sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, “it’s not your fault.” It took her a moment to get my little joke, and I grinned and she smiled back, a little more at ease.

I didn’t like talking about that morning, when Dad was waiting for me outside the school gate. For some reason, he was wearing his best suit. He didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. Mom had collapsed at work, he said, a massive stroke.

They had always joked that he would be the one to go first.

“So where’s home?” I asked Anna.

“Oh, the main house is in Suffolk, but we’ve not really been there enough for it to feel like home.”

“Ah, the hard life, so many houses...” I didn’t know why I said it. It was meant to be flippant, a quip, but it just sounded petty and unkind.

Anna scowled at me and took a hurried sip of her drink as if she had to leave.

“Actually, Rob, if you must know, I was on scholarship at Roedean, and my parents don’t have two pennies to rub together.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean...” I stammered. She was frowning, and I could see she found it hard to disguise her annoyance.

“And before you try to out-poor me, Rob, my parents were missionaries and I

spent most of my childhood living in Kenyan slums that would make your public housing complex look like Cheam.”

She angled her body away from me, and we both silently sipped our drinks.

“Sorry again. I didn’t mean it like that, I really didn’t,” I said.

Anna sighed and nervously fiddled with the menu. Then she smiled and

looked at me again. “Sorry, I probably overreacted a little. Evidently you’re not the only one to have a chip on your shoulder.”

That night we kissed as soon as we closed the bedroom door. After a few

breathless minutes, Anna stopped and I thought she was having second thoughts.

But then she started to undress, as if she was alone in her own room, and I watched her and I didn’t think she minded me watching her: the angular bones of her hips, her neat little breasts, her pale delicate arms. When she was naked, she folded her clothes and left them in a tidy pile on my desk.

Since I had been a teenager, sex had always been an exercise in caution. A gradual testing of the waters, a constant expectation that my probing hands would be quickly brushed away. Anna was nothing like that. She was hungry and uninhibited, so unlike the prim and proper way she carried herself. Her desire was single-minded—a quality then, not really knowing women, I found curiously masculine. We stayed awake until the early hours, shuttered behind hastily drawn curtains, our bodies wet with each other, until finally we slept.

* * *

I waited for her out on the court, feeling a little uncomfortable in my West Ham United football shirt and Umbro shorts. The court smelled of rubber and fresh sweat. I wanted to impress on her that I was sporty, that I didn’t just spend my time in front of my computer. So we agreed to a game of squash, which Anna said she had played once or twice at school.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she came out onto the court. In her flappy men’s shorts and regular blouse, she looked like a 1920s tennis star.

“What?” she said.

“What, what?” I said, stifling a laugh.

“Well, your clothes aren’t exactly regulation either. With your football jersey.”

“I didn’t say anything,” I protested, smirking and looking away from her.

“Right. Shall we play then?” she said, awkwardly holding her racket with two hands.

We started warming up, slowly hitting the ball back and forth. Except Anna

wasn’t really hitting the ball, but flailing, struggling to connect even when she was serving.

“I’m not so good without my glasses,” Anna said, as she scooped the ball up toward the ceiling.

We carried on like that for a while, not having anything that would resemble a game.

“Okay, I admit it. I lied,” Anna said, after she missed the ball yet again while attempting to serve.

“You lied?”

“I’ve actually never played squash.”

“Oh,” I said, once again stifling a laugh.

“I asked Lola and she said it was easy. She said that anyone could do it.

Apparently not.”

I wished then I could have taken a picture of her on that squash court. She looked so beautiful, her dark flannel shorts accentuating her pale legs, her dimpled cheeks flushed with exercise.

“Have you really only played a few times?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know, four or five. At school.”

Anna was quiet, bit her lip. “Well, the truth is, I hate sports.”

“I thought you wanted to play?” I said, putting my arm around her cold

shoulders.

“Not really. I thought you wanted to,” she said, gently tapping her racket against her leg. “I only did it because, well, I didn’t want you to think that I was sedentary.”

I smiled when she said that. Sedentary. It was a very Anna word. After another five minutes of pretending, we gave up and went outside.

It was sweltering in the sun. We sat on a small wall that overlooked an

enclosed field hockey turf. Children, mostly infants and a few older teenagers, were running around at some kind of sports camp.

We had both decided that we would stay the summer in Cambridge, living off the rest of our student loans. Anna said she wanted to do all the touristy Cambridge things she had never done because she had been working so hard to get her first-class honors. So we went punting and walked around some of the colleges and spent an afternoon in the Fitzwilliam Museum and a morning in the botanical gardens. Much of the time we just spent in bed.

As the summer went on, our friends gradually left. They went off traveling: backpacking in Australia, a camper van across South America. While I felt a

pang of regret when they left, a sense that I was missing out on something, Anna and I were both agreed that traveling wasn’t for us. We hadn’t gone to

Cambridge just to piss it all away “finding ourselves” somewhere in the Andes.

Besides, I had my maps to think about, the software I was writing, the company I wanted to start.

The real reason, though, was that we didn’t want to be apart. We were

inseparable, like love-struck teens whose parents and friends can see are headed for a fall. Whenever we tried to spend just one night alone in our own rooms, we were miserable and antsy. We broke, usually within an hour. There was a line in an old Blur song that we both liked: collapsed in love. And that was what had happened. We collapsed in love.

People thought Anna was closed, a cold fish, but she wasn’t like that with me.

One evening, without probing, she told me about her life in Kenya and her missionary parents. In these careful, considered sentences, she talked about her father, his affairs, his estrangement from the church. She talked about her mother: how she would not accept her father’s wrongdoing; how she channeled her love into her good works.

It was like a flood, an epiphany, to find out that this person that I thought was so guarded actually lay entirely open, exposed, and the one she wanted to let in was not her father, or Lola, or one of her housemates, but me.

The sun was getting hotter, and we sat on the wall drinking some water that Anna had brought in a thermos.

“Do you want to go and play squash again?”

“No,” Anna said. “I think I’ve humiliated myself enough today.”

“I enjoyed it.”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m sure you did.”

“You do look very cute in your shorts.”

She smiled and dug me gently in the ribs. “God, it’s hot, isn’t it,” Anna said, wiping her brow.

The momentary respite of breeze had gone and it felt like it was 100 degrees.

“We could go in the shade over there?” I said, pointing to an awning on the other side of the field.

Anna looked up. “We could, but we’d have to cross the field,” she said. “And look.”

We hadn’t noticed before, but a group of animals—adults in furry suits—had joined the children on the field. A lion, a tiger, a panda, they looked like the grubby leftovers from a Disney parade. There was some kind of awards ceremony, and the children were waiting in line for their prizes.

“What are they doing?” Anna asked.

“Getting medals, I think.”

“Right, I get that, but why the animals?”

I shrugged and Anna squinted, trying to get a better view.

“I don’t like the look of them,” Anna said.

“The animals or the children?”

“The animals.”

I looked over at them. In a certain light, they did look quite sinister, their furry mouths locked into perma-smiles.

“There’s a lot of them,” I said.

“Indeed,” Anna said warily.

“Shall we risk it then?” I said, getting up off the wall.

“No,” Anna said indignantly. “We can’t just run across the field, Rob. It’s some kind of school function.”

“We’re not going to get arrested.”

“We might,” she said.

“Well, I’m going,” I said, looking back, expecting her to follow. “It’s better than sitting here and dying in the sun.” I started running across the pitch, but Anna stayed on the touchline, looking sheepish, as if she was gathering the courage to jump into a swimming pool.

Now safely in the shade on the other side, I waved at her to come across and she cautiously started to move. In an attempt to appear less conspicuous, she decided to walk, but there was something about her nervousness that made her stand out. The master of ceremonies on the microphone stopped talking, and the heads of the children, the parents and the animals all turned to stare at Anna.

She smiled politely, aware that all eyes were on her, and then broke into a hurried little trot. In her gym shorts and blouse, she could have passed for a teenager, which was probably why a large orange tiger intercepted her in the center circle, linked arms and then dragged her into the line of children. I started to laugh, thinking she would make a break for it, but Anna—polite, diligent Anna—stayed in line, waiting for her prize.

After receiving her medal, Anna had to walk down a greeting line of animals.

Even from here, I could see the flicker of fear on her face. With her medal round her neck, she moved down the line, being embraced by each animal one by one.

Despite the animals’ advances, Anna didn’t hug back. She even pulled away when a bear tried to rest its head on her neck.

When it was all over, when the children had gone to greet their proud parents, Anna walked sheepishly back to where I was standing in the shade, her cheeks bright red, little bits of animal fur stuck to her blouse.

“Oh my God,” I said, still laughing. “What were you doing?”

Anna started to giggle and wiped the sweat off her brow. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. The tiger cornered me.”

“Why didn’t you just leave?” I said, handing her the thermos of water.

“I don’t know. I was in the line and then...it was too late... Stop laughing,” she said, frowning at me. “It’s not funny.”

“It is.”

“Well, maybe a bit. And anyway, it’s your fault.”

“How?”

“For making me cross that pitch. You’re an absolute idiot,” she said, sipping the water. “It’s literally my worst nightmare. Being hugged in public.”

“And by animals.”

“Well, quite.”

We sat for a moment, cooling off in the shade, and I knew then that I couldn’t possibly love her any more.

* * *

We were sitting by the River Cam, with a bottle of wine and some sandwiches. It was another sweltering day. Heat haze hugged the banks of the river like a dogged morning mist, and tinkles of jazz piano floated across the water from a café on the shore.

“Are you ever going to put that away?” Anna said.

I had spent the rest of my student loan on a digital camera and some extra lenses. “Yeah, yeah,” I said, fiddling with the settings, trying to work out how to change the shutter speed.

“Seriously, stop pointing it at me. I feel like a model or something.”

“You look like a model,” I said, and took a photo of her. She stuck out her tongue and turned toward the water, stretching her legs out on the riverbank.

“So any progress?” Anna said casually.

“On what?”

“The job hunt, I mean.”

“Oh, that,” I said. “I sent off a few CVs but I haven’t heard anything back yet.

Do you want more wine?”

Anna put her hand over her plastic cup and shook her head, and I poured myself some more.

“You seem pretty relaxed about it all.”

I shrugged. “I’m not going to worry.”

Anna puckered her lips, something she did when she didn’t agree. “Well,

you’ve only sent off a few CVs. I sent off about fifteen applications and only got five job offers.”

“What happened with the other ten?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said, looking a little forlorn, not realizing I was making a joke. “It’s annoying that they haven’t responded. I don’t understand why.”

She had become a little agitated in recent weeks, suddenly concerned about my career plans. Anna had a job lined up, with an accountancy firm in London, and had started asking questions. What would I do next? Would I join her in London and look for a job?

My heart wasn’t really in the job search, because all I could think about was maps—maps that were alive and dripping with data, maps that could be created by a teenager with a Myspace account and a laptop.

“I’m still hoping my maps idea will pan out, to be honest,” I said, pouring more wine into my cup and stretching out my legs.

Anna’s face tightened. “So what is the maps thing again?” she asked, pulling her sunglasses off her face. “You never really explained it.”

“I thought I did.”

“Well, maybe you did. But I still don’t understand it,” she said, and she seemed angry and I couldn’t figure out why.

“Well,” I said, sitting up and turning to face her. “It’s still early days, but the software basically allows the user to customize their own maps. So, for example, you could map out your cycle route or where you went for a jog. Or you could upload your photos on a tourist map for other people to see.”

“You’d put the photos on the map?”

“Yes.”

Anna pouted. “That seems rather strange, doesn’t it. Why would anyone want to do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, beginning to feel a little annoyed. “Because they can.”

We sat in silence for a little while, and Anna started to pack away the picnic things into her backpack.

“Anyway, you don’t know the first thing about maps, do you?” Anna said. “I mean, people study for years to be cartographers. A cousin of my father was a

cartographer. It’s an incredibly skilled profession.”

“Why are you being so weird about this?”

“I’m not, Rob. I’m just asking.”

“Nothing’s changed, Anna.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m still coming to London, if that’s what this is really about.”

She snorted a little. “It’s not about that. It’s nothing to do with that.”

“So why does it bother you so much?”

She didn’t answer, continued packing away the picnic things. I knew why it bothered her. It was my plan to go it alone. She saw it as a risk, a deviation from the proper course. To her mind, I should be applying for a job, with benefits and a pension plan. That, after all, was why we had gone to Cambridge, why we had studied so hard.

“You’re exasperating sometimes,” she said, staring out across the river.

“You’re always so absolutely certain you’ll get what you want.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Because it doesn’t always work like that.”

“It has so far.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, everything I’ve worked for, I’ve got so far.”

I knew I sounded arrogant, but I felt under attack. Anna turned away angrily and smoothed down her skirt. “Well, as long as you know what you’re doing.”

“Why does it bother you so much?” I asked.

“It doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does. You’re pissed off now.”

She reached across me and poured herself some wine. “It just seems

impulsive, as if you haven’t thought it through. You’ve just graduated at the top of your class, Rob, companies would be begging to employ you, but you want to do this thing with maps.”

“Right, because I think I can make it work. And besides, I don’t want to work for a company.”

Anna exhaled deeply. “Yes, you’ve made that quite clear,” she said.

We had reached an impasse, and we both sat and watched the punters on the Cam. Apart from a few minor squabbles, it was the first argument we had ever had.

“It is about that,” Anna said after a while, her voice barely audible.

“About what?”

“What I said earlier. I said it wasn’t about London, but it is. I just want to know you’re coming.”

I looked at her. She was so beautiful, her knees chastely tucked up to her chest, her hair peppered with tiny dandelion seeds.

“Of course I’m coming to London,” I said, moving close to her. “But there is one thing.”

“What?”

“I want us to live together. I know it’s not been long, but I want to live with you.”

2

“Anna, can you talk, you’re not gonna fucking believe this.” I was standing outside a meeting room in an office on Old Street.

“Is everything all right?” she said.

I was trying to keep my voice down as the corridor walls were thin. “They want it. The software. They want to buy the fucking software.”

A pause, a faint crackle on the line.

“This isn’t one of your jokes, is it, Rob?” Anna said.

“No, not at all. I can’t talk for long, but they’re in the room now, looking at the papers. I didn’t even have to pitch it. They just want it. They get it.”

The company, Simtech, had been recommended by a programmer friend. A

start-up run by someone called Scott, who had been a few years ahead of me at Cambridge.

“That’s absolutely fantastic, Rob. Brilliant news,” she said, but it was as if she was waiting for me to tell her something else.

“And guess how much they want to pay for it?”

“I don’t know, um...”

“One and a half million.”

Even Anna couldn’t contain her excitement. “As in sterling?”

“Yes, pounds. I still can’t believe it.”

Anna took a deep breath, and I could hear a shuffling sound, what sounded like her blowing her nose.

“Anna, are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, sniffing a little. “I just... I just don’t know what to say...”

“I know, me too. We have to celebrate tonight.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, a note of caution in her voice. “I don’t understand, though. So what actually happened? What did they...”

I could hear the scraping of chairs on the floor of the meeting room, the sound of people standing up.

“Anna, I’ve got to go, I’ll call you in a bit...”

“Okay,” she said, “but don’t do anything hasty, Rob. Don’t sign anything, okay? Say you need to discuss everything with your lawyers.”

“Yeah, yeah... I’ve got...”

“I’m serious, Rob...”

“Okay, okay, don’t worry. I’ll call you later...”

* * *

The grimy heat hit me as soon as I left the building. For a moment, I just stood, blinking into the sunlight, watching the lanes of traffic hurtle around the roundabout, the happy, dirty din of London.

The last nine months hadn’t been easy. Living in Clapham in a rented ground-floor flat that Anna paid for. While I worked late through the night—caffeine-fueled coding binges—Anna got up early for work. We didn’t see much of each other, a wave in our bathrobes on the landing—her getting up, me turning in. It was just for a while, we agreed. It would be better when her training period was over, when I had finished writing my software.

Anna loved her job, working in a department that audited the bank’s

adherence to financial regulations. It was perfect for her: a stickler for the rules, she knew where the bank could trip up. And because she knew the rules, she also knew how to get around them, the legal shortcuts and back doors, the get-out clauses that lurked in the small print. Her talents were recognized, and she was promoted and fast-tracked for management in just her first six months.

I was still buzzing and didn’t know what to do with myself, so I started

walking toward Liverpool Street, the skyscrapers eclipsing the sun. I tried to call Anna but her phone was switched off, so I ducked into a pub for a beer.

I knew I was right. All those twenty-and thirty-hour coding sessions, sleeping under an old blanket on the floor. I told people smartphones would change everything, and they rolled their eyes. But it was true. Maps used to be static, something we kept folded up in a backpack, or in the glove compartment of the car. Now they would always be with us, customized, dynamic, on our phones, in our pockets.

The beer began to have a calming effect, and it felt like a great weight had been lifted. It hadn’t been the plan—Anna paying the rent and lending me the money to buy a new suit. She didn’t say it outright, but I knew what she thought.

That I should do a business course, an internship at a gaming company, that I should put my silly maps idea on the back burner for now.

It grated. Because everyone always thought that it would be me, that I would be the precocious wunderkind dripping in cash. Because I had a track record. I told people I would graduate at the top of my class—and I did. I told my disbelieving tutors I would win the annual Cambridge hacking competition—and I did, every year. But London hadn’t been like that. While Anna flew off to Geneva every two weeks for work, I sat on the sofa in my boxer shorts watching Countryfile and eating leftover rice from Chicken King.

My phone rang. It was Anna.

“Hello.”

“You’re in a pub, aren’t you?”

“How did you guess?”

“I had training and I’ve finished early. Do you want to come and meet me at Liverpool Street?”

* * *

It was a bustling Thursday night. The streets were packed with commuters in suits, and you could hear the buzz of the workweek coming to an end. I got to the pub before Anna and stood in the crowd of people waiting for a drink.

I saw her walk in. Even though we had lived in London for nine months, I had never seen her on her territory and it made me fall in love with her all over again: the cautious way she approached the bar; the calculations I knew she was making about the best place to stand; the way she fiddled with her new work glasses, which she said made her look like a secretary in a porno movie.

“Hello,” I said, and she turned around and smiled. For a moment, I thought she was going to hug me, but she just stared, intently, blinking as if the light was hurting her eyes.

“I owe you an apology,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because sometimes I wasn’t that supportive, of your idea, your software, and I’m sorry.”

“That’s not true, Anna, and you’ve essentially funded the whole thing by

paying the rent...”

“Yes, but that’s not what I mean. It’s a horrible thing to say, but I think I doubted you. I’m very sorry. I feel very ashamed about it.”

She swallowed, and suddenly looked very sheepish. “It’s okay, Anna,” I said, putting my arm around her waist. “I understand that sometimes it’s difficult to recognize genius.”

She poked me in the ribs and removed my arm from around her waist. “Don’t get cocky. Wait, what on earth am I saying? You’re the cockiest man I’ve ever

met.”

“Harsh. Shall we get drinks?”

Anna looked wistfully toward the bar. “I’m trying, although my plan of attack isn’t working.”

Suddenly, she turned to me and awkwardly kissed me on the cheek. It was

chaste, like the kiss you would give an elderly aunt, but for Anna a rare display of public affection. “I promised myself I won’t cry,” she said, “and I keep my promises, but I wanted to say how proud I am of you. Really, Rob. You’ve worked so hard, and you deserve all your success.”

I was just about to say something when I saw Anna tighten the strap on her laptop bag. She nodded toward the bar. “Let’s go,” she said. “We have an

opening.”

* * *

“Did you tell your dad?” Anna asked, after we had found a table and I had gone over everything that had happened at the meeting.

“Over the moon, son. That’s footballer’s wages, that is,” I said, mimicking my dad’s East London vowels. “No, he was really pleased. You know how

sentimental he gets.”

I could tell Dad was trying not to cry when I told him. He was still at the taxi stand, waiting for a call out. “Fuck me, son,” he kept saying. “Fuck me.”

When he had caught his breath, he told me how proud he was. “I still can’t believe it,” he said. “First Cambridge and now this. Taxi driver and a cleaner—

no idea where you got it from, son.”

* * *

Anna took a notebook out of her bag. “I am very pleased of course, but I do have some questions.”

“Uh-oh. You’ve made a list, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have.” Anna flipped a page and I could see a numbered list in her improbably neat handwriting.

“Oh my God, you really did.”

She blushed a little. “It’s a big opportunity for you, Rob. I’m not going to let you waste it.”

“It’s a big opportunity for us.”

Anna fiddled with the salt shaker and took another sip of her drink.

“Seriously, can we go down my list? I’m getting nervous now.”

“We should order some champagne first.”

Anna slowly and demonstrably shook her head.

“What, really? C’mon, let’s celebrate.”

“I’m not being a killjoy, Rob. It’s just that we’ll pay the absolute earth here.”

“Jesus, Anna. I just made one-and-a-half-million pounds.”

“I know and that’s good,” she said, hushing her voice in case anyone was

listening. “It also brings me onto my first question.”

“You’re so sexy in your new glasses,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“Thank you. That’s very kind of you. But Rob. Please.” She wiped some dust off the page. “So will they pay you a salary?”

“What?”

“On top of the money, will they pay you a salary?”

I thought back to the meeting. It was all a bit of a blur, but they did say something about a salary. “They will actually. They want me to run the company for them.”

Anna beamed. “Oh, I’m so glad.”

“Wait, you’re happier about that than what they paid for the software?”

“Yes, I am in a way. You’ll think me strange, but yes, the regular income does mean more to me.”

“Wait, what?”

Anna suddenly looked very solemn, her client face. “Really, it does. Look, the windfall is great, but it’s just a pot that will keep getting smaller. Whereas your regular income is a pot that, over time, keeps getting bigger.”

“That makes sense I suppose.”

“One of the many benefits of having an accountant as a girlfriend,” Anna said, smiling and turning the page of her notebook. “Now, can I get through the rest of my list?”

* * *

There was a strange musty smell in Anna’s parents’ house: it reminded me of Werther’s Butterscotch or the jasmine-scented handkerchiefs old people put in their drawers.

We sat and ate in near silence, just the doom-laden tick of the clock, the scratch of cutlery on bone china. The food was a turgid affair of frozen turkey, mushy overcooked vegetables, and a glass of sherry, which Anna said had been brought out in my honor.

“And how is your father, Robert?” Anna’s father said, putting down his fork.

He was wearing a suit, a gray three-piece that was worn and tattered around the edges.

“He’s fine, thanks. Yeah, still driving his cab. Although his health isn’t so good at the moment. Problems with his diabetes.”

Anna’s father didn’t say anything and looked down at his plate.

For the last three Christmases we had been to my dad’s. For proximity, we told Anna’s parents. Romford was much closer and Dad was all on his own. But this year, out of Anna’s sense of duty more than anything else, we decided to stay with them in their little village on the Suffolk coast.

“And will he be spending Christmas alone?”

“Nah, he’s going round his best mate’s...best friend Steven’s for dinner.”

“Is that Little Steve?” Anna said with a slight smirk. It amused her, she said, how I tried to sound refined around her parents.

“Yep, Little Steve. He’ll be fine, though. He treated himself to a big flat-screen TV, and we got him a new Sky Sports subscription so, yeah, he’s like a pig in...” I nearly choked on my sprout. “So yeah, he’s really happy...”

At the other end of the table, Anna stifled a laugh and took a dainty sip of sherry.

“They’re expensive, aren’t they, those new televisions,” Anna’s mother said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. As always, she was dressed in her plaid two-piece, like a stern, passed-over governess. For some reason, she had served the food wearing rubber gloves and her hands underneath were a pale white, as if they had been scrubbed clean with a Brillo pad.

“Oh, he’s paying in installments,” I said. “He got one of those zero percent interest deals for Christmas.”

Silence. We all listened to the ticking clock, the wind and rain hammering on the windowpanes.

“We’ve never been in debt, Janet, have we? Never had a mortgage or bought anything on credit. Africans can teach you a lot, in that regard.”

I smiled politely. Well, I wanted to say, that’s because the church gave you the house and because you haven’t bought as much as a new shirt in thirty years.

He had been brilliant once, Anna said. Mercurial. Daktari they called him in Swahili, the doctor. In the village, he was a priest first and a doctor second, but also an engineer, a judge, a mediator of disputes. In all of the villages they lived in across Kenya, he was treated like nobility.

There had been troubles, though, Anna said. That was the word she used.

Troubles. Affairs with the locals, the daughters of God. In the end, the church couldn’t turn a blind eye anymore and, very quietly, they asked the family to come home.

“Well, he’s enjoying watching his football on it and all the movies,” I said, and Anna’s mother mumbled, “that’s nice” and something else I couldn’t hear.

I kept thinking about what Dad would be doing now. Sitting down to dinner with Little Steve and his wife. The queen’s speech and a game of party bingo.

“And how about you, Robert?” Anna’s father said, finally breaking the

silence. “Are you working much at the moment?”

I wasn’t really, but I couldn’t tell him that. When I sold the software and was taken on by the company, I had imagined it differently. I thought I would be living off the interest, coming in to a board meeting every now and again, riding around on a little scooter and playing pool with some of the programmers on a break.

It wasn’t anything like that. Simtech didn’t have an office anymore. There was no need, Scott, the investor, said. We could just outsource most of the

programming to a company in Belgium. So two or three times a week, I sat in a conference call with Marc in Brussels. For everything else, we used email and Google Chat. I never really had enough to do. I spent most of my day writing comments on programmers’ forums and playing fantasy football.

“Oh, you know, bits and pieces, stuff with the company.”

I expected Anna’s father to say something, but he just nodded, staring past me at something on the wall. He didn’t approve of my career, thought I had got lucky, as if making money was a magician’s trick.

It annoyed me that he thought we were extravagant. We put the money mostly into the house, a tall Georgian town house right at the top of Parliament Hill.

There were new clothes, a car, but we weren’t jetting off to the Bahamas every week.

“Well, jobs aren’t easy to find these days, that’s for sure,” he said, as if I was unemployed, as if I was incapable of bringing any money home.

“And how about you, Anna? Your work, I mean,” he said stiffly, and it was unfathomable to me that they were father and daughter.

“Fine, yes,” Anna said, and I expected her to go on, to expand, but she didn’t.

She was silent and stared at an African wood carving on the sideboard.

Before I met them, Anna had warned me about her parents. She said they were cold, strange and they had never been very close. The problem, she said, was

that they loved Africa and their missionary work more than they did her. When times were good, they were like honeymooning lovers, and Anna felt like an appendage, a third wheel. When things were bad, when her father was away on one of his “trips,” her mother resented her, as if his insatiable lust for village girls was somehow Anna’s fault.

There was a story she told about Nairobi, which, no matter how she spun it, I could never understand. Her parents would sometimes take in girls from the parish, the destitute or the troubled. Anna was expected to wait on them, not just make them welcome—she was more than happy to do that—but serve them tea, turn down their beds, bring them a towel after they bathed. She understood, she said, the need to help the less fortunate. That had been drummed into her since she had been a child. But sometimes it was as if they were the daughters, she said, and not her.

That evening at Anna’s parents’, I huddled under a blanket in my room

reading an old James Herriot novel. Even though we were now married—an

impromptu wedding on a beach in Bali—we were still given separate bedrooms.

The room was sparse: a bed, a bedside table and a Bible. There was no Wi-Fi or phone signal, just a single shelf full of old beige hardbacks, their titles worn away. Our sleeping arrangement was punishment, Anna thought, for our unplanned and unannounced wedding, a union that hadn’t been blessed by the church. That was the difference between them. My father couldn’t have been happier, thrilled by the surprise, telling us it was our wedding, we could do whatever we liked. Anna’s parents just smoldered.

I heard a soft knock at the door, and Anna came into the room, wearing her coat. “I can’t take this anymore,” she said. “We need to find a pub.”

We said we were just going for a quick evening stroll, but instead marched the two miles into the nearest town. The breeze on our faces had never felt so sweet.

So intent on finding signs of life, we barely spoke as we speed-walked along the dark country road.

The little seaside town of Southwold was dead. Only the lighthouse seemed alive, incongruous and towering over the town, its beam of light dueling with the moon. All we could hear were our footsteps and the soft sound of the sea.

“Everything’s going to be closed, isn’t it?” I said.

“We’ve got to keep looking, we must,” Anna said, as we turned into yet

another dark cobbled street.

Just as we were thinking about giving up, or trying to get a taxi to the next town, we turned the corner and light spilled out onto the street. A hotel that

doubled as a pub.

As we opened the door, it was like easing ourselves into a steaming hot bath.

We stood in the doorway and took it all in: the warm glow and chatter of the bar, the flicker and ping of the slot machines. In the corner, there was a loud group of locals wearing Christmas sweaters and Santa hats.

“What do you want?” I asked Anna at the bar, having to shout above the

noise.

“A pint of something, and I think I’ll have a double of something.”

“A what?”

“A double. I’d like a double. A double measure of spirits.”

I started laughing. Anna didn’t drink a huge amount, and I had never seen her drink spirits.

“Er, okay. I’m just having a beer.”

“Very well,” Anna said, sounding a little like her father. She was looking at the optics above the bar. “Gin. I think I’ll have a gin.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to catch the bartender’s attention. “A beer and a gin.”

She nudged me. “But Rob, it has to be a double. Two of them in one glass.”

“Yep, I got it, sweetheart,” I said, smiling.

We sat at the bar, on two stools facing each other. Anna drank her gin down in one and winced a little, her cheeks flushing red. She let out a sigh of relief.

“I’m sorry,” she said, chasing the gin with her beer. “About them I mean. I realize it’s not easy.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

Anna shook her head. “It’s not fine actually. They’re so strange, the older they get. And the thing is, this is actually them being nice.”

“Really?” I said, nearly spitting out my lager.

“Really,” she said. “They just don’t like it here. In England, I mean. They’re unhappy and it shows.” She took a long sip of her drink. “I much prefer it with your dad. It’s a horrible thing to say, but I wish we could go there every year.”

I knew now why Anna was so keen to spend Christmas in Romford, at our

little row house, which Dad decorated with reindeer lights and a giant blow-up Santa in the front yard.

I had been nervous the first time I had taken Anna back home for Christmas.

Since Mom died, Dad didn’t really want to celebrate. One year we ordered

Chinese; another we ate our Christmas lunch in the pub.

But with Anna coming, Dad said he would do the full works, just how Mom

used to do it. He got Little Steve’s wife to show him how to do the turkey and

roast potatoes. He got the artificial tree down from the attic and bought some crackers from Tesco. And for the first time in his life, he bought a brown sliced loaf of bread instead of his usual white.

From the first moment he met her, Dad said Anna was family. I always

thought he might joke—got yourself a high-class lady, son—but he never did.

That first Christmas, they spent most of their time chatting in the living room.

He loved hearing about Anna’s time in Africa and her stories from boarding school. And she loved his tales of the taxi stand and watching football at West Ham.

When the drinks were flowing later in the afternoon, Dad got out the photo albums and we all scrunched up on the saggy, worn-out couch.

“And that’s your mom, Rob?” Anna said, pointing to a photo of her in a sun hat on Brighton beach.

“Yep. When was that, Dad?” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know, son. That’s when you were about seven or eight I

reckon...” Dad said, his voice cracking a little.

“She’s beautiful,” Anna said suddenly, and we all stared at the photo of her again.

“Yeah, she is...” Dad’s choice of tense was deliberate because he had never accepted that she was gone. “Look,” he said, turning the pages. “There’s a nice one here. That’s us at Christmas. Your mom just had her hair done.”

“She looks absolutely lovely,” Anna said. “Goodness and look at you,” she said, pointing to awkward pubescent me. “You’re so skinny.”

“He always was. Don’t know where he gets it from. Certainly not from me,”

Dad said, laughing loudly.

That afternoon, I didn’t think I had ever seen Anna look more relaxed, more at home, her feet up on the coffee table, a can of Carlsberg in her hand. After that, we went to Romford for every Christmas, our family traditions rejuvenated by Anna’s presence. She loved those traditions, the things she said she had never had. The midmorning sparkling wine and ceremonial opening of the giant tin of chocolates. The pub for a pint while the turkey was cooking. The bingo. The party hats that Dad made us wear from dawn until dusk.

In the afternoon, Dad would get overemotional on the bubbly and would tell me and Anna how much he loved us, how she was like the daughter he never

had. And then, at almost exactly the same time every year, he would fall asleep on the sofa, just after the traditional sing-along of “Hey Jude” on the PlayStation karaoke.

“We could all spend it together, my dad and your parents,” I said, putting my hand on Anna’s arm. “Although I can’t imagine your mother doing the karaoke.”

“Ha,” Anna said and suddenly she leaned over and kissed me, full on the lips, and I felt a wave of lust, a pent-up desire like that urge to fuck after funerals.

“Wow. Be careful, Anna. Definitely a public display of affection there.”

She sat back on her stool. “It’s the gin, I think. I’m being serious, though. I don’t want to come here for Christmas again. I know they’re my parents, but I don’t want that.” Anna lowered her head, almost as if she was embarrassed by what she had said. “I missed you last night,” she said.

“In your teenage bedroom?”

“Yes. It made me feel quite randy actually.”

“Really? Well, I could always come to yours.”

“No,” Anna said quickly and then looked around her conspiratorially. “But, I will come to you.”

I started laughing. “Are you drunk?”

She giggled. “A little actually. It’s the Christmas cheer. But seriously, Rob, I forbid you to come out of your room. It’s much easier for me. I know the times they fall asleep, you see. I know which floorboards squeak on the landing. I know how to close the door without making the latch click.”

“I’m impressed.”

“I’m not quite as square as you think, darling.”

“But what if we make a noise?” I said, half joking, happily buzzed from the beer.

“We won’t. Or at least I won’t.”

I looked at her quizzically.

“I went to boarding school, Rob. I learned how not to make a noise.” She

smiled at me mischievously and finally got the bartender’s attention.

“Could I possibly have another gin?”

The bartender nodded.

“A double, please.”

We were a little drunk walking home. For safety, Anna made us walk, single file, facing the oncoming traffic. When cars approached, she pulled me into the shoulder to let them pass.

On the final stretch, there was a sidewalk and we strolled along arm in arm.

“Are you still coming to my room?” I said.

“Yes, of course. We have an agreement,” she said, almost solemnly. She then stopped, I thought for another car, but the road was empty.

“Maybe we should try...” she said.

“Try what?”

“To have children.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Tipsy,” she said.

“Really?” I said. We had never really spoken much about children. We were happy with our childless London lives: Anna’s career; Star Wars marathons and pop-up food festivals on the weekends. Boating in the park, museums on rainy days, lazy afternoons in pubs. It was the London life we had always imagined. A world with children was still in the distant future, a future that was no more real, or no more ours, than a future that would have us living in Peru.

I watched Anna whenever she was around children. She didn’t seem to coo

and caw like other women. I saw her hold the baby of a friend once, and she cradled the infant so awkwardly, like a careless Mary in a nativity play. After she had returned him to his mother, I saw her discreetly wipe some of the baby’s saliva on the back of her trousers.

“Yes, really,” Anna said, biting her lip nervously. “During lunch today, I was thinking about your dad and how much I love going there for Christmas. Just that warmth of being in a family. And I really want to have that, as well, to make that my own.”

I pulled her close to me and kissed the top of her head. Loving Anna was like a secret that no one else knew. A secret you kept close to you, that you would never reveal. Because I was the only one, the only who that she let in. We stood like that for a while, on the side of the road, gently swaying in the moonlight.

* * *

I think we conceived that night, or perhaps the morning after when Anna’s parents were at church. A couple of weeks later, Anna called me into the

bathroom. She was sitting on the side of the bath, examining, up close, in various angles of light, the clear blue line on the pregnancy test. I read the instructions, to check that we were reading it right. Yes, it was really there, irrefutable, a thick blue stripe.

“I can’t believe it,” I said.

“I know,” Anna said. “Let’s not celebrate yet, though. We still don’t know for certain.”

She saw my face drop and put her hand on my arm. “This brand, by the way,”

she said, “has the lowest rate of false positives on the market. I chose it precisely because of that.”

I didn’t say anything, and she put her arms around me and buried her face into my neck. “I just don’t want to get too excited, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and we stood and looked at the strip, the blue line now brighter and clearer than ever before.

durdle door

it wasn’t the water, you said, that made the big hole in the rock. it was batman with his batarangs and his blaster. we looked down at the cliff jutting into the sea, a rubber boat full of kids going under the arch, and then you started running and jumping through the grass, dodging the rabbit holes, shouting at the top of your voice, so I started chasing you, trying to catch you, and we were laughing so hard as we ran and ran, kicking up rainbow showers in the leaves.

3

A blue line. In the end that was all it was. I remember the doctor’s pause. I thought that the ultrasound monitor had frozen, because the little gray-white shadow wasn’t moving. I could feel Anna next to me, holding her breath, trying to decipher the shadows on the screen above her.

“Hmm, I’m afraid I’m not picking up a heartbeat, right now,” the doctor said, moving the wand across Anna’s belly. Where we had once seen a heartbeat, an electronic wobble, a quiver of white, now there was nothing.

She began to measure the size of the fetus. Has it grown, I said? It’s small, eight weeks, the doctor said, but Anna was ten weeks gone. So it’s small, I said, because I didn’t understand these things. He’s underweight?

Anna did understand these things. Without prompting, she wiped down her

stomach with a piece of paper towel and sat up on the side of the bed, her eyes fixed on the monitor on the wall.

The second time Anna miscarried, it was at thirteen weeks.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “We’re just not seeing the growth we would have expected at this point.” This time, it wasn’t just a little cluster of amniotic cells, but it had a human form, with limbs, a heart, a mouth. The baby had eyelids.

That child, which had to be evacuated from Anna’s body, could have been held in the palm of a hand. Even though we didn’t know the sex, Anna later told me she had named her Lucy.

Anna grieved silently. She didn’t tell her mother; she didn’t tell Lola, who wore her own miscarriage on her sleeve. Because that was Anna’s way, that was how she had been taught. Stoicism, above all.

Growing up in Kenya, a latchkey kid in a poor, dusty parish, the locals greeted her every morning on her walk to school with stones and insults, calling her a white devil and a smelly buffalo cunt. When Anna told her parents, they said she was complaining, spoiled, was not prepared to suffer for the Lord.

We kept things to ourselves. Our lost babies were our secrets. They bound us together. Yes, those secrets were devastating, but they were ours and ours alone.

She told me everything, even the feelings she said were shameful. She thought she was being punished, but she could not say for what. She said she could not bear to go to the supermarket and see young moms because she thought they had taken her babies away. She said she did not believe there was anything wrong with her eggs, the fetus we had created together, but the fault was in her ability to carry the child. She thought she was damaged, that her body had a mechanical defect. Mis-carriage. I had never thought of it that way, the carriage part.

Anna, however, wasn’t to be deterred. She applied herself to having a baby in the way she had got her first-class honors. We went to see specialists on Harley Street and they ran tests, tests galore, but they found nothing wrong with her.

Just one of those things, better luck next time.

So we kept on trying, refused to give up, because that was how Anna saw the world: as a fight, your guard up, backs against the wall. It was where we converged. The kid from Essex public housing and the scholarship girl, who both felt like we had something to prove, because we didn’t have rich parents or a proud lineage.

At Anna’s suggestion, I went to a clinic and, in a toilet stall with a handrail and an emergency cord, jerked off over some ancient pornography. But there was nothing wrong with my sperm. Top notch, the doctor said. Pristine.

We were not surprised when Anna got pregnant for the third time, because

conceiving had never been the problem. We approached the pregnancy with a sense of fatalism. At around the eight-week mark, we expected the same: Anna’s strange cramps, the feeling she described as an emptiness, even though both times the child had been there, living and dying inside her. But, no, there it was on the monitor: a heartbeat. And not just any heartbeat, but a strong heartbeat.

There were hands and feet, the delicate outline of ribs. There were eyes, a half-formed pancreas. There were eyelids.

In the second trimester, they told us that the chances of losing the baby, even for a high-risk pregnancy, were slim. We didn’t believe them. It was

inappropriate, I said to Anna, but it felt like we were on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? , where the questions were getting harder and we were pushing our luck by staying in the game.

“Your analogy doesn’t work,” Anna said, “because we can’t cash out. If you could cash out with a baby, it would work.”

It was at the start of Anna’s third trimester when I noticed them. I was in the backyard one day, and there were two sunflowers that hadn’t been there before.

Anna hated gardening. It was a chore, she said, and she had never planted anything in her life.

I went into the kitchen and she was standing at the sink, in her apron, washing some coffee cups.

“I like your sunflowers,” I said. “Did you do that?”

“I did,” she said, looking pleased with herself. “They’re nice, aren’t they?”

“They are. I’m just surprised. I thought you hated gardening.”

“Oh, I do, don’t worry about that... It’s just...” She swallowed and put down a coffee mug. “You’ll think me silly, but I just wanted to do something. You know, for the little ones. I know that’s not the sort of thing I do, but I thought it would be nice.” Then she turned away from me, because she didn’t want me to see her cry, and I put my arms around her, and she buried her head into my neck.

“The woman in the garden center said they were robust, good in all weathers.”

* * *

I was sitting on the floor of the bathroom, watching Anna in the bath. She was reading a book, propped up on a wire bridge that held the soap, like something I remembered from my grandmother’s house. Absentmindedly she twisted her hair around in her fingers, and I watched as the bubbles attempted to navigate her bump.

I was amazed at how much skin could stretch, her belly like a taut drum, the outer layers almost translucent. I was nervous about touching her. I wanted to, but I was worried that I would press the wrong place, that my inexpert hands would damage what was inside.

I watched as she read. Her pink razor was placed on the side of the bath and, even after all these years, there was something comforting about that. I

remembered that feeling from the very beginning, when we started living

together in my room in Cambridge. I used to love seeing her collection of gels and shampoos in the shower; her book on the bedside table; her earrings

carefully placed in a saucer on the chest of drawers. Yes, it was a territorial advance, but one that only ever felt like a liberation.

“Oh, I was going to tell you,” Anna said, putting her book down and swishing her hands through the water. “I joined this group on Facebook—Babies & Tiny Tots.”

“What’s that?”

“The clue’s in the name, Rob. Babies and Tots. It’s some kind of mother’s group.”

“Is it useful?”

“Well, I only just joined, but, in short, no, it’s awful. Lola made me join.”

“Is she still doing her raw food thing?”

“Doing it? She is it, Rob. She has her blog, the Raw Food Mamma, and she’s working on her first cookery book.”

“God. Poor India.”

“I know. She swears India likes it, though. Says her croup has completely gone since she went raw.”

“Lola’s on Twitter, by the way,” I said. “Do you know what her bio says?”

“Mmm, let me guess...”

“Hold on.” I pulled out my phone. “Lola Bree-Hastings. Mother, daughter,

sister, friend, fire dancer, yogi, raw food evangelist.”

“Goodness. That is very Lola,” Anna said, pulling on a strand of hair. “And she needs a hyphen between raw and food. In that vein, do you know what she has listed as her job on Facebook?”

“What?”

“CEO of cuddles and chief feeding assistant.”

“Oh my God,” I said, starting to laugh. “So how is this Babies and Tots thing awful?” I poured myself a glass and offered Anna some of the Bobby Bubble

“kids champagne” she had been drinking.

Anna shook her head. “I’ve had enough of that stuff to last me a lifetime...

Anyway, I thought it would be people, first-time mothers like myself, asking questions about breastfeeding or how the baby will sleep, but, goodness, these people are just so strange.”

“How do you mean?”

“This Miranda, one of the admins, sent me a list of the acronyms they use in this group and, really, I’d never heard of any of them.”

“Like YOLO?”

“What does that mean?”

“You only live once.”

“Oh. Why would someone say that?”

“I don’t know, if you’re going bungee jumping or something. Like, YOLO!”

Anna shook her head and narrowed her eyes. “Anyway, I just found some of

these acronyms to be utterly bizarre.”

“Was it all DD, DS and DH?”

“What?” Anna turned toward me, mock outrage spreading across her face.

“You know this?”

“Everyone knows it. Dear son, dear daughter, dear husband.”

“Well, everyone doesn’t know it,” Anna said. “Okay, clever-clogs. EBM.

What’s EBM?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Expected breast manipulation?”

“That’s actually quite a good guess. You got the breast at least.”

“I always do.”

Anna raised her eyebrows. “You’re not funny, you know.”

“Not even a little bit,” I said, touching her back and tickling her arm.

“Don’t, please don’t,” she said, giggling. “It hurts when I laugh, with all this extra weight.”

“So what is it then, EBM?”

“Expressed breast milk.”

“Aha,” I said, turning away from her, surreptitiously checking the West Ham score on my phone.

“There’s this woman,” Anna said, “I think she might be one of the admins.

She constantly shares all her craft ideas, all the a-maa-zing things she does with her kids. Today she posted, asking where she could find polystyrene beads because she needed to fill her handmade breastfeeding pillow. That led to a discussion about whether the chemicals in the polystyrene could infuse her breast milk.”

“What was the conclusion?”

“Lentils and dried beans. Cheaper and safer.”

“Of course.”

Anna looked down mournfully and stroked her bump with the tips of her

fingers. There was a line of moisture on her top lip and brow.

I put my glass down, inching closer to her on the bathroom floor. “Shall I do your back?”

“You might have to.” She leaned forward, and I watched little drops of water scurry down her back. Her skin felt hot and smooth, like a wet waterslide in the sun.

Anna got out of the bath and walked back into the bedroom. She waddled a

little: tiny, slow penguin steps, as if she was walking over pebbles. She didn’t have the careless confidence of other pregnant women. When she slept, she would only lie on her side. If she bumped her bump, she would agonize about it for days.

I understood why. Because even now, a few weeks until he was due, I felt like we were living on borrowed time. I expected his heart to stop beating. A black hole on a scan. An evacuation. We didn’t like to talk about names.

I sat next to Anna on the bed. Without warning, she started to cry and nuzzled her head into my chest.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” I said, stroking her hair.

“Yes,” she said, wiping her eyes and sniffing a little. “I think I’m just a little hormonal. That stupid Facebook group got me all worked up.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m just worried I won’t be good enough. Be a good enough mother, I mean.

Because I’m just not like these women, and I don’t want to be like these

women.”

I touched her arm, and she angled her body toward me.

“But then,” she said, “I suppose it’s nice to worry about that, instead of what we usually worry about.”

We lay next to each other in bed, her lips inches from mine, staring into each other’s eyes. That was what always drew me in. Her eyes. The soft pump of her pupils; her eyelids, as thin as sugar paper, fluttering with each beat of her heart.

“I can’t wait,” I said, my voice cracking. “I just wish Dad was here to see it.”

Anna pulled me closer and stroked the back of my neck. “I know. It’s just so unfair. He would have been so proud.”

Dad died of a heart attack two days after we told him the news. Little Steve, who had a spare key, found him in bed, as always sleeping on Mom’s side. Next to him, on the bedside table, was the ultrasound photo we had given him.

I didn’t thank him enough. All those night shifts he did in the taxi to buy me a computer so I could learn to code. All those wonderful afternoons at West Ham.

All the times he stayed up late, nodding off in the living room, making sure I came safely home. All the love.

Anna looked at me, her eyes still a little damp. “I can’t wait,” she said. “To see his little face.”

“Me too.”

“I can’t believe that it’s real,” she said. “When you want something so badly, when you wait so long, and then finally—finally—it’s actually happening, I just...” She couldn’t speak, her words trailing off into tears.

* * *

I was outside in the garden, experimenting with my remote-control helicopters.

My toys, Anna called them, although they were anything but. I had a new one, a trainer flyer, with coaxial blades, and I had welded a little digital camera to the underside. I managed to get the helicopter up in the air, but the camera added too much weight and it crashed into the rose trellis.

I listened, thinking I might have heard a shout. Any day now, any day. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anna was upstairs, resting on the bed. She was a week overdue now and, as we had been told, the waiting was the worst part.

I picked up the helicopter and tried one more time after the wind had died down. It took off and I managed to keep it steady, hovering alongside the French windows, but then a gust of wind smashed it into the glass, snapping off one of the rotors.

“Rob,” I heard Anna shouting, just as I walked back into the living room.

“Yeah?”

“Can you come up?”

I ran upstairs and found her sitting, with her legs apart, on the end of the bed.

“Shit, are you okay?”

“I think I’ve had contractions.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said, steadying herself by putting her hands on her knees. “I timed it. And it’s definitely unlike anything I’ve felt before.” She checked her watch, a chunky Casio that she praised for its night-light and accuracy.

“How long have you had them?” I said.

“I don’t know. Forty-five minutes maybe.”

“Jesus, Anna, you should have called me...”

“I wanted to be sure.” She looked terrified, ashen-gray. “I think we should go.”

“I’ll get the bag.”

“It’s the day one.”

“Okay, sweetheart,” I said. “Shall we go down?”

Anna had two separate bags packed and they were both sitting in the hall with luggage labels tied to their handles. One said “Day,” the other said “Night.”

“Right,” I said as we stood at the door, me holding the bags, Anna going

through a mental checklist in her head. Just as we were leaving, I reached for my camera bag from the side table.

“Don’t even think about taking that, Rob.”

I looked at her face. Now definitely wasn’t the time to argue.

* * *

The doctor had just left when Anna screamed and my first thought was that she had lost the baby. I pressed the emergency bell, but already a tuft of hair, the

beginning of Jack’s head, had begun to emerge. The doctor came running back and called for a nurse but she was elsewhere, on her break.

Anna was still screaming, so the doctor shoved her legs into the stirrups and then thrust a tray of instruments into my hands. She barked something at me but I didn’t know what, so I just stood at the end of the bed, holding on to the tray for dear life, as Anna screamed out her pain and screamed out Jack.

We joked at first that he wasn’t human—our little alien, we called him.

Because even when I saw his slick dark hair emerge, his tiny body encased in gunk; even when I heard his screams pierce the cold matronly air, as he lay on the antique mechanical scale, I could not believe that he was real.

I would never forget the way that Anna smiled at him, when she held that little snuffling body in her arms and put him to her breast, so naturally, as if she had been taught by a heavenly midwife. Her smile was so natural, so unguarded, and I didn’t think I had ever seen her smile like that at anyone before.

“Do you want to hold him, while I stitch Mom back together?” the doctor

said.

I cradled him in my arms, gently, afraid I would crush him. He was wrapped up as tight as he was in the womb, straitjacketed, his eyes swollen slits. I was glad he was now getting some comfort away from the cold scale, the doctor’s coarse hands.

In the baby books I read, they said it would take time to develop a bond, that while Anna would feel it, with me it would take time. It wasn’t true. I felt it instantly, and it was like a lightning bolt down my neck, my spine, a feeling that everything, everything had been for this.

That we could produce this—this—a little bundle who squawked and cooed;

no, it couldn’t be true. That the two of us could create another person, with fingers and toes, a brain, a soul. That we could create a life. That we could create Jack.

4

It was hot for spring, and Hampstead Heath was full of runners, day-trippers, families with strollers. The grass was a patchwork of picnic blankets and hampers. The regulars, the elderly men who came up here every day, sat on their usual benches holding up small radios to their ears. A girl and boy kicked a football around with their mother: big run-ups, little kicks, the ball pinging around in the wind.

Jack had just got a new Spider-Man bike, with a windshield and cannons on the side, and he wanted to try it out. It was difficult to find somewhere flat around Parliament Hill, somewhere without a busy road, so, as we always did, we came up to the heath.

I watched Jack as he marched up the hill, the bike still too big for him. How quickly the contours of our world had changed. He was five, a proper little boy, as my dad would have said. Gone was the bow of his toddler’s legs, the babyish lilt of his speech. Now our world was library books and parents’ evening and trying to persuade Jack that the after-school drama club was cool.

“How about here?” I said, as we got to some flat ground.

“Okay,” Jack said, putting his leg over the crossbar.

“Boys, no,” Anna said. “It’s far too steep here. I thought we were going to the flat bit.”

“This is the flat bit,” I offered.

“It’s okay here, Mom,” Jack added.

Anna thought about it, looking up and down the path. “No, I don’t think so.

It’s too steep.”

Jack sighed and rolled his eyes, something he had learned in kindergarten.

“C’mon, Jack,” I said, “let’s go to that bit up there.”

“Okay,” Jack said, starting to push his bike up the hill.

When we got to the top, to the plateau of flat ground, we watched a boy on a tricycle, his father anxiously running behind him.

“Should be okay here,” I said.

Anna looked perturbed, a little flustered, as if she thought she was somewhere else. “Okay,” she said, checking out the terrain, “but you go carefully, Jack.”

He secured the strap on his helmet like a fighter pilot and then pushed himself

down the path, weaving in and out of the walkers. I ran alongside him, smiling, brimming with pride, and it was like an old home movie shot on Super 8, the trees whizzing by, the lens-flare in the blinding light.

I felt something touch my arm and realized that Anna was by my side. At first I thought it was out of nerves, that she was ready to swoop in and save Jack, until I realized she was smiling, happily letting him trundle down the hill.

Jack slowed a little, now facing a gentle incline, and I ran behind him and gave him a push, my hands on the back of his saddle. I remembered the feel of my father’s hands, the powerful thrust as he pushed me, his cheers of pride as I rode my bike for the first time on our street.

“There is one more present,” Dad said that Christmas, and I remembered

Mom smiling, her cheeks flushed with wine. “But you gotta close your eyes, son.”

That December, I thought Dad was working a lot on his car. After I had gone to bed, I could hear him, tinkering in the garage, the radio on low, the occasional ptush as he cracked open a can.

Mom tied one of her old scarves over my eyes, and they led me out to the

garage.

“Are you ready?” they said and I squealed, barely able to contain myself.

They pulled the scarf off and I opened my eyes, and there it was, what Dad had been working on every night. A little BMX, but not just any BMX, but one that had been tricked out, with five-spoke mag wheels and chrome pedals and pegs.

“Fifteen quid, it cost,” Dad said proudly. “Everything donated or from the scrap yard.” I didn’t think I had ever seen him look so pleased.

* * *

“You did brilliantly, Jack, well done,” I said as he expertly slowed to a halt.

Jack got off and started to make sure the bike’s plastic cannons were still working.

“He’s really got the hang of it,” I said to Anna.

“He has, hasn’t he?”

“Can I go again?” Jack said, tightening his helmet.

“Of course you can.”

Jack got back on his bike and practiced riding around in circles, weaving in and out of some tree stumps on the grass. Anna and I were talking, not paying

attention, when Jack, instead of turning, rode straight into a tree.

Anna let out a scream and we both ran over. He was lying on the ground, a dazed look in his eyes.

“Are you okay?” I said, kneeling down next to him.

He nodded vaguely, as if he didn’t know what happened.

“Are you hurt?” I said. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Jack smiled at me. “A million.”

“Can you remember your name?”

“Jack.”

“Can you remember my name?”

“Mr. Piggy Face,” he said, starting to giggle a little.

“Good. I think you’ll be fine.”

I helped Jack to stand and picked up his bike from the ground.

“What happened, poppet? Are you okay?” Anna said, dusting off his jacket

and trousers.

“I’m okay,” Jack said, still looking confused.

“What happened, mate?”

“I don’t know. I was just on the Spider-Man bike and then I... I don’t know... I felt all funny and then did a big crash into the tree...”

* * *

When we got back to the house, I sat with Jack in the living room, drinking hot chocolate and watching Final Score. Jack listened, mouthing the names of some of the teams. Accrington, Chesterfield, Blackburn. He tried to say the more difficult ones out loud: Gillingham, Scunthorpe, Shrewsbury.

As he was listening, Jack started to go through the photos he had taken on his camera, his little point-and-shoot. It had been a present for his fifth birthday, and it never left his side. He always gripped it tightly with two hands, just like we had shown him, because it wasn’t a toy, Jack, it wasn’t a toy. After he had finished taking his photos, he would wipe the screen with a piece of toilet paper and put it back in the case.

“Daddy,” he said, carefully putting the camera on the coffee table, “can I have special cheese toast?”

Special cheese on toast was butter, Marmite and a few slabs of cheese melted in the microwave.

“Of course you can. I think Mommy is making it right now.”

“Are you having it too?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll just eat all yours.”

“Nooooooo.” Jack looked at me and crossed his eyes. “If you do, I’ll do

something bad to you.”

“Like what?”

“Hmm.” Jack put his finger to his lips. “You will have to go to bed

and...and...” He thought hard and I raised my eyebrows. “And...and you can’t watch football,” he said triumphantly.

“Ah, okay,” I said, scratching my chin. “You win. I won’t eat your special cheese on toast then.”

Jack beamed, and I went into the kitchen to see if it was ready. Anna was cutting the toast into little squares.

“Is he okay?” she said.

“Yes, he’s absolutely fine.”

“I still don’t understand what happened.”

“Anna, he just fell off his bike. It’s completely normal.”

“But it was like he blacked out. He said he felt funny.”

“He just lost his concentration. It’s a new skill, a lot to take in.”

Anna didn’t look convinced. She handed me the plate, and I carried it in to Jack.

It was the only thing my dad could ever make. He did everything around the house but never learned how to cook. When Mom was out cleaning offices

downtown that was what he would make for my dinner. He knew how to get it just right. Lightly browned toast, the butter spread as soon as the toaster popped.

A layer of Marmite and then thin slabs of cheese. He always put it in the microwave for thirty seconds but would watch, bent over the kitchen counter, waiting for that perfect cusp just before the cheese started to bubble.

I made him special cheese on toast after Mom died. He would sit silently at the kitchen table, Mom’s place mat, her knife and fork, laid out next to him.

Every night he sat and cried, and all I could do was make him his dinner, as my mom had always done.

“Thanks, beautiful,” he said, when I put down his plate, because that was what he always said. In front of my friends or at West Ham, it was always

“handsome” or “son.” But when we were alone, it was always “beautiful.”

So that was what I did, that was all I could do. For a year, I made Dad his favorite frozen pizzas, his Crispy Pancakes, his Fray Bentos pies. When he came home after his afternoon shift on a Friday, I always had it there waiting for him, his treat: two rounds of special cheese on toast with ketchup on the side.

I watched Jack eat, little dabs of tomato sauce around his mouth. He was still watching the football results, mouthing the names of the teams. Sometimes, I could really see Dad in him. The careful, considered manner in which he ate.

The way he would hold his head to the side when he was listening, as if he was hard of hearing.

I daydreamed sometimes, imagining them together. How Dad would let him

sit on his belly, as I had done as a child. How one day, when Jack was old enough, the three of us would all go to West Ham. How he would let him sit in the front of the taxi and speak on the radio to the dispatchers. Dad would have glittered with Jack.

* * *

“Seriously, mate, not the drones again. Please, God, not the fucking drones.”

I was sitting with Scott in The Ship, our impromptu office. It was always quiet in the afternoons, the big tables empty enough for us to stretch out with our laptops. The wood paneling made you feel like you were on a ship; the stained glass like you were in church.

“The thing is...” I started.

“No.”

“But I’ve made progress, Scott...”

“Jesus, Rob, please not again...”

“I’ll buy all your drinks if you allow me five minutes to talk about drones.”

Scott laughed and slapped the table with his hand. “There is literally nothing you can buy me that would make you talking about drones worth it.”

“Fuck off.”

Although Scott grew up a few streets away and went to Cambridge, we never met until I walked into Simtech’s meeting room on Old Street. Parallel lives, we always joked. Scott was the only Cambridge graduate I had ever met who bought his underwear at Romford market and had a West Ham birthday cake every year until he was eighteen.

“On another subject, though. I really need that code,” Scott said.

I checked my phone, as if I had just received an important email. I was

supposed to have written some scripts for a Chinese mapping company, but I was stalling and Scott knew it.

“I’m on it, Scott. I’m on it. It’s just more complicated than I thought.”

“So give it to Marc.”

“It will be complicated for him, as well.” Scott had wanted to outsource it to our team of programmers in Belgium, but I insisted on doing it myself.

“Right, but there’s six of them,” Scott said.

“Right, but it doesn’t always work like that in programming.”

My trump card. Blind Scott with science. He was rich, a brilliant businessman, but he couldn’t code. He sighed and swiveled around on his chair.

A few worry lines had appeared on Scott’s face. I knew he was thinking about selling the company. He had taken a hit after the crash and was “moving a few things around.” That was why he wanted me to write the code: to impress a potential Chinese buyer.

“Rob, look, you’re a mate, and we’ve been working together for a long time.

I’ve always tried not to micromanage you, but I’ve gotta draw the line on this one. I need that code by the end of the week, okay?”

He looked out of the window, and I noticed his foot was tapping on the base of the chair. I didn’t want him to sell. I would lose my salary, something that petrified Anna. But more than that, to get my drones idea off the ground, I needed Simtech. I needed their name, their pedigree, Scott’s contacts in the finance world. Without them, I would be right back to where I was, in the suit that Anna paid for, presenting my scribbled-out business plan.

“If I get you the code by Friday, can I talk about drones?”

“For fuck’s sake, Rob,” Scott said, laughing, his accent thick, as if he was selling shoes on Romford market.

“Juan,” he said, looking at the bartender, his Spanish pronunciation flawless,

“can you get us a couple of beers when you have a minute?”

Juan nodded and dutifully pulled a couple of pints and brought them over.

“Go on then. I’m all ears,” Scott said, taking a deep gulp. “But promise me you’ll get me the code by Friday.”

“Promise.”

Scott smiled and shook his head. “Right then. Drones. My favorite subject.”

“So,” I said, “we’ve talked before. You know what I think. It’s the future. The hardware is cheap, and people are going to use them everywhere. They’ll deliver us pizza, our Amazon orders. Builders will use them to deliver cups of teas on their...”

“Rob, spare me the preamble,” Scott said. “I’ve heard it a million times

before. You’ll tell me about the search-and-rescue teams next...”

“Right, but there’s something new, and this is what I wanted to talk about.”

“Okay, go on.”

“Personal drones.”

“Personal drones?”

“Yes. Ultracheap, ultralight and ultradurable.”

“Okay,” Scott said. “And what do these personal drones do?”

“Take photos mostly.”

“Take photos?”

“Yeah, you’ve seen those selfie sticks.”

“Unfortunately, yeah.”

“Well, that’s exactly what these little drones will do, all controlled from your phone. So just imagine: You’re at a wedding and you need that big group shot.

Or you’re hiking in the mountains and want to show people just how high you are, how amazing the scenery is... Or you’re in a crowd at a football match.

These were things that only pros could do a couple of years ago. Now anyone can do it with a five-dollar bit of plastic.”

Scott thought for a moment, stroked his stubble. “Look, I get it, Rob, there’s something there and maybe you’re on to something. But it’s just too...”

“Too?”

“Too niche, Rob.”

“That’s what they said about selfie sticks.”

Scott’s phone beeped and he looked at his watch. “Fuck, I’ve gotta go.”

“Meeting?”

“No, new lady.”

“Oh.”

“She’s Russian. Lovely, but a little demanding.”

“You’ll be bored of her in six months.”

Scott looked down at his laptop. “Bit harsh, mate,” he said, scooping up his car keys off the table.

“Sorry, was only joking.”

“Probably true, though,” Scott said, waving goodbye to Juan. “And anyway, you prick, I could say the same about you. You love the chase, building the new project, but then you get bored.”

“Touché.”

“All right,” Scott said, downing the remains of his beer. “Don’t worry about the tab. I got it. And please, my little beauty, please get me that fucking code, okay?”

hampstead heath

it was the first time you’d seen snow so we went sledding, up on the hill where the big boys were and i just remember hurtling down, you crammed between my thighs, snow spraying up into our faces like the warp-speed millennium falcon.

the only thing i would have changed jack is that i could have seen your face, that i could have seen your face as we were going down.

5

It was spitting with rain as we stood at the base of the Monument. We looked up at the column, the gray-beige stone blending into the rain, the only color we could see, the crop of golden bird feather at its peak.

We began to make our way up the spiral steps, Jack in front, going as fast as he could, his camera case strapped to his back. As we got halfway up, I could feel the chilly wind blowing down the steps, the pale ginger light beckoning from above.

For as long as we could remember, for as long perhaps as Jack could speak, he had wanted to be up high. At first it was the top of the stairs, the attic, but then it was tall buildings, hills, cliffs—wherever he could see the view from the top.

We would go up to Parliament Hill and look out across London. Jack would

sit on my shoulders, banging his little heels on my chest, and I would point out all the buildings on the skyline: the Telecom Tower, the Gherkin, Canary Wharf.

When he got older, he printed out pictures of skyscrapers—the Burj Khalifa, Taipei 101, the Shanghai and Petronas towers—and stuck them to the wall

around his bed. He said he was going to go up them all.

At the top of the Monument, we were the only ones on the viewing platform, and I was surprised by how narrow it was up here, a circular alleyway enclosed by a wire mesh, the walls daubed with a crumbly white plaster.

“So how was school today? Did you learn anything?”

He was still wearing his gray school trousers and green Amberly Primary polo shirt.

Jack didn’t answer, too busy trying to peep over the barrier.

“Jack?”

He sighed like a teenager. “Math, reading, writing and PE,” he said rapid-fire and then looked up at me. “Daddy, why is it called Monument?”

“Do you remember I told you about the big fire in London?”

“In the olden times?”

“Yes, in the olden times.”

“So they built this to remember the people.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what people do sometimes. They build things to remember

people.”

“Why was there a fire?”

“Well, it started close to here, just around the corner, and in the olden days lots of the houses were made out of wood.”

“And they build all the houses again?”

“Yes.”

“That’s cool.”

Jack tried to peep over the barrier again. Cool. Ever since he had started school, everything was cool.

“Do you want to go up in the air?” I asked. “That way you can see

something.”

“I’m not too big now?”

“You’re big but not that big,” I said, lifting him onto my shoulders. I could feel him turn his head, moving his little hips, his heels on my chest.

We moved closer to the edge and looked east down the river. Amid the gray, there were just a few dashes of color: a smudge of green trees along the river; a red asphalt children’s playground squeezed between two buildings.

“Look, Daddy, I can see Tower Bridge.”

“Wow, yeah, you can. Do you want to take some pictures?”

He nodded solemnly, and I could feel him tug at his bag and carefully take out the camera.

Jack started to take photos, and I could feel him swiveling his hips, trying to get the best possible view. He liked to take photos from up high, and we printed out some of his best ones to add to the collection around his bed. The morning sun taken from his bedroom window. A weekend in Dorset, a white lighthouse against a purple sky. Raindrops against the windowpane taken from the top of Canary Wharf.

Jack had stopped moving and sat motionless on my shoulders, and I thought something might be wrong so I looked up at him but he was just still, staring out over the city, like an old yeoman surveying his land.

London was all Jack had ever known. His dragons were Tube trains, and he

knew the bears would eat him if he stepped on the cracks in the pavement. He went to Chinatown for dim sum when he was two, and he could name all the

bridges that crossed the Thames. He loved it all. Watching the summer sunset from the South Bank. Jumping the fishy puddles in his rain boots at Billingsgate.

The throaty warm wind at the entrance to the Tube. The grime that feels a part of you.

We stood like that for a while, a four-armed giant, listening to the police sirens in the distance, the gray hum of traffic, the static of the city, a sound you would only notice when it was gone.

* * *

Jack was quiet on the Tube on the way back. I knew he was counting the stops, a trait he had inherited from Anna. She still did it, every time she got on. A quick little glance up at the map, and then the gentlest quiver of her lips as she ran through all the stations in her mind.

She memorized all of her journeys when she got to London. I used to test her, give her a little quiz. Without pause, she could tell me how to get from Piccadilly Circus to Camden Town or the fastest route from Lancaster Gate to Regent’s Park. Sometimes it was easier to consult Anna than a map.

It was still raining when we stepped out of the Tube. We were going to the play center in Hampstead, the one that offered mother-and-baby yoga where you could only get organic bhajis and Sumatra-roast coffee. As Jack headed toward the ball pit, I found a table and ordered an Americano. I listened to two women at the next table talking about another mother, whose child refused to eat, who had her wrapped around her little finger. That was what happened, they agreed, if you bottle-fed and gave them all that processed rubbish.

I drank my coffee and checked email on my phone. There were pitches for

start-up investments, some paperwork from our accountant. I had been asked to speak at a tech-incubator event, something about nurturing a new way of

thinking in virtual reality.

Jack had come out of the ball pit and was now charging through a plastic tube with another boy, I thought someone he might know from school. The two

women were still talking, about their depressed nannies and how it must be a Slavic thing, and I knew why Anna couldn’t stand it here. It was better if you were a man. They left you alone.

My phone chirped. It was Scott.

I thought you were sending me that code

At play center can we talk later?

A pause, a thinking pause. Then I could see that he was writing again.

Rob please call me I’m getting pissed off now

Will do later no probs.

I wasn’t going to write that code. The Chinese company was huge, flush with cash, and would snap us up. They had their own people, their own infrastructure.

Simtech would be dead as we knew it—and with it my chance of launching my drones.

I looked for Jack. With another boy, he was trying to get inside a plastic car through the windows, Dukes of Hazzard-style. I put down my phone and watched him. Since he had been small, I loved to see him play with other children, his first fumbling efforts at making friends: how he would cautiously smile and raise his eyebrows, his attempt at an opening; how he would try to woo his suitor by showing them all of his things, his colored pencils, his toys, the picture on his T-shirt.

I felt in my pocket for the shopping list Anna had given me. Her lists always made me laugh. Their neatness, their specificity, how she would state the particular brand of cherry tomatoes, her starred annotations, instructions on precisely which asparagus tips to choose. I used to keep her old shopping lists in my wallet and read them on the train, the bus, whenever I was sat somewhere waiting for her to arrive.

“Please turn over,” she wrote once, “for the cheeses to buy if they don’t have Gruyère.” On the back of the paper, there was a neat numbered list of seven cheeses, with a parenthetical note to say that they were in descending order of importance.

I looked up from the shopping list and suddenly couldn’t see Jack. I stood up, slopping my coffee on the table, but he wasn’t in the ball pit, or inside the Toytown car. Then I spotted him, in the corner on the edge of the mat, lying motionless on the floor.

I ran over to him and he was still in the same position, lying on the floor, looking up at the ceiling.

“Jack, Jack, are you okay?”

He looked at me, his eyes glazed. It was as if he had just woken up and didn’t know where he was.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“No,” Jack said, “I just fell over.”

“Do you have any injuries?”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “I feel... I feel funny...”

“Funny how, beautiful? Like dizzy?”

“What’s dizzy?” he asked.

“You know when you’re on the roundabout in the playground?”

“The big playground or little playground?”

“The big playground.”

Jack nodded.

“So you know when you go really fast on the roundabout and then you jump

off and you feel funny. That’s dizzy. Is that how you feel?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“And have you had it other times, when you’re at school?”

Jack considered what I had said.

“I was on the jumping pillow with Nathan, and it felt like spaceships flying through my head.”

“And can you feel the spaceships now?”

“No, Daddy, don’t be silly,” he said, sitting up, the color returning to his cheeks.

Ever since he had fallen off his bike in the park, Anna was sure that Jack’s balance was off. I wasn’t convinced. It was just clumsiness or overexuberance, I told her. It was normal for kids to bang into things. But she was insistent. It wasn’t just when he was running around, she said. She noticed it when he was walking to the bathroom before bed.

“Can I go and play with my friend again?”

“Are you feeling okay now?”

Jack tapped his head and patted down his stomach and legs. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“Go on then, but be careful,” I said, looking him up and down.

He ran off and found his friend. I watched him, as he navigated the tunnels and climbed inside the police car and then, with his new partner in crime, started to pelt the playhouse with rubber balls.

* * *

“How was your day?” Anna asked when she got home. She’d had a meeting

with a client and ditched her laptop bag and sensible shoes for heels and makeup.

“Was good. Pretty quiet,” I said, folding the risotto over itself.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine, just a bit tired.”

“Where’s Jack?”

“Upstairs in his room.”

“Ah, okay. I’ll go up.”

She filled her glass with some tap water, leaned back against the kitchen counter and kicked off her shoes. I knew she didn’t find it easy, to be working at the bank while I did the school runs and looked after Jack. Even though she had gone to a progressive school, where girls were taught to be independent and empowered, she still found it hard to come home and find me cooking Jack his dinner, joking with him about the things we had done that day—things that, deep down, she felt that she should be doing.

Anna, though, was never one to allow a feeling to get the better of her. She found a way. When she came home, instead of putting her feet up, she spent all her time with Jack, doing his bath and his story, the little bits of homework he now had. After working all day, it was Anna who made sure that Jack’s water glass was filled, that his bedroom door was at the right angle, that Big Teddy and Little Teddy were standing guard.

She put her arms around my waist and nuzzled my neck. “Are we having kids’

food or adults’ food tonight?”

“Adults’ food.”

“Really?”

“You want fish fingers and beans again, don’t you? No, I’ve made a risotto.”

“Ooooo, fancy.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“No, risotto sounds great,” she said. “How was playtime by the way?”

“It was good. Jack loved it, made some friend. Oh, and I think I saw one of Lola’s friends there.”

“Who?”

“The snooty one.”

“Well, that’s a big help.”

“I don’t know. With a scarf. Big Mommy trousers.”

Anna shook her head. “You’ve just described all of her friends.”

I started to chop up some chives, wondering how to broach it. “Nothing to worry about, but he did fall over again.”

“Really,” Anna said, turning to face me. “Was he okay?”

“Yeah, absolutely fine. He fell over and then said he was feeling dizzy.”

Anna turned pale and started scrunching her fingers into her palm. “I knew it,

I knew something was wrong.”

“Sweetheart, you always do this,” I said, putting my arm around her.

“Will you take him to the doctor tomorrow?” Anna said, pulling away from

me.

“Of course I will, but do you really think it’s nec—”

“Yes. It’s necessary, Rob. This has gone on long enough.”

“All right, I’ll take him. They have a walk-in clinic after school. It’s probably just a little ear infection or something. Do you remember he used to get them when he was little?”

“So you think it is something?” she said.

“Jesus, Anna. No, not at all. I’m just saying that I really don’t think you should worry...”

As we were speaking, we watched Jack climb onto the back of the sofa and

then do a tightrope maneuver along one arm.

“Look at him,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“I hope so,” Anna said. “He does get quite tired, doesn’t he, with school.”

Jack had now climbed down from the sofa and was attempting to do a

headstand on the floor.

“Seriously, sweetheart. He’ll be absolutely fine.”

6

“Now, I don’t want you to worry, but there is something here I think we should have a little look into,” the doctor said, regarding the report. Next to me, I could feel Anna wince and then lean forward in her seat.

Two weeks ago, I had been here in this same doctor’s office with Jack. The doctor watched him walk in a straight line, shone lights in his eyes, tested his reflexes with a rubber hammer. He was fine, the doctor said, absolutely fine. But what Jack was experiencing did sound a little like epilepsy, so as a precaution they would need to do some blood tests and a CT scan.

We all went together for Jack’s scan. We told him there wouldn’t be any pain, and they were just going to take a picture of his head. We promised him that if he managed to lie very, very still—as still as a statue, Jack—then we would all go to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal and ice cream.

“So,” the doctor said, “the scan does show a little something on Jack’s brain.

Now, we don’t know exactly what this is yet, but just to be extra cautious, we do need to get you an appointment with a specialist.”

“A little something. What does that mean?” I asked.

“Well, first of all, don’t panic. These things almost always turn out to be nothing. It could be several things—some kind of growth, a cyst. And, in a very small number of cases, a tumor. But even if it was that, they mostly turn out to be benign.”

Tumor. I thought of Jack, outside in the playroom.

“And there’s nothing more you can tell us?” Anna asked.

The doctor looked at his screen, moving his lips as he read. “No, nothing more I’m afraid. Just that there is a lesion, and it requires further investigation.”

Anna took a deep breath, and I could see her pinching the skin on her hand.

“So what happens now?” I said. “Will he need an operation?”

The doctor pressed his hands together. “Goodness, let’s not talk about that yet, Mr. Coates. We don’t even know what it is yet. It’s probably absolutely nothing.

But, to be on the safe side, I have referred Jack to a specialist, so we don’t lose any time.”

“Is it possible to see them this week?” Anna asked.

The doctor took a deep breath and looked down at his calendar. “I can get you

in on Wednesday, if that suits.”

“Thank you,” she said.

A specialist? Why did Jack have to see a specialist, when there was probably nothing wrong? It didn’t make any sense. “And you really can’t tell us any more?” I asked the doctor.

“I’m sorry, I really can’t. Dr. Kennety will be infinitely more qualified to make a judgment on the scan.”

“Right,” I said, “I understand that. But surely you can say something from your experience...”

There was a photo on the doctor’s desk, facing away from us, and I wondered if it was his children.

“If it is a tumor,” the doctor said, “then at Jack’s age, he would certainly need an operation. But we just don’t know, and it would be unethical and unfair of me to speculate. As I said, if it is a tumor—and that’s a big, big if—mostly they turn out to be benign. So I know it’s difficult, but please try not to worry.”

Benign. Mostly benign. My legs felt shaky as we left, and I was just about to confer with Anna, when Jack charged toward us wearing some sort of cape.

“Can we go to McDonald’s?”

“Of course we can,” I said, ruffling his hair, smoothing down his cape.

In McDonald’s, while I nabbed a table, Jack walked to the counter with Anna.

He was wearing his Angry Birds sweatshirt and blue jeans. His hair was a little too long, his blond curls looping behind his ears. He came triumphantly back from the counter holding his Happy Meal box.

Jack sat at the table, carefully deconstructing his hamburger. We watched him as he methodically removed the gherkins, scraped off the sauce and then ate in a dignified silence. When he finished, he smiled, dabs of sauce around his mouth, and asked if he could have another one. There was nothing wrong with him.

There couldn’t be. Just look at him!

* * *

“I don’t want to go, Rob.”

“I know, but it will take your mind off things.”

“Right,” Anna said, looking away. “And why you do want to go so much?

You normally hate this kind of thing.”

It was a launch party for Lola’s Raw Food Mamma recipe book. “Admittedly, it’s not my favorite thing in the world,” I said, “but if we don’t go, we’re just

going to sit and worry.”

Anna looked at me from across the kitchen table. “I just...just, God, I can’t, I don’t even want to think about it...”

“Sweetheart,” I said, reaching across the table and putting my hand on her arm, “I know what you’re doing, but you can’t think like that. Remember what the doctor said. Only in a very small number of cases, it would be a tumor. And even then, it would most likely be benign. They’re just being careful, that’s all.”

Anna didn’t respond, and I could see that she was grinding her teeth. “C’mon, we should go. Jack’s looking forward to seeing India.”

“You’re right,” Anna said after a pause. “It will take my mind off it.”

* * *

“Hello, poppets,” Lola said, as we walked into the converted warehouse in Hackney Wick. We were standing under a wrought iron staircase that didn’t lead anywhere. Next to us, two men wearing pipe-cleaner glasses were sitting on a sofa that looked as if it had been rescued from a dumpster.

Lola was wearing a jungle-print onesie. “Oh, wonderful, you brought Jack.

India will be delighted.”

“Hello, Auntie Lola,” Jack said.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite boy,” Lola said. She bent down to kiss Jack’s head and next to me I could feel Anna flinch. “You all look so well. Right, let me show you through. Now, you won’t be surprised to hear that everything on offer tonight is all my own creations. It’s all raw, all organic—of course—and there are absolutely no chemicals in anything.”

I smiled, wondering whether I should interject with my standard response that everything was a chemical. Our bodies, Lola, your onesie, your amber necklace, your free-range apples, your tarragon orange sliders, are all made of chemicals.

“Thanks for coming, Rob,” Lola said, squeezing my arm. “I know it’s not

exactly your thing.”

“I don’t know, Lola. Maybe it might be. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it and all that, right.” Lola looked pleased, still holding on to my arm. “And besides,” I said, taking a chipped antique glass of champagne from a wallpaper table, “we can always stop at McDonald’s on the way home.”

“Don’t you bloody dare,” Lola said, but she was already looking over my

shoulder, ready to greet the next guest.

Jack ran off to play with India, and Anna and I stood next to a table loaded

with food and drink.

“You okay?” I said.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Can you stop asking if I’m okay?” Anna snapped.

“Sorry, I just...”

She turned away and took something from the table that looked like a patty made from compressed oats.

“Do you want a drink?” I said.

“I’m driving, Rob.”

“You don’t have to drive. We can get a taxi back and leave the car.”

“I’m not so desperate to have a drink that I’m going to leave the car in

Hackney.”

“Okay.” I went over to look at a painting on the wall. There was nothing I could do when she was like this. When I came back, Anna was still eating. The patty was falling apart, crumbling into little bits in her hand.

“Is it good?”

“No,” she whispered, moving closer to me. “It’s horrible, like eating sawdust.”

I sniggered, spluttering my champagne a little.

“I want to get rid of it, but I don’t know how.”

“Isn’t there...”

“No, I’ve looked. There’s nothing, no trash cans, dirty plates, anything. How can they have no plates?”

Anna was still looking for somewhere to put her patty and her face was taut, a deathly pale, and I remembered that face from the days after the miscarriages.

The tightened skin on her forehead; the slight movement of her cheeks as she ground her teeth.

“I’m going to check to see if Jack’s okay,” Anna said.

I stood for a while next to the table, not really knowing anyone and not

knowing what to do.

“Ah, and I thought you were trying to avoid me,” I heard as I was getting another glass of champagne. I turned to see Scott, standing with a tall woman with brown hair.

“Hello, mate. I didn’t know you’d be here,” I said, smiling at him and his friend. “I was going to call you tonight.”

“Right,” Scott said.

“Didn’t know this was your sort of thing,” I said brightly. “Raw food...”

“I get out and about, Rob...” I hadn’t seen him like this before. He was openly hostile. He had called and emailed a few times about the code I was supposed to be writing, the little script that he hoped would seal the deal with the Chinese company and end his money troubles. But I had ignored him, fobbed him off, bought time—and now with everything with Jack, I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought.

“Well, seems like a good party...” I said, trying to break the silence.

“This is Karolina by the way,” Scott said, nodding at her.

“Hello,” she said frostily and with a thick Slavic accent. Then she looked wistfully at a group of young people on the other side of the room.

“This is Rob,” Scott said.

“Uh-huh,” Karolina said, and I expected her to say something else, but she just nodded to herself.

“Look, Scott, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve had a lot going on, some family

problems. But I was hoping we could meet to talk...”

“I’m going to sell, Rob. I’ve made up my mind. I just asked you for one

thing...”

“I know, I’m sorry. But it’s not as simple as that...”

Scott took a deep breath, looked into the mingling crowd. “Rob, let’s talk tomorrow. I’m not going to bother to ask you to send the code because I know you won’t. As I said, I’ve made up my mind.”

We stood in silence for a moment, picking at our food. “Have you tried the food, Karolina?” I said after a while.

“It’s okay,” she said without looking at me. “Nothing special.” I nodded, swallowed, trying to think of something to say, when Jack and India came

running up.

India was eighteen months older than Jack. When she was little, she used to call Jack her doll. She would play with his hair, putting his curls into bunches, trying to fashion his locks into a ponytail. Jack was besotted by her, the older sister he never had.

“Hello, Uncle Rob. How are you?” India was six, but spoke like a twelve-

year-old.

“I’m fine, India. How are you?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“Are you both having a nice time?”

Jack nodded enthusiastically. “There was a spider on the floor, so we came here.”

“Oh. Do you think it’s still there?” I asked.

“I think it’s gone now, Jack,” India said, and Jack blushed a little, just like his mother.

“Shall we go and see if my mommy needs any help?” India said.

Jack nodded so vigorously his ears wobbled.

“Did you see Mommy, Jack?” I asked. “She said she was coming to find you.”

Jack shook his head. “No. Maybe Mommy’s gone home.”

“No, she’s here somewhere,” I said, looking around again.

“Come on, Jack.” India took Jack’s hand in hers and led him off to the play corner. I could hear her telling Jack about the nutrients, how the food was much cleaner this way.

“Is that your children?” Karolina asked, when I turned back to her and Scott.

“Just the boy. The girl is Lola’s daughter.”

“Who’s Lola?”

“She’s the host, babe,” Scott said, checking if anyone had heard. “The raw-food woman.”

“Oh, her,” Karolina said. She turned to look at me, and I found her intense, unnerving. “He looks tired, your son.”

It was a strange thing to say, and I didn’t know how to respond. “He probably is a bit,” I said, a little flustered. “It’s been a long day.”

“He’s got these—how you say, Scottie?” She turned to Scott, and with her

finger made half-moons under her eyes. “These black krug, circles, here.”

“Yes, well, he is a bit tired at the moment,” I said, trying to temper the annoyance in my voice.

“Sometimes it means problem with liver or kidneys, it’s connected,” Karolina said.

“Excuse me for a bit,” I said, and as I walked away, I could hear Scott raising his voice.

I went to the bathroom and sat inside a cubicle and Googled “brain tumor dark circles” on my phone. One million two hundred fifty results came up in 0.59

seconds. Shaking, I clicked on one, The 5 Warning Signs of Pediatric Cancers.

There it was. The neuroblastoma symptoms to watch out for: bulging eyes, dark circles, droopy eyelids.

I sat in the cubicle listening to the dripping of a pipe. Outside in the gallery, I could hear the sound of speeches, of Lola on the mic. I Googled some more, clicking on link after link. There were other symptoms—glassy eyes, a worsening stutter, sensitivity to bright light. Jack didn’t have any of those things.

I was just getting myself worked up, so I took a deep breath and headed back to the party.

Lola was still on the mic at the other end of the gallery, but I couldn’t see Anna. I looked around and then found her outside, sitting in the car with the light off.

“I’m sorry, I know I’m being rude. I just can’t be in there right now,” Anna said. “I just keep thinking about it, and I can’t smile and pretend that

everything’s normal.”

“I know,” I said, putting my hand on Anna’s shoulder. “Why don’t we leave? I can make some excuse.”

“Would you mind? I just can’t go back in there.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make something up.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come. It was a mistake.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll go and get Jack, all right?”

“Thanks.” Anna looked broken, as if she was shrinking into the seat. I went back inside and told Lola that Anna wasn’t feeling very well and went to look for Jack. He was sitting with India under the champagne table. They had taken their shoes and socks off and had laid some paper plates out on the ground.

“We’re having a picnic,” Jack said, pretending to drink out of his shoe.

“I can see that. It looks yummy.”

“Can we play more, Daddy?”

“We have to go, I’m afraid. Mommy’s not feeling very well.”

“Oh, Dad-dee.”

“But you’ll see India very soon.”

Jack reluctantly put his trainers back on and then kissed India goodbye.

“Bye-bye, Jack,” India said formally. “I enjoyed playing with you today.”

As we were leaving, Jack kept turning around to see India, to see if she was still waving goodbye. He fell asleep as soon as he got into the car. We drove home in silence, listening to the hum of the tires on the tarmac.

“Are you okay?” I said as we pulled into the drive.

“Yes, sorry. I know I’m being unpleasant, but I just can’t stop thinking about it.” Anna checked that Jack was still sleeping and lowered her voice. “Thinking what if, what if, and I know it’s stupid but I can’t...”

“I know,” I said, wanting to tell her what Karolina had said, but I knew it would only worry her more. “You can’t think like that, you just can’t,” I said, putting my hand on her leg.

We took Jack up to bed when we got home. He was sleepy, but we managed to

stand him up, so we could get him in his pajamas and brush his teeth. When Anna had gone to get him some cream for a rash, I looked into his eyes to see if there was a droop, if his eyelids were bulging, the symptoms I had read about online. I looked from both sides, turning him toward the light, but I couldn’t see anything unusual.

We tucked him in together, putting his things—the cookie-tin lid, Darth

Vader’s ripped cloak—on the end of the bed and then putting his favorites—

Little Teddy and flashlight—next to his head, so he could find them in the night.

I sat on the end of the bed, looking at his photos and the pictures of

skyscrapers on the wall. Sometimes, after I had kissed him good-night, I

watched him through the crack in the door. He would lie on his back and then shine his flashlight on the pictures, whispering the names of all the buildings, the places he had been, the skyscrapers he was planning to climb. Tonight, though, he was quiet. Tonight, he just slept.

7

We did not speak in the taxi to Harley Street nor in the waiting room. Anna sat upright in her chair. She did not move, or read or check her phone. A woman, covered by a burka, was sitting opposite us. I knew she was ill. I could tell by the way she gently rubbed her thumb and forefinger together, the way her husband paced, his prayer beads wrapped round his knuckles.

The secretary called our name and led us through to Dr. Kennety, a small man sitting behind a large desk, like a child wearing his father’s clothes.

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Coates,” he said, clearing his throat as we sat down.

“Thanks for coming. Did you come from far?”

“No, just Hampstead,” Anna said softly.

“Oh, lovely, I live quite close.” He looked at us and then down at his papers.

“So let’s talk about Jack’s scans. Before we start, please bear in mind, I am just one doctor. Another doctor may well see the situation differently, and I always advise my patients, and the parents of my patients, to get a second opinion.” The doctor looked at us, raised his eyebrows, and I didn’t know if he expected a response. “So that’s my usual preamble. Now, from looking at the scans, it does seem clear that Jack has what we call a glioma, which is a type of brain tumor.”

I could hear a car alarm, hushed talking in the waiting room. Out of the

window, a pigeon walked along a shit-splattered sill. The doctor paused, waiting to see if we would react, but we were still, silent. It was as if the doctor’s words were being spoken to someone else, as if we were watching a drama unfold on the stage. I stared at a Disney World paperweight on his desk that contained a photo of a child wearing a Finding Nemo T-shirt.

Dr. Kennety looked up from his papers, a stray hair protruding from one

nostril. “Should I give you a minute?” he said.

I tried to speak, but my throat wouldn’t open, as if it was clogged with soot. I didn’t know what Anna was doing. I could only feel her stillness, the sound of her breathing, next to me.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “I’m sure this is quite a shock. However, it does appear—and this is the good news—to be slow growing.”

I managed to sit up in my seat, to catch my breath again.

“Now, some of these tumors don’t grow. They are essentially benign and just

sit there for years, and you’d never know about it. On the other hand, some of them start off benign and can then turn nasty. In Jack’s case, it does appear to be in the early stage, but we would want to take it out, to prevent it from growing into anything unpleasant.

“Here, look,” Dr. Kennety said, taking a scan of Jack’s head out of his folder.

Anna and I both leaned in. “Can you see this lighter part here?” We bent over and nodded. I had expected the tumor to be more spherical, better defined, but it was just an amorphous shadow, as if a photograph had been overexposed.

“It looks like Jack has a tumor called an astrocytoma, and his more specific type is called a pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma. Quite a mouthful I know, so we call these PXAs.”

The room started to spin and I wanted to rewind, to play the doctor’s words back, because nothing he was saying made any sense.

“Let’s talk about the next steps,” he said, writing something on his pad. “Now, I do want to focus on the positives—and there really are many positives here.”

Dr. Kennety pulled a plastic model of a brain out of a desk drawer. “So,” he said, putting it down in front of us. “Here are the two temporal lobes on the side.

And here on the left side is where Jack’s tumor is. Now, the harder-to-reach tumors are much deeper in the brain, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here.

That means it will be much easier for the surgeon.”

“So he will need to have an operation?” Anna asked, the first words she had spoken.

“Sorry, yes. I’m jumping ahead of myself here. Yes, surgery to remove the tumor.”

“And would that be it?” I said. “He wouldn’t need any more treatment?”

“Hopefully, that would be it, yes,” the doctor said. “In the cases where there is a complete resection—meaning where the surgeon manages to get out all of the tumor—we’re looking at a cure rate of 80 or 90 percent.”

Eighty or 90 percent. One in five, one in ten.

“And if the surgeon doesn’t?” Anna said, her voice clinical and clear.

“Well, that gets a bit trickier, but let’s not think about that now,” he said, clasping his hands together. “From the scans, it looks like it would be no problem getting it all out.”

“That’s good,” I said, and it was, but the words still felt like razor blades in my throat.

“I know the waiting is horrible,” Dr. Kennety said, “but we’ll know so much more after the operation.”

We both nodded because what else could we do?

“I’m going to book you an appointment with a neurosurgeon. Her name is Dr.

Flanagan, and she’s really the best in the business. Of course, you’re welcome to do your research and find someone else, but this is who I would recommend.

And I will of course need to see Jack to give him a thorough neurological exam.”

Dr. Kennety looked from side to side, demonstrably making eye contact with us. “Okay then,” he said softly, and I watched his hands, small and childlike, pecking at his keyboard like a hen.

* * *

We walked quickly down Harley Street toward Oxford Street. I crossed the road without looking, powering ahead of Anna. You didn’t normally notice life going on around you—it was just a hum, a murmur in the background. You could unsee it, push it from your mind. But suddenly, now, it was shrill, like a dog whistle in my ear. Schoolgirls in split skirts eating potato chips, swigging from Coke cans; delivery drivers shouting instructions, angry that something was late, that someone was in their way; a slick of Soho advertising types guffawing outside a wine bar.

We just kept walking, quick strides, as if we were racing, but we didn’t know where. My head was full of numbers, percentages, 80, 90—the chance of my son staying alive.

“Can you wait? Can you please wait?” Anna said.

I stopped. We were standing on Cavendish Square, in the gardens under a

bronze statue, and it had started to rain.

“I just can’t believe it,” I said. “I don’t understand. Does he look like he’s got a...”

“No,” Anna said. “No, he doesn’t.” She shook her head, and her chin began to dimple and then quiver and then, in the afternoon drizzle, she began to cry.

“I wish it were me, I just wish it were me,” she said, and I put my arm around her and pulled her closer, and she rested her head on my shoulder and we stood like that, her tears wet on my shirt, listening to the sounds of the city, the sounds of other people’s worlds.

“We should get back,” Anna said suddenly, her face a ghostly white. The rain was beating down now, gasoline rainbows in the gutters, a dark blanket of cloud suffocating the city.

I needed to see Jack. To take him in my arms and feel his warm skin on mine.

I didn’t want him to be alone. Once, when he was three or four, he said that he was sad because Peppa Pig didn’t want to be his friend. It broke my heart. I could not bear to imagine Jack’s loneliness, like the feeling, as a child, of wetting the bed in someone else’s home.

* * *

Jack ran toward us when we got home. I picked him up and swung him around.

He looked so alive that evening, boisterous, oversugared by his grandmother.

Anna’s mother could see it in our faces. “So how was it, any news?” she said.

“We can talk about it later,” Anna said quickly. Janet narrowed and then

widened her eyes, like a puppy wanting a treat, and I wanted to scream at her, can you just wait, can you just fucking wait.

“Well, Jack has been a very good boy,” Janet said, ruffling his hair. “We’ve been reading stories.”

I resented Janet being here, in our home, in London. A woman who had spent her life between rural Suffolk and Kenya, who always said that city life wasn’t for her. After Anna’s father had suddenly upped and left for his beloved Africa, Janet said there was nothing for her in Suffolk anymore. Her husband’s abrupt leaving, a month before Jack was born, was rarely discussed. He had a calling, Janet said, a desire for solitude, to be closer to God. A desire to be closer to the village girls, Anna said, although she could not say such a thing to her mother.

The church arranged the flat for her. A little place above a Lebanese

barbershop on Praed Street, just a few doors down from the drop-in center where she served goulash to the homeless in return for a book of prayer. She tried, but she could not hide her pain, her shame at being abandoned. You could see it in the slight hunch she had developed in her shoulders, the sag of skin on her face that had nothing to do with age.

“We did a story about Daniel,” Jack said, “and they throwed him in with the lions but they didn’t eat him because they would get in troubles.”

I didn’t like Janet teaching Jack Bible stories but now wasn’t the time. “Ooo, I know that one about the lions,” I said. “That’s a good one.”

Janet smiled at me approvingly.

“Right, beautiful,” I said. “Let’s get you to bed.”

We took longer that evening with Jack’s bedtime routine. We both read Shark in the Park, and then we tucked him in, doing snug as a bug in a rug, once, twice, three times. How could I reconcile all this, the way he lay down, clutching Little Teddy and his flashlight, tucking his knees up to his chest, with what we had just been told?

When I got downstairs, Anna and her mother were sitting in silence, rigid, their familial response to crisis.

“I am very sorry to hear the news,” Janet said, looking up at me.

“Thank you, Janet.”

She shook her head. “Poor little mite,” she said. Little mite, like a helpless Victorian child, Tiny Tim but worse.

“I will be praying. For you all, every day,” Janet said, looking down into her lap. Anna remained still. She had not moved a muscle since I entered the room.

“I don’t think Jack needs prayers right now,” I said. She was acting as if he was dying. “This is something that can be cured. That’s what they’ve said.”

Anna’s mother nodded sympathetically, but there was something robotic about her reaction, a rote response, as if she was counseling a wayward drunk at the drop-in center. She kept shaking her head. “Of course, of course, but what a terrible thing. And so young. Just a child.”

I couldn’t listen to her anymore and left the room, taking refuge in the office upstairs. There was something about her response, a smugness, almost as if she had always known this was going to happen. Poor little mite, as if Jack was forsaken, done-for already.

* * *

After Janet had gone, we sat in the living room. Anna, still pale, sat in silence, watching the finance channel. Later, we looked at a list of pediatric

neurosurgeons that Dr. Kennety had already emailed us. When she went up to bed, I sat downstairs and heard her pause outside Jack’s door and then go into his room. In a little while, she came out again and I could hear her start to cry.

I went to check on Jack. I could see the light of his flashlight through the half-open door. He liked to sleep with his flashlight so he could find his way to the bathroom. Every night, he said, it was like having an adventure.

I watched him through the door. He was lying on his side, looking at his

Pokémon trading cards. They were spread out, organized in rows and columns as if he was playing solitaire. He got it from Anna. The classification. The need to order things. Her color-coded Tupperware. Her spreadsheets and lists.

He inspected each card with his flashlight, turning it to see every detail, before placing it down on the bed. I could hear him whispering to the cards—“you go

there...there you are...you sit down there with him...” He liked to organize them into teams, dividing them by color, by type, by whether they lived on the land or in the sea.

“Hello, beautiful,” I said, as I walked into his room.

“Hello, Daddy.” He pointed to his Pokémon cards. “I’m putting them in

teams.”

“That’s cool,” I said, sitting down on the bed.

“This is the naughty team,” Jack said, pointing to one pile of cards. “And these are the good ones. And tomorrow, in the morning, they’re going to have a big fight.”

“Wow,” I said, “and who’s going to win?”

Jack considered the question. “The naughty ones,” he said, and then laughed loudly.

“C’mon, you should sleep now.”

“Okay,” he said, picking up the cards and putting them on his bedside table.

He settled back on his pillows, and I tucked him in again. “How do you feel, Jack? You don’t feel dizzy or anything?” I looked at the left side of his head. The temporal lobe.

“No, Daddy,” he said, his eyes beginning to close, and then quickly he was asleep. I watched him as his breathing began to deepen, little question marks of hair wrapping around his ears, the light brown moles on his nape. A little me, Anna always said. A little me.

I kissed his forehead and sat for a while on his sofa with the sprinkles of stars and dancing comets. I stilled myself, trying to slow down my breathing, so I could listen to him. But it was not enough: I could still hear my breathing, my heartbeat. So I held my breath for as long as possible—ten, twenty, thirty seconds—and then finally, all I could hear was Jack, the sound of him breathing, the occasional snuffle and murmur, the only sound in the world I wanted to hear.

the gherkin

we raced up in the elevator, as fast as a space rocket, and then the doors opened up into a huge glass room and you said it was like stepping out into the sky. and it was jack, it really was, because we could see right across london, as far as the south downs, nearly as far as the sea. we walked around, looking up and down, left and right, like timothy pope with his telescope and i will never forget that day jack for as long as i live. your laugh like chocolate as you danced with the shadows, the tinkle of rain on the glass.

8

I woke early, before sunrise. Anna was turned away from me, her legs tucked up to her chest just like Jack, the cover pulled around her neck. I looked for Jack, but he was not there. He was an early riser and would often creep into our bedroom before we woke, sitting on the floor at the foot of our bed, whispering to himself, ordering and reordering his Pokémon cards.

I went downstairs and sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and started Googling “pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma.”

“Treatments for childhood brain tumors.”

“Child brain tumor prognosis.” I read National Health Service fact sheets, Wikipedia pages, a long interview with a doctor from the American Brain Tumor Association.

I varied my searches, digging into the third, fourth, fifth pages of results.

Everything I found confirmed what Dr. Kennety had said. They were grade 2

tumors, rare, especially in children. And as the doctor had said, the overall survival rate was high, as much as 90 percent.

I heard the sound of little feet and saw Jack standing at the bottom of the stairs. He looked so young, so lithe in his Spider-Man pajamas. Still sleepy, he climbed into my lap and wrapped his arms and legs around me. I could feel his breath on my neck.

“Daddy, can I have cheese toast?”

“Of course you can.”

“Special cheese toast.”

“Special cheese toast?” I said with mock outrage. “Really? In the morning?

Well, I don’t know about that. What will you give me in return?”

Jack thought about a possible bargain. “I’ll give you a kiss,” he said, smiling.

“Only a kiss. Hmm, anything else?”

Jack looked around him and then ran over to a wicker box of toys. He

rummaged around inside and came back with something clenched tightly in his little fist.

“I’ll give you a present too.” He opened his hand and it was the broken arm of a Transformer.

“Bumble Bee’s arm?”

“Yes.” Jack nodded, and then started laughing.

“It’s a deal. Can I have my kiss now?”

Jack nodded, and as he planted a neat kiss on my face, I heard a small sob, a sharp intake of breath, and saw Anna standing at the bottom of the stairs, her hair still wet from the shower. She quickly turned and went back up the stairs.

“Where’s Mommy gone?”

“To the bathroom.”

“Why?”

“To do a wee-wee probably. Shall we make the special cheese on toast then?

But first, I’m just going to check that Mommy is okay.”

“Can I watch the iPad?”

“Sure, you can.” Jack smiled, took the iPad off the shelf and sat down cross-legged on the sofa.

“But don’t watch those stupid toy videos, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, Mr. Piggy.”

“Jack. I mean it.”

Upstairs, Anna was in the en suite bathroom, and I could hear the sound of running water.

“Anna?” I said gently through the door.

“Yes,” she said, her voice hoarse, distant. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

I sat and waited for her on the bed. “You okay?” I said, when she emerged and sat down next to me.

She shrugged, her face wet with tears, her eyes red.

“We’re going to get through this,” I said, putting my arms around her.

She nodded and turned away from me, not wanting me to see her tears.

“Really, we are. Remember, 90 percent cure rate,” I said, stroking her back.

“I still can’t believe it,” Anna said. “I couldn’t bear it if something happened to him, I just couldn’t bear it. I just want...” Her words trailed off and she wiped her eyes.

“We’re going to fight it and beat it, okay?” I said. “When Jack’s at the play center, let’s do some more research on the neurosurgeons.”

Anna chewed on her lower lip and shook her head. “I don’t want him going to soft play today,” she said.

“Why?”

Anna looked at me, narrowing her eyes. “We can’t... I don’t want to risk

anything.”

“Anna, have you seen him this morning? He’s charging around downstairs.

We have to carry on as normal.”

Downstairs, I could hear the voice of Ryan from Ryan’s Toys videos on Jack’s iPad.

“I’ve told Emma he can’t go.”

“You spoke to her already?”

“I texted her.”

“You didn’t tell her, did you?”

“No, of course not.”

“But Anna, we have to carry on as if nothing is wrong. For Jack’s sake. I don’t want him to know that he’s ill.”

“I agree, but he’s not a baby anymore,” she said. “We have to tell him

sometime. He’s going to wonder about all the doctors’ visits and why he’s feeling poorly.”

I went into the bathroom and got her a tissue to dry her eyes. “He’s not feeling poorly now,” I said, sitting back down next to her and putting my hand on her leg. “He wants his cheese on toast. Special cheese on toast.”

Anna laughed sadly, sniffed and wiped her face. “I just don’t want him to bang his head,” she said and she started to cry again, and this time no amount of tissues or hugs or words would stop the tears. I pulled her close to me, feeling her body tremble, her frantic little breaths.

“Why is Mommy crying?” We turned around, and Jack was standing at our

bedroom door.

Anna wiped her eyes with her sleeve and sniffled a little.

“Well, sometimes people get upset, just like you get upset sometimes,” I

offered.

“Did you do something bad to Mommy?” Jack said to me, moving closer to

Anna.

“No, not at all,” I said.

“Are you angry, Daddy?”

“No.”

“Is Mommy red with anger, like the man in the fireman book?”

Anna laughed a little, her sobs subsiding.

“Daddy, can I show you something?”

“Okay, let’s go and Mommy will come down in a bit.”

We walked downstairs, and on the table there were bits of broken bread, torn off from the loaf, topped with hard clumps of butter and a large uncut block of cheddar.

“I made special cheese toast.”

“You did,” I said, ruffling his hair. “That’s impressive, Jack.”

“Are you happy, Daddy?”

“I’m very happy, Jack,” I said. I watched him eat his bread and cheese, the morning light making columns of glitter dust, halos in Jack’s hair.

* * *

In the afternoon, the doorbell rang. Jack was napping and we were sitting in the living room. I looked out of the window and could see Lola’s little Fiat parked outside. “Did you tell her?” I asked Anna.

“No, I didn’t.”

“So what’s she...”

Anna stood up. “I don’t know. You know sometimes she just pops by.”

“Can you tell her to...”

Anna was already opening the door. “Hello, poppet,” Lola said, and I could hear the sound of her air-kisses and then silence. “Goodness, why the glum face, darling?”

Anna didn’t say anything, and I could imagine Lola trying to read her, the girl she knew so well, adjacent beds at boarding school, roommates in Halls.

“Hello, Rob,” Lola said as they walked into the living room. She looked at me quizzically, her eyebrows raised almost as an accusation.

“Where’s Jack?”

“He’s napping upstairs,” I said.

Lola looked at Anna, who was stone-faced, motionless. “Anna, darling?” she said and then looked back at me, and I thought I could detect a slight annoyance in her face, as if she felt she was being excluded. Lola always had to know everything.

I swallowed and took a deep breath. “We had some bad news yesterday, with Jack,” I said, my voice beginning to shake. “He’s been having a few problems with his balance, so we went to get it checked out. There is something on a scan that they think is...is a...” Tumor, tumor. I couldn’t say the word out loud. “...a lesion, yes. He has a lesion...”

Lola looked confused. “A lesion. What do you mean? Like a tumor?” Of

course, that word meant nothing to her: it was just vowels, consonants, not something that was growing in my little boy’s brain.

“Yes, they think it is.”

“Oh, God, poor Jack. Will he need treatment?” Lola moved next to Anna on the sofa and put her arm around her.

“Yes,” I said, steeling myself. “He will have surgery to remove the...you know, to get everything out, and then we’ll know more. But the doctor thinks that will be it, he won’t need any more treatment...”

“And then he’ll be okay, right?” Lola said, looking at Anna and then me.

“Yes, we hope so,” I said.

“God, how terrible. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.” Lola took a deep breath and started speaking again to break the silence. “There was a little boy at India’s nursery who had something similar. He had the tumor removed, and he’s absolutely fine now. Made a full recovery...”

Lola pulled Anna closer to her. “Oh, sweetheart, I hate seeing you like this.

It’s all going to be okay, I promise.”

Anna nodded, stiff in her arms, and Lola didn’t know what to say. She looked around the living room, as if, for a moment, she thought other people besides us were there.

“Actually, there’s a woman I follow on Twitter, and she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and then I think another cancer. Well, she turned to alternative remedies, I forget what exactly, but she’s completely cancer-free now. I can send you the link to her blog if you like.”

Lola’s words fluttered by like dandelion seeds in the wind.

“Thank you, Lola. We’re looking into everything at the moment.”

Just then, Anna stood up and walked out of the room. I could hear her quick little steps padding up the stairs.

“Should I go and see her?” Lola said, looking crestfallen.

“No, it’s fine. Best to leave her now.”

* * *

“Scott.”

“Hey.”

His tone was cold, unsparing.

“Would you have time to meet today?” I said.

“I thought we were supposed to meet a week ago. You know, to discuss the

sale.”

“Sorry,” I said, “something’s happened.”

“Right, it always does, doesn’t it? Mate, you’re my best friend, but I can’t deal

with this at the moment.”

I was quiet, didn’t know what to say, could feel the tears welling in my eyes.

“Rob? Are you still there?”

“Could you meet now?” I said, my voice cracking. “In The Ship?”

“Yes, of course.” Scott’s tone had softened. “Is everything okay?”

I didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything.

“I can be at The Ship in about fifteen.”

* * *

Scott was already there when I arrived, sitting at the bar, scrolling through something on his phone.

“I ordered you a pint and a cheeky one,” he said, pointing to a whiskey.

“Sounds like you need it.”

“Thanks.”

Scott took a long swig of his pint. “So what’s up, mate? Trouble with the Mrs.?”

I downed my whiskey in one gulp, and the ice rattled around the glass. “It’s Jack,” I said, taking a deep breath and pinching the backs of my thighs.

“They’ve found something, some kind of lesion in his brain.”

“A lesion? What’s a lesion? Is that a tumor?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck, I’m so sorry. That’s awful.”

Scott indicated to the bartender we wanted more whiskeys. “And what did the doctor say?”

“Well, he’ll have to have an operation first, and then they’ll know more,” I said, picking up my pint. “And hopefully that will be it.”

Before he could answer, Scott’s phone rang and he looked at the screen. He shook his head as if he didn’t want to take it. “Sorry, hold that thought. It’s Karolina, and I’m in the doghouse...”

He stepped off his bar stool, and I noticed he was wearing new brogues and skinny jeans. “Hello, babycakes,” he said as he walked away. He stood at the other end of the bar, laughing and whispering. I stared at a clock, a barometer, a ship in a bottle.

“Sorry, mate,” he said, coming back to the bar and sitting back down on his stool. “She’s so demanding at the moment. Anyway, you were saying about the treatment... I mean, they caught it early, right?”

“Yes,” I said, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure and couldn’t remember exactly what the doctor had said. “He has to have an operation, and they think they can take it all out.”

“Well, that’s good news. Really happy to hear that.”

“Thanks,” I said, pinching my thighs again, so hard it made me wince. “I just don’t understand it, because...because, he’s so well, he’s so active

and...and...well, normal, I just don’t...”

“God, Rob, I’m so, so sorry,” Scott said, and I didn’t know why he was

apologizing until I realized his phone was ringing silently, throbbing on the bar.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, declining the call but then the phone lit up again, and we both stared at the flashing screen.

“So what’s the next step then? What happens now?” Scott said, when Karolina had finally hung up.

“Well,” I said. “In the next few weeks, he’ll have an operation to remove the...you know, to get everything out. And then hopefully that will be it.”

“I’m sure it will, mate,” he said, touching my whiskey glass with his. “And please, keep me in the loop, let me know if I can help. By the way, I do know some Harley Street types from the golf club, so I could ask around about the best people for this kind of thing.” Scott started scrolling through his phone. “Yep, here we go. This guy, Dr. Khan. Indian guy. Very clever. I’ll give him a ring later if you want?”

I was sweating and could feel cold trickles run down my back. “I’ve got to go,” I said, suddenly feeling a bristle of panic.

“Okay, mate,” Scott said, taking a leisurely sip of his pint. As I was leaving, he put his arm around me, I think an attempt at a hug, but I didn’t respond, my body stiff.

“Seriously, let me know if there’s anything you need. Your Jack’s a fighter, especially if he’s anything like his old man.”

Anything we need, I thought as I walked back up Parliament Hill. Anything we need? Maybe not being on the phone to your new girlfriend. Maybe not

staring at the barmaid’s breasts when I’m telling you my son has a brain tumor.

* * *

Anna was in the living room when I got home, sitting on the sofa with the laptop on the coffee table.

“Is he still sleeping?” I said.

“Yes, I just went up and he’s out like a light... Sorry about before. I know Lola means well but I just couldn’t...”

I sat down next to her. She had done her makeup and tied back her hair. “I’ve gone through the list of neurosurgeons and put all the contact info into a spreadsheet. I printed one out for you. We can just split it up and work our way down the list.”

I looked at the spreadsheet: doctors, their addresses and phone numbers, a note on their area of specialization.

“I’ll get started.”

“I was thinking back to the appointment with Dr. Kennety,” she said, “and it’s all just a blur. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t write things down. There are so many questions I wish I had asked but it was like this fog came over me...”

“Yeah, I know. I was thinking about that earlier.”

Anna sighed and I put my hand on her knee.

“We’ll be ready for the next meeting,” I said. “With lots of questions. We’re going to fight it, okay?”

My words felt feeble, but Anna squeezed my hand. “Yes, we will. We have

to,” she said. “Lola sent me a very sweet message, by the way. She was worried she’d upset me. How was Scott? Did you tell him?”

“Yeah.”

“And how was he?”

“Oh, just Scott being Scott.”

Anna was about to say something, to probe further, but she stopped, bit her lip. “Okay,” she said, standing up. “I think I’m missing a page.”

I looked at her, confused.

“Of the spreadsheet.”

As she went to the printer, I opened the laptop so I could research the doctor that Scott had mentioned. In an open browser window, there was a page of

search results. Anna had been Googling “miscarriages and brain tumors in

children.” In another tab, there was a story from The Huffington Post: “How My Miscarriage Caused My Child’s Cancer.”

I didn’t read it, but just looked at the stock photo of a woman, her head bowed, clutching her stomach.

* * *

Anna had always done her Christmas letters, a tradition she inherited from her

mother. I had teased her about them in the past. They were awful, I said, from another age. Middle-class humble-brags: “Jonathan has had another fantastic year at Oxford, but sometimes we wish he would spend as much time on his studies as he does on his rowing and fraternizing with members of the opposite sex!”

They don’t have to be like that, Anna said. Hers weren’t like that. And

besides, it was a good way of keeping in touch. So every year, despite my mocking, she carefully folded a sheet of paper into her Christmas cards.

I had not been sure about sending the email. I was worried we would have to spend our time answering messages of support, fending off friends armed with food baskets at the door. But Anna convinced me. It was better this way, she said. Let everyone know together, and then it would be easy for us to manage.

Her word bothered me a little—“manage”—as if it was one of her clients, a crisis at work where everyone had to be on-message.

Subject: Jack

Sent: Mon May 12, 2014 2:00 pm

From: Anna Coates

To: (Undisclosed Recipients)

CC: Rob

Dear Friends,

We hope you are all well and apologies for the mass mailing. We wanted

to let you all know that Jack has recently been diagnosed with astrocytoma, a type of brain tumor.

He will soon have surgery to have the tumor removed and the doctors

are optimistic that he will make a full recovery.

This has obviously been a tremendous shock, but we are hopeful and

positive we will get through this. We thank you all for your support.

Best Wishes,

Anna and Rob

I had added the “positive we will get through this” part. It was true, I told Anna, and, besides, we didn’t want people to worry unduly, to think that Jack was going to die.I didn’t understand her at times. Her genetic impulse to look on the negative side of things. She got it from her parents, handed down like a cursed heirloom. The glass-half-empty family, she used to joke.

The replies came quickly. People wrote to say they were sorry, shocked,

saddened. They told us stories: mothers, fathers, friends of friends, who had taken on cancer and won. They told us about little children they knew who were diagnosed with the same—or something similar—and were now doing very well. They told us to stay positive because that, they said, was the most important thing. They told us they would pray, that they would carry Jack in their hearts and be thinking about him from morning until night.

I read and reread Anna’s note. A full recovery. That was what she wrote. So why did they all act like he was dying? Did they know something we didn’t?

9

I sat at my desk, buzzed with caffeine, my fingers twitching as I checked my email. I preferred to work on the sofa, or in bed, anywhere I could position my laptop on my knee, but Anna made me set up the home office. We went to choose a desk and a comfy office chair and she bought some organizers and stationary. It was important, she said, for my state of mind, so I felt like I was going to work.

I scrolled through my in-box. The tech-incubator organizers were still chasing me, now offering to pay my expenses plus a speaker’s fee. Marc wanted some input on one of the programmers. There was something from Jack’s nursery, which I couldn’t bear to open, and then, hidden between an advertisement for a garden center and a PayPal receipt, an email from Scott.

Subject:

Sent: Wed May 21, 2014 1:05 am

From: Scott Wayland

To: Rob Coates

hello mate just wanted to say sorry about the other day in the pub. I know you’re going through so much right now and probably wasn’t as attentive

as I should be.

btw, I spoke to the doctor friend of mine, pulled a few strings and he said the best in the business is dr. kennety on harley st. he really knows his stuff apparently. lemme know if u want to go down that road and I can hook u up...

regarding other stuff, I still desperately need to talk to you about the China thing, selling I mean. they’re pestering me and I don’t want to lose the window on it. time to chat about it? if you don’t want to come by the office we could meet at The Ship or I could pop by the house.

in other news, Karolina broke up with me and ive taken it pretty hard,

so not going through the best time myself at the moment...

anyways, chin up mate. hope to see u soon.

Sent from my iPhone

Chin up, mate, as if West Ham had been crushed at home. Did he not realize how he sounded? With everything that was happening, was I really supposed to care that Scott’s latest Slavic fuck-buddy had moved on to better, richer things?

After I had calmed down, and made more coffee, I started to do some more

research. As I was searching for “PXA treatment options,” I clicked on a link that led me to a forum called Hope’s Place. On the front page there were yellow-winged butterflies dancing across a baby-blue-and-pink sky. In one corner, underneath a giant rainbow, was a picture of Hope: a seven-year-old girl in a Glee T-shirt.

I clicked on Hope’s picture and it led to a discussion forum for parents of children with brain tumors. I dug deeper and found a thread for Jack’s tumor type, PXA.

I read quickly, scrolling through the posts. From what I could tell, removal by surgery was the preferred treatment option, but some of the children were given radiation therapy, and I didn’t know why. Was that for children with more serious tumors? An option we should consider for Jack?

Can anyone help us?

by Rob» Wed May 21, 2014 8:45 am

Hello, everyone, I’m new to Hope’s Place. We have recently received the

news that our 5-year-old son Jack has been diagnosed with pleomorphic

xanthoastrocytoma.

In a few weeks’ time, Jack will have an operation to remove the tumor

and then we will know more.

Apart from this, Jack is in very good health. He has some balance issues, which prompted us getting him checked out, but you wouldn’t know he was ill at all. He is still very active and sharp.

The doctor was very hopeful that Jack could be cured, but we realize

there is still a risk that he may not. They have recommended just surgery, but I see some children have also had radiation as well. What would be

normal in our son’s case?

Also, I have been reading on this board about Gamma Knife and

Proton therapy. Would these be things we should be looking into?

Any information would be very much appreciated.

Best Wishes,

Rob

I heard Anna come home, the door gently close, the rattle of her keys on the hall table, but I couldn’t hear Jack, his usual greeting of “Hello, everyone!” I rushed to the door and found Anna standing in the hall, with Jack slumped over her shoulder.

“He fell asleep in the car,” she said, removing her second shoe. He seemed to sleep a lot now, nodding off when he was watching cartoons or even the shortest car journey.

I took him in my arms and carried him up to bed. The midafternoon sun was strong, so I closed his curtains and laid him down on his bed. He stirred, turned to his side and pulled his knees up to his chest.

When I got downstairs, Anna was staring into space, a glass of wine in front of her on the coffee table.

“You okay?” I said.

“No, I’m not actually,” she said. The skin on her neck and chest was red, a rash that appeared when she got angry or nervous.

“What happened?”

“God, I’m fuming right now. Stupid fu—” She stopped herself. For as long as we had been together, I had never once heard Anna swear. “Stupid, stupid people everywhere.”

She took a large sip of wine and put the glass back on the coffee table. “I was in Costa, the one at the bottom of the hill, and it was quiet and Jack was in the play corner drawing. And it was nice, because we haven’t had time alone for a while, and he had a chocolate milk shake and he was an absolute delight. Then I saw this woman, Joanna. Do you remember her? From Jack’s Little Gym thing.”

“Joanna, yeah, it rings a bell. Oh, the woman who was always going on about her divorce?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Well, she sort of sidled up to me, in this really creepy way, and said hello and I knew she knew because she had this weird nervous grin. Then she said, ‘I’m so very sorry’ and she looked over at Jack and said, ‘poor little thing,’ and he was right there, right there next to her. And then she said, ‘I suppose you’re making memories now.’ Making memories. She actually said that. And I just didn’t know what to say, so I said, ‘well, Jack is going to make a full recovery,’ as if I had to justify myself. To her. As if it was any of her damn business. And then you know what happened?”

“What?”

“She hugged me. She hugged me right in the middle of Costa Coffee.”

“Oh my God.”

“Quite. Well, you know how freakish I am about such things, even with you.

It was awful. I didn’t think she’d ever let go.”

I started to giggle, the thought of Anna in Costa Coffee, stiff-bodied, not hugging back.

“It was one of those situations where afterward I was kicking myself, because I really wished I had told her just how rude, how insensitive she was being, but I couldn’t because Jack was there, and anyway, what would have been the point?”

“That’s awful,” I said. “Some people are just assholes.”

I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine and joined Anna on the sofa. “It’s silly to get so pissed off at this stuff,” I said, “especially with everything that’s happening, but I got so angry the other day over this fucking Facebook post.”

“Who was it?”

“Just this girl from school. It was this long, long post about how she had had some growth on her neck, and she was worried that it was cancer, and she

thought she was going to die. So they cut it off, and of course it turned out not to be cancer. Then she went on and on about this doctor who looked her in the eyes and said, ‘Now you should stop worrying and go and live the rest of your life.’

And then all these hashtags. Hashtag positive. Hashtag cancer. Hashtag fuck off.”

Anna laughed, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen her smile.

This was what we used to do. Our wine-fueled rants about friends and

colleagues. Happy conspirators, sitting up late into the night.

“I’m going to talk to my boss tomorrow,” Anna said, “about taking a leave of absence around the time of the operation.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I just think I should be with Jack when he’s recovering.”

“Do you think they’ll go for it?”

“I don’t know. They do offer compassionate leave in some situations, but

that’s for, well, you know... I know some people have taken unpaid sabbaticals, so I was thinking I might be able to do something like that.”

“Right, that could work, I suppose.”

Anna narrowed her eyes. “So you don’t agree?”

“No, I do, yes... I haven’t really thought about it to be honest. But are you sure it’s necessary? I’m going to be here every day, when he’s off school after the

operation. And there’s the money, as well. Would we manage without it?”

Anna looked at me sharply, her cheeks flushed with the wine. “I don’t know, Rob. I hope so. And if you’re so worried about the money, maybe you should speak to Scott. Because if he sells, that’s half our income gone.”

I didn’t say anything, choosing my words carefully. I knew what she thought.

That I was being lazy and irresponsible, that I wasn’t doing enough to convince Scott not to sell the company to the Chinese. She had always worried about money, even with us both earning. London was expensive, she said, and we were living beyond our means. We weren’t saving, and now Jack’s school fees were mounting up.

“So have you spoken to him about it?” she asked.

“Yes, of course I have, but I’m not sure there’s much I can do. I don’t have the energy to argue with him anymore.”

“Great,” Anna said, looking away. “You don’t have the energy.” She shook her head. “You’re amazing sometimes, Rob. You don’t work and I do, and all I want to do is to take some time off so I can spend more time with Jack, and then you make me feel guilty about it.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I really didn’t mean it like that.”

Anna stood up and took a pair of Jack’s trousers off the radiator. “Anyway, maybe you’re right, maybe we can’t afford it.”

“I’m not giving up on Scott yet, though,” I said.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, it’s not the best time to talk to him about it, but I’ve made a real breakthrough on the drones thing. In fact, I think that this Chinese company might be able to help.”

Anna sighed and picked up the pile of clothes.

“What?”

She rubbed her forehead as if she had a migraine coming on. “Please don’t start on about the drones thing again. You know I support you, but it’s been more than five years now, and you still don’t have anything to show for all the work you’ve put in.”

“I get that,” I said, her words stinging a little. She was like this about the maps, overly cautious, convinced it was a fool’s errand. “These things take time.

And do you remember how it was with the maps? Nothing for ages, and then

suddenly I got money. So I’m not going to throw in the towel with the drones yet.”

Anna shook her head and sat down next to me on the sofa. “You always think

that everything’s going to be okay,” she said, half smiling, shuffling closer to me.

“Sure,” I said. “What’s the alternative? Thinking that everything is going to be shit?”

“True,” she said, putting her feet up on the sofa and then resting her head in my lap.

She slept like that once, our backs against the promenade on Brighton beach.

A dirty weekend in a guesthouse near the sea. Still so new to each other, we spent most of our time in bed that weekend. It had started to get dark when we dragged ourselves out to eat fish ’n’ chips and cotton candy on Palace Pier.

Afterward, we went clubbing, some cheesy indie night where we danced to The La’s and the Happy Mondays.

That night, we were fearless on the dance floor, without shame, our hands everywhere, and it was as if we were back in the guesthouse, tingling with lust, our bodies damp with each other. We walked out at 4:00 a.m., the air chilling the sweat on our backs, laughing and stumbling, drawn back to the sea.

Anna wanted to watch the sunrise, so we went and sat on the beach and talked for a while, about London, where we might live. We joked—the way new

couples do—about the kids we would have one day.

Just as the sun was coming up, Anna began to fall asleep and rested her head in my lap. Some things you never forget. The waves gently shuffling the

pebbles; the birds awakened by the red dawn; the warm, salty wind. Anna was happily oblivious to it all. I watched her sleeping, locked into our bliss, our endless summer, her chest rising and falling in perfect time with the sea.

* * *

That evening, I logged back in to Hope’s Place. There were already fifteen responses to my post.

Re: Can anyone help us?

by dxd576» Wed May 21, 2014 10:34 am

I cant help you with your particular condition or recommend any surgical

stuff or anything but we are now eighteen months out from our daughter’s

diagnosis. We have been juicing and our little one (and all the family) have moved to an all vegan all raw diet. While we can’t say what is round the corner our little Jade is doing well and we know that is to do with the changes to our diet and less with the drugs that the doctors have been giving her.

Re: Can anyone help us?

by Chemoforlifer» Wed May 21, 2014 10:58 am

Rob,

Sorry you’re dealing with all of this. It must have come as quite a shock.

While of course it is a brain tumor (and no one likes to hear those two words), do take comfort from the fact that PXA is a very treatable and survivable cancer.

(Just FYI, as you’re new here. I lost my only daughter, Hope, to glioblastoma multiforme five years ago when she was eight years old. I started this forum in her memory to try to help other people. I am a research scientist by trade.) So, regarding concrete advice. I would highly recommend, if he hasn’t

already, that your son get genetically tested. Even though you are looking at surgical resection as a cure, it’s always good to have things in the armory, in the unlikely event the tumor did recur.

Please feel free to ask me anything. I am always here to help.

Best Wishes,

Chemoforlifer

Admin

Re: Can anyone help us?

by Trustingod» Wed May 21, 2014 11:44 am

Sorry to hear this Rob, although, as you say, there is much to be hopeful about. We are in a similar position, although our baby was diagnosed a

few months ago. We have found that our faith has been such a comfort to

us in these difficult times. May God put his healing hands on your little boy. I will be praying for you and your family.

I stopped reading. These people weren’t us. They were the desperate parents you read about in magazines, who watched as their children slipped away. We had nothing in common, because Jack was so alive; the doctor had said he would be cured. Suddenly I needed to see him, to touch him, and recently these moments had become more frequent and painful, like crippling attacks of gout.

I was just about to close my laptop and go downstairs when a little mail icon pinged to let me know I had received a private message through the forum. It was from someone called Nev.

Subject: Hello

Sent: Wed May 21, 2014 10:16 pm

From: Nev

Recipient: Rob

Hello, Rob. I’m sorry to hear about Jack’s situation, although it sounds like you have a huge amount to be hopeful about.

I wanted to tell you my story, in case things don’t work out as planned.

My son Josh was diagnosed with glioblastoma three years ago, when he

was six. The doctors basically wrote him off. After they removed the tumor, they said there was nothing they could do, that it would definitely grow back and all they could offer was chemo and radiation as palliative care.

That was when I found out about Dr. Sladkovsky. Before you stop reading, hear me out. This is a legitimate clinic based in Prague. It’s not a cactus juice for a thousand pounds a pop cancer clinic. This is cutting edge stuff and utilizes all the latest treatments, in particular what’s called immuno-engineering.

Going to Prague was a risk of course. But we took it and our Josh underwent a variety of treatments. To cut a long story short, six months later, the tumor was gone and it hasn’t been back since. He is now a happy nine-year-old, living a normal life, and cancer is beginning to become a distant memory.

I have been banned from posting links to Dr. Sladkovsky on Hope’s Place (the software doesn’t even let me send them in private messages)

so all I can say is Google Dr. Sladkovsky in Prague and you will find everything you need to know.

If you want to find out more about Josh’s treatments, please check out

my blog at nevbarnes.wordpress.com or feel free to message me.

I wish you the best of luck. I’m crossing fingers and legs and toes and

everything really. PM me if you want more info.

Nev

Nev sounded like a con man. I put the name “Sladkovsky” into the search

field on Hope’s Place and hundreds of results popped up.

PLEASE READ re Sladkovsky Clinical Trial

by Chemoforlifer» Mon Jan 26, 2012 6:03 am

Dear All,

Regular users of the board might have seen several posts by Nev about

a proposed clinical trial run by Dr. Sladkovsky. These posts no longer exist and have been deleted by the moderators. They were deleted because they explicitly violated the “no solicitation or promotion” rule.

There have been extensive discussions of Sladkovsky’s clinic on this board. One of the threads is here, for new users who maybe are not familiar with the clinic’s “work.”

forum.hopesplace.topic/article/1265%444

Dr. Sladkovsky’s clinic is not reputable. He has never allowed his immuno-engineering treatments to be evaluated in an independent,

accredited clinical trial, nor has he ever shared the results of his work with other researchers. Every reputable cancer-treatment watchdog has concluded that his “immuno-engineering” treatment is a scam.