His aunt was sitting in the kitchen with a cup of tea. The sink was a bright tub of chrome. Daniel could smell the bleach. There were lilies on the old oak table, sitting in a tall green vase he had never seen before.
It was like coming back to her house not his.
‘We’re going to have to get you another cellphone,’ she said, pulling the sleeve of her cardigan down over her watch. ‘I was getting worried. You’ve been out all day.’
‘Me and Bennett lost track of time.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’ve got someone you can speak to. I’d worry if you didn’t.’
Daniel stayed sitting at the table as she prepared supper because he did not want to be alone. He watched as she went round the kitchen, never going to the wrong cupboard or drawer for anything, which made it seem even more like her house. They talked about her work in California. She said she had her own start-up that could tick along without her so she could be in Cambridge for the whole of the rest of the summer holidays if necessary.
‘What’s it like there?’ asked Daniel as they sat down to eat.
‘Maybe you’ll come see for yourself one day.’
Daniel kept asking as many questions as he could think up about her life on the other side of the world because, whenever there was a lull in the conversation, he imagined Mason peering in through the window, grinning at him, or Lawson lying on the floor beside him, the bloody stump of his arm raised.
‘What’s wrong,’ asked his aunt when she noticed Daniel staring at his empty plate yet again.
‘Nothing. I’m just tired.’ He pinched a lily petal between his fingers and felt how smooth and delicate it was. ‘We’ve never had flowers before,’ he said.
His aunt just smiled and nodded and then she cleared her throat. ‘I had a call from the hospital today, updating me on your father. There’s been no change. But then I suppose you know that. The charge nurse said you went to see him. She said you looked so sad sitting there on your own.’
Daniel nodded, remembering how Mason had whispered something to the nurse at her station to make her laugh before handing over a fold of twenty-pound notes and telling her he wasn’t really there. It made a lock click shut in his stomach, trapping everything about Mason inside him.
‘Daniel, did you really see your friend today? I’m only asking because I don’t want to think you can’t be here with me, that you’re uncomfortable with me being around.’
Daniel put his hands flat on the table to help himself breathe. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see Bennett. I’m sorry I lied.’
‘So what did you do all day?’
‘I just mooched around town,’ he said quietly, his toes flexing so tight inside his trainers he thought the seams might pop.
‘On your own?’
Daniel nodded.
Before she could ask anything else, the phone rang and Daniel sprang up to answer it and listened for a moment, and then shouted down the line in a rage that it was nothing to do with miracles at all, that he had been cursed instead, before slamming the receiver back down in its cradle.
‘I’m having the number changed,’ said his aunt. ‘They just keep ringing.’ She poured another glass of red wine and took a sip. Cleared her throat. ‘Daniel, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Let people believe what they want about what happened. All that matters is you. How you process it. So you can start to come to terms with it all.’
‘I don’t know why any of it happened.’
His aunt nodded as if she understood. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine how terrible it must have been for you down there. But if you want to talk to me, about anything, then you can because it’s not healthy keeping everything bottled up. It’ll rot you on the inside. That’s what bad experiences do. Hollow you out and fill you up with all the questions you can never answer.’
She reached forward and lifted up his dirty plate and stacked it on to hers. ‘We’re family, Daniel. We’re all we’ve got. So we need to stick together. If you want to tell me anything, you can.’
‘I don’t think I’m ready to talk just yet,’ he said, picking a loose thread from the edge of the tablecloth.
When Daniel clicked his bedroom door shut, he caught sight of himself in the mirror and placed his hand on his chest, trying to feel for the secret space that Lawson had shown him. But there was only the thump of his heart and his serried ribs, like the rungs of a ladder leading to somewhere mysterious inside him.
After finally falling asleep, he dreamt of a world where death was a long sleep from which everyone awoke, wide-eyed and smiling, with all the answers to how the world works and how to live peacefully and well. You have to die to know, they said when Daniel asked them the secret to being happy, for they had all sworn not to tell a single person the truth.