Something kept tightening in Daniel’s stomach as he walked quickly back down the towpath, like a screw was being turned deeper and deeper.
He took a bus to the hospital with Bennett to see his father. But when they got there they were told they couldn’t see him because the doctors were examining him.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Daniel. ‘What’s happened?’
Two of the ward nurses took him aside into a room and told him that his father had pneumonia. They told him that it was one of the risks of being on a ventilator and of being fed through a tube.
‘But he’ll get better from that, won’t he?’ asked Daniel.
‘We’re treating the infection, doing all we can,’ said one of the nurses. The other one just nodded and smiled to back her colleague up.
‘We’ll come back later,’ said Bennett and he led Daniel away.
As they walked out of the hospital doors into the daylight, Bennett took his friend by the shoulders. ‘That Bobby’s a drunk, a tramp with an old rag for a brain. That stuff he said wasn’t true.’ But Daniel wasn’t sure what to think. ‘You should go home to your aunt. Tell her about your dad. Talk about him with her and tell her how you feel.’
‘I’d prefer to hang out with you.’
‘Daniel, she’s come all this way to look after you. She didn’t have to, did she? She could have said no and stayed in California. I think she must love you very much. Remember, it’s hard for her too, being with you, being with a person she doesn’t know. She needs you to tell her how to be with you or else she’s just guessing. And people make mistakes when they guess at things. That’s just the way it is.’
When Mason’s phone went off in Daniel’s pocket, he checked it again. ‘I can’t tell her about Mason. She won’t be able to help with that.’
Bennett frowned. He scuffed the ground with a shoe. ‘My brother’s having a party tonight. He has some friends who are into trying out “stuff”.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re “alternative”.’ And he made two rabbit ears with his fingers. ‘New Age. At least some of them are. Last time he had a party some wacky things happened.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘I wasn’t there. I think they got pretty drunk though and high. My brother said it was like a dream. I’m just telling you in case it might be useful. You can’t make the fit with Rosie, and trying with Bobby was a waste of time, so why don’t you come along?’
Daniel nodded. ‘Thanks.’
‘But only if you go home now and see your aunt.’
Daniel shifted from one foot to the other like he was standing on hot coals.
‘James might be there too tonight. You can always speak to him.’
Daniel thought about that. ‘OK,’ he said.
When Daniel got home his aunt was out. She had left him a short note saying she would be back later, not mentioning where she had gone or what she was doing.
The words felt like little daggers on his tongue as he read them out loud the second time around to the pot plant on the kitchen windowsill. But he remembered what Bennett had told him and it was like holding up a lens to the note that made him see it differently. When he read the words out loud again, they didn’t hurt any more. In fact, they sounded sad and upset, not curt at all.
He wrote a message beneath hers, telling her about his dad’s pneumonia and saying he would be out tonight at a party at Bennett’s house. He signed it with an initial, D. Someone moved his hand for him and put a couple of kisses next to it and he immediately wished they hadn’t. But there was nothing he could do once it had happened.