Max’s oversized glasses were teetering on the end of his nose, threatening to fall off, a dog-eared copy of The Gruffalo held up like a tent around the bottom half of his face. We were in the reading corner of the school library. The school – the catalyst for so much – was the last place I’d wanted to take the session, but it had been there or the police station, and I didn’t think an interview room would be the thing at all.
I’d had a flurry of phone calls once Patrick had made his dawn flit back to London, and Joshua had eventually delivered Max to me mid-morning. Max had grinned at me as he climbed out of Joshua’s black estate car, and my heart had melted a little.
‘Hi, Max!’ I’d said, smiling at Joshua over his head, thinking of how Max had whispered to Woody to confide in his dad. I’d been filled with a sense of shared purpose, of enthusiasm, but Joshua’s face didn’t reflect any of that. He was wearing a dark suit, his lined face as closed and forbidding as prison gates.
‘Thanks for doing this, Mia,’ he’d said, his voice flat.
‘It’s . . . well, not a pleasure, but it’s a privilege,’ I said quietly, taking Max’s hand. ‘I’ll take good care of him.’
‘I’m sure,’ he’d said, already turning back towards his car. The crowd of photographers had gone in search of better picture opportunities, mercifully missing out on this painful tableau. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to your session. It might be Lisa who comes and gets him.’
I’d taken Max to the library, asked him to give me a tour of the shelves, but he’d thrown himself down on a shabby green beanbag and hidden behind the book. Had he watched that awkward exchange and decided that trusting me would be some kind of betrayal of his dad?
‘Is The Gruffalo your favourite book?’ I asked. Silence reigned. ‘Did you hear me, Max?’ I asked gently.
He nodded, then nodded again, which I took to be a yes to both questions. The book stayed in place. The library had a musty kind of smell, the reading corner surrounded by high metal shelves, tucked away. I’d plonked myself down on a small wooden chair which barely contained my woman-sized bottom, and I gratefully slid down onto the carpet. I didn’t want to encroach on his space, but nearer felt like it might be more promising.
‘We didn’t have The Gruffalo when I was little,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could read me some?’
Max swung his head back and forth so hard it could’ve almost swivelled right round, then proceeded to bury his nose even deeper in the book. I examined his pale profile from this new vantage point; the subtle smattering of freckles that stretched across the bridge of his nose, his brown hair, which had been cut in a little-boy bowl cut when I first met him at the funeral but had since grown shaggier, the lengths at different levels. My heart squeezed tight in my chest, wondering what Sarah would think of it – if anyone was noticing the tiny details of his life in the brash chaos of grief.
‘You didn’t have The Gruffalo?’ he exclaimed, suddenly animated. It was clearly an inconceivable state of affairs. ‘My mummy can do all the voices. She does the mouse like this!’ he said, his voice squeaky and high. ‘And the Gruffalo like this,’ he said, making his voice suitably gruff. He lowered the book to his knees, waiting for my explanation.
‘Sounds like your mummy . . .’ I paused a second, weighing up the tiny bridge of a word I needed to pick, ‘is very good at telling stories.’
‘She can make them up too,’ he said, earnestly. ‘She makes up the best stories.’
I saw her then – that wild glint she’d had as the children ripped the paper off the parcel, the way she’d made us all clink our Prosecco glasses so hard they could almost have smashed when Lysette had cut Saffron’s cake. ‘And does your daddy tell you stories?’
‘Sort of,’ said Max, considering. ‘Or he puts one on for me to listen to.’
‘Do you like it best when he stays and reads to you?’ Maybe it was something I could pass on to Joshua, an easy way for the two of them to stay in connection.
‘Yes, but I like it better when it’s my mummy,’ he said, his face earnest.
She wasn’t just his mother, she was the heroine of his own personal fairy story: he was still holding out desperately for the happy ending that all fairy stories promise.
‘It must be very hard that your mummy can’t do that any more,’ I said.
‘Mrs Carter next door said she was sorry I’d lost my mummy,’ he said, looking hard at one of the pictures of the mouse. ‘But I didn’t lose her. I lost my red Toyota car which has two exhaust pipes.’
People don’t understand how confusing these twee analogies are for children. ‘No, you definitely didn’t lose her. It’s just a thing that grown-ups say. What do you think happened?’
It’s so important for children to tell their own story as they see it, not have adults always imposing an acceptable version of events. I wished I’d had time to have some props sent from London – my sand tray, my dolls. Staging things can be much easier for little children than finding the words. At least he knew I’d been there for his makeshift funeral.
‘Mummy was very high up and then she slipped and fell,’ he said, eyes turned towards me now, watching my face. ‘And then she hit the ground very hard and it made her bleed and die.’
I nodded at him, acknowledging what he’d said, thinking all the time how random and unfair it must feel, and how much more heartbreaking information was liable to force its way into his life. I’d worked with a number of children who’d had parents commit suicide – I’d witnessed their anger, helped them to believe there was nothing they could’ve done. The problem was, there was no definitive truth to get to grips with as yet. His small, freckled face was angled up at me, expectant. I could tell that he was proud that he’d told me what had happened with such clarity. Without crying.
‘Does it feel unfair that that happened to your mummy?’ I said, keeping my focus on him tight. I wanted him to know that I was really listening. ‘Does it make you want to shout and scream?’
‘Sometimes when you go to hospital, they can make you better,’ he said.
‘That’s right. But they couldn’t with your mummy.’
‘When I went to the hospital they made me better,’ he said, picking up The Gruffalo again. I waited to see if he’d say more. A distraction often tells me there’s something very important a child’s trying to smuggle out. ‘The siren goes nee-na, nee-na and there is a blue light and everyone gets out of the way because they have to.’
‘So did you go to hospital too? A different time?’
‘Yes. I was very, very ill but they made me better.’
‘What was wrong with you, Max?’
Max threw down The Gruffalo almost violently. He jumped up.
‘I need a pee pee,’ he said, barrelling out of the classroom. I went after him, wanting to make sure he wasn’t just making a break for freedom. He wasn’t: he went to the boys’, then came back down the corridor, more slowly this time. I resolved to go more gently, ensure I wasn’t pushing him. He made a beeline for the beanbag, little shoulders hunching as he sank his way into it.
‘What do you like best about The Gruffalo, Max?’
Max chose to ignore the question.
‘Everyone has to go to hospital. When you’re a baby, and you get born, you go to hospital.’
‘That’s true. Most babies do get born in a hospital. Not every single one.’
He looked up at me – just halfway, like Lady Di charming an interviewer.
‘I went there when I was a baby.’
‘So you were ill when you were a baby?’
‘No!’ he said. ‘Because you didn’t have The Gruffalo when you were a baby, I am going to read it to you.’
‘Thank you, Max, that sounds lovely,’ I said.
I stared down at his dark head, dropped low over the ragged pages. I could hear his voice rising and falling with the characters, desperately trying to do Sarah justice. I could feel tears prickling behind my eyeballs, and I forced them away. It’s rare I let that kind of unbridled emotion into my work – I need to be the rock, not the sea – but it was hard that day. We both sat there a second.
‘Did you like it?’ he asked.
‘I loved it,’ I told him. ‘And what I liked best was how you read it to me. You made the mouse all mousy and the Gruffalo very gruff.’
Max climbed out of the beanbag’s embrace and came over to stand close enough to me to touch me.
‘Were you scared?’ he asked me.
‘I wanted the mouse to be OK,’ I said. ‘I thought he would be. He had lots of things that we call resources. Things inside him he could use to help him, like being brave.’
‘Yes, he is brave,’ agreed Max, sinking back into the beanbag. He kept his body close to mine.
‘But brave doesn’t mean having to rely on yourself. Brave can be telling people how you feel and asking them to give you cuddles and talk to you.’
Max considered that.
‘Also the mouse is clever,’ he said.
‘When is he clever?’
‘He has to tell fibs, but not because he’s naughty. The fibs are clever. They stop the bad things from happening.’
I heard a firm knock on the door. We both looked up: Joshua’s square-jawed face was framed in the glass square at the top of it, a perfect headshot. Max looked back at him but didn’t immediately get up. I held up my finger, smiled in a way that told Joshua we were nearly finished.
‘We’re going to have to stop now, Max, but it was lovely spending time with you today.’
He gave a little nod, eyes trained on the worn carpet. I longed to say more, to tell him I’d be here if he wanted to come back, but I couldn’t make him a promise just yet. Instead we both got up, his hand automatically reaching for mine, and went and found his dad.
Joshua and Max said their rather formal-sounding hellos, and then we all walked down the corridor towards the entrance.
‘How did it go?’ asked Joshua, as Max ran ahead.
‘It was good,’ I said carefully. ‘Do you have time to talk? I know you said Lisa might be collecting him.’
‘I felt it was important I did it,’ he said stiffly.
‘I’m glad she told you what I said last night. I didn’t want to seem interfering.’
‘Oh no, Lisa didn’t tell me,’ he said. ‘It was Max who brought it up. He was full of it at bedtime. He’s been so quiet most nights, just wanting a story played, but it was Mia this and Mia that!’
‘Oh,’ I said, trying to compute the information. I thought of the way Lisa’s car sped off, Kimberley framed in the window.
Joshua was suddenly brisk, his eyes seeking out Max. ‘I can’t talk now, but I’ll ring you at four.’
The tone of it was oddly jarring – it felt more like an order than a request. Max was hopping his way down the hopscotch grid, calling out the numbers to himself. I got the sense that he would always look alone, even in a teeming mass of children.
‘Yes, do. I might not have finished my three o’clock, but I’ll pick up if I can.’
‘Fine,’ he said, mind elsewhere already. ‘Come on, Max, we need to get going,’ he shouted, striding off towards his car with barely a backwards glance.
*
As I made slow progress back to Lysette’s, the muggy day wrapped itself around me like a second skin. I was doing the journey I’d done with Saffron at the start of all of this, in reverse. Now it all looked so different, gnarly and twisted. The last thing I wanted was to lose Lysette to that darkness – Patrick was right, I should sit down and talk to her. If anything happened, if things got worse for her and I hadn’t done all I could to protect her, I’d never forgive myself. Was that how she felt about Sarah’s death?
I did a strange combination of knocking and key turning, apologetic and familiar all at once.
‘Lys!’ I called, keeping my voice deliberately warm. ‘Honey, I’m home.’ Silence. Perhaps she wasn’t here. I heard footsteps: here she was, stepping out of the kitchen and into the hallway, her face cold and still. ‘I’ve been thinking about you so much . . .’ I started, the sparkle in my voice starting to tarnish.
‘So have I,’ she said, cutting straight across me. ‘This isn’t working, is it? This isn’t like – cosy girl time. This is you doing your job.’ She spat out the word like it was something poisonous.
I put a hand back to steady myself and hit the banister, which was piled with coats. I could feel the plasticky fabric of Saffron’s beloved pink raincoat sticking to my palm.
‘You asked me to talk to your friends!’ I said, my voice rising with the unfairness of it. ‘I would never have agreed to do this if you’d said when I came back from the police station you didn’t want me to.’
Lysette’s mouth twisted into a rotten flower. ‘This isn’t me throwing you out, but I think you should stay somewhere else.’
Why do women fight so dirty? Lies and half-truths are so much more toxic than a sucker punch.
‘That’s fine, but just out of interest, how is that not you throwing me out?’ I could feel the blood rushing to my face, a crimson tide. ‘Which part of the sentence you just uttered isn’t that?’
‘You saw Max today, didn’t you? That’s why you’re all perky and pleased with yourself. You cosied up to him yesterday, in my garden, and now he’s part of your investigation.’
‘I’m not investigating anything!’ I snapped. ‘I’m here to provide support. And trust me, that child needs some. Whatever else it is you’re all worrying about, that’s where the fire is!’
‘You don’t know anything.’
‘Too right,’ I said. ‘You don’t tell me anything, but I know enough to be really worried about you.’ There was a crack in my voice, a gap we could’ve squeezed through and found a softer place. I saw something flicker in her eyes, took a risk. ‘I heard you – I heard a bit of what you were talking about with the girls in the kitchen.’
The second I’d said it, I knew it was a disaster. Her eyes widened in shock, her skin paling, before she quickly reframed her reaction.
‘I can’t believe you’d do that – spying on us! What the fuck was wrong with you that night?’
‘I’m sorry? What was wrong with me? You were pissed out of your face by the time we left.’
I could hear it, our fifteen-year-old selves creeping into this argument and robbing us of any restraint.
‘Kimberley told me what you did.’
My hands were balled up into fists now. ‘No, I told you what Kimberley did.’
‘Rifling through her stuff, sneaking around. She said you could barely stand up. She tried to steady you, and you completely freaked out and shoved her. She’s upset, Mia.’
I could barely speak through my rage. ‘What, and you believe her over me? Your . . .’ I paused, humiliated by the fact that I had to. ‘Your friend you’ve known for more than twenty years?’
Lysette shrugged. ‘Thing is, Mia, you’ve never been able to handle your drink. You never built up any tolerance.’
It was another crossroads, a chance to turn left. I didn’t do it: I simply put my foot down and accelerated. ‘The state you were in after Sarah’s funeral . . .’
Now it was Lysette who looked humiliated: I could tell immediately she’d already had her own dark night of the soul about that. I hate hurting you: the words stayed buried deep inside me, no use to anyone there.
She might have had secret words of her own, but the ones that came out were missiles. ‘What, your friend Sarah you’re so desperate to help?’ she hissed. ‘Sarah never asked for diagnosis of her son.’ Her eyes were like slits. ‘HER son.’
‘Don’t you . . . I know that. I’m just trying to give him a place where he can express what he’s feeling. Surely she would want that?’
Lysette’s self-righteous zeal suddenly seemed to drain away, grief flooding into the gap.
‘You didn’t know her!’ she said, tears threatening. ‘You don’t know what she would’ve wanted. No one knew her, not really. And now it’s such a mess . . .’
I should’ve heard what it was she was saying, the clue she was giving me about how perilous the situation really was, but I was too focused on Max.
‘He’s hurting so much,’ I said softly.
‘And one plus one equals two,’ she said, her mood taking another handbrake turn. ‘I hate to break it to you, but motherhood isn’t quite as easy as it looks on the tin.’
It wasn’t just the words; it was the pleasure she took in uttering them.
‘Thanks for the advice,’ I spat, already halfway up the stairs. ‘Let’s just hope I get the chance to practise.’
I threw everything into my bag, gave the hated lilo a childish kick and slammed the door, with its peeling blue paint, as hard as I could behind me.