If I was in Iowa I would get up early. Walk the dog before work. Have a breakfast of eggs, coffee and orange juice with Lucy before jumping in the pickup and driving to the store. I would push open the door to the warm smell of wood and dust, make myself another coffee and get to work on the accounts at the counter. At Raithswaite police station there aren’t any nice smells. There are two policemen, a man in a suit, my mum and me. We are all sat in a small hot room. One policeman is asking all the questions.
‘How would you describe your relationship with Jake?’
‘We were friends.’
‘A sixteen-year-old and an eight-year-old boy?’
I nodded and said, ‘Yes.’ My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was too high and scratchy.
‘Did it not strike you as inappropriate?’
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘Do you understand what “inappropriate” means?’
I nodded that I did.
‘You spent a lot of time at the playground on his street?’
‘Sometimes, yes.’
‘Aren’t you too old to be hanging around a playground?’
I didn’t answer that one.
‘Why this playground? It’s nearly two miles from your house.’
‘I walk all around Raithswaite. I go all over.’
‘You go to all the playgrounds?’
‘No. I go all over Raithswaite.’
‘Sixteen-year-olds and eight-year-olds don’t normally meet and become friends.’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘Did you approach him first?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Somebody must have spoken to someone first. Today I spoke to you first. Who spoke to who first? You or Jake?’
‘We just got chatting at the library one day. I saw him in the library quite a bit. He looked lonely. His mum was never with him, she never looked after him.’
‘And this is what you were doing? Looking after him?’
‘Sort of. Sometimes.’
‘So you spoke to him first then, because he looked lonely?’
‘Maybe. I can’t remember exactly.’
‘Don’t you have any friends your own age?’
‘Not too many.’
‘Why is that?’
I thought about Neptune up there. All that space and silence.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.