Mindsight

I noticed Tom’s hair still stuck up at the back and his shoulders, bent over the keyboard as he tapped away, were surprisingly broad.

‘Come in if you want,’ he said, making me jump and slop coffee onto the pale hall carpet. I rubbed it in with the toe of my shoe.

‘I’m just admiring your room.’

‘Oh that’s Martha, Mrs Cooper. She cleans up. But just in the week.’ A glance back at the messy bed and the clothes on the floor. ‘I’m s’posed to do it at weekends.’

I stayed in the doorway, fingers pulling at the fabric of my dress. Say something. ‘How’s the homework going?’ Stupid, stupid idiot.

Without looking at me he pushed at the chair next to him. ‘Nearly done.’

I sat on the chair, put the coffee I couldn’t drink on the floor and sat watching as he did something complicated with a spreadsheet. ‘That looks impressive.’

He laughed. ‘It’s not really.’ A glance at me. ‘But thanks anyway, Mum.’

It was the name that did it, and I found myself burying my face in his hair, breathing in the musky boy smell, different to what I remembered, but not so different that I didn’t know it for the scent of my child. He tolerated it for a bit then twisted very gently away. ‘You all right?’

When I could speak I apologised. ‘I’m silly I know, but it’s just so nice to hear you call me Mum.’

‘What do you expect me to call you?’ A long pause, his face and neck mottling pink. ‘Mum, do you – you know – often think about Tobe and Dad?’

‘Of course I do, but sometimes it hurts too much.’

He looked at the floor, swinging his chair back and forth and chewing at his nails. ‘You know the party? The one I went to? Toby could’ve come too.’

‘But he didn’t and there’s nothing we can do to change that now.’

‘But Daniel’s mum wanted to ask him as well, and I said he wouldn’t want to come.’

‘Well that was probably right. He was excited about going to the Lake District on his own with the grown-ups. And Daniel was really your friend.’ I fought to keep the tremors from my voice.

‘But Daniel liked Toby a bit and he said his mum was going to ask Toby anyway, and I told him I wouldn’t be his friend anymore if Toby came. And then I told Toby Daniel didn’t like him.’

I laid my hand on his back. His guilt seemed so ridiculous compared to mine, but it was clearly a huge burden to him. ‘Maybe it was a bit mean of you, but you weren’t to know what would happen. And don’t forget, Toby was sometimes nasty to you.’ Thank goodness he was still looking down and couldn’t see me shaking the hot tears from my eyes.

‘Yeah, well, that was why really. I wanted to get back at him cos he took my Gameboy and broke it.’

‘You were always breaking each other’s things. What about the time when you had kites for Christmas and you lost yours up a tree that same day? And then Toby laughed at you, so you trod on his.’

‘And when he kept stealing the batteries from my remote-control car, and I kept stealing them from the TV channel changer, and Dad went mad at us both, and you went mad at Dad?’ We laughed at that, although the laughter was forced. Then he turned to face me. ‘What about Dad? Only sometimes, when we were little, Tobe and me thought you might be going to get divorced.’

I told him this was probably because of what was happening to the parents of other kids they knew. ‘Dad and I argued a bit, but all married couples do.’ I’d promised myself I’d be honest with him, but it was going to be so difficult, when I often didn’t know the truth myself.

I took a breath. ‘Alice wants to take me back soon, but what about a quick walk?’

We didn’t talk till we reached the little wood down the lane from the house. It was quiet and cool, the late sun sending delicate fingers of gold low through the trees.

‘I remember coming here when I was small, usually when I’d done something wrong,’ I said.

He scuffed his feet through the dry leaves and twigs covering the ground. ‘I know. You used to bring us when we came to see Granddad. You were always telling us that.’

I bit my lip. Of course. What else had I made myself forget? Odd, disjointed memories came back: Toby dancing in the Indian headdress he’d been so proud of; Steve chasing two screaming five-year-olds with a discarded snakeskin; and little Tommy jumping out from behind a tree to shout Boo at us all so loudly it made Toby cry.

Tom’s new, deep voice jolted me back. ‘Me and Tobe used to think it was a forest. Used to pretend we were outlaws.’

The name hung in the air between us and I began kicking at the leaves, matching his rhythm.

A pheasant burst from a bush just ahead and we bumped shoulders as we stopped: me with a gasp and Tom with a gruff chuckle.

‘Tom,’ I said, when we were moving again. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier.’ I didn’t look at him as we continued to scuff along together. ‘You know I don’t remember the accident: that I lost my memory?’

‘Amnesia, yeah.’

‘And you know why they put me in prison?’

He kicked hard at a pile of leaves making them rise into the air. ‘Course I do.’ His voice was curt. ‘They said you took drugs – amphetamines.’

Don’t treat him like a baby. ‘Well, I pleaded not guilty at my trial because I didn’t believe I could have done that.’ His intake of breath told me he was about to speak, but I had to get this out. ‘But you see, I had a lot of time to think in prison, and I came to realise I must have done it – somehow got hold of those pills and taken them. I don’t know why I would have done it, but it means I was guilty.’

‘But maybe you didn’t want to take them. Someone could’ve put stuff in your drink. You know, at the wedding. I’ve been looking up amphetamines on the internet and it says they can be dissolved in liquid.’

I could have smiled if it hadn’t hurt so much. ‘But why would anyone want to do that?’

‘Maybe it was a joke, or someone had it in for you or Dad – or for Granddad. He was important wasn’t he?’

‘Well, he ran a successful company, yes.’

‘’Cos I looked him up, and he’s on Google. He was just the kind of guy people might have a grudge against. There was all that stuff with the arthritis drug too. It was in the papers.’

‘You have been busy.’

His voice was stubborn. ‘I want to help you.’

‘I know and thank you.’

He stopped walking; his crossed arms and lowered head telling me I was doing it all wrong again. I looked up into the dark branches above us, knowing it had to be now, however badly I said it. ‘What you don’t know, Tom, is that before you were born, I was an addict for a while. When I was a teenager I got in with a bad crowd and thought taking drugs was cool. It isn’t, it’s stupid, and I managed to get off them. Then I met your dad and I was so happy I never thought about drugs again. You and Toby and Dad were my life. But maybe something happened the night of the wedding to make me slip back into my old ways. I met addicts in prison who’d been clean for years, but who relapsed when things went wrong in their lives.’

He turned and crashed away, almost at a run.

‘Tom. Wait. Please wait for me.’

A bramble twisted round my foot and leg as I tried to follow him, biting into my calf and making me stumble. I pulled at the wretched thing, cursing under my breath, aware he had stopped and was watching me. When I looked up again he was still there kicking at a tree trunk and staring down at its roots. I went to him, daring to touch his arm. He didn’t push me away.

‘I’m so sorry, Tom. I should have told you this before.’

His grey eyes were misted and he shook his head as he spoke. ‘But why did you want to take drugs?’

What to say? ‘You know I was adopted, don’t you? Well my mum, your grandma, was ill. Not physically, but she had mental problems that made her depressed and unhappy. So she was often angry with me. It wasn’t her fault, but I didn’t understand that and so I ran away from home and met people who were very bad for me. That’s not an excuse, Tom, and it made things worse not better. Which is what always happens with drugs.’