‘You really want to know what was going on with him?’ she demanded.
Her hair was wild, her pale cheeks tearstained, and I knew I’d gone too far, but how could I walk away when her question was so loaded? She clearly knew something.
‘Yes!’ I cried. ‘I need to know.’
‘It was you! He felt invisible around you and Flynn. The pair of you spent all your time working and, if you weren’t working, you were discussing work or you were talking about building your dream home. Did you ever include him in that? Ask him what he wanted? No! And do you know how that made him feel? Like he didn’t matter. Like you couldn’t wait for him to move out so you could get the perfect home without him.’
‘It wasn’t like?—’
But Jessie was on a roll, her voice getting stronger and louder. ‘He didn’t have siblings and do you know what he thought about that? That you’d never really wanted kids and he’d been a mistake.’
A look of horror crossed her face, as though she realised she’d just crossed a line. Her voice softened. ‘I loved Noah and he loved me. When he was struggling, I could always bring him round but, at some point over the summer, I stopped being enough. I don’t know why. He never told me and now he never will. That’s it. That’s all I know. Please don’t come back. I can’t do this. I really can’t.’
She closed the door and I stood outside for several minutes, reeling. Could there be any truth in that? Surely not! But I had a montage playing in my mind of numerous occasions when Noah had walked into the lounge or kitchen-diner where Flynn and I were deep in conversation, and had walked out again. Times when he’d asked what we were doing that evening or weekend and we’d told him we were working. Had he really felt pushed away?
If he had, that wasn’t fair on us. Everything we’d ever done was for Noah. He’d been the centre of our world and we’d given him so much of our time. As he’d hit his teens, he’d wanted to spend more time with his friends and less with us – usual teenager behaviour – but we’d still talked regularly. Except… if we’d properly done that, wouldn’t I have known he’d lost touch with his friends, split up with his girlfriend, was bunking off college and dropping grades? Had Jessie spoken the truth?
I was sitting in the dark when Flynn returned home from work.
‘Jessie thinks we neglected Noah,’ I said.
‘You scared the life out of me!’ he cried, flicking the light switch. ‘Why are you sitting in the dark?’
‘Did you not hear what I just said? Jessie thinks we neglected Noah.’
‘I thought you were going to leave Jessie alone.’
I stared at him, unable to comprehend how he could be more concerned about why I was sitting in the dark and why I was pestering Jessie than he was about what she’d said. My befuddled mind joined some dots and told me that it was because Flynn knew it was true and that he’d been the one to neglect our son, so I hurled that at him but all he did was roll out his usual patter about letting it go.
Days rolled into weeks with Flynn and I barely speaking to each other and then came the breaking point. I woke up early one morning in June to find the bed empty. I could hear noises along the hall, like furniture being moved. I crept along the landing and found Flynn kneeling on the floor of Noah’s bedroom, picking up his clothes and folding them into bin bags.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I demanded.
He twisted round, his cheeks wet with tears. ‘It’s time.’
‘To hell it is!’ I stormed over to him and tried to wrestle the bin bag out of his hand but he gripped it tightly.
‘It’s been nearly six months,’ he said. ‘I know you keep saying you’re not ready, but this isn’t healthy for either of us.’
‘So it’s your decision, is it? You get the final say?’
‘I’m doing this for you.’
‘If you were doing it for me, you wouldn’t be doing it at all.’
Noah’s favourite hoodie was draped over his bed and I grabbed it before Flynn had a chance to stuff it in a bin bag. ‘You’re not throwing this out.’
Flynn tied the handles on the bin bag he’d been filling and placed it beside several others before looking up at me.
‘I’m not throwing any of it out.’
‘Then what are you doing?’
‘I’m bagging it up and putting it somewhere safe until we’re ready to sort through it properly.’
‘Why?’
‘Because no matter how much I wish it wasn’t true, Noah isn’t coming back. Because I’m scared that, if I don’t do something about it now, six months will turn into six years. And because it feels disrespectful to leave his room in a mess when he was one of the few teens in this world who actually kept a tidy room.’
