The Shock of the Fall

He came in every morning anyway, to sit beside me for a few minutes and just be there.

‘Morning mon ami, you okay?’ He ruffled my hair, in that way grown-ups do to children, and we did our special handshake. ‘You going to work hard for Mummy today?’

I nodded, yes.

‘Good lad. Work hard then you can get a decent job and look after your old pa, eh?’

‘I will mon ami.’

It started in France when I was five years old. This was our only holiday abroad, and Mum had won it in a magazine competition. It was something to be proud of, first prize in a True Lives writing contest, eight hundred words or less about what makes your family special. She wrote about the struggles and rewards of raising a child with Down Syndrome. I don’t suppose I got a mention. The judges loved it.

Some people can remember way back to the beginning of their lives. I’ve even met people who say they can remember being born.

The farthest back my mind can reach puts me standing in a rock pool, with my dad holding one of my hands for balance, in the other I’m clutching my brand new net, and we are catching fish together. It isn’t a whole memory. I just keep a few fragments; a cold slice of water just below my knees, seagulls, a boat in the distance – that sort of thing. Dad can remember more. He can remember that we talked, and what we talked about. A five-year-old boy and his daddy chewing the cud over everything from the size of the sea to where the sun goes at night. And whatever I said in that rock pool, it was enough for my dad to like me. So that was that. We became friends. But because we were in France we became amis. I don’t suppose any of this matters. I just wanted to remind myself.

‘Right then. I’m off to earn that crust.’

‘Do you have to go, Dad?’

‘Only until we win the lottery, eh?’ Then he winked at me (but not in a Steve way) and we did our special handshake again. ‘Work hard for Mummy.’

Mum wore her long nightdress and the silly animal slippers Simon had once chosen for her birthday. ‘Morning baby boy.’

‘Tell me about France again, Mum.’

She stepped into my room and opened the curtains, so that for a moment, standing in front of the window, she became nothing but a faceless silhouette. Then she said it again. Just like before. ‘Sweetheart, you look pale.’

school runs

I think of Mum zipping closed my orange winter coat again, and pulling up the hood again so the grey fur lining clings to the sweat on my forehead and brushes at my ears. I think of it, and it is happening. Hot honey and lemon drunk down in gulps from the mug I once gave to her – no longer special – and a bitter chalky after-taste of ground-up paracetamol.

‘I’m sorry about the other day, sweetheart.’

‘Sorry for what, Mummy?’

‘For dragging you past the playground, with the other children staring.’

‘Were you punishing me?’

‘I don’t know. I might have been. I’m not sure.’

‘Do we have to do it again?’

‘I think so, yes. You have your coat on.’

‘You put it on me. You zipped it up.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then we should go.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘I know that, Matthew. But you’re unwell, and you might need antibiotics. We need to get you seen. Did I really zip your coat up?’

‘But why now? Why can’t we wait until after playtime has finished?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t worked that out yet.’

I pass her back the empty mug, World’s Greatest Mum. I think of this and I am there again. She’s opening the door, reaching out her hand. I take it, and I am there.

‘No!’

‘Matthew, don’t answer me back. We need to go. We need to get you seen.’

‘No. I want Dad.’

‘Don’t be silly, he’s at work. Now you’re letting all the cold air inside. Stop it. We need to go.’

Her grip is tight, but I’m stronger than she thinks. I pull back hard, and snag at her charm bracelet with the hook of my finger.

‘Now look what you’ve done. It’s broken.’ She bends over to pick up the fallen chain, with its tiny silver charms littering the ground. I push past her. I push her harder than I should. She loses balance, arms flapping like pigeon wings before she falls. ‘Matthew! Wait! What is it?’

In a few strides I’m through the gate, slamming it behind me. I run as fast as I can, but she’s catching up. My foot skids off the pavement, I’m startled by the urgent blast from a speeding van.

‘Baby, wait. Please.’

‘No.’

I take my chance, running across the main road, cutting between a line of cars, causing one to swerve. She’s forced to wait. I round the corner, and the next, and am at my school. ‘Is that you again, Matthew? Hey, it’s Matthew again. Look, his mum’s chasing him. His mum’s chasing him. Look! His mum’s chasing him!’

I am ahead, and she is chasing. She’s crying out for me to stop. She’s calling me her baby. She’s calling me her baby boy. I stop. Turn around. Then fall into her arms.

‘Look at them. Look at them. Get a teacher, someone. Look at them.’ I am lifted from the ground, held by her. She is kissing my forehead and telling me that it will be okay. She’s carrying me, and I can feel her heartbeat through my stupid hood.

‘I’m so sorry, Mum. I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s okay baby boy.’

‘I miss him so much, Mum.’

‘I know you do. Oh, my baby. I know you do.’ She’s carrying me, and I can feel her heartbeat through my stupid hood.

Children must be accompanied by an adult

AT ALL TIMES

In Bristol there is a famous bridge called the Clifton Suspension Bridge. It’s a popular hangout for the suicidal. There is even a notice on it with a telephone number for the Samaritans.

When my mum first left school, before she met Dad, she worked doing paper filing at Rolls-Royce.

It wasn’t a happy time because her boss was a horrible man who made her feel stupid and worthless. She wanted to quit, but was too worried to tell Granddad because he had wanted her to stay at school, and having a job was a condition of her leaving.

She was riding back on her moped one evening, but when she reached home she didn’t stop.

‘I kept going,’ she told me. She perched on the edge of my bed in her nightgown, having woken me in the middle of the night to climb in beside me. She did that a lot.

‘I had nothing to live for,’ she whispered.

‘Are you okay, Mummy?’

She didn’t know that she was going to the suspension bridge, but she was. She only realized, when she couldn’t find it.

‘I was lost.’

‘Should I get Dad?’

‘Let’s go to sleep.’

‘Are you sleeping here tonight?’

‘Am I allowed?’

‘Of course.’

‘I was lost,’ she whispered into the pillow. ‘I couldn’t even get that right.’

dead people still have birthdays

The night before my dead brother should have turned thirteen years old I was woken by the sound of him playing in his bedroom.

I was getting better at picturing him in my mind. So I kept my eyes closed and watched as he reached beneath his bed and pulled out the painted cardboard box.

These were his keepsakes, but if you’re like Simon, and the whole world is a place of wonder, everything is a keepsake. There were countless small plastic toys from Christmas crackers and McDonald’s Happy Meals. There were stickers from the dentist saying, I was brave, and stickers from the speech therapist saying, Well Done, or You are a Star! There were postcards from Granddad and Nanny Noo – if his name was on it, it was going in his box. There were swimming badges, certificates, a fossil from Chesil Beach, good pebbles, paintings, pictures, birthday cards, a broken watch – so much crap he could hardly close the lid.

Simon kept every single day of his life.

It was strange to think of it all still there. In some ways it was strange even to think of his room being there. I remember when we first got home from Ocean Cove, the three of us stood in the driveway, listening to the little clicking sounds as the car’s engine cooled. We stared at the house. His room had stayed put, the first-floor window, with his yellow Pokémon curtains. It hadn’t the courtesy to up and leave. It stayed right where we’d left it, at the top of the stairs, the room next to mine.

Hugging a pillow to my chest and keeping my eyes shut tight, I could see him searching through his memories to find the most important one – a scrap of yellow cotton. It was this he was first wrapped in as a tiny bundle of joy and fear, and it became his comfort blanket. At seven, eight, nine years of age – he always had it with him, forever carrying it around. Until the day I told him that he looked like a baby. I told him he looked like a little baby with his little baby blanket, that if he wasn’t so thick all the time he’d understand. It disappeared after that, everyone proudly accepting he’d outgrown it.

I lay listening to him, sleep drifting back over me as he climbed into his bed. Then breaking through, not enough to wake me, but at the very edge of my awareness, another sound – Mum was singing him a lullaby.

Spring sunshine painted pillars of white across my carpet.

It was Saturday, which meant breakfast around the table. I put on my dressing gown, but didn’t go downstairs straight away. I wanted to check something first.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been in his room.

Dad hadn’t wanted me to feel afraid or weird about anything, so after I got back from staying with Nanny Noo, we went in together. We shuffled around awkwardly and Dad said something about how he knew Simon wouldn’t mind if I played with his toys.

People always think they know what dead people would and wouldn’t mind, and it’s always the same as what they would and wouldn’t mind – like this time at school when a really naughty boy, Ashley Stone, died of Meningitis. We had this special assembly for him which even his mum attended, where Mr Rogers talked about how spirited and playful Ashley was, and how we’d always remember him with love. Then he said he was certain Ashley would want us to try and be brave, and to work hard. But I don’t think Ashley would have wanted that at all, and maybe that’s because I didn’t want it. So you see what I mean? But I suppose Dad was right. Simon wouldn’t mind if I played with his toys because he never minded. I didn’t play with them though, and the reason is the obvious one. I felt too guilty. Some things in life are exactly as we imagine.

His model aeroplanes swung gently on their strings, and the radiator creaked and groaned. I stood beside his bed lifting the comfort blanket from his pillow. ‘Hey Si,’ I whispered. ‘Happy birthday.’ Then I placed the blanket back in his keepsake box, and closed the lid.

I guess children believe whatever they want to believe.

Perhaps adults do too.

In the kitchen Dad was making a start on breakfast, prodding bacon around a sizzling pan. ‘Morning, mon ami.’

‘Where’s Mum?’

‘Bacon sandwich?’

‘Where’s Mum?’

‘She didn’t sleep well, sunshine. Bacon sandwich?’

‘I want marmalade, I think.’ I opened the cupboard, pulled out a jar and struggled with the lid before handing it to Dad.

‘You must have loosened it for me, eh?’

He lifted a rasher, considered it, and dropped it back in the pan. ‘Are you sure you don’t want bacon? I’m having bacon.’

‘We go to the doctor’s a lot, Dad.’

‘Ouch. Shit!’

He glared at the reddened flesh on his knuckle, as though expecting it to say sorry.

‘Did you burn yourself, Daddy?’

‘It’s not so bad.’ Stepping to the sink, he turned on the cold tap and made a comment about how untidy the garden looked. I scooped out four large spoonfuls of marmalade, emptying it. ‘Can I keep this?’

‘The jar? What for?’

‘Will you keep your voices down?’ The door swung open hard, banging against the table. ‘I need some bloody sleep. Please let me sleep today.’

She didn’t say it in an angry way, more like pleading. She closed the door again, slowly this time, and as I listened to her footsteps climbing the stairs, I felt a horrible emptiness in my tummy – the kind that breakfast can’t fill.

‘It’s okay sunshine,’ Dad said, forcing a smile, ‘You didn’t do anything. Today’s a bit difficult. How about you finish up your breakfast and I’ll go talk to her, eh?’

He said that like it was a question, but it wasn’t. What he meant was that I had no choice but to stay put, whilst he followed her upstairs. But I didn’t want to sit by myself at the table again, or listen to another muffled argument throbbing through the walls. Besides, I had something to do. I picked up the marmalade jar and stepped out of the back door into our garden.

These are the memories that crawl under my skin. Simon had wanted an Ant Farm, and dead people still have birthdays.

Crouching beside the tool shed with mud between my toes, I lifted large flat stones like Granddad had taught me. But it was too early in the year, so even under the bigger slabs I could only find earthworms and beetles. I looked deeper, digging a hole with my fingers – as the first drops of rain hit my dressing gown, I was somewhere else: It’s dark, night-time, the air tastes of salt, and Simon is beside me, wiping rain from his cheeks and bleating that he doesn’t like it any more, that he doesn’t like it and wants to go back. I keep digging, telling him to stop being a baby, to hold the torch still, and he holds it with trembling hands, until her button eyes glisten in the beam.

‘Matthew, sweetheart!’ Mum was standing at her bedroom window calling out, ‘It’s pouring down!’

As I opened the back door, the front door slammed shut.

I ran upstairs.

‘Sweetheart, what are we going to do with you?’ She took my wet dressing gown, wrapping me in a towel.

‘Where did Dad go?’

‘He’s gone for a walk.’

‘It’s raining.’

‘I doubt he’ll be long.’

‘I wanted us all to have breakfast together.’

‘I’m so tired, Matthew.’

We sat beside each other on the bed, watching the rain against the window.

a different story

Only fifteen minutes today, then puncture time. I have a few compliance problems with tablets, the answer – a long, sharp needle.

Every other week, alternate sides.

I’d rather not think about it now. It’s best not to think until the injection is actually going in.

I want to tell a story. When Click-Click-Wink Steve first got me started on the computer, he said I could use the printer as well. ‘To share your writing with us, Matt. Or take it home to keep safe.’

Except the other day the printer didn’t work. I’d been thinking about the time Mum took me to see Dr Marlow, but we saw a different GP instead. I couldn’t remember the details, like what exactly my mum thought was wrong with me, or why Dr Marlow wasn’t there. So I made something up about the mole beside my nipple, and Dr Marlow being on holiday. Perhaps that was even true, it’s not important. The important part was this new doctor asked to speak with Mum in private, and their conversation was the beginning of a whole new chapter in our lives. But when I tried to print this, an error message flashed up and no paper came out.

So that was that.

Until this morning at Art Group – where whispery Jeanette gives out bottles of poster paint, glue, knackered old felt tips and tissue paper, and we are supposed to express ourselves. I sat beside Patricia, who must be sixty years old, or maybe even older, but wears a long blonde wig and pretends to be twenty. She wears dark sunglasses, bright pink lipstick, and today she’s wearing her bright pink catsuit too. She usually draws colourful patterns in crayon, which Jeanette says are beautiful. But this morning she was doing something else, quietly absorbed, making precise cuts into sheets of paper with a pair of blunt scissors, then carefully arranging the cut-out pieces onto a square of cardboard.

I suppose the printer must have finally coughed up my pages, and they ended up with the scrap paper. It was a strange feeling, and for a moment I wanted to shout, but I didn’t because Patricia’s a really nice person and I think if she’d known it was my writing, she wouldn’t have taken it. She shook her head, turning away from me slightly; PLEASE STOP READING OVER MY SHOULDER. You can see why this was different, though? But I didn’t want to upset her, so I carried on doing my sketches, whilst she carried on rearranging my life, sticking it down with Pritt Stick.

I waited until just before the end of the hour, when we have a few minutes to share what we’ve done with the group, but I knew Patricia wouldn’t, because even though she wears those clothes, she’s actually very shy.

‘I’ll clean the brushes,’ I offered.

‘Is it that time already?’ asked Jeanette.

I want to tell a different story, a story belonging to someone else. It will not be the same as mine, and though it might be sad in some ways, it will also be happy because in the end there are beautiful crayon patterns and a lady with long blonde hair who stays twenty years old forever.

I moved around the table collecting paintbrushes, and glanced over her shoulder. What we can know about Patricia’s story, is that she’s

second opinion

She ran the tip of her finger over the small dark mole beside my nipple, and I felt my face grow hot.

‘It doesn’t itch?’

‘No.’

‘Has it grown or changed colour?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘We usually see Dr Marlow,’ Mum offered for the third time.

I pulled my top on and shrank into the chair, self-conscious of my changing body, of how it had started to stretch and stink and grow wisps of hair, so that with each passing day I knew myself a little less.

‘How old are you, Matthew?’

‘He’s ten,’ my mum answered.

‘I’m nearly eleven,’ I said.

She turned back to the computer screen, scanning appointment after appointment. I stared absently at the two framed photographs of Dr Marlow’s daughters – the younger one riding her horse, and her sister in graduation robes, grinning, with eyes half closed – and I wondered if this new doctor would get her own office, and have pictures of her own family for me to stare at every couple of weeks, until I felt I’d met them.

‘How are you getting on at school?’

‘What?’

She was looking right at me, not buried in a prescription sheet or tapping on her keyboard, but looking right at me, leaning forwards.

Mum coughed, and said she thought my mole had grown, but maybe it hadn’t.

‘You must be starting secondary school after the holidays?’

I wanted to turn to Mum for reassurance, but there was something about how the doctor was leaning forwards that held me. I don’t mean I felt trapped. I mean I felt held.

‘I don’t go to school.’

‘No?’

‘We home tutor,’ Mum said. Then, ‘I used to be a teacher.’

The doctor kept looking at me. She had placed her chair near to mine, and now I found myself leaning forward as well. It’s difficult to explain, but in that moment I felt safe, as though I could say anything I wanted.

I didn’t say anything though.

The doctor nodded.

‘I don’t think there’s anything to worry about with the mole, Matthew. Do you?’

I shook my head.

Mum was on her feet, already saying thank you, already ushering me to the door, then the doctor said, ‘I wonder if perhaps we might be able to talk in private for a moment?’

I felt Mum’s grip tighten on my arm, her eyes darting between us. ‘But. I’m his mother.’

‘Sorry, no. I wasn’t clear Susan. I wonder if you and I might talk in private for a moment?’ She then turned to me and said, ‘It’s really nothing to worry about, Matthew.’

The receptionist was telling a woman with a pushchair how Dr Marlow was on holiday until the end of the month, but a young lady doctor was covering and she was very nice, and they even hoped she might stay on. I sat on the rubber mat in the corner, where they keep toys for children. I guess I was too old really, and after a while of glaring at me and sighing heavily, the woman asked whether I’d mind making room for her child to play.

‘Can I play with him?’

‘Oh.’

Her little boy reached out a hand, and I gave him a Stickle Brick, which he dropped to the floor and laughed like it was the funniest thing to ever happen. I picked it up and we did it again, this time his mum laughed too and said, ‘He’s bonkers, I tell you, absolutely bonkers.’

‘I’ve got a brother.’

‘Oh, right?’

‘Yeah. He was older than me. We were good mates. But he’s dead and stuff now.’

‘Oh. I see. I’m sorry—’

The bell chimed and a name scrolled across the sign by reception. ‘That’s us I’m afraid. Come on mister.’ She picked up her little boy and he immediately began to whimper, stretching his arms back towards me.

‘Someone’s made a new friend,’ she said, before rushing him down the corridor.

‘I’ve got a brother,’ I said again to no one in particular. ‘But I don’t think about him so much any more.’

I put the Stickle Bricks away.

Mum appeared, pressing a prescription sheet into her handbag.

‘Is everything okay, Mum?’

‘Let’s get ice creams.’

I don’t suppose it was the best weather for the park – it was pretty cold and cloudy. But we went anyway. Mum bought us ice creams from the van, and we perched on the swings next to each other. ‘I’ve not been a very good Mummy, have I?’

‘Is that what the doctor said?’

‘I worry, Matthew. I worry all the time.’

‘Do you need medicine?’

‘I might.’

‘Are you and Dad going to get divorced?’

‘Sweetheart, why would you even think that?’

‘I don’t know. Are you?’

‘Of course not.’ She finished her ice cream, stepped off the swing, and started to push mine.

‘I’m not a baby, Mum.’

‘I know, sorry. I know. Sometimes I think you’re more grown up than me.’

‘No you don’t.’

‘I do. And you’re definitely too clever for me now. You do those exercise books quicker than I can mark them.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You do, sweetheart. I think if you went back to school, the teachers wouldn’t know what hit them.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘I’m allowed?’

‘Is it what you want?’

This might not have happened so quickly as I’m telling it, or reached the surface of our conversation so easily. Probably we were in the park for a very long time, drifting in and out of silences, each moving around an idea, afraid to reach out and see it sink away, and this time, to impossible depths. No. It didn’t happen quickly or easily. But it did happen. On that day. In that park.

‘It isn’t that I don’t like you teaching me—’

‘I know. It’s okay. I know.’

‘We could still do lessons in the evenings.’

‘I’ll help with your homework.’

‘And you’ll still help me type up my stories?’

‘If you’ll let me. I’d like that a lot.’

A good thing about talking to someone who is standing behind you is that you can pretend you don’t know they’re crying, and not trouble yourself too much with working out why. You can simply concentrate on helping them feel better.