We Own the Sky(78)

I stood next to Anna, close but not touching. Someone, not me, had put a coat

around her shoulders because she was shivering. The balloons didn’t go very far.

A few of them never even made it off the ground and just bobbled around the backyard. Some got lodged in the eaves under the garage roof. One of them popped on the branches of the apple tree and, at that, I couldn’t help smiling.

Jack would have liked that.

  *

I liked to think of Jack’s death another way. In Greece, I would sometimes go for a walk with him after lunch. We walked away from the hotel, down a hidden path through the tall grass, which meandered toward the sea like a stream, until we got to the second beach, the beach with the boats and the fishmonger who always made Jack laugh.

One day, the promenade was deserted and the sun was relentless, so we took shelter under a lone tree and drank water from a plastic bottle. Jack was beginning to feel sleepy and rested his head on my shoulder.

We sat like that for a while, listening to the sounds beyond the wind. Cicadas, the rattle and chirp of a yacht’s mast in the distance. New smells. Jasmine grass.

Hot dust. Lamb being grilled on an open flame. Eventually Jack started to fall asleep. His eyes went, then his head slowly slid to the side. That was how I liked to imagine his death. A slow, gentle sleep. The kiss of the wind. The sound of the sea.





19

It was not wise to be a childless man around a children’s playground. So I was careful about choosing my positions. A bench at an indirect angle, partially blocked by trees. A seating area in Camden where office workers ate sandwiches, directly across from some trampolines and a death slide.

My favorite spot, though, was the Parliament Hill playground, not just

because I used to come here with Jack, but there was a café and it didn’t seem strange to sit here, alone, without kids. With Anna now back at work, my days were empty. They offered her compassionate leave, but she said she needed something to occupy her mind.

I sat with my laptop in front of me and watched a boy, around five years old, playing on the swings. His father was leaning on a tree, one eye on his son, one eye on his phone. There was a gangly boy, tall for his age, perhaps about ten or eleven, with a shyness in his face that reminded me of Jack. He was playing with a football, occasionally smashing the ball into a wall.

I always drank Diet Coke at the café. I would buy a bottle at the counter, and then switch it with the one in my bag—the one I had already prepared, the one half-full with vodka. I started drinking more because I couldn’t sleep. I would lie awake next to Anna, annoyed by the quiet symmetry of her breathing, the apparent ease with which she slept. I watched the tree branches dancing in the lamplight; I listened to the mournful howls of the neighbor’s dog. So I started getting up and going downstairs, tiptoeing around in my bathrobe, stepping over the creaky stair, silently opening the latch on the drinks’ cabinet. At first a few large whiskeys were enough, but then it became four or five. Soon I was taking sips from the drinks’ cabinet during the day, as I had done as a teenager, taking nips from my parents’ sideboard before a night out.

It had started to spit with rain, and people were leaving the playground. I needed to buy more vodka, so I walked down the hill to the Tesco Metro. I went straight to the booze counter, not allowing my eyes to wander. I could not go down the cereal aisle anymore, nor where the children’s magazines were stacked. I had learned to avert my eyes as I passed the Marmite, the Babybel cheese. Once, I began to weep when I saw Jack’s little pots of Petit Filous.

When I got home, Anna was somewhere in the house. We moved around like

ghosts, rarely speaking, wordlessly passing each other on the stairs. We did our crying alone, in the shower, the car, at the sight of a lone robin sitting on Jack’s favorite tree.

We did try to come back to each other. We attempted to eat together on the weekends, as if Icelandic scallops or an aged rib-eye steak would help us forget Jack’s empty place at the table. Once, on a Saturday, we went to the cinema together, but Anna had to leave after seeing a trailer for a children’s movie.

There were boxes in the hallway, things from Jack’s room, things I assumed she wanted to clear out. It shouldn’t have been like that. Because when your child dies, you are meant to leave their bedroom untouched. A shrine to the before. A sanctum for those quiet moments, which are now so achingly frequent.

A place where you go to smell their clothes, to lie down in their rocket bed, to stack away their toys again and again.

I told her this, asked her why she was clearing out his room, but there was no point in reasoning with her. So instead, one day, when she was at work, I took the remainder of his things—his backpack, his camera, his sticker books—and snuck them away in one of the cupboards in the spare room.

I lay on the sofa in the living room, happy that Anna was upstairs, that I could drink my vodka in peace. This was now where I spent most of my days, on my laptop, my phone, staring at the wall. Scott had finally sold the company and I didn’t have a job, not that it mattered anyway. I withdrew, like a wounded insect, coiling and curling into a ball. Once, I played a little mental game, to see if I could remember who the prime minister was, or where the last World Cup was held. I had no idea. Nothing. I no longer lived in the world.

  *

I woke on the sofa to find Anna staring at me.

“Rob, we need to talk.”