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By Root 1618 0

on the floor with him, or playing loud music upstairs so I’d thump the ceiling with a broom roaring, ‘Turn it down!’ it seemed strange. Muted. Especially since, this time, he didn’t seem to listen to music at all, or even watch much television. In fact, he barely troubled technology. He read quite a bit, I noticed, and when I came in from work, I’d find him on the sofa in the bay window, somewhere I often sat because it was light, but not Seffy: a grown-up position, with a view of the street, not the scruffy television and computer end, with a bag of crisps. It was a contemplative place to sigh and reflect. And when I picked up the book he’d been reading from the floor when he went to the loo, I dropped it as if it were hot. Poetry. Poetry! And not only that, but Marvell, and even I knew what he wrote about.

‘What are you doing with this?’ I’d said in a brisk, accusatorial tone as he came back, as if I’d discovered him with Tits ’n’ Bums, or Asian Babes Do It Sideways.

He shrugged, ‘Found it in the bookcase.’

‘Oh. Right.’

Yes, and one glance at the inside cover confirmed that it was indeed mine: my name in a flamboyant hand in violet ink, when I was going through an exotic phase: ‘Harriet Carrington, 1989.’

I’d bought it because Hal had recommended it to me. Me, the English student, him being Law, had introduced me to Marvell’s ‘Coy Mistress’, as he had to Bach, and cooking with herbs and garlic, and would have done to so much more. So much more I hadn’t accepted: had shut the door on. I shut the book now, deliberately losing Seffy’s place.

‘That Ali G film’s on later. Shall I order us in a takeaway and we can watch it together?’

‘Borat. No, it’s OK, I’ve seen it. And I’m not that hungry. I’m going upstairs.’

And up he went, trailing long ripped jeans, showing plenty of boxer shorts and taking the love poems with him.

‘He’s fifteen!’ I hissed down the phone to Maggie later.

‘Well, gosh, how lovely, that’s great, isn’t it? Not only does my godson have a great brain, but a wonderful sensitive side too.’

‘You don’t think it means he’s at it?’ I chewed the inside of my lip. Shut my eyes tight.

There was a censorious pause. ‘No, I don’t think it means he’s At It,’ she said drily. ‘And don’t you bloody well read his diary, either.’

‘No, no, I won’t,’ I breathed, ashamed.

And then did the equivalent. Maggie, childless, wasn’t to know this meant Facebook, which, I discovered, I could make neither head nor tail of: lots of teenagers waving their arms and sticking their tongues out. After a sweaty twenty minutes or so, glancing constantly over my shoulder in case he came down, I gave up. But then – oh, Hattie, how low can you go? – his phone. Which he’d left on the sofa as he’d dripped upstairs with his book. I pounced on it. Glanced furtively upstairs. Then tapped into his messages.

A couple from his friend Will at school: ‘Bad luck, mate, could happen to anyone.’ Another: ‘Yeah, Davis is stressed, but then Davis is a dick.’ This, a reference to the master in charge of the fated trip.

Then one from my father detailing pick-up arrangements – the wonderful texting grandpa – ending with, ‘All love, my boy, and chin up’ which made my eyes fill. Then nothing more.

I lowered the phone. Breathed again. Dropped it quickly back on the sofa, feeling like a heel. I walked smartly to the kitchen, hands tucked under my armpits as if to balm where I’d touched the phone – burned them.

Of course, he could have deleted any messages from her, I thought feverishly later, as I washed up a solitary bacon and egg pan. Seffy hadn’t emerged, even though I’d deliberately billowed doors to waft the bacon smell upstairs. He could have erased her from the memory bank, but he’d be more likely to erase Will and Dad, surely, and keep a sweet missive from a girl? A girl, who, I told myself as I dried my hands, was firmly locked up in her all-girls’ boarding school. Just as Seffy, after this coming weekend, was once again locked in his. Quite.

I glanced at the clock, ticking too audibly in this empty kitchen, which suddenly had a stagnant, old-lady