The Whisper Man

“Oh, I know how right I am. Believe me.”

He smiled. “All right, then.”

Then he picked up his phone again, and began tapping a reply a little awkwardly, as though he didn’t get many texts and wasn’t used to sending ones in return. Or maybe he was just nervous about this one in particular. Regardless, she was pleased for him. There was that slight smile on his face again, and it was good to see. To know it was possible.

Alive, she realized, watching him. That was what it was.

After everything he’d been through, he seemed like a man who was finally looking forward to something.

Forty-five

I’d arranged with my father for him to arrive at seven o’clock that evening, and he was so prompt in his timing that I wondered whether he’d arrived early and been sitting outside until the designated time. Perhaps out of respect for me—the idea that if he was being allowed into my and Jake’s life then it had to be precisely on my terms—but actually, I thought he was most likely the same with everyone. A man for whom discipline was important.

He was dressed neatly in suit trousers and shirt, as though he’d come straight from work, but he looked fresh and his hair was damp, so it was obvious he’d showered and changed first. He smelled clean too. As he followed me inside, I realized I’d checked that subconsciously. If he still drank, he would have started by now, and it wasn’t too late for me to pull this whole event.

Jake was kneeling on the floor of the living room, hunched over a drawing.

“Pete’s here,” I told him.

“Hi, Pete.”

“Could you at least pretend to look up?”

Jake sighed to himself, but put down the colored pencil he’d been using.

“Hi, Pete,” he said again.

My father smiled.

“Good evening, Jake. Thank you for allowing me to look after you for a bit tonight.”

“You’re welcome.”

“We both appreciate it,” I said. “It should only be a couple of hours at most.”

“However long you need. I brought a book.”

I glanced at the thick paperback he was holding. I couldn’t see enough of the cover to read the title, but there was a black-and-white photograph of Winston Churchill on the front. It was exactly the kind of worthy, weighty tome that I’d have struggled to force myself through, and it made me feel self-conscious. My father had transformed himself, physically and mentally, into this quietly impressive man. I couldn’t help but feel slightly inadequate in comparison.

Stupid, though.

You’re too hard on yourself.

My father put his book down on the couch.

“Can you show me around?”

“You’ve been here before.”

“In a different capacity,” he said. “This is your home. I’d prefer to hear it from you.”

“Okay. We’re just going upstairs, Jake.”

“Yes, I know.”

He was already drawing again. I led the way upstairs, pointing my father to the bathroom and then Jake’s bedroom.

“He’d normally have a bath, but just skip that tonight,” I said. “Half an hour or so, he comes up for bed. Pajamas are there on the duvet. His book’s down there. We normally read a chapter together before lights out, and we’re about halfway through that one.”

My father looked down at it quizzically.

“Power of Three?”

“Yeah, Diana Wynne Jones. It’s probably a bit old for him, but he likes it.”

“That’s fine.”

“And like I said, I won’t be out for long.”

“Are you doing anything nice?”

I hesitated.

“Just grabbing a drink with a friend.”

I didn’t want to go into any more detail than that. For one thing, it made me feel curiously teenage to admit I was going on something that might be considered a date. Of course, my father and I had skipped that whole awkward period of my growing up, so perhaps it was natural to feel it a little now. We’d never had the chance to develop the language to talk about it, or not to.

“I’m sure that will be nice,” he said.

“Yes.”

I thought it would be too, and that brought another teenage sensation: butterflies in my stomach. Not that it was a date, of course. It would be foolish to go into the evening thinking of it as one. That way disappointment lay. And both Karen and I had kids at our respective homes anyway, so it wasn’t like anything could really happen. How the hell did people manage that anyway? I really had no idea. I hadn’t dated in so long that I might as well have been a teenager.

Butterflies.

Which reminded me that I hadn’t locked the front door after letting my father in. It was ridiculous, but the excitement was immediately replaced by a small flush of fear.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s head back down.”

Forty-six

The ceiling was creaking as Daddy and Pete moved around upstairs. They were talking, Jake could tell, but he couldn’t make out the exact words. It was going to be about him, though, obviously—instructions about how to put him to bed, and things like that. That was okay. He wanted to go to bed as soon as possible.

Because he very much wanted this day to be over with.

That was the thing about going to sleep. It kind of scrubbed things. Arguments, worries, whatever. You could be scared or upset about something, and you might think sleep was impossible, but at some point it happened, and when you woke up in the morning the feeling was gone for a while, like a storm that had passed during the night. Or maybe it was like being put to sleep before a big operation. Which happened sometimes, Daddy had told him. The doctors put you to sleep, and you missed all the horrible stuff they had to do and just woke up better again afterward.

Right now what he wanted was the fear to go away.

Except fear wasn’t quite the right word for it. When you were afraid, it was of something specific, like being told off, but what he was feeling was more like a bird that didn’t have anywhere to land. Ever since this morning, there had just been the sensation that something bad was going to happen, but he wasn’t sure what. But if Jake was certain of one thing right now, it was that he didn’t want Daddy to go out tonight.

But the feeling wasn’t real, so the sooner he went to sleep, the better. He would be scared—or whatever the name for this feeling was—but when he woke up in the morning, Daddy would be back home, and everything would be all right again.

“No, you’re right to be scared.”

Jake jumped. The little girl was sitting beside him, her legs straight out in front of her. He hadn’t seen her since that first day at school, and yet the hash of scabs on her knee still looked red and raw, and her hair, as ever, was splayed out to one side. He could tell from her face that, once again, she wasn’t in the mood for playing—that she knew something was wrong too. She looked more scared than he was.

“He shouldn’t go out,” she said.

Jake looked back down at his drawing. Just like the feeling, he knew that the little girl wasn’t real. Even if she seemed to be. Even if he so desperately wanted her to be.

“Nothing bad is going to happen,” he whispered.