The Whisper Man

“When are we going?”

“As soon as possible.”

“How will we take everything?”

“We’ll rent a van.” I thought about money, and fought down a hint of panic. “Or maybe we’ll just use the car—really pack it up and do a few trips. We might not be able to take everything with us, but we can sort through your toys and see what you want to keep.”

“I want to keep all of them.”

“Let’s see, eh? I won’t make you get rid of anything you don’t want to, but a lot of them are very young for you now. Maybe another little boy would like them more.”

Jake didn’t reply. The toys might have been too young for him to play with, but each of them had a memory attached. Rebecca had always been better at everything with Jake, including playing with him, and I could still picture her kneeling down on the floor, moving figures around. Endlessly, beautifully patient with him in all the ways I found so hard to be. His toys were things she’d touched. The older they were, the more of her fingerprints would be on them. An invisible accumulation of her presence in his life.

“I won’t make you get rid of anything you don’t want to.”

Which reminded me of his Packet of Special Things. It was there on the table beside the drawing, a worn leather pouch, about the size of a hardback book, which zipped shut around three of the sides. I had no idea what it had been in a previous life. It looked like a large Filofax without the pages, although God knew why Rebecca would have had one of those.

A few months after she died, I went through some of her things. My wife had been a lifelong hoarder, but a practical one, and many of her older possessions were stored in boxes stacked in the garage. One day I’d brought some in and started to look through them. There were things going back to her childhood in there, entirely unconnected to our life together. It felt like that should have made the experience easier, but it didn’t. Childhood is—or should be—a happy time, and yet I knew these hopeful, carefree artifacts had an unhappy ending. I began crying. Jake had come and put his hand on my shoulder, and when I hadn’t immediately responded, he’d wrapped his small arms around me. After that, we’d looked through some of the things together, and he’d found what was to become the Packet and asked me if he could have it. Of course he could, I said. He could have anything he wanted.

The Packet was empty at that point, but he began to fill it. Some of the things inside had been sifted from Rebecca’s possessions. There were letters and photographs and tiny trinkets. Drawings he’d done, or items of importance to him. Like some kind of witch’s familiar, the Packet rarely left his side, and except for a few things, I didn’t know what was in there. I wouldn’t have looked even if I’d been able to. They were his Special Things, after all, and he was entitled to them.

“Come on, mate,” I said. “Let’s get your things and get out of here.”

He folded up the drawing and handed it to me to carry. Whatever the picture was meant to be, it clearly wasn’t important enough to go into the Packet. He picked that up himself and carried it across the room to the door, where his water bottle was hanging on a hook. I pressed the green button to release the door, then glanced back. Sharon was busying herself with the washing-up.

“Do you want to say goodbye?” I asked Jake.

He turned around in the doorway, and looked sad for a moment. I was expecting him to say goodbye to Sharon, but instead he waved at the empty table he’d been sitting at when I arrived.

“’Bye,” he called over. “I promise I won’t forget.”

And before I could say anything, he ducked out under my arm.

Five

On the day Rebecca died, I had picked Jake up by myself.

That afternoon was supposed to have been one of my writing days, and when Rebecca had asked if I could pick up Jake instead of her, my first reaction had been one of annoyance. The deadline for my next book was a handful of months away, and I’d spent most of the day failing miserably to write, at that point counting on a final half hour of work to deliver a miracle. But Rebecca had looked pale and shaky, and so I had gone.

On the drive back, I had done my best to question Jake about his day, to absolutely no avail. That was standard. Either he couldn’t remember or he didn’t want to talk. As usual, it had felt like he would have responded to Rebecca, which, coupled with the ongoing failure of the book, had made me feel more anxious and insecure than ever. Back home, he had been out of the car like a flash. Could he go and see Mummy? Yes, I had told him. I was sure she’d like that. But she isn’t feeling well, so be gentle with her—and remember to take your shoes off, because you know Mummy hates mess.

And then I had dawdled at the car a little, taking my time, feeling bad about what an abject failure I was. I’d trailed in slowly, putting stuff down in the kitchen—and noting that my son’s shoes had not been taken off and left there as I’d requested. Because, of course, he never listened to me. The house was silent. I presumed that Rebecca was lying down upstairs, and that Jake had gone up to see her, and that everyone was fine. Apart from me.

It was only when I finally went into the living room that I saw Jake was standing at the far end, by the door that led to the stairs, staring down at something on the floor that I couldn’t see. He was completely still, hypnotized by whatever he was looking at. As I walked slowly across to him, I noticed he was not motionless at all, but shaking. And then I saw Rebecca, lying at the bottom of the stairs.

Everything was blank after that. I know I moved Jake away. I know I called an ambulance. I know I did all the correct things. But I can’t remember doing them.

The worst thing was that I was sure that, although he would never talk to me about it, Jake remembered everything.

* * *

Ten months later, we walked in together through a kitchen where the sides were all but covered with plates and cups, the little visible counter space dirty with smears and crumbs. In the living room, the toys spread over the bare floorboards looked scattered and forgotten. For all my talk of sorting toys before we moved, it looked like we’d already gone through all our possessions, taken what we needed, and left the rest dotted around like trash. There had been a constant shadow over the place for months now, always growing darker, like a day gradually drawing to an end. It felt like our home had started dying when Rebecca did. But then, she had always been the heart of it.

“Can I have my picture, Daddy?”

Jake was already on his knees on the floor, gathering his colored pencils together from wherever they’d rolled to this morning.

“Magic word?”

“Please.”

“Yes, of course you can.” I put it down beside him. “Ham sandwich?”

“Can I have a treat instead?”

“Afterward.”

“All right.”

I cleared some space in the kitchen and buttered two slices of bread, then layered three slices of ham into the sandwich and sliced it into quarters. Trying to fight through the depression. One foot in front of the other. Keep moving.

I couldn’t help thinking about what had happened at the 567 Club: Jake waving goodbye to an empty table. For as long as I could remember, my son had had imaginary friends of some kind. He’d always been a solitary child; there was something so closed away and introspective about him that it seemed to push other children away. On good days, I could pretend that it was because he was self-contained and happy in his own head, and tell myself that was fine. Most of the time I just worried.