The Whisper Man

“Like I’ve told you, you’re too hard on yourself.”

“Maybe,” I said again.

I sipped my drink. A part of me remained on edge, but I realized now that it wasn’t anything to do with spending time with Karen. In fact, it was surprising how relaxed I felt now that I was here, and how natural it was to be sitting this close to her, a little closer than friends normally would. No, the nerves were because I was still worried about Jake. It was hard to stop thinking about him. Hard to shake the gut feeling that, as much as I wanted to be here, there was somewhere else it was far more important for me to be instead.

I took another drink and told myself not to be stupid.

“You said your mum’s looking after Adam?”

“Yeah.”

Karen rolled her eyes and then started to explain her whole situation. She’d moved back to Featherbank last year, choosing the village mainly because her mother lived here. While there had never been any love lost between the two of them, the woman was good with Adam, and Karen had figured the support would help while she established herself on her own two feet again.

“Adam’s father isn’t on the scene?”

“Do you think I’d be out with you if he was?”

Karen smiled. I shrugged slightly helplessly, and she let me off.

“No, he isn’t. And maybe that’s rough on Adam, but sometimes kids are better off that way, even if they don’t always realize it at the time. Brian—that’s my ex—let’s just say that he was like your father in some ways. A lot of ways.”

She took a sip of her own drink, and while the silence wasn’t uncomfortable, it still felt like a natural point to leave that particular subject. Some conversations need to wait, if they even have to come at all. In the meantime, I watched the children clambering over the play sets in the far corner of the garden. The evening was settling in now. The air was growing darker, with midges flickering in the trees around us.

But it was still warm. Still nice.

Except …

I looked off in a different direction now. My internal compass had already worked out where my house was from here, and I wasn’t even that far away from Jake: probably only a few hundred meters as the crow flies. But it seemed too far. And looking back at the children again, I thought it wasn’t just that it was becoming gloomy, but that the light seemed wrong somehow. That everything was off-kilter and odd.

“Oh,” Karen said, reaching into her bag. “I just remembered. I’ve got something. This is a bit embarrassing, but will you sign it for me?”

My most recent book. The sight of it reminded me how far behind I was on any kind of follow-up, and that made me panic slightly. But it was clearly meant as a nice gesture, and also kind of a silly one, so I forced myself to smile.

“Sure.”

She handed me a pen. I opened the book on the title page and started writing.

To Karen.

I paused. I could never think what to write.

I’m really glad to have met you. I hope you don’t think this is shit.

When you signed books for people, some waited to read what you’d put. Karen was not one of those people. She laughed as she saw what I’d written.

“I’m sure I won’t. Anyway, what makes you think I’m going to read it? This is going straight on eBay, mate.”

“Which is fine, although I wouldn’t plan your retirement yet.”

“Don’t worry.”

The air around us was darker still. I looked over at the play area again, and saw a little girl in a blue-and-white dress standing there, staring back at me. Our gazes met for a moment, and everything else in the beer garden faded into the background. And then she grinned and ran toward one of the rope bridges, another little girl running after her, laughing.

I shook my head.

“Are you okay?” Karen said.

“Yes.”

“Hmmm. I’m not sure I believe you. Is it Jake?”

“I suppose so.”

“You’re worried about him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s probably nothing, just that this is the first time I’ve been out on an evening without him. And I am having a good time, honestly. But it feels…”

“Really fucking strange?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“I get you.” She smiled sympathetically. “It was the same for me when I first started leaving Adam alone. It’s like there’s something tethering you to home and it’s stretching too thin. There’s this need inside you to get back.”

I nodded, even though it felt much more than that. The sensation inside me was that something was terribly wrong. But I was probably just being overdramatic about exactly what she was describing.

“And it’s fine,” Karen said. “Honestly. Early days. Let’s just finish these and you can get back home, and maybe we can do this again sometime. Assuming you want to?”

“I definitely want to.”

“Good.”

She was looking at me, both of us holding eye contact, and the space between us felt weighted with possibility. I realized that this was a moment when I could lean in for a kiss, and that if I did, she would lean forward too. That we would both close our eyes as our lips met, and that the kiss would be as gentle as breath. I also knew that if I didn’t, one of us would have to turn away. But the moment would have been there, and we would both know it, and at some point it would happen again.

Might as well be now, then.

And I was about to do just that when my phone started ringing.

Fifty-one

It had been in the afternoon, and Jake and Daddy were coming back from school. It was usually Mummy who picked him up on that day, because it was supposed to be one of Daddy’s days to work, but that wasn’t what happened.

Daddy wrote stories for a living, and people paid him to read them, which Jake personally thought was exceptionally cool. And Daddy sometimes agreed that, yes, it was. For one thing, he didn’t have to wear a suit and go into an office every day and be told what to do like lots of other parents did. But it was also hard, because it didn’t seem like a job to other people.

Jake didn’t know all the ins and outs of it, but he was dimly aware that this had caused problems between his parents at one point, in that Daddy was doing most of the pickups and drop-offs, and that meant he wasn’t writing quite so many stories. The solution was that Mummy started picking him up more often. This had been meant to be one of her days. But then Daddy turned up and explained that Mummy wasn’t feeling well, and so he’d had to come instead.

That was the way he said it. Had to come instead.

“Is she okay?” Jake said.

“She’s fine,” Daddy said. “She was just a bit light-headed when she got back from work, and so she’s having a lie-down.”

Jake believed him, because of course Mummy was fine. But Daddy seemed more tense than normal, and Jake wondered if his most recent story had been going less well than usual, and that having to come out to collect Jake was … well. What was the opposite of icing on a cake?

Jake often felt like he was a problem for Daddy. That things would be a bit easier if he weren’t around.

And in the car, Daddy asked the usual questions about his day, and how things had been, and what he’d done. As always, Jake did his best not to answer them. There was nothing exciting to say, and he didn’t think Daddy was really all that interested anyway.