About the Author
Matt Haig is the number one bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and six highly acclaimed novels for adults, including How to Stop Time, The Humans and The Radleys. As a writer for children and young adults he has won the Blue Peter Book Award, the Smarties Book Prize and been nominated three times for the Carnegie Medal. His work has been published in over forty languages.
Also by Matt Haig
The Last Family in EnglandThe Dead Fathers ClubThe RadleysThe HumansHumans: An A–ZReasons to Stay AliveHow to Stop Time
For Children
Shadow ForestThe Runaway TrollTo Be A CatEcho BoyA Boy Called ChristmasThe Girl Who Saved ChristmasFather Christmas and Me
Published in Great Britain in 2018 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2018 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Matt Haig, 2008
First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Jonathan Cape
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 319 2
eISBN 978 1 78689 321 5
Typeset in Minion by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
To Andrea
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
Carl Gustav Jung,
The Development of Personality
But the deep deep tragedies of infancy, as when the child’s hands were unlinked for ever from his mother’s neck, or his lips for ever from his sister’s kisses, these remain lurking below all, and these lurk to the last.
Thomas De Quincey,
‘Suspiria de Profundis: The Palimpsest’
Contents
Of course, you know where it begins.
It begins the way life begins, with the sound of screaming.
I was upstairs, at my desk, balancing the books. I recall being in a rather buoyant mood, having sold that afternoon a mid-Victorian drop-leaf table for a most welcome amount. It must have been half past seven. The sky outside the window was particularly beautiful, I remember thinking. One of those glorious May sunsets that crams all the beauty of the day into its dying moments.
Now, where were you? Yes: your bedroom. You were practising your cello, as you had been since Reuben had left to meet his friends at the tennis courts.
At the time I heard it, the scream, I had already lowered my gaze towards the park. I think I must have been looking over at the horse chestnuts, rather than the empty climbing frame, because I hadn’t noticed anyone on East Mount Road. There was some kind of numerical discrepancy I was trying to solve; I can’t remember what precisely.
Oh, I could hold that scene just there. I could write ten thousand words about that sunset, about that park, about the trivial queries of my profit and loss accounts. You see, as I write I am back inside that moment, I am back there in that room, wrapped up warm in that unknowing contentment. For this pen to push that evening on, to get to the moment where the sound of the scream actually meant something, seems a kind of crime. And yet I have to tell you how it was, exactly as I saw it, because this was the end and the start of everything, wasn’t it? So come on, Terence, get on with it, you don’t have all day.
* * *
The scream struck me first as a disturbance. An intrusion on the sweet sound of whatever Brahms sonata was floating to me from your bedroom. Then, before I knew why, it caused a kind of pain, a twist in my stomach, as if my body was understanding before my mind.
Simultaneous with the sound of the scream, there were other noises, coming from the same direction. Voices unified in a chant, repeating a two-syllable word or name I couldn’t quite catch. I looked towards the noise and saw the first street lamp stutter into life. Something was hanging from the horizontal section of the pole. A dark blue shape that didn’t immediately make sense, high above the ground.
There were people standing below – boys – and the hanging object and the chanting gained clarity in my mind at the same time.
‘Reuben! Reuben! Reuben!’
I froze. Maybe too much of me was still lost in my account books as, for a second or so, I did nothing except watch.
My son was hanging from a lamp post, using the greatest of strength to risk his life for the sake of entertaining those he thought were friends.
I felt things sharpen and began to move, gaining momentum as I ran across the landing.
Your music stopped.
‘Dad?’ you asked me.
I rushed downstairs and through the shop. My hip knocked into something, a chest, causing one of the figurines to drop and smash.
I crossed the street and ran through the gate. I crossed the park at the pace of a younger self, flying over the leaves and grass and through the deserted play area. All the time I kept him in sight, as if to lose him for a second would cause his grip to weaken. I ran feeling the terror beat in my chest, behind my eyes and in my ears.
He shuffled his hands closer towards the vertical section of the post.
I could see his face now, glowing an unnatural yellow from the lamp. His teeth bared with the strain, his bulging eyes already knowing the insanity of his mistake.
Please, Bryony, understand this: the pain of a child is the pain of a parent. As I ran to your brother I knew I was running to myself.
I stepped on the park wall and jumped down to the pavement, landing badly. I twisted my ankle on the concrete but I fought against it as I ran towards him, as I called his name.
Your brother couldn’t move. His face was twisted in agony. The glare of the light blanched his skin, releasing him of the birth mark he always hated.
I was getting closer now.
‘Reuben!’ I shouted. ‘Reuben!’
He saw me as I pushed my way through his friends. I can still see his face and all the confusion and terror and helplessness it contained. In that moment of recognition, of distraction, the concentration he needed to stay exactly where he was suddenly faltered. I could feel it before it happened, a kind of gloating