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as the years have gone by.
    ‘I’ll keep these.’ She smiles, gathering up the envelope and hugging the reports to her chest as if she is fond of them. ‘How’s the flat?’
    He shrugs. ‘All right.’
    ‘Flatmates OK?’
    He shrugs again. ‘Bit nerdy.’
    ‘What, all of them?’
    He shrugs again.
    ‘Oh dear.’ Catherine makes an effort to sound as if she is giving Nicholas the benefit of the doubt, but she imagines his flatmates are bright, engaged, focused. They probably read, and that’s what makes them nerdy in his eyes.
    ‘They’re all students,’ he says.
    ‘You’re still enjoying work though?’ She struggles to cover the awkwardness between them.
    ‘It’s fine.’ He shrugs. ‘You know.’
    She doesn’t know. How can she know if he doesn’t tell her? Nicholas is working in the electrical department at John Lewis – it’s not quite what she and Robert had imagined for their son, but considering he left school at sixteen with a handful of GCSEs it seems a godsend. There was a time when they were unable to imagine him ever being able to commit to any kind of job. She remembers how hurt she had been by the phone calls from other mothers, even close friends, who couldn’t wait to tell her about their children’s results, asking the cursory question about Nicholas and all the while knowing damn well he’d be lucky to come away with any passes. It was a long time ago, yet she’s never quite forgiven them. It wasn’t sisterly – it was cruel. Anyway, Nicholas has stuck it out at John Lewis, so there must be something he likes about it.
    ‘I’ll take this with me,’ he says, and pulls out a mobile. Aeroplanes. Delicately made from balsa wood and paper, wings a little torn, strings tangled.
    ‘And Sandy?’ He shakes his head at the balding dog Catherine holds in her hand. Her turn to be hurt now. She is trying to coax him back to boyhood memories: to the time when he couldn’t sleep without his cheek resting on Sandy; when he couldn’t sleep without her tucking him in. It’s so bloody complicated. She wants him to be a grown-up but she also wants him to remember how much he loved her once. How much he needed her. She is nervous too that he still needs her more than is good for him and it makes her tougher and it makes her relieved, in the end, that he is leaving Sandy behind. She stops at the door and turns to him.
    ‘You do understand, Nick, don’t you?’
    He has hooked the mobile on the corner of a shelf, and is trying to untangle the strings.
    ‘What?’
    ‘About us moving. You know. We just didn’t need such a big place any more.’
    He doesn’t answer, and she knows she should resist pushing it, yet she can’t.
    ‘Don’t you want to be independent? We’re here if you’re ever in real trouble, but it’s time, Nick. Isn’t it?’
    He shrugs. ‘If that’s what you want to tell yourself, Mum.’
    ‘The match is about to start,’ Robert calls from the sitting room and Nicholas brushes past her to join his father, leaving her with the sting of his words.
    Catherine returns to the kitchen and pours the rest of the bottle into her glass and slides open the door on to the terrace. She lights a cigarette, alternating between dragging on it and slugging wine from her glass. She thinks it calms her down. It doesn’t. It jangles her nerves. Makes her twitchy. She wants to punish herself. The cigarette is part of that, a slow self-destruction, and the book is another. She returns to the kitchen and takes it out from under the Sunday papers, where she had buried it earlier, and opens the first page. No, there’s not a hint here of what is to come. It is gentle. Soft. She flicks ahead to the part she knows will hurt her. She is lost in it, sinking beneath its weight. Its injustice. Her eyes close, the words washing over her, to the sound of a roar from the TV. A goal. Silence.
    She must have fallen asleep. She doesn’t know how long for. It’s getting dark outside. She is groggy.