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obscured by the kitchen units. An apron, oven gloves and tea towels hung from it on a neat row of
hooks. Layers of paint had dulled the panelled detail on it. It was probably a larder, I told myself, or a
broom cupboard, and I should just go.
But I found that I couldn’t. I felt compelled to walk towards it and, as I did so, I heard someone
whimper and I realised it was me.
I stopped in front of the door. My left palm was moulded around the handle of the knife, and I
rested the tip of my index finger on the bottom of the blade, and pressed down a little, feeling it bite
into me, making me flinch. There was nothing to be heard apart from the slow drip of rain from
somewhere outside. Even the hands on the kitchen clock moved soundlessly.
With a feeling of horror uncurling within, I reached my hand out towards the door and clasped the
handle. It turned, but something stopped the door opening. It was jamming at the top.
I reached up to a bolt that was drawn at the top of the door. Tremulous, unreliable fingers fumbled
but managed to draw it back.
I opened the door, stepped behind it and there was a soft click as I pulled it shut.
I could see nothing. All around me it was pitch black, and I had to use the light from my phone to
see that I was at the top of a short staircase, and that there was another door, also bolted, at the bottom
of it.
I started to make my way down. The darkness was so dense that I needed my hands to steady me on
the narrow walls.
Two more steps and I reached the door at the bottom of the staircase. Once again, trembling fingers
pulled the bolt, pushed the door open.
My fingers felt for a light switch, and found one. The hesitant bulb blinked and then glowed the dull
orange of a polluted sunset before it brightened, revealing the room to me, making me gasp.
It took me long moments to absorb what I could see.
It was a boy’s bedroom: freshly painted walls, bright yellow, thick blue carpet on the floor. A
rugby poster, and rugby club scarf, both pinned up, some reading books, a teddy bear on the bed,
wearing a scarf. There was some clothing, a pair of small slippers, a dressing gown in softest white
towelling. A wooden-framed bed made up with a cartoon-patterned duvet set on it, a pile of DVDs
and a television set on a table in the corner, a chest of drawers with pirate stickers decorating it.
No Ben. No natural light.
I picked up one of the garments: it was a pyjama top, for a boy, bright red cotton, a dinosaur printed
on the front of it, grubby marks around the collar. ‘Age 8’ read the label. I held the top to my face, I
inhaled the smell of the fabric, and I knew that Ben had worn it.
He had been here.
My fingers dug into the soft cotton and I held on to it as if it were a living, breathing part of my son.
‘Ben,’ I whispered into it, ‘Ben.’
My eyes roved again, looking for more signs of him.
And what struck me was that there was nothing in that room, nothing at all, not one thing, that was
right.
If Miss May had made this space for my son, and I was convinced that she had, then she’d got it
wrong. Ben didn’t like rugby. He’d never have chosen bright yellow walls, or a babyish duvet set, or
the type of reading books she’d left out for him, and he wouldn’t have liked the pirate stickers on the
chest of drawers because he preferred dinosaurs. The bear on the bed was a version of Baggy Bear,
but wasn’t him. His ear wasn’t sucked.
This was a room made for an imagined boy, not for my boy, who would never have felt at home