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Their big house just outside Salisbury was always perfectly presented, traditional, and loud, and it
became claustrophobic after one night. I simply found the whole package a bit overwhelming: superefficient
Nicky working domestic miracles left, right and centre, her big, jolly husband, glass of wine
in hand, and pile of anecdotes at the ready, and the daughters, bickering, flicking V signs at my sister’s
back, wrapping their father around their little fingers. It was a world apart from my quiet life with
Ben in our small house in Bristol.
Not that the cottage was my ideal destination either, even without Nicky’s family to contend with.
Left to both Nicky and me by our Aunt Esther, who raised us, it was small and damp and held slightly
uncomfortable memories for me. I would have sold it years ago, I could certainly have done with the
money, but Nicky remained very attached to it and she and Simon had long since taken on its
maintenance costs entirely, largely out of guilt, I think, that she wouldn’t let me release the capital in
it. She encouraged me to make more use of it but somehow time spent there left me feeling odd, as if I
somehow had never grown up properly, never shed my teenage self.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I’d reached the start of the path that led to the rope swing.
Ben wasn’t there so I assumed he’d gone ahead of me. I made my way along in his wake, squelching
through mud and batting away brambles. When I came to the clearing where the rope swing was, I
was smiling in anticipation of seeing him, and of enjoying his triumph at having got there himself.
Except that he wasn’t there, and nor was Skittle. The rope swing was in motion, moving from left
to right and back again in a slow rhythm. I pushed forward to give myself a wider view of the
clearing. ‘Ben,’ I called. No reply. I felt a flash of panic but told myself to stop it. I’d given him this
little bit of independence, and it would be a shame to mar the moment by behaving in an overanxious
way. Ben was probably hiding behind a tree with Skittle, and I shouldn’t wreck his game.
I looked around. The clearing was small, no bigger than half a tennis court. Dense woodland
wrapped around most of it, darkening the perimeters, although on one side a large crop of mediumsized
saplings grew, spindly and brittle, leafless. They dispersed the light around them, lending it a
quality of strangeness. In the middle of the clearing stood a mature beech tree, which overhung a
small brook. The rope swing was tethered to one of its branches. I reckoned that Ben was hiding
behind its thick trunk.
I walked slowly into the clearing, playing along with him.
‘Hmm,’ I said, throwing my voice in the direction of the tree so that he could hear me. ‘I wonder
where Ben is. I thought he was meeting me here, but I can’t see him anywhere, or that dog of his. It’s a
mystery.’
I stopped to listen, to see if he would give himself away, but there was no sound.
‘I wonder if Ben has gone home without me,’ I continued, dipping a booted toe into the brook. The
motion of the swing had ceased now and it hung limply. ‘Maybe,’ I said, drawing the word out, ‘Ben
has started a new life in the woods without me, and I’ll just have to go home and eat honey on toast by
myself and watch Dr Who on my own.’
Again, no response, and the flutter of fear returned. This kind of talk was usually enough to make
him emerge, triumphant at having tricked me for so long. I told myself to be calm, that he was upping
the stakes, making me work hard. I said, ‘Well, I guess that if Ben is going to live on his own in the
woods then I’ll just have to give away his things so that another boy can have them.’
I sat down on a moss-covered tree stump to wait for his response, trying to play it cool. Then I
delivered my trump card: ‘I just wonder who would like to have Baggy Bear…⁠’ Baggy Bear was
Ben’s favourite toy, a teddy that his grandparents had given him when he was a baby.
I looked around, expecting him to emerge, half laughing, half cross, but there was absolute silence,