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37. SUMMER 2013

It was as if she’d sent a sightless serpent through our letter box. We watched its blind head sniffing the air, trying to smell us out, then stretching to reach the latch — trying to break in. I should have taken an axe to her. But I’m mixing my daemons here. She is more siren than Medusa. We heard the evil in her voice trying to lure us to the door then singing through the telephone. She wants us to listen, does she? She wants to talk, does she? She has something to say. Well, it’s too late for that now. We haven’t got the stomach to witness her bleeding heart or her husband’s, for that matter.

He’s become quite a pest, leaving messages on the site for The Perfect Stranger, desperate to make up for lost time, desperate to meet us. He believed we were still “us,” still Mr. and Mrs., until I emailed him back and broke the news that my wife had died some years ago; Jonathan was our only son; she never recovered from his loss. It’s pitiful, poor man. I think he is well aware that he is an incidental character in this story. I have no interest in meeting him but I am happy to answer his questions when I can. “Why now?” was simple. The truth was enough. The discovery of my wife’s writings and the photographs and realising that for years she had protected me from knowing that the little boy Jonathan lost his life for was not a stranger, that my son had been intimate with his mother. Our emails have been gratifying. His reveal evidence of his disgust for his wife and the pains he is taking now to distance himself from her, “unforgiveable,” “shameful cruelty”; he is grateful for finally “knowing the truth” and he is “hoping for some kind of reconciliation.” His language is that of a committee member addressing the wrong-doings of an evil dictatorship.

I expressed my sorrow at the hurt and shock I must have caused him by sending him the book and photographs, and too, my regret that I had left a copy for his son at work. “I was out of my mind,” I said, “… as if I was reliving the loss of Jonathan and Nancy all over again.” I hoped he could at least try and understand my grief. And I believe he has, never questioning me over Nancy’s portrayal of his wife as a sexual predator. He has joined ranks with us against her.

Nancy comes up behind me and whispers in my ear. She finds his entreaties tedious and is impatient to see Jonathan again, so I pop him back up on the screen. He is still a work in progress, but he is almost complete. We’ve enjoyed picking out photographs: Jonathan on his eighteenth birthday, the camera we gave him hanging around his neck; Jonathan with his new backpack just before he set off for Europe; Jonathan smiling, handsome, on a beach somewhere in England — it could be anywhere, so we’ll say it’s France, the first leg of his journey. His favourite books — we still have them on our bookshelves — up they go. And music, that’s important, that’s a must. His taste is a bit last century, but that’s “cool” these days — shows he has depth, knows his stuff. We have kept him a teenager — we haven’t allowed him to sink into middle age. He is forever young, forever on his gap year, about to start at university. He still hasn’t decided where. Bristol? Manchester? All he needs now are a few friends and he must have a best friend, we must give him that. Friends will make him appear more solid, more bona fide.

Geoff has been a great help in our project. We met up again a few weeks back. He accompanied me to a small event at our local bookshop where I had been invited to do a reading from my book. They are very keen, as Geoff said, to promote local authors. It was, I’m sorry to say, a rather pitiful affair. Me, standing by a small display of books, with only a handful of people turning up to listen to an old man who had published his first novel. The wine was cheap, the crisps were stale, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over. It was an ordeal. My voice cracked and I found it hard to get the words out; they lodged in my throat and tripped me up and, even though I knew I should try and make eye contact with my audience, I found myself incapable of looking up from the page. I was uncomfortable being looked at. No, I didn’t like being in the spotlight.

Geoff and I escaped to the pub as soon as we could. He felt guilty for putting me through it. It was his idea, after all. I think he had underestimated how hard it was for an elderly man who had become unused to socialising to be on display like that.

“Geoff,” I said. “Forget about it. I have.” And I picked up his empty pint and took it to the bar. When I returned with the drinks I put my hand on his, in a fatherly way. “You have been a good friend to me,” I said. “If it wasn’t for you, my book wouldn’t even have been in that bookshop. And if it wasn’t for your encouragement, I wouldn’t have had the heart to start another novel.” This got him going.

“Stephen, that’s great. What’s it about?”

“I haven’t worked out the story yet but I have a character in my head. I can see him, I can hear him.” I chuckled as I tapped the side of my head. He was in there all right. “I’m still at the research stage and I wondered whether you might be able to help me with something. I know you’ve already given me a lot of your time so I don’t like to ask…”

“No, no, it’s fine. Ask away.”

So I did. I told him the character was a teenage boy and that, although I felt confident with the characterisation after all my years in teaching, it was the techie stuff I was having difficulty with.

“I want to create a Facebook page for him. A real one…”

“You mean a fake one. A fake page? For a fictional character?”

“Ummm.” I nodded, taking a sip of my beer.

He didn’t say anything. I could hear the cogs turning: old man; teenage boys; fake Facebook page. If I say it myself, I think I handled his misgivings with agility.

“He’s not the main character, it’s actually the grandfather I want to focus on and his relationship with this boy, but still, I need to understand a bit more about the world these kids disappear into when they go online. I mean look,” I said and pointed over to a table of youngsters: drinks on the table, cigarettes standing by, faces ready to break into laughter. All normal. It could have been a scene from any decade, except they weren’t speaking. There was no conversation. They weren’t even looking at each other. Their eyes were down, on their phones, like a bunch of old ladies checking their bingo cards.

“I mean, what are they looking at?” I smiled in bafflement.

He nodded. “I see what you mean,” clunk, clunk went the cogs.

“Maybe it’s a bad idea but I feel such an imbecile around that sort of thing I just hoped you might be able to guide me through it. An idiot’s guide to Facebook and however else young people ‘communicate’ with each other.” And I tickled that word “communicate” with my fingers. “It’s an alien world to me.”

“Me too,” he said.

“Oh well, it was just a thought.” Bugger.

“But my son’s on it all the bloody time.”

“I didn’t know you had a son.”

“Yeah. He’s eighteen. Lives with his mother but he comes over every other weekend. He could probably help.”

And that’s how it started. Sundays on the Net with Geoff’s son. And in exchange for his expertise, I helped him out with his English essays. Geoff was delighted when his son started getting A’s for his homework, although I think we’d both agree that I was the more enthusiastic student. I can’t fault his boy’s teaching though. He was extremely thorough. Fifty friends, he said. At least. And he showed me how to get them. He was a good teacher and I was the perfect pupil. At times my head felt as if it would explode with all this new information, but I was greedy for it. How on earth do you get a photograph taken in the 1990s into a laptop? How do you do it? Well, now I know. And once it’s in there, spread it around. Don’t just put it on Facebook — make sure it’s on Google too.

“What sort of music does he like?” And I shrugged, suddenly the dunce in the class, and that afternoon he sent me home with some tracks on my laptop. Geoff was always there, he never left us alone together. He brought us cups of tea and I would bring with me jars of Nancy’s jam to have with our crumpets. It was a good arrangement and a very pleasant few weeks.

I passed with flying colours, equipped with all the tricks I needed to bring Jonathan to life again. Our son now has a future, and it feels good to hold it in our hands. This time, when he goes off on his travels, we can make sure we keep a firmer grip on his likes and dislikes, and the friends he picks up on the way. You can’t have too many friends, but it’s important he has one special one, a confidante, someone he can open up to.