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43. SUMMER 2013

A story has been playing on the news all day, a story of children who have died of shame, unable to tell their parents about pictures they have posted on the Internet to predatory adults who pretend to be their friends. Some of these children are as young as eight. This has been the sound track as I have pored over photographs of Jonathan as a child, the news story running through my head as I search for the picture which best captures my son, the one which shows him as I wish him to be remembered. If Jonathan were a child today, I don’t believe he would have become a victim of those monsters. He would never have died of shame because he knew he could always talk to his mother. He knew he could tell her anything and she would never love him any less. They were as close as a mother and son could be.

So close, that it was Nancy, not me, who was the one to tell him the facts of life.

His mother, not his father. You’d think it would have been easier for me, but it was Nancy he listened to, Nancy he talked to. When I tried to tackle the subject with him he’d stuck his fingers in his ears and la-la-laad so loudly he’d drowned me out, and Nancy and I had laughed about it afterwards, how funny he was, how silly. He’d hit puberty early, he was only eleven, but he needed to know what was what so she said she’d do it and I remember thinking, good luck, he’ll be even more embarrassed listening to his mum talk about sex. But he wasn’t.

She’d sat him down and made him look her in the eye and told him there was nothing to be frightened or shy about. It was natural. One day he would meet the right person and then his uncomfortable urges would make sense. There was nothing to be ashamed of, he should feel free to explore his own body, in fact she encouraged him to do so and told him that if he was ever worried about anything he could always talk to her. I remember a few occasions when I walked past his closed bedroom door and heard the murmur of their voices. He knew he could trust her and I knew not to intrude on them. Jonathan could be sure that no matter what he did his mother would always understand. Our son would have been safe from Internet predators like me.

I have lied about my age to lure someone younger than me into being my friend. I have pretended to be someone I am not.

Last night I posted up the rest of the photographs. No child should have to see their mother like that. What would it do to you, seeing your own mother exposed like that, everything on show, the shame, the filth? I doubt whether he’ll ever be able to erase those images from his mind. But there’s no going back now. We are on a mission.

Little Nick. He is waiting for me — he wants to know more about the photos. Who took them? And so I tell him. Then I post up the picture I have chosen of Jonathan. A little boy age ten, wearing the sweater his grandmother knitted him for Christmas. He looks as pleased as punch, chest out, showing off the Ninja turtle she’d stitched into the front. And I add the words:

Jonathan Brigstocke

6 June 1974–15 August 1993

A perfect stranger who died saving your life

It will take him a while to get his head around Jonathan’s death — his young friend who never was — to get his head around everything I have posted up for him. The book will help him — I have given him page numbers so this time there’ll be no chance of him failing to recognise her or himself. Nancy must have her say too. Perhaps he can come up with some answers to her questions.

Why didn’t she help her child? How could a mother turn her back on her child and leave him alone in the sea? A child who couldn’t swim. No armbands, no rubber ring. How could any mother in her right mind do that? Was she out of her mind?

She would have watched her child drown — she said that she’d wished Jonathan hadn’t done it. Those were her actual words. Was her passion for Jonathan greater than her love for her child? Little Nick. Is he such a devil of a child that even his own mother didn’t think him worth saving?

Up it all goes, the extract from Nancy’s notebook, my last post. I feel as if I have stuffed a kitten into a sack and dropped it in the canal. I can hear it mewing but there’s nothing I can do to save it now. Sink or swim, it is up to him.