Idiopathy

across the sun and dimmed the extent to which the other patrons were backlit and rendered the face of the man with the bap more focused and less sinister and made it clear he was not necessarily staring. A claret-coloured Rover pulled up to the kerb outside. Nathan drank all of the Pepsi and put the can on the table. He picked up his bag and put his free hand in his pocket and left the café just as his mother, neatly resplendent in a powder-blue skirt suit that sadly accentuated the arterially blown mayhem of her calves, unfolded herself from the passenger seat and opened her arms for a hug with which Nathan was only physically able to engage and so for which he could not really be said to be present.
    ‘Darling,’ said his mother. ‘We’ve missed you so much.’
    She looked back at the car, where Nathan’s father was visible in the driver’s seat. ‘Roger,’ she said. ‘Get out of the car.’
    Nathan’s father, a man who wore a year-round yachting jacket despite never having set foot on a yacht, slid out of the car accompanied by the industrial rustle of chemically complex fabrics.
    ‘Kiddo,’ he said. ‘How goes it?’
    He held out his hand to Nathan, who shook it.
    ‘OK,’ said Nathan. ‘Fine.’
    ‘Great,’ said Nathan’s father.
    ‘Well,’ said Nathan’s mother.
    They stood in an approximately equilateral triangle and each somehow angled themselves so as to face the emptiness between the other two. Nathan’s father put his hands in the pockets of his yachting jacket. Nathan rubbed his beard. Nathan’s mother performed a sort of smile that in order to be complete would have required machinery her face simply did not possess. Nathan debated a cigarette and thought maybe no. Nathan’s father slid an iPhone in a protective pleather pouch from his Velcro-sealed pocket and stroked the screen.
    ‘There’s a window in the traffic,’ he said. ‘We should carpe diem.’
    He loaded Nathan’s bag into the back of the car and popped the rear door so Nathan could get in. Nathan’s father drove, his mother sat in the passenger seat looking straight ahead. Nathan stared at the backs of their heads and necks, at his mother’s neat grey bob and his father’s wide, slightly red neck that always looked as if he were either angry or cooling off from sunburn. Duration of stay had not been discussed.
    ‘Your room’s looking lovely,’ said his mother without turning round. She tended to direct her conversation to the windscreen when they were in the car. She had, Nathan thought, a child’s sense of solipsism. She struggled with the concept of other minds. She thought if she didn’t watch the road her husband wouldn’t either.
    ‘I see,’ said Nathan.
    ‘I see, he says,’ said Nathan’s father.
    ‘What do you want me to say?’
    ‘I think your father’s just looking for a little bit of gratitude, that’s all,’ said Nathan’s mother. ‘Bus, Roger.’
    ‘Noted.’
    Nathan’s mother unpeeled the pocket-flap of her husband’s yachting jacket and located the phone. She prodded and swiped at the screen with an efficiency that Nathan found unsettling.
    ‘Five new mails,’ she said shrilly.
    Nathan thought his earlier decision re: having a cigarette might not have been the right one.
    ‘Thinking of you as you pass this milestone,’ his mother said in a tone of voice that made it clear she was reading out loud.
    ‘Bless,’ said Nathan’s father.
    ‘Who’s that from?’ said Nathan.
    ‘Dear MotherCourage. I just wanted to tell you that you are an inspiration to me. I’ve read everything you’ve written. I hope so much you get your boy back, love Samantha69.’
    ‘What boy?’ said Nathan.
    ‘What boy, he says,’ said Nathan’s father.
    ‘At last count I only had one,’ said Nathan’s mother.
    Nathan’s seatbelt greatly restricted forward movement and made it difficult to properly converse with his mother. Undoing his seatbelt would have led to an unnecessary conversation with one or other of his parents.
    ‘Are you MotherCourage?’
    ‘Of course I’m MotherCourage,’ said Nathan’s mother.
    ‘So who’s Samantha69?’
    ‘One of my followers.’
    ‘What followers?’
    ‘Now I want you to know,’ said Nathan’s mother, still caressing the phone and directing her speech to its screen while every second or so checking the road, ‘that we are here for you, and we are not seeking confrontation. But at the same time, if there is confrontation, then that is OK.