Idiopathy

tarrying with a teabag. ‘We want you to make yourself at home. I know you haven’t been here in quite some time, and that coming home at thirty must come with its own, shall we say,
disappointments
, but I do honestly think you can be very happy here, and I want you to know that we’re glad to have you, and that however long you want to … PUT THAT DOWN THIS INSTANT, ROGER.’
    Nathan turned to the fridge, where his father was upending a flagon of neon orange fluid into his gaping face.
    ‘Honestly,’ said Nathan’s mother, marching towards him and snatching the drink from his grip, ‘it’s just
full
of agent orange. Where did you get it?’
    ‘Garage,’ said Nathan’s father. He pointed lamely at the label. ‘It has added vitamin C.’
    ‘Do you want to have a stroke, Roger? Is that what you want?’
    ‘I could go into a home,’ said Nathan’s father slightly wistfully.
    ‘Oh, darling, don’t be silly, you know I’d never allow that.’
    Nathan traced a whorl on the tabletop and tried not to look at anything with excessive focus. Colours could be deceiving, he thought. It was possible to bring discomfort with you into a room that wasn’t technically uncomfortable, although, that said, he thought the room probably was uncomfortable, one potential cause of which may have been the fact that the floor tilted imperceptibly but slightly tipsily downwards in one corner, creating an angle that opposed the angle of the ceiling’s slope and gave the impression of being inside a student maths project completed without the aid of a protractor.
    He rolled a cigarette.
    ‘No,’ said his mother simply. Then, ‘Outside if you must.’
    He took his tea with him. He was trying not to do memories, but at times they seemed to do him. He liked the cold. The house was too hot. The Sanctuary had been too hot. There was something immediate about being cold. It was good to stand and think; to breathe deeply. Suffolk skies seemed kind in their expanse; generous somehow; unfurling into scattered occurrences of cloud. His tea wasn’t sweet enough and not worth enjoying alongside his cigarette. Most of the plants were gone but his mother was growing beans under teepee’d canes. She’d hung out old compact discs, presumably to keep the birds away. They spun in the gentle breeze. When he was eight he’d planted grape pips because his father had told him he could grow a vine. When the vine failed to appear his mother told him it was probably because he hadn’t been good enough. He spent over a week being as good as he thought it possible to be, at the end of which, when there was still no vine, Nathan did not feel he had learned anything particularly positive. He looked at the CDs as they spun. On two of them, in black marker, was written:
Happy Mother’s Day, Love Nathan
. He switched off several thoughts and went back to the kitchen. His mother was sitting at the dining table.
    ‘Aha,’ she said. ‘He returns.’
    Sensing an air of upcoming instruction, Nathan sat down opposite her and did four cycles of calming breathing.
    ‘Now,’ she said.
    She took a deep breath, tapped one index finger against her pursed lips. Someone who knew her less well than Nathan would have assumed she was trying to think of what to say.
    ‘Nathan,’ she said.
    ‘Hello there,’ said Nathan.
    ‘I need to brief you,’ she said. ‘Ever so quickly. Won’t take long.’
    ‘Brief me?’
    ‘The most important thing,’ she said, ‘is that no matter who calls or what they offer you redirect them to me, OK?’
    ‘What do you mean, what they offer?’
    ‘No matter how much money, or how big the spread, we absolutely do not accept opening offers. Are we agreed?’
    ‘Opening offers of what?’
    ‘It’s rather like when the government says they won’t negotiate with terrorists. They do, of course. They have to. But it’s important that they say they don’t in order to dissuade time-wasters.’
    ‘Are we going to be contacted by terrorists?’
    ‘No. It’s a metaphor. For journalists.’
    Nathan wondered if four cycles of calming breathing might have been optimistic and considered doing another four.
    ‘Did I not explain this over the phone?’ said his mother.
    ‘You said something, but, to be honest, I wasn’t really listening.’
    His mother blinked three times in an even rhythm.
    ‘I’ll reiterate,’ she said. ‘During your time away, there have been considerable developments. Mothers Who Survive has been very