Idiopathy

successful. I have nearly four thousand followers on Twitter.’
    ‘What do you tweet about?’
    ‘Well, largely I just link back to my blog, you know. But what with the book coming out I’ve also been trying to leverage social media as a promotional tool. The response has been excellent.’
    Nathan felt slightly unwell in his stomach.
    ‘Now, you can see this two ways,’ said his mother. ‘And I’m very aware of that. You could see it as selfish, or opportunistic. You could say that I’ve shown a callous disregard for your dignity and feelings. And if you did say that, I’d understand.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s nothing that hasn’t been said by certain bleeding-heart columnists already. But you could also look at it another way, Nathan. You could look at it as my gift to you. You could look at it as me putting myself on the line, exposing myself, for you, just as I always have. Do you see?’
    Nathan did not see and said so. His mother reached across the table and took his hand in hers. He had absolutely no idea how to respond.
    ‘Just give it a chance,’ she said.
    Nathan’s father ambled into the kitchen.
    ‘We can take your stuff up,’ said his father.
    ‘Yes, good idea,’ said Nathan’s mother, releasing his hand. ‘We can pick this up later. Just remember: no first offers, that’s the main thing. Take his bag, Roger.’
    ‘It’s just one bag,’ said Nathan.
    His father had already picked up the bag and was not to be dissuaded. He was like an ocean liner: a change of mind was painfully slow and required a complex pattern of braking and turning before thrust could be reapplied. The stairs were lined with photos. Nathan watched his parents getting married; watched himself at some family function; watched himself graduate. There was a cavernous distance. Things sparked; faded; failed to echo.
    ‘We can change it, if you want,’ said his father, opening the bedroom door.
    ‘No,’ said Nathan. ‘It’s …’
    He let the ellipsis hang. Somehow he could shape it with his lips. He saw it notated: ‘…’ or ‘–’. Considerable and slightly misguided effort had been made. The duvet and pillows were gunmetal grey. He pictured his mother commenting that it was a good boys’ colour. The bookshelves were metal; mildly industrial. His books were alphabetised and so were his CDs. On the bed was a toilet bag filled with the brand of men’s scented products (Logger: For The Woodsman In You) his mother had bought him every Christmas since he was fifteen. When he swallowed it felt like a small animal had fashioned a nest in his larynx.
    ‘Anyway,’ said his father, and left.
    There was a book on the pillow: hardback, its title embossed in blue above a picture of his mother inexplicably looking out to sea, wrapped in a scarf, the collar of her Barbour jacket turned up against what Nathan could only assume was a squall of spume-flecked adversity.

    Mother Courage: One Woman’s Battle Against Maternal Blame
    Nathan opened the book to the first page of the first chapter and read:

    Looking back, I probably should have known that Harry, as I’m going to call my only son in this book, would be a difficult child. Perhaps it all began with his conception – a lengthy, at times exhausting process made all the more difficult by …
    H e closed the book and lay back on the bed. After a few moments he put the book under the bed. He thought about his mother. She’d aged; found new interests; expanded her vocabulary and social circle; modulated her voice from self-taught social bray to whooping aspirational blare, but had not, as far as anyone who knew her well could see, changed. She still favoured tottering, precarious heels that caused her to tilt aggressively forward at all times and which led to people reactively leaning backwards when they were addressed by her, as one might from a person with particularly toxic breath. She still smiled with a surprisingly limited array of facial muscles.
    Nathan’s memories of her during his childhood were centred on his schooling. Here she was marching him in by his wrist and pulling up his shirt to show off the bruises he’d received at the hands of Benjamin Hollingdale during a disagreement on the school playing field which Nathan would have been very happy to forget. Here she was at parents’ evening, expressing dissatisfaction at certain teaching methods employed by Nathan’s middle school which, she said, through their refusal to ‘stream’ or