Idiopathy

‘set’, disadvantaged the more able students, such as Nathan, by forcing them to learn alongside certain individuals from certain families who in all honesty, without being unkind or passing judgement, were never really going to progress. Here she was at Nathan’s upper school explaining to a gathering of three senior teachers why Nathan was ‘different’ and why, although he didn’t need to be treated differently, certain factors did need to be borne in mind when making decisions about group activities and involvement versus individual work and – she didn’t want to say special attention but, well – special attention.
    In his late teens, twice in his twenties and finally very firmly after the events of what she would only ever refer to as ‘That Night’, Nathan’s mother had attempted to explain to him that because a fairly key characteristic of what she only started referring to as his ‘condition’ very late on in proceedings was that he didn’t actually think he had any sort of condition at all, he couldn’t really make what she would later, after much reading and research, call an
informed choice
about what should be done about it. There was, admittedly, a certain difference in approach. When Nathan was ten she might have said something like,
Why don’t you at least try and be normal
, whereas by twenty-five she was becoming more adept in what she saw as the language of understanding, and so would have been at greater pains, if not actually to empathise, then at least to dress her language in the clothes of empathy and continually reiterate how she and Nathan’s father were ‘there’ for him, and how they wanted to ‘support’ him, but how, if they were going to support him, he would have to take certain things ‘on board’ and basically stop trying to pretend he was normal, although the word normal had by then disappeared from her vocabulary. But these were minor changes and served only to mask what Nathan saw as the basic unchanging nature of the woman who had now taken early retirement in order to devote her life to changing his life.
    Just as she was never one to let facts stand in the way of an opinion, Nathan’s mother was disinclined to let tragedy stand in the way of potential opportunity. Mere days after That Night, as Nathan was swimming back up from what he regarded as an unnecessarily heavy dose of tranquillisers and attempting to flex his hands and arms under the bandages, his mother had seized the moment of him being at his lowest possible ebb and presented him with a face of such finely crafted tragedy that he was unable to refuse when she near-ordered him to do what she described as
one favour
and submit to a period of experimental residential treatment. At the time, Nathan was beginning to wonder if he
had
inflicted unnecessary misery on those around him, and so had agreed, some small part of him wondering if she might be right: perhaps he did need to change; perhaps it was the least that he owed her.
    The spare bedroom had not previously been referred to as his. The change was not one with which he felt comfortable. The effort that had gone into the room’s creation was both touching and oppressive. His possessions seemed unfamiliar in a new context. He couldn’t be sure he had been the person who had owned these things: incense pots; empty jars; a pair of khukuri knives; a gyroscope. He stood and wandered. The bedside table contained a single drawer in which he found his mobile phone. Turning it on, he was surprised to find that his mother hadn’t wiped it. He scrolled through the messages. They asked him where he was. They asked him why he hadn’t replied. They dried up. One stood out:

    Nathan. Hope you’re OK. Call sometime. K x x. PS: Broke up with Dan.
    H e read it twice. Things rose; sank. He went to the window. The light was too strong. He turned back to the bed and unzipped his bag and then zipped it back up. He’d spent a lot of time being lonely, most of it around other people. He looked at the text again, thumb hovering over the call button. He felt relieved when his father tapped on the door and poked his head in.
    ‘Your mother feels we should have some man time,’ he said.
    ‘Oh,’ said Nathan.
    ‘Do you like darts?’
    ‘Sure.’
    His father led him out to the garage, his yachting jacket squeaking as he pushed open the door and gesticulated towards the changes he’d made to the interior.
    ‘This all came about when she made me get rid of