His bed was squeezed between the wall at its head and the hot-water tank at its foot. He measured it and found it was six feet long – exactly one inch longer than he was. It took him a week to get used to sleeping on his side, with his knees bent, so that he wouldn’t touch at either end. Even so, he was woken every morning by five thirty, when his feet grew warm as the heating kicked in. He slept in his sleeping bag because it smelled of grass and earth, and often he woke thinking he was on the Beacons.
A strip of chipboard under the windowsill served as a desk so small that he could only open one textbook at a time and still use his laptop. His books and disks had to go on top of the wardrobe. He had found a photo in his bag that he had not packed, and he left it there. The walls were woodchip, painted magnolia, and the carpet was brown, although Patrick wasn’t convinced it had always been so.
The window had been modified so that it only opened about six inches. A deterrent to burglars, he guessed, although he doubted any burglar would brave the railway line, climb the tall garden wall and risk a drop into the thick brambles below, when it was plain from any angle that this grimy little terraced house must contain little worth stealing, and that easier pickings would surely be found almost anywhere else along the row. Even so, Patrick carried his bike upstairs to his room every night to protect it. It was a ten-speed Peugeot racer that was older than he was, but it was the only thing he’d inherited from his father, so he screwed two stout hooks into the wall and, while he slept, the bike hung over him like a sparkling blue talisman.
Two other students shared the house. Jackson and Kim were both doing art degrees. Kim was a staunch lesbian – an elfin blonde who made lumpy ogres from plaster of Paris, with nuts and bolts sprouting at their genitals. Jackson made tedious video art that, to Patrick, looked like scenes where the cameraman had been killed and left the camera pointing at a dark corner of a dull room. Jackson had long, pale hands that flapped on slender wrists, and dyed black hair, so short at the back and so long at the front that Patrick itched to reach out and realign it with his head. He wore eyeliner, cowboy boots and a Yasser Arafat scarf, even when he was making toast.
They had all agreed to clean up after themselves, but Jackson was a slob, Kim not much better, and Patrick too nervous of germs to leave anything unwashed for as long as it might take either of his housemates to fulfil their promise. He simply got up earlier or stayed up later to clean the kitchen and bathroom. Kim occasionally left a dish of tasteless vegetarian food on his shelf in the fridge by way of thanks, but Jackson never mentioned the mess or the sparkling kitchen that was its mysterious corollary.
There was a TV in the front room that Jackson had brought from home, and which he controlled jealously – even taking the remote to the toilet with him. So Patrick learned all about the Turner Prize and Hollyoaks, and had to go to the bookies over the road to see any horseracing.
Sometimes they had parties in the house – not him, but Jackson and Kim. At first they’d tried to involve him in the planning and the purchasing, but Patrick had no interest in parties and said he would stay in his room.
Jackson had narrowed his eyes suspiciously. ‘Don’t think you’re going to come downstairs in the middle of it and eat our food and drink our booze then.’
‘I don’t drink,’ said Patrick. ‘And I wouldn’t eat your food in case I got salmonella.’
‘No need to be rude,’ said Jackson.
‘I’m not,’ Patrick told him. ‘You always have meat juice on your shelf; it’s only a matter of time.’
‘Don’t come then,’ Jackson said petulantly.
‘OK,’ said Patrick. ‘Can I put the racing on?’
‘Absolutely not. Cruel sport.’
Patrick was alone on the planet, it seemed, in being without a mobile phone. He’d tried one once but he could actually feel his brain being fried, and still flinched whenever a phone went off nearby. But it did mean that he had what seemed to be exclusive use of the public phone outside the bookies, although he always wore a stolen pair of the bright blue gloves when he called his mother every Thursday night, in case of germs on the receiver. She’d insisted he call once a week and Patrick did, only so that if he died he would be missed before his body started to smell too badly.
‘Are you eating all right?’ was one of the first questions she always asked.
‘Yes,’ he’d say. ‘Monday I had toast and jam, then a cheese sandwich at lunch and pasta for dinner. Tuesday was the same but the sandwich was Marmite. Wednesday was the same but the sandwich was peanut butter. Thursday I ran out of peanut butter. And bread.’
‘Did you get some more?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ she’d say. ‘Don’t forget to eat.’
‘I won’t,’ he’d say, although sometimes he did.
Then, even though he never asked, she would tell him about the garden and the cat. It always went on for a lot longer than either of them deserved.
And then there were the silences. Patrick liked those bits of the conversation – the in-between bits that were so soothing and allowed him to think about things she wouldn’t understand: adjusting the derailleur on his bike because first gear was clipping the spokes; the way fat looked like greasy yellow clots of sweetcorn under the skin; and Custom Lodge and Quinzi, who had died at Wincanton on Wednesday night.
‘You are wearing your bike helmet, aren’t you, Patrick?’
He nodded, his head elsewhere.
‘Patrick?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are wearing your helmet, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. I told you already.’
‘Sorry.’
The first death had been too quick, the second hidden from view behind screens, so neither had been useful to him.
‘Well,’ she’d say after a few more moments of silence. ‘Thanks for calling. You take care of yourself and work hard.’
‘OK.’
‘I love you, Patrick.’
‘OK.’
‘Goodbye until next week then.’
‘OK. Bye.’
Then he’d peel off the blue gloves and drop them in the bin on his way back to the house.
The click of disconnection always came so quickly after his last word that Sarah knew he was hanging up even as he said goodbye. Desperate to get away from her.
Could she blame him?
She often did.
Every week she thought of all the things she should ask him. But when Patrick wasn’t around it was all too easy to forget how hard it was to keep a conversation going. As soon as she heard his voice, all the questions she would have asked any normal son died in her mouth.
Are you having fun in the evenings?
Who’s your best mate?
Met any nice girls yet?
Patrick never had fun in the evenings. Not what most boys his age would call fun, anyway. He liked being on the Beacons, watching racing and collecting roadkill. The closest he had to a friend was Weird Nick next door, which said it all. And she could never imagine him even talking to girls, let alone allowing one to touch him or attempting a kiss. Asking Patrick those questions might not have upset him, but they would have upset her, because the answers would have reminded her of just how odd he still was – and possibly why.
And so every week they exchanged the same banalities and, instead of feeling relieved by them, his calls left her feeling guilty and resentful, even after all these years.