The Boy That Never Was Read Online Free PDF

got home the next day, the minute I walked into the house, I would go upstairs and pop my pill.
    Only I didn’t.
    We got home after a night of too much wine, of making drunken, messy, soppy love. We both felt tired, and a little sad as we always did after that day, yet renewed as well, somehow fortified by it. I went upstairs and I stood in the bathroom, looking at the foil pack of pills, seven empty blisters, fourteen bulging. I stared at the tiny letters – SAT
    – printed on the foil, and I thought to myself: no.
    I suppose you might say that it was then that I made my decision. At that moment, it felt like the right thing to do. I didn’t discuss it with Harry; I knew already what his answer would be. In the past, whenever I had broached the issue, it had always been met with a refusal.
    ‘I wouldn’t trust myself.’
    That was what he always said. But the look in his eyes when they met mine said something else: that really what he was afraid of was the thought that I couldn’t trust him with another child. Not after Dillon.
    But I did trust him. I understood somehow that it was guilt that held him back from wanting another baby, as if he needed to punish himself for leaving Dillon alone that night. And after five long years of watching him trapped and struggling with the burden of his self-loathing, I felt that something had to be done to release him from it.
    I flushed the pills down the toilet. What the hell, I told myself as I watched the water swirling in the bowl, each little blue tablet washed away. Let’s just see what happens. That was a month ago, and in all that time I hadn’t said one word about it to Harry. I kept searching for the right moment to bring it up, but it never came. Now the fuse was lit, and it was too late for a discussion. And when I considered that in the coolness of our little office on that snowy morning, I felt the first quiver of doubt passing through me.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Hello, love. I’m glad I caught you.’
    ‘Mum. How are you?’
    ‘Frozen. Your father keeps turning off the heat. All this talk of austerity has gone to his head.’
    I sat on the bottom step of the stairs and cradled the phone to my ear. In the background I could hear the clink of cutlery against crockery and pictured my mother at the kitchen table with her blonde hair neat as a wig, her face fully made up, and a cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders as she wrapped herself around a steaming mug of coffee.
    ‘The only room in the house with any warmth is the kitchen. Jim has this notion that if we turn off the range we won’t be able to turn it back on again.’
    ‘And I suppose you’re happy to perpetuate that myth?’
    ‘Of course. Not a word to him, now, do you hear me?’
    ‘Your secret is safe.’
    ‘How about you, love? How are you coping with this cold weather?’
    ‘Well, I’m sitting here in the hall, and there’s a crack above the front door and the back door won’t close properly, so it’s a bit like sitting in a wind tunnel.’
    ‘I can imagine. That creepy old house. I feel cold just thinking about it. Why you didn’t find yourselves a nice modern place with insulation and central heating is beyond me. I said it at the time, but you insisted on buying Mark’s share of that house and living in it. There was no reasoning with you. And I know, I know,’ she said, cutting me off before I could offer my defence. ‘It was Granny’s house, and you didn’t want a stranger living in it.’
    ‘We love this house, Mum.’
    ‘Love is all very well. I just hope you are warmly dressed.’
    ‘I’m wearing tights under my jeans, and a thermal vest underneath a flannel shirt and a fleece.’
    ‘You sound like a dustbin man. What are you two doing with yourselves today, anyway?’
    I stared at the scraper in my hand.
    ‘I’m stripping wallpaper, and Harry’s gone into town.’
    ‘Oh.’ There was the slightest pause, and then she said, ‘He hasn’t gone on that march, has