closer to me and spoke more quietly, even though it was obvious Jake would still be able to hear. “Our teaching assistant saw him at lunchtime, and was a little concerned. He said that Jake was talking to himself?”
I closed my eyes, my heart properly falling now. God, not that as well. Not in front of everyone. Why couldn’t things be simple?
Why couldn’t we just fit in here?
“I’ll talk to him,” I said again.
* * *
Except that Jake refused to talk to me.
I tried to coax the information out of him on the way home, gently at first, but after being met by repeated stony silences, I lost my temper a little. I knew it was wrong even as I did, because the truth was that I wasn’t really angry with him. It was just the situation. Irritation that things hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped. Disappointment that his imaginary friend had returned. Concern about what the other children would think and how they would treat him. Eventually I fell into a silence of my own, and we walked alongside each other like strangers.
Back home, I went through his book bag. His Packet of Special Things was still there, at least. There was also some reading to do, which I thought looked a little basic for him.
“I mess everything up, don’t I?” Jake said quietly.
I put the papers down. He was standing by the couch, head bowed, looking smaller than ever.
“No,” I said. “Of course you don’t.”
“That’s what you think.”
“I don’t think that, Jake. I’m actually very proud of you.”
“I’m not. I hate myself.”
Hearing him say that was like being stabbed.
“Don’t say that,” I said quickly, then knelt down and tried to hug him. But he was completely unresponsive. “You mustn’t ever say that.”
“Can I do some drawing?” he asked blankly.
I took a deep breath, moving away slightly. I was desperate to get through to him, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen right now. We could talk about it later, though. We would talk.
“All right.”
I went through to my office, and touched the trackpad so that I could look back over the day’s work. I hate myself. I’d told him off for that, but if I was honest, they were words I’d thought about myself quite a lot over the last year. I felt them again now. Why was I such a failure? How could I be so incapable of saying and doing the right thing? Rebecca had always told me that Jake and I were very much alike, and so perhaps the same thoughts were going through his head right now. While it might be true that we still loved each other when we argued, it didn’t mean that we loved ourselves.
Why had he said such an awful thing at school? He’d been talking to himself—but, of course, that wasn’t really the case. I had no doubt at all that it was the little girl he’d been speaking with—that she’d finally found us—and I had no idea what to do about that. If he couldn’t make real friends, he would always have to rely on imaginary ones. And if they caused him to behave the way he had today, surely that meant he needed help?
“Play with me.”
I looked up from the screen.
A moment of silence followed in which my heart began beating harder.
The voice had come from the living room, but it hadn’t sounded like Jake at all. It had been croaky and vile.
“I don’t want to.”
That was Jake.
I stepped closer to the doorway, listening intently.
“Play with me, I said.”
“No.”
Although both voices had to belong to my son, they seemed so distinct that it was easy to believe there really was another child there with him. Except it didn’t sound like a child at all. The voice was too old and throaty for that. I glanced at the front door beside me. I hadn’t locked it when we got back home and the chain wasn’t hooked. Was it possible someone else had come in? No—I had only been in the next room. I would have heard that, if so.
“Yes. You’re going to play with me.”
The voice sounded like it was relishing the prospect.
“You’re scaring me,” Jake said.
“I want to scare you.”
And at that, I finally moved into the living room, walking quickly. Jake was kneeling on the floor next to his drawings, staring at me with wide, frightened eyes.
He was totally alone, but that did nothing for my heart rate. As had happened before in