His godson
Finn doesn’t really understand what’s going on, why everyone keeps talking to him.
Their thoughts are with him, they say, but he doesn’t want thoughts.
Finn sits, his tie abandoned on the floor, and pretends that the cubicle is a spaceship in a far-off galaxy.
Up in space, no one will talk to him, and he has a dad waiting for him back on Earth.
The bathroom door booms open. Finn holds his breath, but it’s not someone looking for him. On the other side of the cubicle door, he hears pacing, heavy breathing.
‘Seb,’ a voice says, as someone else enters. Though this is the boys’ toilets, the voice does not belong to a boy. It’s Nora’s mum.
‘Seb!’
A silence. The door swings shut behind her.
‘I can’t do this.’ It’s Seb’s voice, but it doesn’t sound like Seb.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she replies. ‘It’s an awful day. It’s just—’ She can’t go on. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
Finn can hear Seb wheezing. ‘I should have been there,’ he chokes out.
‘You wouldn’t have been,’ she says. ‘You couldn’t.’
‘I could have been there more.’
‘You’re always there,’ Nora’s mum says. ‘For everyone.’
‘Not for Finn,’ Seb says.
At the mention of his own name, Finn tightens his grip on his legs.
‘He’s my godson, and I barely know him,’ he says. ‘It’s all been about—’
Seb doesn’t finish his sentence. A silence hangs in the air. Seb sniffs, tries to pull himself together.
‘Nora?’ her mum says.
‘I didn’t say that.’
There’s a long silence between them. It’s Nora’s mum who eventually punctures it.
‘Back then,’ she begins, her own voice wobbling. ‘When you said what you said.’ A slow breath. ‘Do you know why it hurt so much?’
A pause. Finn imagines Seb with his eyes shut tight, shaking his head.
‘Because I knew, even then,’ she says, the tears now coming, ‘that you’d have been the opposite. You’re brilliant at it.’
‘Clara—’ Seb says, as if trying to stop her. He’s struggling to breathe again. His voice sounds even more strangled than before.
‘You’re a good person, Seb,’ she says. ‘People might not say it enough, because you’re not showy about it. But you’ve always been there, holding everyone up. Nora, Augie, me. Nimesh, just as much as he did you. Finn, even if you don’t realise it. We love you, Seb. God, I lov—’
‘I need to get some air,’ Seb says, and suddenly he’s gone, the door banging open and swinging shut behind him.
Finn can hear Nora’s mum, breathing fast. Then she goes, too, and Finn is left alone, though he’d already stopped listening.
Because they’d said Nimesh, and Nimesh was his dad, and he’s screwing up his eyes and trying to bring his dad to mind: the scratch of his stubble after a day of work, the smell of aftershave that still lingers at home.
A conversation they’d had, when he’d woken up scared and his dad had lain beside him in bed and Finn had asked if heaven was real.
And his dad had answered, in his classic fashion, no.
‘But where do we go after we die?’ Finn had said, trying to hide the fear in his voice.
His dad had thought about this. ‘Somewhere else,’ he’d said. ‘Somewhere close.’ He’d smiled that calming smile of his. ‘Do you really think I’d leave you behind?’