Mark brightens and flicks a card into Seb’s hand. They say goodbye and even though Seb is desperate to get into the safety of his childhood home, he forces himself to stay still as Mark leaves, so he can’t clock which number Seb’s mum’s house is, before walking away himself.
Only a few houses on St John’s Terrace have gone big on the decorations this year. There’s the house at the end of the terrace which projects the same video every year on to the side of the building – a group of cartoon skeletons dancing in top hats, holding canes. Last year Seb’s kids sat on the wall opposite, eating sweets and watching until Greer said she was going to be sick. Another couple of houses have jack-o’-lanterns lit, sticky-looking fake webs dangling from their doors. Eva’s stuck the spiders she cut out with the kids on to the inside windows, but other than a plastic pumpkin that’s about to run out of battery, that’s it for decorations.
As he puts his key in the lock, someone calls his name behind him. He turns towards a man in a black waterproof and beanie, who holds up his phone – snap, snap, snap – before he says, jarringly cheerful, ‘Fucking prick,’ and, chuckling, walks away.
Seb scrambles to get inside and only starts to breathe again once he’s heard the click of the door behind him. He holds on to the handle for a moment. Presses his cheek against the cool metal. He’s still sinking, falling away inside himself, knowing that now when the name Benjamin Kent is mentioned, in lecture halls or among his dad’s old students, the first thing people will say is, ‘You heard about his son?’
‘Sebastian?’ Eva calls from somewhere inside.
He stands upright slowly and finds her in the kitchen, stirring the stew that has become a Halloween tradition. For the last two years Eva has gone out with them trick-or-treating, everyone going back to her house for stew before bed. Last year, Greer – a tiny, exhausted skeleton – had fallen asleep next to her bowl on the table. It is one of Seb’s favourite photos of her. Eva turns and smiles when she sees him but keeps stirring. She looks small in the black witch’s outfit she’s worn every Halloween since Seb was a boy.
‘How was your day?’ Eva asks, moving towards him, holding his forearms as she kisses her son’s cheek.
Seb lifts his shoulders, shakes his head. How can he answer? He can’t. She knows. He clears his throat. It doesn’t work. He tries again. ‘What can I do?’
He means can he set the table or steam some vegetables, but Eva doesn’t take it like that. Instead she points to one of the armchairs – the one that used to be his dad’s – positioned in front of the wood burner.
‘You can sit down,’ she says firmly, and Seb feels himself liquefy as he does as he’s told. Picturing his dad’s head leaning back against the headrest, he has the shocking thought that he actually agrees with that post. He’s glad that quiet, dignified Benjamin isn’t here. That he’ll never know the truth.
‘Tell me, what are you thinking about?’ Eva sits opposite him. She’s never asked him that before.
He looks at her, surprised, and lies easily: ‘I was thinking about an email I need to send.’
‘Tsk. What were you really thinking, Sebastian?’
Seb looks away from her, stunned. The lies, even innocuous ones, have lost their power. He has no choice. He’ll have to try the truth.
‘I was thinking about Dad.’
Eva nods slightly, asking him silently to expand.
‘I was thinking how disappointed he’d be in me.’
The space between her eyes pleats and she looks away, towards the fire.
‘True, perhaps, in a way,’ she says sadly before adding, ‘but also true that your dad suffered from the same thing as you. He was always trying to do the right thing as well. Trying, perhaps too much.’
Seb stares at her. They’ve never talked like this, neither one of them admitting any fault or flaw in Benjamin. He’d been good in his life, true, but death had made him invincible. She looks back at him; this time she doesn’t have to ask what he’s thinking. She knows.
‘Your dad grew up thinking that his role was to sort of mute himself. His own desires, his own wants. You know he always wanted to write? He didn’t, of course, because your grandparents thought that was ridiculous. Too frivolous and unreliable. That’s why he became a professor. To appease them. His life became about responsibility, about not letting anyone down. It was only when he got cancer that he started telling me the things he’d wanted for so long. That’s when he went on that novel-writing course.’
Seb doesn’t remember the course, but he does remember the half-written novel in his dad’s spidery hand still in the drawer by his bed. He hadn’t been able to hold a pen or a thought for long enough by the end to finish it.
‘Sometimes I wanted to scream at him, but I didn’t know why, and it’s only recently, with all this with you and Rosie, that I see something similar happening between the two of you to what happened with us.’
Seb’s eyes widen and Eva suppresses a smile. ‘No, I’m not talking about sex. We were fine on that front, but I mean the deeper thing. The thing that stopped your dad and now you from being OK with yourself just as you are. It’s OK to want and need things, Sebastian, and it’s OK for some people not to like you. It’s the trying to ignore those things – I think that’s what’s tripped you up.’
Seb feels like he’s shattering, breaking into hard, sharp pieces of himself.
‘This feels like more than just tripping up.’
Eva looks at him again, not trying to stop herself from smiling now because it’s unavoidable and so absurd, and she shakes her head a little as she says, ‘OK. You’re right. It’s a monumental collapse.’ Her face becomes serious again as she leans towards him and puts her warm palm on his leg. ‘I know it’s uncomfortable acknowledging that even if we don’t like certain things about ourselves, they still exist. We must learn how to be with them.’
‘But how, Mum?’
‘Stop living for others’ approval. It doesn’t work. Start living for yourself. Trust us. We will still love you.’
Her phone rings; she whispers something in Danish about bad timing as she moves back to the kitchen to answer it. Without hearing her voice or her name, Seb knows it’s Rosie asking what time Eva’s coming out to meet them.
When she comes back, Seb’s crying into the palm of his hand and she doesn’t try to stop him; she just lets him shake and wail. Because she knows that this, this falling apart, was what he needed all along.
By the time Eva leaves, witch’s hat in the crook of her arm, to meet Rosie and the kids, Seb is staring fixedly at the flames in the wood burner. He feels solid with sadness, as if turning towards his sorrow has made it grow hard and brittle within him. If someone were to peer into his mouth they’d see it there, a great blockage of regret and fear. There’s no thinking any more and there’s no emptiness, either. There’s just feeling.
Eva has left one of her huge plastic bowls full of the Danish sweets she imports on the front doorstep so Seb won’t have to deal with the trick-or-treaters; he hears their whispers and giggles as they reach for greedy handfuls of sweets. Some of them might know this is Eva’s house but they won’t know he’s staying here, that there’s a real monster inside.
An hour or so passes before his phone starts ringing in his pocket. He feels another lurch, a strange fear as he answers, ‘Rosie?’
‘Seb, hi.’ She waits for him to say something, but he doesn’t trust himself so instead, slightly irritated, she keeps talking. ‘Listen, it’s started raining. The kids are getting edgy. We’re going to come back in about half an hour, but I stupidly left the crumble at home and we’re all the way over by Rectory Gardens. I really don’t want to have to go all the way home with everyone to get the crumble before going back to Eva’s – would you mind …?’