The Boy Who Fell to Earth Read Free Page B

implored me not to tell anybody. My instinct was to blurt it out, to scream it from rooftops, a howl of indignation and terror. But, under Jeremy’s strict instructions, when people asked about Merlin, I produced a mechanical smile and placed a platitude or two on my lips. Which brought on stage three – a bad case of the ‘Why me?’s
    I’d been teaching English at the local state school for a year. I now downgraded to part-time but didn’t give up altogether, reasoning that it might prove therapeutic. After all, mono-syllabic teens whine ‘Why me?’ constantly, so perhaps no one would notice my own self-absorption. When my sister, in whom I’d confided, asked me why I didn’t quit work completely as I was clearly going gaga, I glibly replied that London mothers had to be able to afford to buy their kids the latest iPhone or their offspring would put themselves on the ‘at risk’ register. But in truth, now that Jeremy had abandoned me emotionally, single-parenting every night and weekend had quickly made me realize that the only good thing about being a domestic goddess is that you can’t commit suicide by putting your head in the oven as there’s bound to be a casserole in there already. If I gave up work it wouldn’t be long before I’d be licking the cake beaters … while they were still whirring.
    Still, I felt so guilty about the relief I experienced when I dropped my son off at the childminder in the mornings … (What kind of heartless mother was I?) … only to feel even more guilty when I picked him up in the afternoons. After all, I was obviously on parental ‘L’ plates. Surely he’d be better off with professionals? Worry became my Mastermind specialist subject. Even though four hours a day teaching a group of truculent teens better armed than your average Colombian drugs cartel was a lot like hosting a hurricane, I found it a respite from mothering Merlin.
    Day’s end, though, seeing my pupils spurt out of the school gates like toothpaste from a tube, only reminded me that my own son would never know those normal, exhilarating pleasures. Merlin was like a rubber glove turned inside out. Everything I took for granted – smiling, laughing, loving – all as natural as breathing, were alien to him. My son was exiled on to a planet beyond my understanding, beyond logic. Looking up at me, his eyes as bare and round as light bulbs, I knew he was not in the same space-time continuum as the rest of us. The kid was all currents and impulses. Merlin’s moods were so erratic it was as though he were responding to some invisible conductor’s baton. I’d often find him smiling at something secret, as if being tickled from the inside with a feather … only for this to be followed by a sudden darkening of his mood, as the poison of anxiety branched through his little being.
    I was also going through childminders like tissues. Even though I only left him with carers who assured me that they were trained in ‘special needs’, a frazzled Tracey or Leanne or Kylie would invariably hand my son over as though he were some rare feral creature recently netted in the Amazon and still adjusting to captivity. Merlin would go rigid with horror when I tried to wrestle him into his car seat, flapping his arms and legs like a trapped bird which was panicking and frantic and crashing into walls. My son’s muteness meant that all I could do was peer into the disturbed, empty reaches of his eyes while pleading with him to be calm. ‘Earth to Merlin, come in. Are you reading me? Over. Ground Control to Major Mum.’
    I then drove home, white-knuckled with stress. Eventually Merlin’s crying would subside into a brooding, sullen, twitching silence. Unless I deviated from the usual route, that is. Then he would thunk his head against the car seat, screaming with terror. Once home, he would shudder with exhaustion, clinging to me desperately as he sobbed into my chest. My heart quivered with pity and I would have to