“Mrs. Gray?”

“Yes.”

“Hi. You don’t know me, but I’m … Philip. A friend of Alex’s, from school.”

“Oh, yes. Hello.”

“Sorry to just call round like this.” He waited for her to say it was okay, but she didn’t. She didn’t say anything. He’d forgotten how green her eyes were. “Only … I wanted to speak to you about something.”

“To do with Alex?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“Oh. Well, you … Come in. Come in, won’t you?”

Alex followed her inside. The smell was the first thing he noticed. Living here, he hadn’t ever realized that the house had its own distinct odor. He couldn’t have said what it was exactly but as soon as he stepped over the threshold, it hit him: the smell of home.

He set his schoolbag down, as he’d always done, at the foot of the coat stand. The bag was bulging where he’d stuffed his Litchbury High blazer and tie inside. In the hallway, Mum became awkward, as though she’d already forgotten who he was and how he’d come to be there. Collecting herself, she offered him a frail kind of smile and led him through to the lounge. Out on the doorstep, she had been similarly distracted. Confused. She’d seemed to gaze through rather than at him, and when she’d spoken, it was as though she was being prompted via an earpiece. The one time her attention had sharpened was at the mention of Alex. She’d almost flinched.

“This is the living room,” she said, like she was showing the house to a buyer.

Sam was there, cross-legged on the floor, directly in front of the TV, playing a video game. Motor racing. Back in December, Sam had been into some Tomb Raider-type thing. Even though Sam had his back to Alex, the sight of his brother got to Alex. The short-cropped reddish hair, like suede, the knobbly bump of his uppermost vertebrae, which he was so self-conscious about. Likewise, the sticky-out ears. Sam’s birthday had been and gone, he realized; he was eleven years old now, and after the summer, he would be starting at Crokeham Hill High. His little brother, growing up without him.

“Sam,” Mum said, “this is one of Alex’s friends.”

“Uh-huh.”

No hi, no turn of the head to see who it was. Just the jerking of his elbows as his car screeched into a chicane. At one of Sam’s birthday parties—the fifth or the sixth—the balloon man (Uncle Pete) asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. “A Jedi warrior,” Sam said, deadly serious. They mightn’t have been brothers at all, their personalities were so dissimilar; but they were brothers, and Alex longed for Sam to turn round. To look at him. Just so he could see Sam’s freckly face again.

“Sam,” their mother said. “Say hello.”

He answered robotically, attention fixed on the screen. “Hello, friend of Alex.”

Mum looked at Alex apologetically. “Why don’t we go through to the kitchen?”

She made tea, in the red and white stripy pot with the chipped lid. He figured it was to give herself something to do, because Alex said he’d be fine with water and, anyway, the tea remained unpoured the whole time they were talking. She was wearing a familiar lime green top and that frayed denim skirt, faded almost white; her ginger hair, as ever, was cut into a bob. Usually, she wore beige moccasins, trodden down at the heel, but that day she was barefoot. It threw Alex, the oddness. Her insteps were pale as chalk, and as she moved around the kitchen, the soles of her feet made a kissing sound on the laminate floor. She looked older. More than six months older. Tired. Her body had sagged. She was thinner than he’d recalled—gaunt, really—but more than that, and for all her bustle, she was less of a presence. A partially erased drawing was how he thought of it.

“Are you in Alex’s class?” she asked, handing him a glass of water. It was too full and some spilled down the outside, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“No, I’m in 9JH.”

Having started with a lie about being a friend of Alex’s, he had to go through with it. So much of what he would say depended on what she said to him. One thing was certain: he couldn’t just pitch up and declare himself to be Alex. For now, it was enough to establish contact with his family—befriend them, gain their trust—while he sussed out how best to play it from there.

“JH?” his mum said. “Is that—”

“Mrs. Harewood.”

“Old Hair Ball?”

Alex smiled at the nickname. “Yeah, that’s her. Teaches science.”

Mum paused, swilling the teapot under the tap as she waited for the kettle to boil. “She sent us a very nice card. Jennifer. Jenny Harewood.” She set the pot down, popped in a couple of tea bags. “Got Alex earmarked as a budding chemist.”

He thought about that: his teachers sending condolences to his mother.

Right here in this kitchen, at breakfast one morning back in October, Mum had tested him on the periodic table—calling out symbols from a homework sheet while he, between mouthfuls of cornflakes, named each element and its atomic number. Or tried to. By the end, she knew them as well as he did. From then on, Special K (Mum’s cereal) was always referred to as Special Potassium.

“Sorry, what did you say your name was?”

“Philip.” He hated lying to her. Before she could say she didn’t remember Alex mentioning him, or wonder why they hadn’t met him before, he said, “I only started at Crokeham Hill in September. We moved down from Yorkshire for my Dad’s work.”

“I thought there was a whatsit. A northern twang.”

Alex realized as she said this that her familiar south London accent was oddly comforting. One of the sounds of home. You heard Mum speak and you could tell where she came from, not like Mr. and Mrs. Garamond, whose speech was so neutral they could have come from anywhere. Where did they come from? He knew, from something he’d heard the mum saying on the phone one time, that they’d moved up to Litchbury for the dad’s job at the university, but that was all.

Any time now, they would be starting to wonder where Philip was.

The kitchen, the house itself, seemed so much smaller and shabbier than the Garamonds’. Mum filled the pot, then slipped on the grubby, never-washed knitted cozy that Dad had long threatened to burn as a health hazard. “So, was it the chess?” she asked.

“Sorry?”

“How you became friends with Alex.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, the chess club.”

“His grandfather taught him to play.” She smiled. “Their games lasted for hours. I used to take them sandwiches and drinks.”

Cheese, sliced thick, with rings of red onion that made your nose sting. White bread. Milk for him, cocoa for Granddad. He took a slug of water to distract himself from the memory, to stop himself from blubbing. If he blubbed, he might just throw his arms round her and call her Mum. Alex had been doing okay until then. Even here, in his own home, with his own mother, he’d managed to hold it together. But this talk of marathon chess sessions with Granddad, and the realization that Mum had lost them both—her father, her son—and the thought of what Alex himself had lost, or been torn away from … all of this came close to overwhelming him. It was suddenly way too freaky to be standing in this kitchen he knew so well, a stranger to his own mother.

He’d imagined a moment of epiphany: an incredulous look in her eyes, her hand reaching tentatively for his cheek, exploring the contours—like she was a blind person reading his face like Braille—and her asking the hushed question, not daring to believe it herself: Alex … is that you?

She hadn’t shown the slightest hint of knowing him, of course. He was just Philip, a boy she’d never met, Alex’s friend, in whose company she could reminisce about her dead son.

“That looks like a nasty bump,” she said.

His lip, she meant. “Bump” was Mum’s word for just about any kind of injury, from a grazed knee to a broken arm (that time he’d taken a tumble off the trampoline). “I got hit by a cricket ball.” Alex touched the scab with his fingertips. “In the park,” he added before she thought to say that they didn’t play cricket at Crokeham Hill.

They talked about how lucky he had been not to lose a tooth. Then, with another of those frail smiles, Mum said, “Now, what did you want to talk about?”

So he took her through it: the plan to set up a fund at the school—with donations, sponsored events—to pay for an annual interschools chess trophy in Alex’s name. The Year Nine Council wanted to check if it was okay with her before going ahead. On the train, it had seemed like a good cover story—explaining why he’d called round, while enabling them to talk about “Alex.” Face to face, it sounded cheap and nasty. A scam. He felt like a door-to-door con man trying to trick this woman—his own mother—into buying something she didn’t need.

That she seemed genuinely touched by the idea only made it worse.

“This whole business—” She stood at the sink, gazing out into the back garden. So choked up she had to check herself. She took a deep breath, blinked back the tears. “I … sorry … I suppose I didn’t realize he was so well liked. ”

Alex didn’t say a word. He wished he could unsay everything he’d already said.

“To be honest with you, Philip”—she turned towards him, her eyes red-rimmed—“we’ve always worried that Alex was a bit too much of a swot to make friends at that school. Apart from David Bell, you know, he hardly ever brought anyone home.”

“It’s just an idea, really. I don’t—”

“But it makes people realize, doesn’t it? When something like this happens.”

He waited for her to continue.

“It makes them think ‘That could be me,’ or ‘That could be my son.’ ” He started to speak, but she talked over him. “And please don’t think I’m ungrateful—because I’m not, truly I’m not. It’s a lovely … gesture.” She pressed her palms to the sides of her face, then lowered them. “But the timing. The timing isn’t wonderful.”

The washing machine clicked into a new phase in its cycle; up till then, Alex hadn’t registered that it was on. He wasn’t sure what she meant by “timing.” In chess, whenever you made a move, you had a fair idea of the other player’s response, but he couldn’t read Mum at all. A moment earlier she’d been pleased to the point of tears. Now his mother seemed altogether less happy.

“It’s the six-month anniversary this week, did you know that?”

“Oh, okay. No. I mean, yeah, I kind of knew it must be around now.”

“Sometimes it seems like yesterday. Other times, it’s …” She turned back to the window, not looking out, though; her head was bowed, the fingers of both hands gripping the edge of the stainless steel sink. The kitchen smelled faintly of cooked food—meaty, like sausages. Sam’s tea, probably. Did they eat the same meals? Your son died, but you still had a husband and another son. You had to go on. Cooking, eating. Making pots of tea. Doing the laundry. After a pause, Mum said, “Could you go back to the year council, Philip, and thank them for me? For us. Tell them we’ll think about it again when … when it’s more appropriate.”

She picked up a mug from the draining rack and hooked it onto the mug tree. It had a picture of a man in dressing gown and slippers, jumping over the moon, and the slogan He’s all right, my dad. A birthday present from Sam. Alex wondered when Dad would be home. It depended which shift he was working. Much as he longed to see him, Alex was unsure what his rational, skeptical father would make of “Philip.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I shouldn’t have—”

“You mean well, I know that. All of you.” Mum moved away from the sink and took a step towards him. Started to place a hand on his shoulder, but hesitated and left the gesture incomplete. She pushed a stray lock behind her ear. Her hair looked dull, in need of a wash. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Doing the right thing. Saying the right thing.”

Alex put the glass of water down. “D’you think I could use the bathroom?”

He made straight for the bedroom. His bedroom.

Alex paused on the landing, half afraid to go in, still clinging with the fingertips of his imagination to the idea of entering the room to see himself at the PC or sitting on the bed, reading or listening to music. That name panel he’d made in woodwork, with its wonky X, was still fixed to the door, along with the notice he’d done on the computer: Killers fans only beyond this point. Alex had once run face-first into this door, hurtling upstairs in the dark to escape a whack from Dad. What for, he couldn’t recall. Now he heard Mum downstairs, pottering about, and the synthetic racetrack roar from the lounge. Hesitant as he was, he didn’t have much time before his trip to the loo would be taking too long. He opened the door, went in.

And there it was. He had wondered if he might find it like this, but he hadn’t actually expected to. They did this in movies or TV dramas, not in real life: the bereaved family leaving a child’s room untouched after he’d died. As though he might return home at any moment, or as though they couldn’t bear to let him go, and by preserving his room, they were allowing themselves the illusion that he wasn’t dead. Maybe they came in here from time to time, Mum and Dad—Mum, most likely—to talk to their lost son while they were surrounded by his things.

To Alex, who felt like he’d been away from home for days rather than months, it wasn’t as bizarre as it might’ve been to find his bedroom the way it was the last time he’d seen it. In fact, it wasn’t precisely as he’d left it. Someone (Mum) had tidied away the strewn clothes, the CDs and books and other things that lay about the place. The room no longer looked like a burglary had just occurred. It didn’t smell of what his dad called teenage armpit. The bed was made. Drawers were pushed in; the wardrobe doors were closed; the keyboard had been slid back into its slot beneath the computer table. (How bulky and old-fashioned that monitor seemed, compared to Flip’s flat-screen.) The surfaces were clear of dust; the curtains were tucked behind their hooks; and the window, which Alex had always kept shut, was open a crack. It was a boy’s bedroom from the show home of a new housing development.

Was his room really small? It seemed so, after Flip’s. It was good to see his own posters, though. Not cricketers and basketball players, but the Killers; maps of the world and of the night sky; wall charts of woodwind instruments, the planets, the hydrological cycle; a wall-mounted magnetic chessboard, its 2-D pieces frozen in mid-game. His books lined the shelves. His CDs filled the rack. And when he opened the wardrobe, there were his clothes. Not that they would fit him. On the bedside table, he saw the novel he’d been reading in December—Louis Sachar’s Holes—a bookmark poking out of it. Alongside it lay his inhalers—the brown, the blue—like quotation marks, and the jam jar of five-pence coins. One hundred and seven, at the last count.

Next to the table was the music stand, with the clarinet book open at Henri Tomasi’s Sonatine Attique; beside that, the clarinet itself, impaled on its mounting. Alex picked up the instrument. How tempting to play it. But quite apart from drawing attention to his snooping in “Alex’s” bedroom, he wasn’t likely to produce a tune, given the state of his lip or a reed which must’ve dried out after six months’ disuse. All the same, it was good just to hold it. Secondhand, but decent; he’d had it since he was nine. If he lived to be ninety, he’d still be able to recall the feel of it, the smell, the sound, each scuff and blemish on its chocolate-colored skin.

Not that he’d live to ninety, of course. Or even make it to fifteen. Not as Alex.

Was that what got to him? Probably it was the accumulation of everything. Just being there, in that house. Whatever it was, a wave of anguish swept through him, his shoulders shaking with each sob. Through the tears, he looked at the bed. His bed. Suppose he got in right now—just slipped under the zebra-stripe duvet and slept. Slept for hours, then woke suddenly in the dead of night, restored to his own body.

Alex was still holding the clarinet, he realized. He bent forward to replace the instrument on its stand.

“Do you play, Philip?”

He jumped half out of his skin. He hadn’t heard Mum come up the stairs and didn’t have any idea how long she’d been standing in the doorway. If she was angry with him for being in there, she didn’t sound it, with her quiet question; when he turned round and saw her expression at the sight of his tear-streaked face, he knew she wasn’t cross at all. She couldn’t have known, or begun to imagine, why this strange boy was crying, or what he was doing in Alex’s room in the first place. But it seemed his mother regarded him not as an intruder but as an ally in love and loss.

How many times had she come in here herself and wept?

To apologize for being in there would risk breaking the spell. So he answered her question. “I used to,” he said. It wasn’t altogether a lie.

She nodded, as though she’d suspected all along he was musical. Here was a boy the same age as Alex. He played chess, as Alex did. He could play the clarinet, just like Alex. Mum might not have intuited Alex’s essence inside this unexpected visitor, but she appeared to be turning him into some kind of surrogate son. Or more likely, she was simply glad to have someone to talk to about him.

“He used to drive me barmy,” she said, still framed by the door. The room had grown gloomy but the landing light was on and Mum stood in its haze. “You don’t know how cross you can get until you have kids.”

If she expected a response, she didn’t give him time to come up with one.

“I’d give anything to have him back,” she said, smiling to herself, “but I know I’d be sniping and yelling at him again before too long.”

There were the sounds of tires outside on the hardstanding, the killing of an engine, the opening and closing of a car door. Mum didn’t seem to notice, or to pay any attention if she did.

“We talked about giving up. On the anniversary.” Giving up what, he had no idea. Giving up on all this, maybe—finally letting go of him and clearing out his room. “Six months, a year—it doesn’t make all that much difference, really.” Mum sounded calm, matter-of-fact. Staring at the bed, as though her son was right there, with his head on the pillow, she said, “So we sat with him, the two of us, and discussed it.”

From downstairs, the click of a key turning in a lock and the familiar judder of the warped wood against the frame as the front door opened.

“That’ll be him now,” she said. For one ghastly moment he thought Mum meant “Alex,” but then he realized who she must’ve been referring to.

“Alex’s dad?” he asked.

“Ed would be there twenty-four seven, if they’d let him.” Then, with an odd kind of a laugh, she added, “I expect he’s got something going with one of the nurses.”