Secrets - The Drive Home

'It's still early. We could go to see a film. What do you think?'

'I want to go home.'

'And you're sure about that?'

No answer. 
           
'Okay, but say if you change your mind,' I say.  I get into the car. 'We can go anywhere or do anything you like.' I reach over to help fasten his seatbelt, but he tenses, so I back off.

Poor kid. He must be hurting so much. Robert acts as if his mother never existed, refusing to talk about her at all. I don't blame him, really, although the extreme reaction concerns me. Like what do we do about it, Craig?  Take Robert to see a therapist? Keep going over a situation that has no solution?  Let the boy cry?  For what?  Lana's gone; she isn't coming back. She doesn't want further contact with Robert; that's what she decided. Tears won't soften the blow of Lana's rejection. No, I can't let Robert cry and cry and cry in vain. No way.  
 
On the night she left, a sweltering evening at the start of the summer, she dropped him with a boy from his class. The boy wasn't a friend exactly – more a decent kid who didn't pick on him like the other children at school. The kid's mother returned with Robert at around eight o'clock that evening, puzzled as to why Lana had failed to return. Lana rang me on my mobile in the morning to say she wasn't coming home. She'd met someone else, a bloke who lived a few streets away. Someone she'd been seeing for months. A younger, fitter version of me. A bloke without the hang-ups.
           
I concentrate on the road ahead. This stuff hurts.
I couldn't cope afterwards. The small web design business I ran from the study of the Islington flat fell into trouble when I missed too many deadlines. Robert and I weren't managing at all, so Mel arranged with her landlord for us to move to The Factory for a year.
           
Day Four of our stay.  I sneak a glance at Robert.  He's locked himself away, and I can't get through the barrier. I don't think Mel can either.

The Factory appears empty when I pull up in the cul-de-sac car park, the turret-like windows seeming to watch us get out of the car, the red-brown chimney to the right of the building tall and still. We enter using my electronic keypad. On the ground floor, silence merges with the smell of fresh polish. For a moment or two, I get the impression that someone's staring down at us from one of the balconies, but when I look up I don't see anyone or anything. Just the drop and the glass dome in the ceiling letting in the late afternoon daylight.
           
 'Okay,' I say, rummaging through the postbox.  'We'll take the lift.'