When his father was supposedly meeting a gallery owner, to organise an exhibition, even though he didn’t have any paintings – yet. It was just for a weekend. Ever paid for them both to stay at the Bowery Hotel; away from home, eating, drinking and having fun, his father seemed to be putting on a face that was brave, at least; he seemed OK, frustrated maybe with his life, but essentially OK, and in many respects in a better place than Ever himself.

Although he never did meet the gallery owner.

But Ever did carry blame, it was an issue, towards himself, he should have come out earlier, when he had sensed the change, the attitude, the feeling, the enthusiasm disappear from his father. He could hear it in his voice, read it in his emails, but he was so consumed with his own turmoil in his brain that son never came to see father.

The person he loved the most. And his father would never have burdened him with any kind of painful truth.

And now.

Now.

What?

*

Lomita Nairn had eaten her dinner.

A grilled chicken breast lightly coated with olive oil and some green beans, haricots vert, the same dinner she ate, when at home, every night. Well, there was the occasional variation. On a tray, on a California King size bed, lying on the top of the bedding, on a lilac satin eiderdown, faded but the stitched squares still carried a plumpness that comforted her delicate limbs.

The television would normally be supplying sound but now displayed itself in silence. She thought about Ever. She was not a sleeper. That luxury had long left her, two or three hours a night was the only peace she was given from her mind, and the continual reassessment of her life.

Her life of seventy-six years. Born 9 July, early 1940s. That was all she would admit to. She didn’t want to think about being a child again. A time when she thought and planned everything, believed that it was all going to be all right. She didn’t want to relive that.

She took a zolpidem and a shot of whisky. The particular whisky she liked was a single malt, called Oban, the taste of which she demanded to linger in her mouth, and she swirled it, making sure it accessed every particle of tissue. It comforted her, and she prayed to drift off, dreamless, for just a few hours.

The whisky and sleeping pill numbing, just ever so slightly, her thoughts. So she would be unable to connect with disappointment and her dreams would no longer, if she was unfortunate enough to have them, house the hope of great things to come.

*

Ever rocked in the roll of the chair, concentrating his mind in an attempt to determine whether he had been asleep or not. He tried to remember a dream; in a trickle of treacle his thoughts came back.