We don’t know each other, and I think we should do something about that. If you agree, come to Fathers’ and Sons’ Day on 18 May at Colet Court. That’s part of St. Paul’s School for boys in Barnes. It’s on the banks of the Thames. I’ll be waiting for you outside.

Samuel Noam Valentiner

I’LL BE RIGHT with you, Sam. I’m just having a little rest.

Someone pries open my eyelids. The lakeshore is far, far away, high above me, and a man is calling down from the rim of the hole. He’s wearing a paramedic’s uniform and gold-framed sunglasses. He smells of smoke. I can see my reflection in his shades. I see my eyes go dull and glaze over. I see the paramedic’s thoughts.

Come on, his thoughts echo inside the hole I’m in. Don’t. Don’t die. Please, don’t die.

A long shrill beep draws a straight line under my life.

Not now!

Not now! It’s too soon!

It’s . . .

It . . .

The long beep swells into a final drumroll.

I jump.

DAY FIFTEEN

Sam

2:35 p.m. Samuel Noam Valentiner.

Patient visited: Henri M. Skinner.

Fourteen times I’ve written these same words, but every day I have to register again. Every day Mrs. Walker pushes the black clipboard toward me with a form on which I must enter, in capitals, the time, my name, and the name of the patient I’m visiting.

The name above mine is Ed Tomlin. Ed Tomlin also visits my father, always a few hours before me while I’m still at school. Who is he?

“I was here yesterday,” I tell Mrs. Walker.

“Oh, I know that, darling.”

The woman at the Wellington Hospital reception is lying. She doesn’t recognize me at all. Lies have a particular sound: they’re whiter than someone’s normal voice. Her name is printed in capital letters on the sign above her left breast: SHEILA WALKER. She calls me “darling” because she can’t remember my name. English people are like that: they hate to tell the truth—it’s rude.

Sheila Walker’s body bears the shadows of many years. I can tell, just as I can tell with most people. Some have many shadows, others fewer, and children have hardly any. If they do have shadows, then it’s because they come from countries like Syria and Afghanistan, and their shadows grow longer as they grow up.

Mrs. Walker has experienced a lot of sadness, and she’s so preoccupied with the past that she neglects the present. That’s why to her I’m merely a boy in a school uniform whose voice is breaking—with embarrassing effects. Maybe when she looks at me she sees a beach and her empty hand, which nobody has held for years.