He started fiddling with the very new-looking iPhone he had in his hand as if to check, but while I genuinely had no memory of said text, it would be totally unsurprising to me if I’d completely forgotten. So I just made a half-hearted attempt to pat down my hair, shooed away his apology and stepped aside to let him in. I busied myself getting tea bags out of the canister and when I flicked on the kettle it was still slightly warm from the cup Norman had brought me an hour or so earlier.

“Mum, Mum, I’m just going down to do the rocks. I’ve got my phone, I’ll be back later, okay?” Even his whisper sounded like it was fading away these days.

To be honest, even though I half woke up and opened my eyes just enough to register that Norman had a warm enough jacket on and wasn’t going out in his pajamas, I wasn’t sure that it truly was okay.

Whenever Jax stayed over on a Saturday night, which was almost every week, the next morning the boys would get up early and walk the hundred yards from our house down to the beach. They’d search the shingle beach for the perfect rocks among all those millions the low tide exposed every day, then, in a perfectly chosen spot just back from the water’s edge, they’d spend excruciating eons taking turns to balance them on top of each other. With boyish gruesomeness, they loved the fact that no matter how much work they put in and how high they got their little Zen stone stack, within a few hours it was doomed to obliteration by a wave anyhow.

Josie Fenton told me that one morning, when she’d gone down to collect Jax to go to a family brunch, she’d stood up on the road and watched the boys for about twenty minutes without them knowing. Seeing Jax patiently and tenderly encouraging Norman when it was his turn, and his intense concentration and considered movements as he balanced his own carefully selected rocks, it was the first time she’d dared to think there was a chance that maybe her husband, the teachers and an entire street full of angry neighbors just might be wrong about her son.

The last I’d heard, their record was eighteen high, but my only defense on Sunday mornings now when I started to think about Norman trying to balance those little piles of rocks on his own was to put the pillow over my head and go back to sleep.

Leonard sat himself down at the kitchen table and took his laptop out of his backpack. He opened it up, tapped a few keys then folded his hands in his lap and waited. I placed a cup of tea down in front of him and took a casual look over his shoulder at the screen. Despite up until then still having been vaguely daydreaming about being back in bed, suddenly I was very much awake.