Page 79 of The Elements

I manage some sleep, and when I open my eyes, the partition between Emmet’s seat and my own has been lowered.

He’s sitting in the lotus position, his screen turned off, reading, but he sets his book aside when he sees that I’m awake.

I expect him to raise the barrier again immediately but, no, he must be feeling bored because he gives me a look that says, Talk to me .

“How long was I out?” I ask.

“About three hours.”

I sit up and stretch my arms. It wasn’t a long sleep, but I feel pleasantly refreshed.

I wander down to the bathroom, making sure not to catch Charlotte’s eye as I pass her seat, clean my teeth, wash my face, and when I return, he’s massaging one of the mini tubes of moisturizer into his forehead and cheeks.

“You’re gorgeous,” I say.

“Do you know that woman?” he asks.

“What woman?”

“The woman you were sitting with at the bar. You were talking to her in the airport too.”

I didn’t realize that he’d seen us and wonder whether he’d come down to join me, then changed his mind when he found us chatting.

“No, I never met her until this morning,” I tell him. “We just struck up a conversation, that’s all. Why?”

“You’re at a very vulnerable age. I don’t want anyone taking advantage of you.”

I laugh, as he’s simply parroting back to me a line I’ve said to him several times over the last year. I always enjoy it when he takes the piss out of me. It reminds me that there’s still something of the fun-loving kid hidden away beneath the stroppy teen.

“Can we go down there?” he asks.

“Down where?”

“To the bar.”

I’d actually prefer to settle back with a movie now, but since he’s actually asking to spend time in my company, I won’t pass up the opportunity. We stand and make our way down opposite sides of the aisle, passing passengers snoozing behind their eye masks, and meet up just beyond the galley.

It’s quiet now and we don’t have to sit side by side at the wall as the table that allows passengers to sit facing each other is unoccupied.

Perhaps a shift change has happened because Paul Newman has been replaced by a young woman whose hair is drawn into a complicated arrangement on her head.

When we sit, she approaches and asks what she can get us.

I don’t feel like another beer, so order a gin and tonic, while Emmet, with supreme confidence, orders a Tiger.

There’s a moment between the three of us.

The stewardess can see that he’s young but he is accompanied by his father, so unlike her colleague at takeoff, she chooses not to object.

Emmet is deliberately not looking at me, and I remain silent until he glances up. We’re both smiling.

“One,” I say, pointing a finger at him and laughing. “Just one, all right?”

I don’t know whether drinking with my fourteen-year-old son is the worst thing a father can do or the best. All I’m certain of is that we’re thirty thousand feet above the earth, and the normal rules of life need not apply up here.

“It’ll knock me out,” he says in his defense.

“You didn’t sleep when I did?”

“No, I watched another film.”

“Well, we still have about six hours to go,” I say, glancing at the screen on the wall. “Even if you only get three or four, it’ll be better than nothing. You must be tired.”

“Not really. Maybe. Sort of? I don’t know what time my body clock is at.”

“A little sleep would do you good. Otherwise you’ll be exhausted for days.”

“I’m used to flying to Dubai.”

The stewardess, whose name tag reads No é mie, returns, carrying a tray with our drinks, bowls of nuts and crisps, and a chocolate muffin in which a single candle has been placed. I stare at it in surprise, then turn to Emmet, who’s grinning.

“Happy birthday,” he says.

It takes me a moment to appreciate the significance of this. He obviously organized it with her while I slept, and I’m so moved that I feel tears come to my eyes.

“You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“Obviously we can’t have naked flames on board,” No é mie tells me. “So it’s an LED candle. You blow it, and somehow it goes out. Don’t ask me how. Witchcraft, probably.”

I make a wish, do as instructed, and, sure enough, the flame disappears.

“Thank you,” I say to Emmet as we clink our glasses.

“I’m just glad that you’re still mentally competent and can walk unassisted,” he tells me. “Considering how ancient you are.”

“Forty’s not that old!”

“Welcome,” he says, stretching his arms wide and doing a more than decent impression of Richard Attenborough, “to Jurassic Park!”

This is as happy as I’ve felt in a long time.

As he takes a sip from his beer, which has arrived in a mercifully small glass, his face betrays no aversion, so I assume it’s not his first. Of course, he has a life outside of mine.

He has friends. Friends I’ve known since they were in Nippers together.

Good kids, for the most part, and whatever mischief they get up to is not something that worries me unduly as they’re generally quite responsible.

The worst thing they ever do is stay down at the beach when the lifeguards have gone home for the night, but they’re all experienced swimmers and no one is ever left in the water alone.

“So,” I say, sensing that he’s open to a more meaningful conversation than the feral grunting of morning time. “How are you feeling about all of this?”

“All of what?”

“This,” I say, looking around. “This trip. Where we’re going. What we’re doing. Why we’re doing it.”

He blows out his lips.

“Let’s just say, I’ve made my peace with it,” he replies, and it’s hard not to laugh at his use of such an adult phrase.

I try to contrast who I was at fourteen with who he is now.

I was happy. I had friends. I had parents who loved me.

I was growing interested in girls. I liked soccer.

My father and I attended all the home matches of our local football team, only returning our season ticket when two of the players were charged with rape.

And then, one day, Freya Petrus came to our school as part of an outreach program from the local hospital, trying to engage young people with the idea of working toward a career in medicine, and afterward, when I told her how much she’d inspired me, she took me home with her and my life changed.

Emmet, however, is different. He’s not quite as carefree as I was at that age, but perhaps the times don’t lend themselves to that.

Other than swimming and surfing, he doesn’t care about sport.

So far, he has shown—at least to me—no interest in girls.

And until I saw those photos on his phone, I assumed that he had not, as yet, had any sexual experiences.

But there’s clearly something going on in his private universe that I don’t know about, but that I need to uncover.

If I am to discuss it with him, I will have to choose my moment carefully.

“Well, whatever happens,” I tell him, “I’m glad you came.”

“You didn’t give me much choice.”

“You didn’t put up too much of a fight.”

“Gets me out of school for a week.”

“True,” I say. “How is school anyway?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything you want to tell me.”

He glances to his right, toward the window that looks out onto the dark night sky, and shrugs.

“It’s school,” he says. “It’s fine.”

“Adults usually say that life was so much easier when they were children,” I tell him.

“When we had no responsibilities, no bills to pay, no wives, husbands, kids, all that stuff. I think we forget that it’s just as difficult being a teenager as it is being an adult.

A different set of difficulties, yes, but they feel as important. ”

“Not for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your childhood was great, wasn’t it? I mean, I know Gran and Grandad died young, but you were an adult by then. Your teenage years were OK.”

It’s my turn to look away now. I’ve always known that the day might come when I would talk to him about what happened to me at his age, but for all my training in this area, I’ve never quite known how to approach it, worried that it might change his view of me in some way.

“I had my issues.”

“Well, my childhood wasn’t exactly a Disney movie.”

“I’ve done my best.”

“I didn’t mean you,” he concedes, his tone softening. “I meant Mum.”

I decided a long time ago that I would never say a negative word about Rebecca in Emmet’s presence.

Granted, I’ve never gone out of my way to praise her either, but I knew that it would be a mistake to say or do anything that could be interpreted later as my way of turning him against her.

Such behavior would only rebound on me in the future.

“Your mother loves you,” I tell him.

“My mother could barely pick me out of a lineup.”

“Emmet, you must remember—”

“I don’t want to talk about her,” he says, cutting me off, and I decide not to push this topic any further. I’d prefer to return to the more cheerful conversation that we were having earlier.

“A gym,” he continues after a moment.

“What?”

“This plane has a shower, a bar. What it needs is a gym. Thirteen hours? You could get a good workout in.”

“I guess,” I say.

“Just a small room with some dumbbells and a treadmill,” he continues. “That’d be cool.”

“I think people would spend more time at the bar,” I tell him.

He nods, but I’m reminded of how he’s been throwing himself into exercising lately, although it doesn’t seem to be having much effect on his body, which remains stubbornly slender.

“What I said about the woman you were talking to—” he continues.

“Emmet, I swear I just met her!”

“I know, I know. I was just kidding about that, but can I ask you something?”

I nod. “Sure.”

“Like…” He hesitates, sounding nervous. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”

I’m taken aback by the question. I can’t recall him ever asking something so intimate of me.

“Well, it’s not as if I wouldn’t like one,” I say, weighing each word carefully.