Too Much Sky Part 1

'What do you think?'

He looked for half a minute, swung the gate with his foot and for a while there was just the hinge singing over the silence.

'There's too much sky Dad – and it's too much on the ground. Where's my bedroom?'

We walked through the house listening to the sounds it made, we looked through rooms, lifted old newspapers, coughed in the dust – rubbed spaces in the grime on windows, names and faces. There were cupboards to open, doors that led to walls, walls that looked like doors and everywhere the smell of wood rotted to the core. Sea views don't come much cheaper than this. His sound invaded the place, I heard him crashing through corridors as I flicked through months of junk mail, singing, shouting at echoes, loud hellos roared up staircases he hadn't mustered the courage to climb.

I kept one thing, a note left on the back of the front door, printed capitals from Mrs Jones giving me the number of a cleaner and a handyman. Roughly scribbled as afterthought an apology for not being able to find the key that opened the main back bedroom on the second floor.

'Dad, come look.' I pocketed the note and climbed the stairs. He was perched on two packing crates, his forehead resting on the glass of the large bay window at the back of the house, which he wiped as I approached. 'Look – a massive boat. It's hardly moving.' We watched it together in silence clouding the window even more and then I lifted him onto my shoulders.

'Don't climb on packing crates – or any dangerous stuff. You've got to be really careful at the minute before everything is sorted out.'

'Where is it going – is it going to France? Is this my room?'

I pretended to crash into things and for a few seconds he laughed as he always had at the joke, then just as quickly, leaned so that all I could do was put him down. He ran to the window again and carried on watching the container ship hardly moving along the horizon.

'I don't know where it's going Tom'. This room was as good as any and had a connecting door to the one I had thought just as good as any for myself. 'This will be a good room – once we clear the mess and get your toys and things out.' I waited for a sign he'd heard. 'I'm right next door...we can knock like we used to...do you remember that T-'

'When are we getting the dog? You said we were getting a dog Dad. Are we getting it today?'

I made tea – isn't that the thing to do? Went out in the garden where I watched him run, mimic the sounds his toy made – sometimes he'd stop suddenly, look back, ignore my smile, my wave – keep looking for something else and then uncomfortable i'd look around and see the house – the outline angled into the sky – the irregular lines. Always when I looked back again the play had started – muffled whoops, a plane's engine coming crashing down.

The garden didn't stop; a fence had once set the boundary but it was long defeated, rose up stupidly in places for the wind to beat it down. Where garden became salt marsh, had been lost to time. A shed made a marker – he wandered towards it, I watched him clumsily kick the ball we'd just bought – a heavy leather one I knew wouldn't just blow away, but even a five year old can see that things don't mean that much any more, that what you are left with once the paper is torn and discarded is pretty much what was there before – and that simply isn't enough.

He opened the door and without hesitating walked inside. The mist made the view hazy, I could just about see his light blue coat, the cuffs orange and rolled back so his hands could escape. Then he closed the door. Or the wind closed the door.

I waited, probably a minute, tried not to panic – i'd been warned that smothering now could only do more harm than good after everything. So I walked casually, pretended to examine the small rockery, the empty pond. Stopped and fiddled with the washing line – killing me, boring into me that I couldn't see him. Trying to be calm. I called his name – nothing, normal - he never answered first time, called again – practised, steady. Nothing.

Something stopped me shouting but I covered the ground quickly. Through the gap of door I saw his outline, his back to me, drawing something in the grime of the floor, an unbroken monologue just audible above the creak of the shifting walls. I strained to catch the words - failed; whispered his name as though he were a sleepwalker. The monologue continued. I opened the door slightly, scanned the abandoned pots on shelves, the stiff paintbrushes, the jars of stuff left behind because I didn't know what else to do.

'I'm hungry.' He held out the football for me to take which didn't register at first. At his feet whatever pictures had been drawn were long gone – scuffed away. I took his hand, feeling guilty.

'There's some biscuits in the car – then we can sort your room out. Fish and Chips for tea.'