A Line of Blood. Ben McPherson

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      The precarious thinness of his white arms, all angles against the dark foliage.

      ‘Max.’

      Nothing. No response. He was half-hidden, straddling the wall, his body turned away from me. Listening, I thought. Waiting, perhaps.

      ‘Max.’

      He turned now to look at me, then at once looked away, back at the next-door neighbour’s house.

      ‘Foxxa,’ he said quietly.

      ‘Max-Man. Bed time. Down.’

      ‘But Dad, Foxxa …’

      ‘Bed.’

      Max shook his head without turning around. I approached the wall, my hand at the level of his thigh, and reached out to touch his arm. ‘She’ll come home, Max-Man. She always comes home.’

      Max looked down at me, caught my gaze, then looked back towards the house next door.

      ‘What, Max?’

      No response.

      ‘Max?’

      Max lifted his leg over the wall and disappeared. I stood for a moment, unnerved.

      In the early days of our life in Crappy we had bought a garden bench. A love seat, Millicent had called it, with room only for two. But Finsbury Park wasn’t the area for love seats. We’d long since decided it was too small, that the stiff-backed intimacy it forced upon us was unwelcome and oppressive, something very unlike love.

      The love seat stood now, partly concealed by an ugly bush, further along the wall. Standing on it, I could see most of the next-door neighbour’s garden. It was as pitifully small as ours, but immaculate in its straight lines, its clearly delineated zones. A Japanese path led from the pond by the end wall to a structure that I’d once heard Millicent refer to as a bower, shaped out of what I guessed were rose bushes.

      Max was standing on the path. He saw me and turned away, walking very deliberately into the bower.

      ‘Max.’

      Nothing.

      I stood on the arm of the love seat, and put my hands on top of the wall, pushing down hard as I jumped upwards. My left knee struck the head of a nail, and the pain almost lost me my balance.