We Own the Sky by Luke Allnutt

Author:Luke Allnutt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Park Row Books
Published: 2018-01-10T16:24:32+00:00

box hill

mommy was away for the weekend with work so we took a day trip, out of london and into the countryside. it was amazing that day, jack, blazing hot, and we drove up the windy road to the top of box hill and then sat at the lookout point and ate sandwiches and jaffa cakes. i remember how you liked to nibble the chocolate, jack, and then scrape the jelly off with your teeth, just like daddy showed you. chocco first then jelly. chocco first then jelly.

15

We could only ignore the phone calls, the emails, the Facebook messages for so long. The people who just wanted to check in because they had heard Jack had been taken ill. The friends who offered to pop around, just for five minutes, to catch up on our news.

Anna suggested sending another email to all of our friends. That way, she said, they would leave us alone. I shrugged, said that I didn’t care either way.

The replies came quickly, filling up our in-boxes. They couldn’t believe it, they said. They were crying, shaking, couldn’t think about anything else. Why was this happening to us, they asked, why oh why? And was there anything they could do? Could they bring us food, help clean the house, anything really, anything, because they just felt so helpless.

And how was Jack? How was he taking it all? Such a terrible thing to happen to a little boy, because they knew how much we treasured him. They knew because they knew how much their own children meant to them. God, they couldn’t even begin to contemplate what we were going through right now.

Then I saw the status updates on Facebook. Friends, friends of friends, people we didn’t even know so well.

Just received some very sad news...

Devastated, blown away...

Sometimes you get reminders that life is so terribly short. Never forget to hold on to what you have.

I counted: Jack, by proxy, was the recipient of 126 likes. Just as I was thinking how to respond, the posts in my feed were no longer about Jack.

RIP David Frost.

So sad right now: RIP Sir David.

*Crying now* this man was a genius. RIP.

Within minutes, Jack was forgotten. Gutted, they said, absolutely gutted. Because Frost/Nixon had always been their favorite movie. Because they don’t make journalists like that anymore, a true gent, integrity to the core, better than Murdoch and his phone-tapping hacks.

“Too soon,” they all wrote. Too soon. Those two little words bounced around in my head. Too soon. He was seventy-four. He’d had his three score and ten. David Frost had probably spent more time on the toilet than my son had been alive. Too fucking soon?

Subject: Treatment

Sent: Tue Nov 11, 2014 10:59 pm

From: Nev

To: Rob

Hi Rob, really sorry to hear your news. I know what a terrible time it is and how there’s nothing anyone can do to make it better.

Right, so down to practical matters. As for Josh’s treatments, he was diagnosed over three years ago and, yes, with grade 3 glioblastoma multiforme.

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