Flip by Martyn Bedford

might not have intuited Alex’s essence inside this unexpected visitor, but she appeared to be turning him into some kind of surrogate son. Or more likely, she was simply glad to have someone to talk to about him.
    “He used to drive me barmy,” she said, still framed by the door. The room had grown gloomy but the landing light was on and Mum stood in its haze. “You don’t know how cross you can get until you have kids.”
    If she expected a response, she didn’t give him time to come up with one.
    “I’d give anything to have him back,” she said, smiling to herself, “but I know I’d be sniping and yelling at him again before too long.”
    There were the sounds of tires outside on the hardstanding, the killing of an engine, the opening and closing of a car door. Mum didn’t seem to notice, or to pay any attention if she did.
    “We talked about giving up. On the anniversary.” Giving up what , he had no idea. Giving up on all this, maybe—finally letting go of him and clearing out his room. “Six months, a year—it doesn’t make all that much difference, really.” Mum sounded calm, matter-of-fact. Staring at the bed, as though her son was right there, with his head on the pillow, she said, “So we sat with him, the two of us, and discussed it.”
    From downstairs, the click of a key turning in a lock and the familiar judder of the warped wood against the frame as the front door opened.
    “That’ll be him now,” she said. For one ghastly moment he thought Mum meant “Alex,” but then he realized who she must’ve been referring to.
    “Alex’s dad?” he asked.
    “Ed would be there twenty-four seven, if they’d let him.” Then, with an odd kind of a laugh, she added, “I expect he’s got something going with one of the nurses.”

With Dad home, the mood shifted.
    He was polite enough. A little thrown by the sight of his wife coming down the stairs with a lad he’d never clapped eyes on, but that was all. Mum introduced “Philip” as a friend of Alex’s from chess club, and as he hung his jacket on the coat stand, his father summoned up the effort to be sociable.
    “You look more like a rugby player than a chess player,” he said. Then, with a smile, he indicated Alex’s mouth. “Or a boxer.”
    Alex knew he ought to say something but no words came to mind.
    “I’m Ed.” Dad offered his hand. Alex shook it, his own hand bigger inside his father’s than it had been before. Not so easily crushed.
    “Philip.”
    “He’s in Mrs. Harewood’s tutor group,” Mum said.
    It was too surreal, seeing his father again like this. Too bewildering altogether after what Mum had said just now in the bedroom. That stuff about nurses , and how Ed would be there twenty-four seven, if they’d let him . The pieces of a puzzle had still been clicking into place in his head, and now this: Dad, standing in the hallway, shaking his hand, making polite conversation. He wore that familiar brown checked shirt (one of five in the same style, in different colors), jeans and the yellowy brown Caterpillar boots—his typical work gear, because although he had been transport manager for a couple of years, with his own office, he was still “one of the lads” at heart. When they were shorthanded at the depot, he’d muck in, loading the vans, or driving one himself if he had to. They called him Ed, not boss or Mr. Gray. He insisted on that. His left thumbnail was permanently black from when he’d trapped his hand beneath a pallet. The accident had happened when Alex was little, and the disfigured thumb had always held a gruesome fascination. Noticing it now, as Dad bent over to tug his laces undone, Alex felt a surge of affection for his father that surprised him with its strength.
    “Shall I put the kettle on?” Mum said.
    Dad stepped out of his boots. “Lovely.”
    “I did make a pot, but it’ll be stewed by now.” She headed for the kitchen.
    It was as though they’d forgotten he was there. Why were