What Sons Do
1073 Words
The bus to his mum's flat took forty minutes on a good day. Today was not a good day.
Callum sat near the back, headphones in but nothing playing, watching South London scroll past the rain-smeared window. Council estates giving way to chicken shops giving way to nail bars giving way to council estates again. The city's endless loop of tired ambition. He knew every street by heart and had spent most of his adult life trying to escape them.
He was still here.
His mum's building was a seven-floor block in Lewisham that had been promised a renovation three separate times in the last decade. The lift was broken again—Callum climbed four flights of stairs that smelled of cigarettes and yesterday's cooking, knocked twice, and waited.
"It's open!" came the voice from inside.
Margaret Reid was fifty-three years old and looked it honestly—the kind of tired that came from decades of early starts and late finishes and never quite catching up. She was in her kitchen when Callum let himself in, still wearing her uniform from the hospital laundry, hair half-pulled from its bun.
"Didn't know you were coming," she said, not unpleasantly.
"Spontaneous visit." Callum dropped his jacket over a chair. "You eaten?"
"I was about to."
"Sit down. I'll make something."
She didn't argue—which told him how tired she was. Margaret Reid arguing was her natural state. Silence meant exhaustion had won.
Callum found eggs, bread, some cheese that was almost expired. He made toasted sandwiches the way she'd always made them for him—butter on both sides, extra cheese, slightly too much pepper.
They ate at the small kitchen table, his mum's feet elevated on the opposite chair, the television murmuring something from the living room.
"You look like something's bothering you," she said eventually.
"I'm fine."
"You've been fine since you were nine years old and you broke Mrs. Patterson's greenhouse window. Doesn't mean much."
Callum almost smiled. "I'm just tired."
She studied him with the particular sharpness that mothers seemed to develop as a biological defence against their children's lies.
"The job all right?" She asked
"Job's fine."
"You're not in trouble? Are you?"
"No, Mum."
"Because if you need money—"
"I don't need money." The irony of the sentence sat heavily in his chest. He was about to risk his nervous system for money. She was offering him cash she didn't have. "I'm fine. I just wanted to see you."
That softened her, as it always did. She reached across the table and patted his hand with fingers roughened from years of industrial detergent. "You're a good boy, Callum."
He thought about the thirty-seven pages he'd signed that morning.
"Yeah," he said. "I try."
---
He left two hours later, having washed up, fixed the kitchen tap that had been dripping since Christmas, and listened to a full account of his sister Rachel's ongoing saga with her landlord in Birmingham.
On the stairs going down, he paused on the third-floor landing and leaned against the wall, eyes closed.
She's tired, she's aging, she's working herself into the ground and she'll never stop because nobody's ever given her a reason to.
He could give her a reason.
One hundred and fifty thousand pounds could give her a reason.
He pushed off the wall and kept walking.
Outside, the rain had started properly—that determined London rain that didn't bother being dramatic, just committed to making everything grey. Callum turned his collar up and started toward the bus stop.
His phone buzzed. Owen: How's your mum?
Good. Tired. Same as always.
Owen: You tell her about Friday?
Callum stared at the message for a moment. No.
Owen: You should.
After. If everything goes well.
A long pause. Then: And if it doesn't?
Callum pocketed his phone without answering.
The bus arrived, half empty and overheated. He found his seat near the back, watched the rain streak down the glass, and spent the forty minutes home rehearsing a conversation he hoped he'd never have to have.
Mum, I signed up for a medical trial. They're going to inject something into my spine. I know. I know. But the money—
She would never understand. She would worry herself sick. She would call him every hour. She would lie awake in that fourth-floor flat doing the mental arithmetic of everything that could go wrong.
So he wouldn't tell her. Not yet.
He'd tell her when he could walk through her door with a cheque and watch the exhaustion leave her face for the first time in twenty years.
That's why you're doing this, he reminded himself. Not for you. For her. For Rachel. For the kids.
It helped. A little.
He got home to find Owen had made dinner—proper dinner, pasta from scratch, which he only did when he was worried about something and needed to keep his hands busy.
"You didn't have to do this," Callum said.
"I know." Owen set a bowl in front of him. "Eat."
They ate without talking much, the television on in the background, the familiar rhythm of their flat settling around them. It was ordinary. Comfortable. The kind of evening Callum had taken for granted his entire adult life.
He didn't take it for granted that night.
"Owen."
"Yeah?"
"Whatever happens Friday—thank you. For coming with me. For not just—" He stopped, not entirely sure what he was trying to say.
Owen was quiet for a moment. Then: "You'd do the same."
"Yeah."
"So eat your pasta and stop being sentimental. It's unbecoming."
Callum laughed despite everything. "Absolute state of you."
They cleaned up together, argued briefly over whose turn it was to take the bins out, and went to their respective rooms at a reasonable hour.
Callum lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to the pipes groan.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. Unknown number. No message—just a link to a news article from three years ago. The headline loaded slowly on his screen.
Medical Trial Participant Dies in Neural Study—Family Demands Answers.
Callum's blood ran cold.
He clicked the link. The page loaded for three seconds, then went blank. The article had been deleted.
But the headline had been enough.
He put his phone face-down on the nightstand and lay in the dark for a very long time.
- Writer
