‘Have you seen my other pillow?’

           Without looking up from his phone, Charlie shook his head. 

           ‘I can only find one.’

           She was stood in the doorway. She came in, moved his rucksack to one side and began riffling through his unmade bed. 

           ‘Why would I have your pillow?’ he muttered. 

           ‘So it’s just vanished?’

           ‘Mum, I don’t fucking know.’

           His duvet landed on the floor in an angry heap. 

           ‘Don’t speak to me like that young man!’

           He sighed and continued scrolling. 

           Bending closer, she said it again. 

           ‘Don’t speak to me like that, Charlie!’

            He could smell her perfume. It was called Jo Malone Amber & Lavender - he’d seen the tiny bottle on the table in her room. Dad had bought it for her, the Christmas before he moved out. 

           He glanced up with an expression of disdain and shrugged dismissively. 

           ‘Sorry.’

           ‘What’s wrong?’ He could see she was becoming upset. With raised eyebrows he sighed again. ‘Nothing’s wrong. I just don’t know where your fuc…where your pillow is, is all.’

           She stood for a moment longer and then left abruptly. He heard her sniffing on the landing, trying not to cry. Her footsteps pattered quickly away down the stairs. 

           Charlie felt something but he didn’t understand it. 

           A short while later, the doorbell rang. He knew exactly who it would be and reached over and slammed the bedroom door. 

           Richard Daly was a small man with sharp, rodenty features. He put Charlie in mind of a creature in search of a place to hide. He lived nearby, in a big house on his own, at the end of a dead-end street where the neighbourhood met the woodland that lay beyond. 

           He hated Richard coming round. He hated the sounds that came from her bedroom, the squeaking of the bed. Blocking it out with his headphones helped, but he knew what was going on. It made his skin crawl. One evening a few weeks ago he’d even arrived home and walked right in on them in the living room, his mum fumbling to cover herself up, shouting at him to get out, Richard Daly slumped awkwardly on the settee, desperately trying to retrieve his trousers from around his knees. 

           What he wouldn’t give to erase that image from his memory. 

           Now that Richard had arrived, Charlie knew he’d be forgotten. Fine with me, he thought to himself. 

           Checking again that he had what he needed, he pulled tight the drawstrings of his rucksack. 

           Slowly he opened the bedroom door and listened. They were talking in the lounge. Richard Daly had a surprisingly deep voice for such a small, pathetic looking man. 

           He sat on the bed, quickly laced up his boots, stood, hoisted the rucksack on to his back and cautiously stepped out on to the landing. He’d left his music on, loud enough for her to hear if she happened to come to the door. He pulled it closed, easing the handle back into its place. 

           Keeping to the edge where he knew they didn’t creak, he went down the stairs. 

           As he got to the bottom he was tingling all over. The lounge door was slightly ajar. 

           He crept past and snuck along the hallway to the kitchen and the backdoor, just as she let out one of her false, cringy laughs. 

            He hated it when she did that. 

           Outside on the pavement, Charlie set off at a run. He imagined her shouting after him. But nothing came. 

           He turned into the road where Richard Daly lived. An alleyway between the houses at the far end led into the woods. He passed down it.

            The narrow dirt-path took him along the hillside through the trees. Overhead, the canopy was spread out like a sky. Shining down through the leaves, the last of the evening sun formed a soft, green light, shimmering amongst the trunks. 

           He felt he was somewhere new and different. He walked more slowly, a little uncertainly. 

           The den was formed by a cleft in the hillside, below the path, sheltered by overhanging rock. 

           With well planted sidesteps, he navigated the snaking roots that wove the soil together, rucksack knocking against his back, loose sticks and leaves forming a rustling cascade before him.

           He tossed in his rucksack and crept inside after it, found his torch and phone in his jacket pocket and wedged the torch on a shelf of rock, giving light to the natural space. Dry earth covered the floor and there was the warm smell of bark. He took out the food he’d grabbed from the kitchen and unrolled his sleeping bag. The day had been warm enough but now, with the arrival of the evening, a chill was setting in. He shuffled down, wriggling the soft material up underneath his arms, and sat against the rock, eating a super-size bag of crisps and a half packet of biscuits. 

           He thought about the trouble he’d be in. Her anger was the easier thing to deal with. ‘Rather be here,’ he mumbled to himself, listening to the sounds of the evening outside the den. A car in the distance, racing along the valley road. A dog barking somewhere back in the neighbourhood. The edges of the canopy bustling quietly in the breeze.

           When he’d finished, he screwed up the biscuit wrapping into the empty crisp bag and stuffed it into a side pocket of the rucksack. From nearby came the burble and rising ke-wick cry of an owl, followed by the solitary, mournful quiver of response, the two birds calling to one another in the dusk. 

           He reached down into the bottom of the rucksack and pulled out the pillow. 

           It had been an impulsive act. Maybe he’d taken it because of what was going to happen in the bed. An attempt to sabotage their intimacy - he hated going into the kitchen in the morning to find Richard Daly eating cereal and grinning at him like they were mates. Now that he’d sworn at his mum, maybe he could swear at Richard Daly too. Piss off Daly, you prick. 

           He’d had in mind to throw the pillow away, leave it to rot in the undergrowth. But now it occurred to him that she’d just find another one, maybe even the one from his bed, and his heart sank. But something else stirred inside him. Drifting up from the pillow was the faint smell of amber and lavender. 

           He placed the pillow on the ground, turned out the torch, and lay his head down. Outside the wind caught in the trees, like whispering. The arguments they had, his parents, had always been whispered, as though that would hide what was going on. 

           In his mind he could hear her sniffing, trying not to cry.

He realised he must have slept because he came round sometime later with a sore head and an overwhelming desire not to be there anymore, alone in the den. He checked the time on his phone. 1.30am. It was later than he’d realised. He wondered if she’d noticed his absence.

           He packed up his things and made his way back through the now dark woods. 

           As he passed Richard Daly’s house he was surprised to see lights on. He dared to peer over the tall metal gate. An illuminated pathway led to the door and there in one of the windows was Daly himself. It seemed as though he was looking right at Charlie but the expression on his rat-like features suggested he was lost in a world of his own thoughts. He appeared weary and unhappy. After a moment he pushed his hands through his thinning hair and turned and left the window. Then the light went out in the room where he’d been. 

           Charlie carried on up the road, towards home. 

           Grateful that he had remembered his backdoor key, he let himself in as quietly as he could. The house was in darkness. 

           He crept along the hallway and back up the stairs, using the walls as his guide. His music was still playing behind the closed door. 

           He eased the pillow from the rucksack and went to her bedroom door and listened. It was open a fraction and he could hear her softly breathing. 

           He pushed it and went in. 

           Gently he placed the pillow down in the space next to where her head lay. Her form beneath the duvet was just distinguishable. She stirred and shifted and made a sound like the beginnings of a sob but it came to nothing and her breathing continued as before. 

           Charlie removed his boots and cautiously lay down. His head still hurt a little. He lay at the edge, with his back to her, on top of the duvet, warm in his clothes and his jacket. Beneath his head, the faint smell of amber and lavender still lingered. 

           He thought about the den standing empty on the hillside and about Richard Daly alone in his big house. He thought about seeing his dad at the weekend. 

           Apart from her, everything was still and quiet. Outside he thought he heard the owls again, far away. He closed his eyes and his mind filled with the light that was soft and green and shimmering. 

           It began gradually to fade. He felt the tiredness in his body. Sleep would not be long in coming.