Erm...

"Erm..." I stuttered.

Tell her? Don't? No. Don't. Act as if nothing had happened. I really would be suffocated with attention then. I'd not be let out of her sight. Or she'd take me to the doctor. Or the hospital. Or the Looney Bin. It was fine. It was a dream. Just a nightmare – or daymare. Obviously I wasn't well or I wouldn't be fainting.

"Could I have a drink, please mum?"

"Of course baby. I'll be right back!"

She hustled out of the room and I heard cupboards opening and closing in the kitchen and the running of a tap. She returned moments later with a glass of juice, checking my temperature with her hand on my forehead as she put it down beside me. I smiled weakly, hoping she'd think I needed a bit of solitude to rest. She did and left, telling me to take it easy, sip not gulp, and shout if I needed her.

She didn't once look at the television or the fading dark blemish on the carpet.

I couldn't watch television after that. I couldn't sleep. Either undertaking seemed to open a trapdoor for my imagination to jump through, with no notion as to what it might land in.

I picked up my book, The Belgariad by David Eddings. Fantasy was my escape recently. I'd moved on from the likes of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov and their future worlds. I still delved, but my interest in science fiction (bookwise – I'd still devour the films) had morphed into my wandering with wizards and elves. I'd already travelled through the series of books once, and was on my second run through. I suddenly felt like the boy Garion, being pulled into a world he didn't recognise. I had no all-knowing Aunt Pol to guide me. My mother was my only companion, and she was oblivious to anything out of the ordinary and if I'd confided in her she'd only fret and fuss.

I heard the telephone ring.

"Hello?"

Pause.

"Seriously?"

Pause.

"When?"

Pause.

"How...?"

Longer pause.

"OK. Thank you. Goodbye."

The phone was returned to its cradle. My mother came into the living room and I expected her to ask how I was, even though she'd only just left. She didn't. She was staring at the floor. I asked if anything was wrong, but she couldn't have heard me.

"Baby," she said. Then she stopped. I could see tears in her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks, dragging smokey trails of mascara with them.

"Yes...?" Was it dad? Had he had an accident at work? Nanna? Had the cigarettes finally got to her like mum always said they would?

"It's... I mean..." She slumped into the chair by the television. I almost cried out telling her to move, to be careful, but held back. She wouldn't understand. Besides, there was clearly something wrong.

She wiped her eyes, smearing the makeup across her cheek, and took a deep breath.

"It's Ian. He's... He's..." she began to cry, short hiccups of breath with moans sandwiched between. She always cried like that, not that she did often. Dad told her she sounded like a walrus giving birth. I think he was about right.

"He's dead."

The only sound in the room was the roaring of blood in my ears. The television and my mother's sobs were suddenly muted and I could only hear the river of blood gushing around my head. The word spun in the current, occasionally being dragged under only to surface again darker, wetter... bloodier.

Dead.

No. She was joking. Ian was one of my best friends. He played football and was one of my year's fastest runners. Especially when the lunch bell went. He wasn't dead. Things like that didn't happen. Not to children. Not to my friends.

"What do you mean?" I asked. Of course I knew what dead meant. I didn't want to be told his spirit had drifted off to heaven or anything like that. I wanted to know what she meant. I must have misheard. Misunderstood. Miss anything. Everything. Nothing.

"Baby. Ian. He's dead. He's been... He's been killed."

A car accident? Run over?

"Killed?"

"He's been murdered, baby. Someone killed him. They... They cut his throat."

My hand went to my own throat. I didn't know if I expected to feel a gash or not, perhaps in sympathy to my friend.

"Who? Have they caught him? Who did it? Where?" I was leaning forward now, all thoughts of dissolving men and televisions banished by the images of Ian with blood pouring down his chest from the gaping wound in his neck.

"No. I don't know. I don't think so. It was... it was at school. In the showers. Someone killed him in the showers at school."

She hid her face in her hands. My own hands were in my lap, in fists I didn't realise I'd clenched. Something... Something... A memory? A dream?

"Who did it?" I asked, my voice struggling to escape my mouth whilst my breath was held.

"I don't know. He didn't say. He just said... that..." Her voice trailed off, fading like the life of my friend, draining like the blood from his body.

"He?" I wondered who had rung. Our teacher? Ian's dad, Neil? No, he'd be lost in the sorry of losing his son. It must be someone from the school.

"I don't know, baby. He didn't really say. I guess it was one of the teachers. He wanted you to know with you being friends or something." She took my hands in hers. I wondered if it was for my benefit or hers. "Are you OK? Can I get you something?"

She wiped tears from her face and took a deep breath. Then she smiled. The smile, damp from the trickle of tears and uneven from smearing her makeup, looked garish. It was a clown's smile. Too wide. Too bright. Almost menacing. I leaned back, retrieving my hands from her grasp.

"No," I said. "I'm fine."

I was, in a way. It was unreal. It hadn't really happened. Ian wasn't dead. How could he be? I'd only spoken to him a couple of days before. We walked to school together every day. It was a mistake. The man on the phone was joking. Messing. Having a laugh.

"Are you all right?" I asked her.

She seemed more upset than I'd ever seen her. My mother fawned over me, but otherwise was fairly sober about most things. She treated most things with a calm serenity which belied the babying of her son, me. If nothing else, though, she was my mother. I felt I had a responsibility to be supportive and protective and any other 'ives' which may feel relevant. I didn't want to leave any out. If the supposed death of my friend was affecting her so badly, I needed to rise to the occasion. She would do the same for me. Well, she would overdo the same, but that was her overactive maternal instinct.

"Bless you, baby," she said, the labour throws of the walrus fading to the odd contraction. "Here am I bawling like a bairn when I should be looking after you. What sort of mother am i?"

She was a good mum. She just went a little too far sometimes, particularly when it came to her son, yes, me. I told her so, after a fashion.

"You're a good mum, mum."

I stood and gave her a hug. She held me tight and then stepped back.

"Why don't you go have a lie down? I'll bring you that drink and a bite to eat."

The last thing I wanted was to lie down. If I did that, I'd only be thinking about Ian. I'd be imagining him with his head barely connected to his body apart from a sliver of skin at the back of his neck. I'd see the top of his spine where it was once attached to the base of his skull. Biology class wasn't my friend right at that moment. Whether my eyes were open or closed, my friend's glazed, lifeless eyes would be staring back at me. They'd be asking me why. They'd be asking me who. They'd be asking me questions no twelve year old should ask or be asked.

"OK," I said. Sometimes, there was no point in arguing with your mother. It was often just easier to agree than have an extended discussion which would result in the same thing. I didn't want to but she'd insist and I'd feel I'd have to so I would. So I did.

Mother came to my room a short while later, bringing me a glass of orange juice and a packet of crisps. Walkers Salt and Vinegar. My favourite. She thought it was a cure for all ills, the way she, Auntie Joyce and Nanna saw a cup of tea each Monday and Thursday when they gathered around our kitchen table to 'put the world to rights'.

I doubted diluted orange juice or a steaming cuppa would cure this ill. How did you cure death? A plaster over the gaping wound? Wash down the painkillers with some Robinsons Fruit and Barley Water? Inject a little PG Tips into the area to numb it?

No. Dr. Culshaw, who had been our doctor for as long as I could remember and looked old enough to have been my parents' when they were my age, would be well out of his depth here. Unless he had a deal with Death whereby he could maybe swap souls with the local stray cat or something, I was fairly sure Ian was beyond the help of someone who had possibly been the resident physician for Noah aboard his Ark.

Mum didn't say anything to me. She put my food and drink on my bedside table, stroked my forehead, managed a smile and left. I wasn't sure whether I was pleased or not. Her face was still streaked from tears, snot and makeup. It looked...

It looked sort of smudged.

Then Ian's face was. Ian's face became smeared. Ian's features dripped like my mother'smascara, mixing with the blood leaking from the gash in his neck. In my mind, my friend looked at me andsmiled. And became the man in my dreamand my television.