When we finally emerge back into daylight, I can tell Felix is still disappointed.
‘I’m sorry it was a dead end,’ I say, but he shakes his head.
‘That was just one stage in the quest. Quests always have multiple stages. Dave has your number now.’
‘I don’t know, it felt like a dead end to me.’
Felix shifts his weight between his feet, then looks up at me nervously. ‘Do you think he knew I thought his game was boring? I didn’t want to be rude. I was trying to pretend it was fun.’
‘Well, you did a good job then. You looked like you were having fun to me,’ I say, putting an arm around his shoulder.
It’s a sunny day and I don’t feel like getting back on the bus just yet, so I suggest we walk for a bit. Despite our mission’s failure, Felix is surprisingly buoyant and talkative. I am learning that Felix likes everything to have an opposite, and that he is very interested in knowing what might kill you if ingested. When we get to Vauxhall, I ask Felix if he would like to see where I used to live, and he says he would.
‘That was your flat?’ Felix asks as we sit down on a bench on the opposite side of the street.
‘Yup, third floor.’ I point up to my old window. ‘I lived up there with my best friend Zoya, and two others, Emily and Julian.’ I feel the tug of nostalgia, thinking about all the conversations had sitting up in that window seat; all the cheap wine drunk, the books read, and the dreams shared. Zoya once made Emily, Julian and me sit up there in the dark beside a propped-up torch, so she could draw silhouettes of our heads. ‘It was always messy and squashed. We never had loo roll, but we did have a lot of fun.’
‘Why didn’t you have loo roll?’ Felix asks.
‘Well, we didn’t have delivery drones back then,’ I explain.
‘Was Zoya your friend who died?’ Felix asks, scuffing his feet against the ground.
‘Yes,’ I say, my eyes still glued to the window ledge.
‘And she was your number one best friend?’
‘She was.’
Felix examines his hands, then says, ‘Matt Christensen asked if he could be my best friend. I said I’d have to think about it.’
‘I think at your age, it’s nice to be friends with everyone, keep your options open.’
‘I want a best friend, though.’ He kicks one foot with the other now. ‘I asked Molly Greenway to be my best friend. She said girls have to have girls and boys have to have boys.’
‘That’s not true. You can have whoever you like as your best friend.’
Felix goes quiet for a moment, as though contemplating this. ‘Did you choose Zoya, or did she choose you?’
I reach out to hold Felix’s hand. ‘I think we chose each other. We sat next to each other in French, we’d write notes to each other in our own made-up language.’
‘Made-up language?’ Felix asks, bemused.
‘Words that sounded funny to us. We were weird kids. I think that’s what a best friend is, someone you can show your inner weirdo to.’
‘I sit next to Molly in Coding Club,’ Felix tells me. ‘She’s way better at it than me. She’s funny too. She made this platform game called “Girls Win, Boys in the Bin”。 You have to put all the boys in the bin to win. And Mrs Harris wouldn’t grade it, she said it was sexist, so then Molly changed all the boys to little Mrs Harrises and called it “Kids Win, Teachers in the Bin”。’ Felix laughs and claps a hand against his thigh.
‘I like the sound of Molly.’
As we’re sitting on the bench, looking at my old flat across the street, the front door opens and Mr Finkley appears with a bag of recycling. Seeing me, he raises a hand in greeting, and I take Felix’s hand to cross the road.
‘Felix, this is Mr Finkley, he lived in the flat above me. Mr Finkley, this is my son.’ My son. Will I ever get used to saying that?
‘What brings you back here?’ Mr Finkley asks. ‘Still missing a few years, are you?’
‘Afraid so. We were just taking a little trip down memory lane.’
‘Would you like to come up for some ham?’ Mr Finkley asks.
I’m about to politely decline when Felix cries, ‘I love ham!’ and takes a step towards the front door.
‘I thought you were super fussy about food,’ I say, narrowing my eyes at him.
‘I’m not fussy about ham,’ he says, now standing ready and waiting by the front door.
‘I guess we’re coming up then. If you’re sure we wouldn’t be an inconvenience?’
‘No, no,’ says Mr Finkley. ‘I’m not getting my stamps out, though.’
Inside Mr Finkley’s apartment, Felix looks around at the foliage-filled room as though he’s just stepped into a secret subterranean world. ‘Wow, cool house. It’s like living in a jungle.’
Mr Finkley’s mouth twitches, pleased. ‘It was your mother here who got me into horticulture.’
Of all the things that seem unlikely about the years I’ve missed, one is that butter boards weren’t the short-lived Instagram fad everyone expected them to be, and two is that I, apparently, became a gardening guru.
‘Mummy’s good at plants,’ Felix says, puffing out his chest. ‘Would you like to see my logbook?’
‘Felix, I’m sure Mr Finkley doesn’t—’
‘I would be honoured to see your logbook.’
After clearing some space on the sofa for us to sit, then bringing out a plate of assorted hams, Mr Finkley settles down to inspect Felix’s book. He is an excellent audience, asking all the right questions, and even commenting on the thoroughness of the ‘incidents’ column and the excellent sketch Felix has drawn of Arcade Dave.
‘This is the best ham,’ Felix says, as they sit side by side poring over the logbook.
‘Smoked. Always smoked,’ says Mr Finkley.
‘Mummy, can you get smoked next time?’
I nod, making a mental note to ask my car to instruct a flying drone to bring smoked ham to my house, then marvel that this sentence seems entirely normal.
‘I could have used a young man like you on one of my boat trips,’ says Mr Finkley.
‘You had a boat?’ I ask, finding it hard to imagine him anywhere other than this apartment.
‘Used to. I led research expeditions, took divers and scientists out to the central Pacific. My wife was an oceanographer.’
‘You were deep-sea explorers?’ asks Felix, his mouth dropping open in awe.
‘Not me. I stayed on the boat, but yes, Astrid was.’ Mr Finkley nods and sits up a little straighter, his eyes creasing into a smile.
‘I didn’t know you were married,’ I say.
‘Many moons ago,’ Mr Finkley says, standing up and walking across to a wooden bureau that’s bursting with books and papers. He pulls out a small brass compass and a folder of old maps. Laying one out on a table, he shows Felix how to chart nautical miles using a compass and ruler. Felix is fascinated and full of questions. I end up leaving them to it, stepping out onto Mr Finkley’s balcony to catch up on messages and work emails.
There’s a message from the Bamph CEO’s PA asking if I would be willing to move my ‘F meeting’ from the executive suite. It appears I’ve bumped the quarterly shareholder meeting on the booking portal. Oops, I thought I was only putting that in my own diary. Hopefully no one will be able to crack my cunning fake meeting code.