“Mum, can I go outside? Mum…Mum, can I?”

She doesn’t respond. She’s at the kitchen sink, her head is bowed low, a hardened look on her face as she scrubs vigorously, stopping only momentarily to wipe the sweat that is annoyingly trickling down her brow. She must get every stubborn burnt mark off the saucepan.

With a quick, discreet backward glance, the boy reaches for his football by the back door and heads outside.

He passes the time kicking the ball against the gable wall of the house. It’s the only side that doesn’t have windows that he is likely to break. He aims for the same spot each time, moving sharply, practicing his catching skills too. He expects his mother to come around the corner at any moment, hollering at him to go up to the field for a kick around, that the ball is leaving prints on the wall, but she doesn’t come.

He takes his football and heads up to the back field. He loves being outside and spending time with his dad. For his 10th birthday his father has promised him that he’ll mow the corner field and line it out to make it into a proper football pitch.

They’ve already bought two decent goal nets. He runs to find his father to tell him about his idea of making some flags to line the pitch too. Maybe his sister Emma could help. He finds him stooped over at his allotment.

 “Dad, when are you gonna start on the pitch? Dad? My birthday is in exactly 1 month and 6 days you know! Dad?”

His father is digging into the earth, pulling up potatoes that are mouldy and soggy.

“Dad?”

“They’re bloody rotten, the lot of them”.

He flings them into the bucket he has by his side.

“Something’s after killing them.”

He doesn’t look up.

“And all that time I wasted planting and weeding, for what? What’s the point.” His father’s voice quivers, and he stops picking the rotten potatoes, to rest his hands on his hunkered knees. His face is turned towards the ground, and he sniffles loudly. The boy decides to leave his father as he is.

When he gets back to his house, his mother is on her knees in the kitchen with her head in the oven. There’s white foam everywhere as she elbows through the grease. The dinner is bubbling away on the hob on the verge of spilling over, but he doesn’t disturb her and instead slips past her down to hall to Emma’s room.

“Dad said you have to make some flags for my football pitch”, the boy lies. “Emma?” 

She is sitting cross-legged on her bed. She takes out her earphones and gets up, walking past him to his bedroom. She pauses for a split-second before opening his bedroom door. Inside on the left, there is a bookshelf that she takes a reference book from, and as she does so, a photo falls to the ground. The boy leans in as Emma lifts it up. It’s a photo of Emma and the boy on the day they met Ronaldo at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. It’s one of about 20 photos their mum took of them that day, and she didn’t frame this one because the boy’s eyes were squeezed closed with sheer excitement and Emma wasn’t even facing the camera, gazing at Ronaldo instead.

Emma kisses the photo, pulls it close to her chest and walks past him back to her own room. The boy rolls his eyes. It’s times like that he wishes he had a brother, someone who he could play football. Sisters are just boring.

He hangs out in his bedroom until their mother calls them for dinner. He bolts to the dinner table, to his usual spot beside his dad and across from Emma.

 “I’m starving Mum, what’s for dinner? Please say it’s burritos tonight.”

Just as they are all sitting, his mother stops short, throwing her hands up to her forehead in complete despair.

“You’ve done it again Paul.”

When she takes her hands away from her face, her eyes have filled with tears.

“When are you going to realise?”

His dad looks around the table to the place he has set for the boy. His football themed place mat and cutlery waiting ready to be used.

“What’s wrong Dad?” the boy queries.

He doesn’t answer him but instead looks to the place where the boy should be.

“He’s gone Paul. He’s not coming back. It’s only the three of us now. Get that into your head.”

His mother throws her chair back and runs from the table crying uncontrollably.

The boy’s head begins to spin and whirl. Different images of his life pass by in quick succession, like a film reel that has been ripped from its rung. Snippets of conversations and spoken words to the boy, about the boy, ring in his ears. A myriad of feelings compressed into one until the final image comes to the fore. An image of the boy as he lies on his bedroom floor, still in his Barcelona PJs as the paramedics desperately perform CPR. It’s pointless. The boy left the world at 3:15 am in his sleep. Suddenly. And unexplained.

“I’m sorry Emma. I just…I can’t…I….”, his father desperately reaches for words that fail him.

“I’ll have my dinner later Dad. I’m not hungry right now”. Emma leaves the kitchen table.

The boy knows what he must do. He expends the warmth of his energy field, to his bedroom where his mother has wrapped herself in his favourite duvet. He reaches for Emma who lies with her head buried in her tear-soaked pillow. He extends with all his love, to his father who is still staring at the empty chair. Daniel’s chair.