A graduate of the UEA Prose Fiction MA, Ned Carter Miles is a writer and radio producer originally from Dorset, UK. His debut novel-in-progress, For Sugar, was shortlisted for the 2022 First Pages Prize.
A ring of yellow salts marked the upstairs bathroom’s off-white tile, and at its center was a fresh golden puddle. Paul had started sitting down lately to piss—she didn’t know why—and that left only Noah. She dabbed the liquid with a wad of paper, rolling it to a hard little pill between her thumb and finger. Held to her nose it was cloying and ammoniac. She should make sure Noah drank more water. The pill went into the toilet, where it opened in the bowl like a de-cocooning moth, and she rubbed at the yellow ring with her big toe, then stopped. She was so tired. And there was something appealing about the trace.
‘Sweetheart,’ she said when she came downstairs. ‘Please try to aim for the bowl when you pee.’
Noah barely looked up from the counter where Paul was sprinkling chia seeds over his grain bowl. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘It’s already dirty. You never cleaned it last time.’
She suppressed annoyance. He was quick-witted and his logic sound. She should be proud, but it could be difficult. Paul struggled with that, too; they’d agreed never to step on Noah’s intelligence, but he complained sometimes at night. Now he whistled softly while pouring milk over her bran flakes, before Noah asked him to stop. She envied his stoicism.
. . .
That evening he finished on her stomach. Paul had got the snip when Noah was born and his semen was dilute, more briny than pearlescent. It tickled her hip as it slid to the sheets.
‘You came?’ he asked.
She had. A tepid mute tremor. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘I love your belly.’ He dragged his thumb up from her pubis, the skin bunching like balloon rubber. When had it begun to thin that way?
‘Shit!’ she said.
Paul pushed himself up from her. A questioning look.
‘The championships. I’ve not done consent forms.’
‘Oh fuck.’ He climbed fully off her.
‘I’ll do it now. Could you get some tissue?’
He went through to the bathroom, his cum cooling unpleasantly in the open air. She’d liked it there once, liked it anywhere. Before him—long before Noah—she’d gone to clubs with lovers who fucked her so adamantly in dark corners she felt like a fold in space, bringing the peripheries of desire and its fulfillment together. Like a painless visual migraine. There was something wholesome in that reduction to surfacehood. It removed any means to be cruel.
Paul was different. Just now he’d slipped out and twitched in her arms, his need demanding her presence, like a baby’s. His finishing on her skin was like asking her to carry on some part of him after he’d spasmed into small death. For a while she’d liked that, too, liked seeing what she did to him made real. Only now it wasn’t real, not really. Just vacant fluid, cooling. It had been a while since they’d had sex. Parenthood did that. But this evening he’d seemed calmer than usual, even zen, and after she’d put Noah to bed, he’d left his laptop at once and kissed her.
He came back from the bathroom with his hand wrapped in toilet roll.
‘Tissue,’ she said.
‘Is it not the same thing?’
‘That’s toilet roll, Paul. You wipe your arse with it.’ She heard her own sharpness, saw his dejection.
‘I think there’s a box in Noah’s room,’ he said.
‘It’s late.’
‘I’ll be quiet.’ He put on his dressing gown.
‘Don’t, he needs to—’
But he was already gone.
She lay very still to protect the sheets, was tired but sleepless. Paul’s sudden new calm had irritated her, made her snippy and principled when she’d wanted to be blank.
Her phone started vibrating, lighting up a square in the pocket lining of her floor-strewn jeans. Awkwardly, she stretched her arm off the bed while keeping her stomach level. A cold drop found its way into her navel. A withheld number.
‘Hello?’
She listened. The line was quiet, mute as underwater.
Again, ‘Hello?’
It clicked off. There’d been a similar call a few days before, but she wasn’t unnerved then either. She’d had this same soothing feeling of inconsequence. The caller’s indifference made her totally benign, and she lay basking until Paul’s cum started tightening on her abdomen, pulling at downy hairs. She sighed and got up, hunching into her dressing gown so the front wouldn’t stick.
. . .
Noah’s door was open, and the blue light of his expensive desktop computer seeped out into the corridor. She readied a look for Paul, felt indignation acrid and compelling in her mouth, like burned sumac. But when she came into the room he was perched on the edge of the bed, and Noah was sat up, his face puffy and his wet irises half-haloed from the screen in the corner. She felt her ire soften and retreat.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, and Noah started to cry.
‘He’s alright,’ Paul said, rubbing his back. ‘He’s just had a nasty email.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Someone from school.’ Noah sniffed at his computer.
Helen bent over the screen and read.
Your a little cunt.
Not as clever as you think u are. And we’re
going to cut you up.
–K
The sender’s address was mostly numbers: 48sy6u7d23@yahoo.com
‘Who’s K?’ She sat on the other side of Noah and put her arm around him.
He shook his head.
‘No one’s name starts with a K at school?’
Paul mouthed a ‘no,’ and she nodded at him to leave them, taking Noah up in her arms. ‘It’s okay, kiddo. I’ll come with you in the morning and have a word with Mr. Triesman. Nothing’s going to happen, alright?’
‘Alright.’
‘Are you going to be able to sleep?’
He rubbed his eyes and nodded.
‘Good boy.’ She kissed him on the head and tucked him back in. It was almost powerful, this giving of care.
When she was at the door he called out, ‘How am I meant to sleep with the computer on?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She bent over his desk and shut it down, waited for its low buzzing to cease. ‘Good night, Sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Love you.’ But Noah made no sound, and she pulled the door harder than she’d meant to. Only the carpet stopped it from slamming.
. . .
‘Who do you think it is?’ she asked Paul when they were back in their room.
‘No idea.’ He’d know as well as she did. He knew everything about Noah’s school—who his friends were, his class schedule, the daily lunch menu—all of it. They both did. ‘It’s not really a big deal though, is it?’ he said.
‘What’s the matter with you? It’s fucked up.’
‘I’m just saying it’s not like they’re actually going to “cut him up.” I mean yes, it’s bad, but worse things have happened. It’s not like I didn’t get worse at school.’
Paul’s school had been like hers. She’d seen freakishly large children throw chairs at teachers. Boys who’d been expelled showed up often on the playing field with freshly shaved heads and flashed knives at former classmates.
‘We don’t pay the fees for the same thing we had,’ she said.
‘I know, but it’s just kids messing around.’
This new equanimity disturbed her. He’d always put just as much into Noah as she did, took him to his competitions, helped him with schoolwork, driven him wherever he wanted to go. The boy was everything for both of them.
She untied her robe. It had stuck a little to her stomach. ‘So, did you get the tissues?’
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine.’ She drew her hand across her abdomen. What was left of his semen fell in flakes onto the carpet, and she longed for the dampened quiet of snow, for long sleep. ‘I still have to do the consent forms,’ she said, resolving to be better.
. . .
When she woke the next morning Paul was already at his laptop setting up a new email address for Noah.
‘I’ve printed out your forms there.’ He pointed at some papers when she brought him coffee. ‘And I’m setting up some parental controls.’ He seemed on edge, more like himself. It was a comfort.
Noah had Latin Club after school, then Debating. If she went to see someone about the email at the end of teaching hours, she’d be detained in one of the school’s child-sized plastic chairs until six, so she called her office to say she’d be late, swiping away a missed call from an unknown number as she did.
In the car she paid careful attention to Noah. Were his knees pointed shyly together? His thin arms crossed defensively? She knew the road well enough that she could watch him at her periphery. He was being very still.
‘Are you looking forward to today?’ she asked. ‘Drama this afternoon, right?’
He didn’t say anything. He was staring out of the window.
‘Hey.’ She reached over to his knee—a garlic bulb in her palm—and kept one hand on the wheel. ‘How are you doing?’
‘What’s for dinner tonight?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t thought about it yet. We could have your favorite.’
‘No.’
‘Not cheesy pasta?’
‘That’s poor person food.’
She took her hand from his knee and put it back on the wheel.
‘Where did you get that from?’
‘Jez said so.’
‘And what does Jeremy eat for dinner? Salmon en Croûte?’ She smiled, but Noah only shrugged.
It wasn’t so long since he’d told her excitedly all the things he was learning from school and his books, about angler fish males biting into the bellies of females, latching on until their bodies fused skin, nerves, and capillaries.
She focused on the road and smiled wider, practicing a chauffeur’s detached charm. In a sense, self-abasement was cathartic, elevating. She pictured the serenity of Christian martyrs as the old lime statuary of the Winthrop College chapel came into view.
. . .
The school was old stone and dark wood, except the new buildings. They were mostly glass and named for wealthy alumni. Her own school had been pebbledash, uneven linoleum, arranged in prefixed blocks: A-Block. B-Block. C-. Like a prison. She didn’t know of anyone else who’d gone there and escaped the town. Leaving had been hard work and constant, like climbing sheer cliffs without ropes or nets. Resting meant a fall, and it all left her so tired she could see the appeal in oblivion. The only way onward was to stay very still, jettison as much as she could, and attach herself to something with the will to keep going. Like Noah.
Dr. Triesman sat behind a bureau topped with the same green leather as his chair.
‘As you know Mrs. Cardwell—’
‘Ms., please.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘—Ms. Cardwell, Winthrop has a strict anti-bullying policy. There are, of course, traditions some newer parents take issue with, but we see them more as bonding experiences for our boys. That said, the digital age admittedly poses fresh challenges. We’ll be sure to root this out.’
‘How?’
Triesman’s face tightened. ‘Well, we’ll hold an assembly and tell the boys what for.’
‘And that’ll work?’
‘Mrs. Cardwell, I don’t need to tell you the premium we put on discipline here. If we talk to the boys, they’ll listen.’
‘It’s just autumn term’s going to be busy for Noah and it’d be awful if he was distracted.’
‘Michaelmas.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘At Winthrop we call it the Michaelmas term, after Oxford.’
‘Yes. Michaelmas. Sorry.’
‘It’s good that we habituate the boys to correct speech early. After all, a boy like Noah will almost certainly be going up. This National Prodigy business is all very impressive. A tad American, putting the children on a stage, but sure to impress.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, though she wasn’t sure why.
‘You have a talented boy, Mrs. Cardwell.’ He stood up, and she felt compelled to do the same. ‘We’ll make sure he makes the best of his time here.’
She thanked him again and left.
On her way out, a small boy from one of the lower years ran towards her with his jacket and cap, books under his arm. He wasn’t looking where he was going but at the ground ahead, and when he was a few yards away she realized they’d collide. She kept walking. When he hit her, he fell backwards. His books splayed out over the stones. Neither of them spoke. He stared up at her, and without changing her expression she went on.
. . .
Sunday, there was a second email.
Helen and Paul both took the afternoon to help Noah practice for the championships. She sat opposite him at the kitchen table with a book of questions open while Paul prepared his lunch. Oily fish. Brain food.
These days of practice could be long, and she endured them by indulging her torpor. She’d let her eyes lose focus as on the magic eye pictures Noah liked when he was little. She never had seen the flower in the fog of patterned colors.
Sometimes she’d try to solve the problems with him. The one before them now was in spatial maths, and on the page were various impossible objects, constructions of numbered blocks that connected obliquely like Penrose stairs. Noah was deep in concentration. He held his hand over his mouth like an old man playing chess. Paul had stopped gutting mackerel and was standing behind him.
‘Got it.’ Noah looked up. ‘Check the answer.’
‘Hold on a second,’ she said.
‘Check it. We don’t have time to mess around.’
Her brain and the problem were like two gears that wouldn’t catch. ‘I just want to figure it out first.’
‘We’re not doing this for you.’
Her face grew a little hot. She thought of her abasement before Triesman, Michaelmas. But it was Noah’s confidence that would carry him. Lack of it was why she herself had stalled. She looked to Paul for some change or word on her behalf, but he didn’t move. In any case Noah was right, they weren’t there for her, and she turned to the back page to check the answer.
‘What did you have?’ she asked.
‘B.’
‘Very good. Well done!’
‘Could you not do it?’
‘I found it a little hard to visualize.’
‘Makes sense,’ Noah said.
She let her eyes fall out of focus, tried to see the flower in the fog, or be lost in it herself.
‘Lunch’ll be ten minutes,’ Paul said, and he left the room.
. . .
After eating, Noah was allowed on his computer for half an hour before they went back to study. She sat at the kitchen table in front of the problem, staring until the blocks seemed to merge and lose all meaning on the page. She was slipping into an almost pleasant nothingness when Noah appeared at the bottom of the stairs, his cheeks red.
‘What is it?’ She jumped to attention.
‘There was another one.’
‘Another what?’
He came to her, crying now, and she pushed her chair from the table so he could stand between her legs and be held. He was so needy and gentle. She’d have to make him strong, eventually, if he was to succeed as she needed him to. But for now this was good.
‘Was it another email?’ she asked, and he nodded his wet cheek into her neck. ‘Show me.’
Kill yourself.
–K
She stood between Noah and the screen, reading the two words over and over. They had a cutting elegance, a sharp integrity. She was disturbed, of course, but also energized. Even excited. Noah’s distress and her tending it were inseparable.
Paul came into the room and asked what was happening.
‘Another email,’ she said.
‘But how did they get the address?’
They hadn’t shared it with anyone yet, and planned caution for when they did.
She kneeled in front of Noah, taking his damp cheeks in her palms.
‘Kiddo, we need to know. Did you share your new email with anyone?’
He shook his head.
‘Noah,’ Paul said behind them. His voice calm again, but firm.
‘Just a couple of boys from school,’ Noah whimpered. ‘They’re my friends.’
She looked into his eyes. Her hands on his face were pulling at his eyelids. He was still so small.
‘You’re hurting me,’ he said.
‘Oh.’ She let him go. ‘I’m sorry.’
But she felt alive and vivid, and then unexpectedly serene. That night she and Paul made love, and she came in great grinding jerks on top of him, like an awakening engine.
. . .
The next morning she called the school and asked to speak to Triesman. The front desk told her he was busy and she said she didn’t care, to put her through immediately.
‘I really don’t see what more we can do,’ Triesman said when she’d explained the second email, his voice smug.
‘Bring in the boys and interrogate them if you have to,’ she said, ‘bring in a spotlight and play the fucking Stasi. I don’t care, just sort it.’
‘Mrs. C—’
But she’d already hung up, her heart thumping under her ribs, her voice and demand still solid and shapen in her ears. Firm and delicious, like power.
. . .
In the afternoon she had another call from the withheld number, the same pressurized muteness. But this time the caller’s silence did nothing, gave her no feeling of inconsequence. She said hello twice, clicked her tongue, and hung up before they did. She was so immune to it that when Triesman called back from the school’s own withheld number an hour later, she nearly didn’t pick up.
‘Ms. Cardwell?’’ he asked, and for several seconds she let him wait.
‘Yes?’
‘We’ve spoken with a number of the boys, and we’ve found the culprit, Jeremy Storr-Lomax. I believe a friend of Noah’s?’
‘Clearly a very good one.’
‘Well, quite.’ Triesman sounded nervous. ‘We’ve contacted Jeremy’s parents, and they’ve assured me they’ll take measures to prevent any further incidents. No more internet I should imagine.’
‘Okay, very good,’ she said. But that delicious solid feeling was fading.
‘There is an additional consideration.’
‘Yes?’
‘Perhaps it’s best that Noah isn’t told about this, nor any of the other parents. I’m sure it’s a mere lapse of judgement on Jeremy’s part, and if allowed to blow over without any further escalation, I expect the two of them will be good friends again in no time. Quibbles like this are common among boys their age.’
She stayed silent.
‘We all want what’s best for Noah, after all?’
‘Yes. We all want what’s best for Noah.’
‘Excellent. So, you won’t tell him?’
She’d begun to feel very tired again, so that all she wanted was to hang up and go back to bed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t tell him.’
. . .
That night she told Noah about Jeremy.
The tiredness she’d felt talking to Triesman had lasted the rest of the day. By the time she realized it was her turn to make Noah’s dinner, she could barely pick up a pan.
‘Not this,’ Noah said when she placed a bowl of pasta shells and grated cheese in front of him.
‘It’s good.’
‘I’ve said before I don’t want it.’ He looked her in the eyes, his small lips tight.
‘Okay, I’ll make something else.’ She sat down across from him and laced her fingers on the table. ‘But first, kiddo, there’s something I need to talk to you about.’
‘Can’t it wait? I’m hungry now.’
‘It’s important, and I thought you’d want to know. They found out who’s been sending you emails.’
Noah’s eyes got wide. ‘Who?’
‘Your friend Jeremy.’
For a little while he looked silently down at his wrists.
‘I don’t know why he’d do that,’ he said, and she felt her heart opening to him.
‘Sometimes people just do things. It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘But he’s my friend.’
She reached across and took his small hands in hers. ‘Noah, you need to understand that you’re not like other children. Me and your dad have put a lot of ourselves into you, and that makes you very special. But the trouble with being special is people aren’t always going to understand you, or even like you. They’re going to be jealous.’ She watched as his eyes refocused on her. ‘What you need to remember, though, is that I know how special you are, and you’re never going to lose that. Okay?’
He hesitated a moment, then nodded.
‘Good boy,’ she said. ‘Because one day I’m going to be gone, but you’re going to be doing wonderful things.’
His eyes shone, and she came round the table to take him up in her arms. He was limp, and she squeezed until he squeezed back. Then she could let herself go.
The hug lasted maybe minutes, and in them she felt herself fade. But underneath was a rising guilt. It was already tugging her back to her senses when the phone rang, and she let go of Noah to answer.
‘Hello?’
That same underwater silence.
‘Who is this?’
She waited, aware of Noah watching her, and suddenly the line came clear, like it had bobbed to the surface of an ocean.
‘Is this 07763489652?’ A man’s voice.
‘651,’ she said.
‘Oh, Sorry. I’ve been dialing wrong.’ She heard him shuffle the receiver.
‘Wait.’
He breathed down the line. She glanced at Noah, then took the phone to the other room.
‘Tell me I’m nothing,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Tell me I’m nothing.’
‘Is this like a sex game or something?’ There was a smile in his voice, vaguely humiliating.
‘Please.’
The line was hushed a moment, and then he said it: ‘You’re nothing.’
She stilled in cold relief.
‘Now tell me you’ll take me to the end of the earth.’
He was noiseless. She waited for him. And then he clicked off.
She stood with her mouth hanging open and the phone held limply below her chin, unmoving even to swallow until a viscous drop detached from her lip, sliding down the sleek black surface of the extinguished screen.
. . .
The championships were on Saturday. She woke at dawn and lay perfectly still, watching early light refract on the ceiling as it brightened through the gap in their heavy curtains, splaying itself slowly from left to right. Paul got up. She heard the coffee grinder downstairs, smelled bacon.
‘We’re going in a couple of hours,’ he said when he came back. ‘Are you getting up?’
She wondered if she could stay there—mute and benign—until that crystal bloom on the ceiling had moved its full course and faded. Then Noah came in.
‘You’re not coming?’ he said.
She didn’t reply, and he climbed onto the bed. ‘You’re being a bad mother.’
Paul stood in the doorway, watching.
‘You’re meant to come with me,’ Noah said.
‘I’m tired, baby.’ She rolled onto her side.
‘But Jez isn’t even coming now. Who’s going to watch me?’
‘Your dad’ll watch you.’
Noah made a hissing off the tip of his tongue. She heard movement behind him and turned to look over her shoulder, but Paul was gone.
‘I hate you,’ Noah whispered, and as he left the room a cloud passed outside. The refraction through the still-shut curtains dulled to nought.
. . .
Time grew thick around her as she lay warm and guiltless in the bed. An hour flattened like a paste over the surface of everything before Paul came back to tell her they were leaving. His movements were slow and controlled, his voice to her vaguely fatherly: ‘Noah’s got another email.’
‘What?’ She stirred, disagreeably aware of her limbs.
‘He just found it. He’s upset.’
She sat up. ‘Show me.’
Noah was sitting in his room, staring at the computer.
‘I told you not to look at that anymore,’ Paul said, and he stepped back to make way for her. She leaned down to read, her eyes like greased lenses:
You’re going to fuck it up today.
2 Salisbury Villas. That’s your address
See you later.
–K
She tried to resist the sharpening of perspective, hold on a little a longer to the genial static.
‘Does this mean it wasn’t Jeremy?’ Noah asked.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘I don’t want to go anymore.’
An instinct in her sensed occasion. A relief and a burning, like when Noah had first taken to her breast. It was a bad latch and he fed so much. She kneeled down to him.
‘You have to go.’
‘But I can’t.’
‘Noah.’ She spoke his name like a blunt object, wrapping the back of his neck in her hand. ‘You are more than any of us. You’ll be the thing that lets us rest. Mummy needs so badly to rest.’ She pulled his face into her chest. His arms stayed down by his sides, raising slowly, slowly to her waist. ‘Will you go?’
He nodded into her. The deep unspeakable comfort of her kin at her breast made it hard to let go. That she might stay here, phasing into her instincts and holding him helpless. She’d perish spiderlike, be eaten alive to nourish him. He’d absorb her gratefully and they’d be one and the same.
But it couldn’t be that way. He’d grown a will. He was different to her now. It wasn’t enough to rest benignant as he fed. The more apart he became the more her own will sharpened. And it was vicious.
‘Go on now,’ she said.
‘Are you really not coming?’
‘It’s better if I don’t.’
She watched his upset as he pulled away. She’d hurt him even in her nothingness, but if she stayed with him, she knew, she’d hurt him as badly. She’d will him to weakness because, despite her best efforts, his weakness made her real.
. . .
When Paul and Noah were gone there came an empty kind of solace. She ran a bath from just the hot tap with no creams or salts, and as the tub filled she went through the house drawing all the curtains shut. She’d scald herself clean and sleep until she disappeared.
In the living room, though, she stumbled. With the curtains closed she tripped the lead to Paul’s laptop, and as the magnetic head pulled from its socket the screen blinked awake over the glass coffee table, bathing the room in frigid light.
She wanted darkness in the house, a stillness debarring thought. Even the machine’s dull intellect was an excess, and she moved to shut it down for a pure dark surface.
It wasn’t hard to guess Paul’s password. She typed her name and the screen brightened severely.
An email client. Three sent messages.
She clicked through, read the second of them. Its cutting elegance, sharp integrity. She should have been disgusted.
The filling tub upstairs changed the timbre of its gushing, was overfull. Her heart chugged at her veins like a drowning man. Her mouth tasted of copper.
She should have been disgusted, but as she opened a new message and began to type—Little Fucker—she was grateful.
A tranquillity rose as she grew vivid to herself, and the bath upstairs flowed over.
She signed off the finished email—K—and shut down the machine. Its glass was a surface between her and herself, and she made a featureless reflection in the near dark.
. . .
‘He won!’ Paul called as he and Noah came through the door, turning on the lights.
‘Of course he did!’ Helen said to Noah, her voice a song.
‘Of course I did,’ he replied. ‘No thanks to you.’
‘I’m so proud of you.’ She smiled easily. ‘I think you deserve an evening off. Why don’t you go and play on your computer?’
Noah looked nervously between her and Paul.
‘Go on,’ she said.
He left them, and she turned to Paul. ‘Has he eaten?’
He nodded, and silently she took his hand, leading him upstairs.
. . .
‘Do it again,’ she said when he was hardest inside her.
‘Do what?’
‘Come on me.’
He shuddered and slid from her instantly. She held his hair in a tight fist, pulling to expose his convulsing throat as thinning semen fell on her stomach and chest.
When the shuddering stopped, she pulled him to her. His cum was like some slick conductive medium between their two bellies. Still gripping his hair, she slid him down, guiding his face to her breast. For years no milk had swelled it, but still relief came as she pressed Paul’s latching mouth to her nipple, and he cleaned her.
Minutes passed, and amid the noises of suckling, a small knocking started at the door. She ignored it until there was a thump outside, and a faint sobbing. Smiling, she pushed Paul away and pulled on her gown.
In the hallway was Noah, head on his knees. He looked up to her, eyes red and puffy. He was so small and full of potential, like a perfect shiny acorn. She picked him up and held him, and she was overcome with perfect love.
