Free The Shock of the Fall (Special edition) by Nathan Filer

1–7,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, and how is your sleep of late, and what of your appetite, and what exactly did happen that night on the cliff edge, in your own words, do you remember, can you remember, do you have any questions? That sort of thing.
    But it doesn’t matter how careful I am to think hard, and tell the truth, people don’t believe a word I say.
    Everything I do is decided for me. There is a plan. I’m not joking. I have a copy of it somewhere. We have meetings, me and some doctors and nurses and anyone else who feels like showing up to take the piss. We have meetings. They’re my meetings, so everybody talks about me.
    Afterwards I’m given a few sheets of paper, stapled together, with my plan written on them.
    It tells me exactly what I have to do with my days, like coming in for therapy groups here at Hope Road Day Centre, and what tablets I should take, and the injections, and who is responsible for what. This is all written down for me. Then there is another plan that comes into play if I don’t stick to the first one. It follows me around, like a shadow. This is my life. I’m nineteen years old, and the only thing I have any control over in my entire world is the way I choose to tell this story. So I’m hardly going to fuck about. It would be nice if you’d try to trust me.

the magnolia elephant
    In the right light, you can still make out the shadows of Pokémon characters beneath the paint.
    Simon’s bedroom became a guest room.
    It happened over one weekend. ‘We should have done this a long time ago,’ Dad said.
    He was on the stepladder pushing the paint roller. I was working in the corners with a small brush, and Mum was on the landing sorting out piles for Charity Shop and Throw Away. Dad placed the roller down. ‘What I mean is—’
    ‘I know what you mean, Dad.’
    He was right too. If we’d done it straight away it would have absorbed into the bigger sadness, part of the goodbye. But to hesitate – to wait – it’s impossible to know how long to wait. Is a year enough? That becomes two, then three – until half a decade has slipped away, and the elephant in the room is the room itself.
    As it happens, I was the one who made the suggestion. This was the Saturday before my granddad was due his second knee operation. With knees they tend to do them one at a time. He’d had the first six months earlier and it had gone okay, but it was hard on Nanny Noo. He was in a wheelchair, then on crutches, and she had to do a lot of lifting and moving him about. Mum and Dad were talking about this over breakfast, about how stubborn she can be, and how much persuading it had taken for her to agree he could stay with us next time. They started laughing about how relieved Granddad had looked when she finally relented. Then I suddenly came out with it, ‘Do you think we should redecorate the bedroom for him?’
    We shoved heaped spoonfuls of cornflakes into our mouths, and nobody said anything for a bit. We just chewed it over. Mum was the first to swallow. She said, ‘Let’s do it today.’
    In my memory milk squirts out of Dad’s nose. But probably it didn’t. Memory plays tricks over time. He was shocked though. ‘Really, love? I’m sure your dad won’t mind if—’
    ‘Let’s make it nice for him, okay?’
    It’s like pulling off a plaster.
    No.
    It’s not like that. It’s a far bigger deal. It’s only like pulling off a plaster in that once we decided to do it, we did it quickly. I’m not giving lessons in how to grieve. I’m only saying what we did. Dad took measurements of the room with his tape measure, and by early afternoon we were traipsing around B&Q, Allied Carpets, and IKEA.
    ‘Can you bring through more newspaper?’ Dad called from the top of the ladder. Mum didn’t answer.
    ‘Are you okay, Mum?’ She didn’t answer me either.
    She’d been doing well. In B&Q she’d outright flirted with an assistant for a discount on the rollers, even though they