Free Runaway by Peter May

websites you visit when they’re both asleep.’
    Ricky blushed to the roots of his hair. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    Jack shook his head. ‘Look, son, I might be old, but I’m not daft. I was working with computers before you were born. And you don’t spend nearly two years sharing the same house with someone without knowing the kind of websites they frequent. You were careful enough around your folks. But I was just some stupid old man. Invisible. What would I know?’ Jack let that sink in. ‘All those videos of naked women with . . . well, how can I put it delicately? A little something extra?’
    If it was possible, Ricky’s colour deepened. ‘I was just surfing, that’s all!’ he said, but his voice was trembling with embarrassment and uncertainty, and he added lamely, ‘I was curious.’
    Jack spread his hands in front of him, and made a face of resignation. ‘I know that, Rick. Young men . . . well, they have to explore a little before they know what it is that suits them. And I’m not saying that’s what suits you. In fact, I’m not here to judge you at all. All I’m saying is, I’m not sure your dad would be so understanding.’ He waited a beat before turning the knife. ‘Or your mother.’
    Ricky closed his eyes. ‘I’m not! I mean . . . I’m not like that.’
    ‘Of course you’re not.’
    Jack almost felt sorry for him. The boy was clinically obese. He never set foot over the door, except for his Friday afternoon visits to his grampa. When was he ever going to get a girl who wasn’t made of pixels, whether she had something extra or not? He saw the slump of his grandson’s shoulders.
    ‘When?’
    ‘Tonight.’
    Ricky took a deep breath. ‘We’re not telling my dad. Or my mum. Alright? They’d only stop me from doing it. We’ll just go.’
    Jack nodded. ‘We can leave them a note on your pillow, son. And don’t worry about it, they’ll blame me. Everyone always does.’
    II
     
    When he got back from the medical supplies store in Shawlands, Jack put a holdall on his bed and began filling it with enough socks and underwear to last him a week. He figured a couple of days to get there, a couple of days to get back, and three days in London to do whatever it was Maurie had to do.
    And yet he couldn’t shake off the feeling that somehow he was packing for the last time, and that it didn’t really matter what he put in the holdall, he was never going to need it. All in stark contrast to the thoughtless optimism with which he had packed his bag fifty years ago, almost to the day. Then, the future had stretched ahead into unforeseeable distance, full of optimism and possibility. The notion of running out of socks had never even occurred to him.
    When he had finished, he dropped his bag by the front door and wandered back into the living room. The school across the way was closed up for the day, its pupils long since gone home. When he had first moved into the flats the sound of children playing during breaks in their classes had seemed like music. But the siren call of youth had served, in the end, only to reinforce how far behind him his own childhood lay, and how close he was to the rocks of old age on which he would inevitably founder and die.
    He picked up the photograph of Jenny and remembered how they had said goodbye that night. And here he was, all these years later, embarking on the same fruitless journey. One that could only, he suspected, end badly. And he recalled the words of his old history teacher. The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history .
    He stood the photo frame back on the bookcase and gazed out through the trees across the lawns beyond. He remembered, the day he had moved in, thinking, ‘This is the view I’ll take with me to my grave.’ That this was what it had all narrowed down to. Four walls and a landscape. And he had found himself infused, then and now, with an almost overwhelming sense of regret