Songs For Your Mother

to relax. A smile crosses my lips, and then the buzzer goes again. Rachel, who is lying next to me, stirs and rolls over so that her face is on my chest. I brush her long dark hair back behind her ears.
‘Please make some tea,’ she says.
‘I can make tea,’ I say. ‘I was thinking, though, that we could do something today, you know, like go for breakfast together?’
Rachel lifts her head, rests her palm under her chin, arches her eyebrows and looks at me searchingly. While at face value my words might not sound strange, in the realm of our non-relationship it’s altogether out of the ordinary. We are, and I hate the term, friends with benefits. Although if you asked Rachel, she would deny we were friends at all. She would shrug and describe me to others, possibly entirely dismissively, as ‘this guy I know, no one really’ before turning her attention back to scrolling her Instagram feed. So maybe we’re people who know each other with benefits. Admittedly not as catchy and unlikely to find itself attached to the title page of a Hollywood rom-com.
‘You thought we could do something? You know we don’t do that, and if we did, we’d be over faster than I could quote Groucho Marx on clubs and their membership rules. By week three I’d be giving the “it’s not you it’s me” speech. It would ruin what we have and only serve to shine a light on the fact that this thing isn’t going to last,’ she says.
Rachel and I haven’t done anything more than a couple of visits to the pub since we met at a party of a friend of a friend where some of her art was on show a few months ago. She’s a painter, and she specialises in large works of dystopian modern life.
Unbelievably the buzzer goes again. It must be the best electricity/gas/religion offer ever. Rachel looks at me and arches her eyebrow.
‘I’m no expert but I would say that there’s definitely someone at the door. You should answer it and make it stop. It can be your achievement for the day. We have to take the victories where we can get them, small as they might be. Today yours can be answering the door, and then maybe we can talk about going for breakfast if you think that would make you happy,’ Rachel says.
‘You know, I think it would,’ I say, and I find myself grinning at her acquiescence. I swing my legs out of bed, and I pull on my shorts and t-shirt. I grab some jeans from the chair leaning against the wall, and I head out of my bedroom into the sitting room where the door to the first-floor flat leads down the turning staircase to the hallway of the Victorian house. I squeeze past the bicycles and open the front door, where I’m greeted by the strangest sight. There’s a small dark-haired boy standing there. He is clutching a toy to his chest. Around him are bags. It’s the oddest thing. It’s like he’s a human parcel and has been delivered to my front door. I scratch my head.
‘Are you lost?’
‘My name is Luke,’ he says.
His name is Luke. Seriously how often is that ever going to happen? I can’t resist. I am such an idiot.
‘Luke, I am your father,’ I intone in a deep voice.
He looks up at me like he’s confused by what I’ve said. Possibly because I am for creative reasons misquoting The Empire Strikes Back, but most likely he is too young for that line to have any meaning. This is a shame. I have a whole box full of Stars Wars gags ready to go. However, on the evidence so far, they will go over his head in a literal and figurative sense.
‘I’m five,’ Luke says, somehow by way of explanation, and he shrugs and looks back at me blankly and down at his toy, which I’ve worked out is a Transformer. I used to love those. Luke looks back up at me.
‘Wow, Optimus Prime is my favourite Transformer, or maybe second. It’s a tough call. He’s definitely in my all-time top three Transformer toys,’ I say.
Idly, I start to reminisce about how much I loved those toys and would probably secretly still own them if I could. I’m worried, however, that before you could say ‘the Decepticons are coming, run!’ I’d have a spare room full of collectables in boxes that had never been opened. It’s a slippery slope.
‘It’s mine,’ he says clutching the Transformer close to his chest, before adding, ‘Mommy got it for me.’
It’s only then that I finally realise something else that’s odd. Well, no weirder than a five-year-old turning up on my doorstep with these bags like he’s come to stay for the holidays. He has an American accent. My weirdness radar pings to alert me that something is seriously not right here. I begin to run through scenarios that might explain why a small American child would turn up outside the house. On the one hand, it’s not that weird for North London, there are plenty of Americans about. Is he a tiny Mormon? The thing is, he can’t possibly have rung the buzzer himself. He is way too small. He won’t be able to reach it until he’s about seven or eight. This is not good. Where on earth are his parents and who leaves a five-year-old unattended? There’s probably a Twitter appeal already launched. #HaveYouSeenMyKid followed by equal amounts of sympathy and condemnation.
‘Talking of Mummy, where is she? Is she nearby? Do you know where she is? We should get her and quickly.’
Luke shakes his head. ‘Mommy isn’t here.’
I’m starting to feel somewhat alarmed. I’ve read far too many stories about missing children. It’s almost like someone abandoned him on my doorstep and ran, which makes no sense.
‘That’s slightly concerning,’ I say. I stare at Luke, trying to work out what to do next when a big