A knock At The Door

A Knock On The Door

I suppose, in hindsight, I should have seen it coming. I'd told him God knows how many times, but still he refused to take my advice. It was like he was wilfully trapped in a world of his own, a universe where fifteen year olds were invincible.
         It happened one week in March. From out of nowhere, a cold wind had taken over the town, submerging it in a mixture of ice, snow and hail. Frost grew on every available surface like a parasite, encasing anything exposed in a sub-zero coffin that masked the destruction underneath. Plants succumbed to the harsh conditions, leaving behind little more than crystal covered shells that pleased the eye. The local newspapers called it 'Autumn Falls' coldest week since records began', though they tended to say that a lot, and folk here were pretty used to the town's bipolar climate anyway.
         My son Jamie was in the middle of a lengthy period of being grounded, even by his standards, after being caught by the police trespassing in some nearby derelict factory.
         “But mum!” he'd protested after I'd picked him up from the station and informed him of his punishment. “I'm fifteen now; I can look after myself!” I had looked him in the eye and told him that as long as he was under my roof he would follow my rules and accept my punishments.
         “Do you know what I thought?” I'd asked him, fighting against some sort of breakdown combined with a fit of rage. “When the PCSO called? I thought something had happened to you – I thought I'd never see you again.” At this point I wasn't sure which of the two emotions was stronger.
         “Oh mum, not again. Stop overreacting. You do this every time.” and with that he'd walked off (now the taste of anger was definitely more unyielding).
         Up until a few years ago, Jamie had been a star pupil at school. Well, he'd managed to get C's and B's, which for Autumn Falls is practically celestial. However, then he'd gotten in with a bad crowd at school, and with that came the poor behaviour.
         At first it was just at school; every time he did something he would apologise to me and swear he wouldn't do anything like that again, and every time I would be foolish enough to believe him. But eventually even that aspect changed, and soon I felt like a stranger in my own home when he was around.
         I'd never been strict at home –I'd  never needed to be, so I guess I was partly to blame for this downward spiral. So in the end I'd resorted to grounding him and taking away most of his prized possessions.
         Anyway, this time I'd been pleasantly surprised at how well he'd eventually accepted his treatment, and I began to think he was making a real improvement, so much so that I'd given him most of his privileges back. He only had two days left of punishment, or “social incapacitation” as he called it, and I had bought him a DVD to watch. It was his birthday at the weekend, but I thought the gift would give him extra incentive to be good. Birthdays in our house had always usually ended up in arguments, and I didn't really want things to be any worse than usual.
         I was downstairs on our worn out sofa (the average retirement age for sofas in our house was five years), half watching the television and half asleep, when I heard a sudden sharp thud outside on the front garden, as if someone had thrown a sack of flour onto the lawn. As it was dark and all the windows at the front of the house had a generous glaze of frost covering them, I decided not to investigate. I had presumed it had been one of the neighbourhood cats that were constantly using the garden as some sort of public footpath anyway. After making sure that I could still hear Jamie's television upstairs, I refocused on the one downstairs, which was now showing some sort of police documentary focusing on reckless driving. Not long after that I trailed into sleep.
         Some time later I woke up. Groggily I looked around, deciding that it must have been the early hours of the morning due to the fact it was so dark I couldn't even see the raging tundra outside. The TV was still on, now displaying some tedious gambling show, so I couldn't fathom what had woken me. Just as I was about to go back to sleep, I heard an impatient knock at the front door.
         At first I didn't really pay much attention to the sound. But when it came again, breaking through the stillness like a tidal wave on a smooth lake, I decided it must be important. As I tugged at the white plastic handle so that I could swing open the white plastic door, I felt overwhelmingly wary. After all, who makes house calls at this time? What surprised me even more was that it had taken me so long to feel this suspicious. The feeling dissolved immediately, however, when I saw the fluorescent glow emitting from the jackets the two visitors were wearing. I became tranquil. It was the police.
         However, as they stepped forward slightly so that their faces were bathed in the halogenated light of my hall, a feeling of dread overwhelmed me. There was something in their expressions, something grave. As  I opened my mouth to speak, one of them interrupted.
         “Mrs Taylor? We have some bad news about your son. He's been found at Dream Works industrial estate. It appears he was in one of the units with his friends when part of the roof fell in...  Mrs Taylor, I regret to inform you that your son was killed during the accident.”