“Some put them up with Sellotape. Those ones have now long gone. The tape turned brown and then loosened. But the posters stuck with wallpaper paste have remained for much longer. They have taken the splatters from dirty puddles, got bleached by the sun. Posters that asked ‘Have You Seen Curtis Rea?’ ended up next to adverts for a tae kwon do club, a splashy flyer for a Back to the 60s night, a handwritten note about a missing cat called Boogie.”
Wendy Erskine is the short story writer’s short story writer, and her collection Dance Moves from last year was, somehow, even better than her first. ‘His Mother’ was first broadcast on the radio (though the recording isn’t available any more, which is a shame) and reading it, you can see how well it would have worked in that medium. The story has an incredibly strong voice. It’s also the saddest story on my list, as well as the most recent.
The story depicts Sonya, a woman who has lost her son Curtis and herself in the process. When we first see her, she is methodically removing the “missing” posters from the lampposts around her area. As the story goes on, it becomes clear that Curtis went missing after taking his own life and that they have now found the body.
The character of Sonya is stuck while everyone else in her son’s life is moving on. Her husband has found some solace in studying psychology and attributing reason and order to his death, while his girlfriend has finally found someone new. Sonya remains as she was, making a final effort to let go by taking down his posters. However, when she sees a poster for another missing young man, she feels immediate discomfort, as if this new person is now more important than her own son. The story ends on a touching note, however, as she envisages that boy’s mother and feels a kinship with her, transcending her pain.
This is a story about men’s mental health and a mother’s love, yes, but it is also a story about those left behind after a death, and about how they move on from the person now gone.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Collected in Dance Moves, Picador, 2022
A Personal Anthology 