That yoke says seven minutes for the next Dún Laoghaire service, but it’ll be at least fifteen. You’re just as well guessing, really. As my sister always says, the displays are right, it’s the buses that aren’t. Funny that, though, isn’t it? We count down towards the good things we’re waiting on – the next payday, the holiday, the wedding anniversary – but away from the bad. Two weeks since the redundancy. Three months since the operation. A year since the divorce. Sure, it helps. Enough time passes and you stop thinking about it altogether. Over. Done with.

But some things don’t work that way. For me it’s been eight years. Eight in October. So it’s either nearly eight, or you’re already into the ninth, depending on how you count it. Not that it matters. With the properly bad things, time loses all meaning anyway. And everything else with it.

I was at work when she called. My wife. My ex-wife. The call every father quietly dreads. Just thinking about it now, I can feel that same freezing weakness all over again. His name was Conor. He was ten. I suppose that’s what he’ll always be, for me at least. Ten. He’d been crossing the road outside the house, head down on his phone. That’s what she said. If I’d told him once, I’d told him a thousand times. Watch the road. Probably texting. One second of not looking up. It was a van turning at the lights. Not even going fast, but it was enough to do what it did.

I was up and in the car before she’d finished speaking. Foot down, straight out to the hospital. I must have gone through every red light. The road was just a blur, coming at me too fast and not fast enough.

Or maybe I went to the house first. No. They’d have taken him to the hospital immediately. But even as I say that, I see an ambulance outside the house. And then I think, she would’ve told me where on the phone. I can’t help seeing it there though. Strange.

When I got to the hospital, anyway, there was a woman with a lanyard waiting at the front desk. Something in my face must have told her, because I didn’t have to say anything. She came over before I was even halfway through the door. I’m sorry, she kept saying. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say back, so I just stood there nodding at her.

Do you want to see him? she asked.

There’s no right answer for a question like that. Not really. And the truth is, I didn’t want to see him. Not at all. I wanted to keep him as he was in my head – Conor in the front garden, Conor at the table, half-listening, half-gone somewhere else, usually on his phone. I wanted that to be how I remembered him, as he was. Not as whatever was waiting on the other side of the door. But you can’t just leave it there. So I saw him.

What struck me most was how much smaller he seemed than when I’d seen him last. There wasn’t a mark on him. Not a scratch. He could have been asleep, if not for the stillness, as if he’d been frozen in the middle of a bad dream. It was too much. I had to get out. They found me in the petrol station across the road, about an hour later, standing at the counter with nothing to buy. I’ve no idea how I got there. They said my wife was in the family room if I wanted to go in. I said no. I just couldn’t.

The flat never felt the same after. Especially the hallway, of all places. I was always expecting him to come bounding out of his room to grab something from the fridge, or tumble in from outside after messing around with his friends. Now there was only a sort of horrible, hungry quiet.

For months, we kept his room the way he’d left it. Didn’t even make the bed after he’d left it in a heap that morning – typical Conor. My sister came over one afternoon and went in to look. You’ve it well kept, she said. That’s how she put it. Well kept. As if we’d been doing it for show. An exhibit or something. After she left, we cleared it out. Gave away the clothes, the toys, the books. To charity shops, mainly. Some things went to the dump. We kept going – the bed, the units, the curtains. Stripped the wallpaper, even took out the light fitting, as if clearing every last trace might somehow ease the pain.

It only made things worse. With his stuff there, you couldn’t look at any of it without thinking of him. Once it was gone, there was nothing to catch on to. No reminders. No weight. Just a void.

I was afraid then of forgetting. Someone suggested writing things down. I can’t remember if it was the woman at the hospital or my wife. My ex-wife. Said it helps. Keeps the memories from going out of order. So I started a notebook. Dates. Times. Little details. What he’d said that morning. What he’d been wearing. Other details about him. What he liked and didn’t like. The sort of things he used to talk about. He was always mad for red cars. From the time he was very small. Any red car. He’d see one and jump up and point and say he was going to get a car just like that when he grew up.

I got it all down on paper. Or I thought I did. When I went back over what I’d written, things didn’t make sense. Thursday in one place. Saturday in another. Ten on one page, thirteen on another, without me noticing. As if someone had come along after me and changed what I’d written. Gaps, too, around things that should’ve been easy to pin down. Basic things, like the name of the driver. I must have told myself I’d fill it in later. Maybe I didn’t want to.

I binned the notebook in the end. It was only doing my head in. There were more important things to be getting on with anyway. The official stuff. Insurance, hospital papers, phone calls, the death certificate. So I went to the registry office.

The clerk asked for the full name. Date of birth. I gave her what I had. She tapped at the keys and frowned. Looked up. No record. I could barely hear her for the thump of my heart in my ears. She smiled, patiently. Happens, she said. Wrong year, maybe, I offered. She tried again. Nothing. Might be a problem after last week’s software update, she said. I just left. These things happen.

Back at the car, I reached for the photo I kept of him in my wallet, but it wasn’t there. Maybe my wife took it out when we were clearing the house, to spare me. Same with the phone. No photos. Not even in the cloud folders I never touch.

Must’ve been lost when you changed phones, said my sister. But I hadn’t changed my phone in years. And sure, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d deleted them myself without meaning to. I wasn’t in great form then. I was drinking a fair bit, you can imagine.

For a while there I thought I must be going out of my mind, so I kept repeating it to myself. Accident. Hospital. Eight years ago. Red cars. Accident. Hospital. Eight years ago. Red cars.

My wife left at some point. Not all at once, I just saw less and less of her, until one day she was gone for good. I only really noticed when the car wasn’t outside. Took it with her, I suppose.

My sister still visits. When I bring up Conor she tells me I should try to think about something different. Something more positive. She was good enough to find a psychiatrist, and started bringing me in to him. The first visit was an hour of forms. Ticking boxes. How’s your sleep? Your appetite? Work? Who’s in your life? Any anxiety, depression? Sign here, date there. All that. Then the doctor told me to start at the beginning. So I did. Accident. Hospital. Eight years ago. Red cars. He wrote it down. All very well and good. Then he asked about my wife. My ex-wife. The room. The notebook. My sister.

I went back a few times, but it was always just the same questions in a different order. And once, he said, very matter-of-factly, that the story was changing every time I told it. In one version it was a van, in another a motorbike. Then he said – and this is the cheek of it – that I’d called Conor by another name in one telling. Like I wouldn’t know my own son’s name. Losing the rag at him wouldn’t have done me any favours, of course. So I said, as calmly as I could muster, then you mustn’t have been listening properly. He nodded and moved on. Said it was to be expected with what I’d been through. He had a name for it, one of those Latin-sounding things. Probably something to do with trauma. They’re always on about that these days. He prescribed tablets. I didn’t take them.

These last few appointments, my sister drops me at the door and drives off, and I walk towards the building until she’s out of sight. Then I come round the corner and sit here for the hour instead. I’m better off here. There’s a roof for when it rains, and you can sit and nobody asks what you’re at. If there’s somebody else waiting, you can have a chat or tell stories about any old thing. You start with the bus or the weather, and then it goes where it goes. Somebody asks are you well, and you say you are. Doesn’t have to be true. You could tell them anything, really, and they’d have no way of knowing.

Conor used to like this spot because you can see far in both directions. Always looking out for something, though not always at the thing he should’ve been watching.

I was talking to a woman here the other week and she asked if this was the way for town. Yes, I said. She glanced up the road the way people do when they’re pretending they don’t already know. Are you heading in yourself then? she asked.

No, I said. I’m waiting for someone to pick me up.

She nodded, half interested, half out of politeness.

My son’s picking me up, I said.

She gave me a look. Hard to know what she was thinking.

Right, she said. Lovely.

Anyway – sorry, one second. My phone.

That’s him texting. He’s round the corner. If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a thousand times about driving with his phone.

That’ll be him now. There. Coming round by the lights. Red car.