Dear Mrs Livingstone,

I am writing to you to express my deepest and most sincere apologies in regards to your son, Liam, whom I was very close to and spent a lot of time with. Obviously not as close to him as you were, or anywhere near as much time as you spent with him, but enough, you know, to feel like we had some sort of connection and that I could judge him to be a wonderful person. And by that I don’t mean that I’m judgmental and that I meant to weight up his personality traits to see if he was worth of my time and effort – I mean it in the most natural, human way, in the completely non-offensive and sensitive way. Point is, he was lovely, and we got on well.

I’m sure you’re very upset. The loss of a child is debilitating and, well, terrible, I’d imagine, not having children of my own. I can’t pretend to understand what you’re going through as a mother. I do feel, though, that it is only fair of me to explain to you the events of last night, so you have some idea of how we ended up like this.

You see, I had invited Liam over to my house as he had mentioned previously that he wasn’t feeling brilliant, emotionally. As you know, he’s been having trouble at work, with the re-organisation of his level and the promotion of some of his co-workers. I really don’t understand much about that, because I’m not in an office job, but suffice to say, he was feeling down, and I invited him over for a few drinks and some light-hearted conversation. He came with a bottle of wine and we ate Thai food. We enjoyed the wine and the noodles and had wonderful conversation.

After eating, we got up and moved into the living room with the couches. Upon sitting down, Liam noticed a stray thread from his jumper – just off the sleeve. Well, perhaps that is not quite accurate: I noticed Liam playing with a stray thread from the sleeve of his jumper, which he said (with a laugh) had been “Rebelliously trying to run off with his clothing for most of the day.” Of course I was unsure at the time, but in retrospect I swear I saw a glimmer of some kind of melancholy in his eye, or some kind of wisdom. At that moment, however, it seemed nothing more than a momentary pause, and I disregarded it.

It’s difficult to say exactly what happened next. He kissed me, there was a changing of couch positions, another kiss. You probably don’t need to know this, I know. I’m sorry – anyway, the point is, Liam got up to get himself a drink, and I noticed, after he had gone to the next room, that there was a thread caught on the couch and leading after him into the kitchen, as if it were a perfect record of his movements, or perhaps a lure. A thin, coloured, baited line, - waiting for me to follow it to its ultimate end. I sighed and followed him into the kitchen, where I found him leaning against a bench with his drink, with one and a half jumper sleeves. I pointed to his left arm. Liam shrugged nonchalantly – it was nothing. He was leaning back against the kitchen-top, sipping from his glass, with his exposed elbow leant on the granite. He seemed to stare off into the near distance a little, as if he weren’t entirely focussed on his immediate surroundings. He seemed vague and disinterested, really, but in a whimsical, endearing way.

I grinned. He looked silly with one and a half arms so I grabbed the thread, close to him, and ran back into the living room. You see, I had figured that if the jumper was already so far gone, it wouldn’t matter me playing with the rest of it.

Imagining the garment unravelling fast with my every step, I tugged the string and skipped into the hallway, which I bounced down and on into the bathroom, wrapping the never-ending thread around everything fixed I could find: doorknobs, lights, chairs, tables. I could hear Liam’s laughs echoing through the house. I was giggling too, and perhaps a little tipsy, and in under five minutes, I was back in the living room, breathing heavily. I called to Liam then, and realised that the kitchen was eerily silent. I felt more than a little drunk by this stage.

Assuming that he’d decided to turn our game into hide-and-seek, and vaguely worried that he might spring up behind me to get revenge for me unravelling his jumper, I tiptoed towards the kitchen door, without entering. As I stood behind the half-open door, absent-mindedly pulling on the string, I called out Liam’s name, wondering where he could have gone (to the bathroom perhaps? It crossed my mind). Deciding it was safe, I ventured into the kitchen quietly, to find it empty, but for some coloured threads draped over the handles of the drawers and leading out the other door of the kitchen which also leads onto the hallway.

Following the thread, like a child following a trail of Easter eggs, like a sniffer dog after a scent, I let the thread trickle through my fingers without grabbing a hold of it or collecting it. For an hour, Mrs Livingstone, I traced this string around my house, out my front door and delicately down my front steps, the driveway and down the road, one block, two blocks (birds whistling, cars passing) and into the park (almost run over for not concentrating or stopping at roadsides), around trees, across the oval, under another tree and around a beautiful willow tree, where the moonlight illuminated the string which was, I noticed, no longer the same colour as Liam’s jumper (red).

I was very confused. In my hands I held the string and Liam was nowhere to be found – I was alone in the park, late at night – but let me assure you, Mrs Livingstone, my neighbourhood is incredibly safe. There has not been one incident here as long as I’ve known. I was entirely fine, and not really very worried about myself – only about Liam. Of course, I resumed following the string, which (unsurprisingly) led back to my house, in the front door again (I had left it unlocked) and back to the lounge. And there, Mrs Livingstone, you must believe me, though I hardly believe it myself – there the string ended, not in a scissor-chopped fray, but in a small rounded nub, like a bellybutton.  I held the ending delicately, and called for Liam again, no response.

I was tired and confused. For hours I searched the house, you must understand, and found nothing except for the mess of threads. Not knowing what to do, and partly panicking, I decided to gather them up. Starting with the nub, I carefully wound the threads around my arm and shoulder like an electrical cord, retracing my steps around the house, back out to the park (it was cold then) and returning to the house, the hall, the bathroom, the kitchen – where it became more familiar, a record of my own silly expedition. Finally, as the sun rose closer to the underside of the horizon, staining the sky mildly pink like a blue sheet washed with reds, I reached the fraying loose end that we began with. I was wearing the giant, heavy loop of thread, so large now that I stooped to carry it to the lounge, where I reverentially laid it down like a wreath, or a sleeping child. And there, I collapsed.

I woke up hours later, some time in the afternoon. In the daylight I noticed that the loops of thread were of many different colours and shades of pinks, browns, blacks, yellows, purples, blues, whites and reds.

It is unfair of me to expect you to accept this letter easily or in good spirits, but I can only swear that every word I write is in honesty and sympathy. I would not deceive you, and have no reason to. I feel guilty, responsible, for this, as if I should have somehow realised what was happening. I miss Liam, and I have little idea what to do from here.

I am sorry for unravelling your son, Mrs Livingstone, and I’m giving you the thread in the hope that you, if anyone, can maybe find some way of re-threading him. I am no weaver of threads.

Best of luck, sympathies, regrets, and apologies.