“I’d like to know anything you can tell me about the boys’ friendship,” I say.
“They’re best friends. Absolutely thick as thieves. Abdi’s a fabulous kid, and he was a godsend when Noah started secondary school. Noah’d been out of the system for so long during treatment we were worried he wouldn’t fit in, but they made friends on the first day and they’ve been inseparable ever since.”
It’s exactly what his wife predicted he would say.
“Was sneaking out of the house the kind of behavior you might expect from either of them?”
“I’m not home as much as I should be, so Fiona’s the expert on Noah, but personally I can’t think of anything they’re less likely to do. They’re nerdy boys. They go to chess competitions. They study together. They freak out if they don’t get merit cards on every bit of homework they do. So no, it was the last thing I’d have expected.”
Something about the way he says this makes me think that Ed Sadler was the opposite type of boy, and still is as a man. I’m particularly interested in his take on this because I get the impression that Noah’s indulging in some mildly rebellious behavior is something that Ed Sadler might welcome, or certainly be open to acknowledging. He doesn’t seem to be as protective of Noah as his wife.
Woodley chips in. “Your wife told us that she felt the friendship might not have been very healthy for Noah. Do you have a view on that?”
He sighs.
“This stuff is hard to talk about. Okay, look, here’s the thing: Fiona’s life has been dominated by Noah’s illness for years, and you can probably imagine how that might make her feel. She longs for ‘normal.’ She thought I encouraged Noah’s friendship with Abdi because of my own interests, and she resents that, because she would rather that Noah had made friends with a boy whose mother will have a coffee with her or share school runs with her. Be her friend. And between us, I think that’s colored Fiona’s opinion of Abdi. She’s never wholly approved of the friendship. I believe she’s wrong, I think Abdi’s a terrific friend for Noah, but you can understand how her feelings about her circumstances might have crept into her judgment of him. She’s been under unbelievable amounts of pressure for a very long time.”
He’s choosing his words very carefully. I consider how much he might have gained from Fiona’s apparently comprehensive devotion to Noah’s care: a large amount of freedom, certainly. It’s clear that Ed Sadler loves his son very much, but at no point has he described the burden of Noah’s care as something they undertake together. Nevertheless, I appreciate his forthrightness.
“That’s a very honest answer.”
“Where we’re at in life, I don’t think there’s any point in being opaque.”
I can’t argue with that.
“So, just to clarify, you saw nothing last night that would make you think that the boys might either have argued or be planning to sneak out of the house?”
“I saw nothing. I don’t know why they did it—neither of us does. We’d had a good night. This exhibition has been in the works for years. It was a big moment for me professionally, and also for us as a family. We thought long and hard about canceling it when we got Noah’s prognosis, but he insisted we go ahead.”
Tears slick his eyes once again, and he grinds his fists into his sockets as if he can rub them away.
“Would you mind if we took a look at Noah’s room?” I ask. I want to get an idea of this boy outside of the grim picture I formed in the hospital.
“Of course, yes.” He gets up quickly, as if he welcomes the distraction, and shows us up two flights of stairs.
He lingers in the doorway as Woodley and I step into the room. “I’ll leave you to it,” he says. “Abdi kipped in here with him last night.”
Once he’s gone I take an initial look around and make some immediate assessments. The first is the most obvious one: Noah Sadler’s room is undoubtedly testament to a privileged upbringing, until you notice the medical paraphernalia.
Woodley and I open drawers and carefully look through the items on the desk. A model of a Bristol hot air balloon twists slowly in one corner as we work.
Noah’s bed is rumpled and unmade, just as you’d expect if somebody had crept out at night. A pair of pajamas is discarded on the floor beside it. There’s a put-up bed in the corner that also looks slept in, but there are no bits and pieces lying around that might obviously belong to Abdi.
“Perhaps he slept in another room,” Woodley says.
He has a poke around in the en-suite bathroom. “There’s not even a toothbrush in here.”
“Perhaps Abdi decided to leave and packed up his stuff and took it with him. They could have had a row. He could have stormed off and Noah went after him?”
I’m thinking aloud, running through scenarios, trying to keep an open mind.
“Could be. We should ask Mr. Sadler if he or his wife tidied up Abdi’s stuff.”
“I very much doubt they’ve done that. Probably the last thing on their minds today.”
“Fair point.” Woodley opens the closet, which is messy with Noah’s clothes. Shoes are stacked in a heap in the bottom of it. Just what I’d expect to see in a teenage bedroom.
Only one thing really captures my attention. Above Noah’s bed, a series of drawings have been framed and hung on the wall. Every one depicts a road and its surroundings, and no two are alike. They’re intricate and meticulous. Each drawing must have taken hours to finish. They are all signed NS.
I ask Ed Sadler about them when we get downstairs, and for the first time he displays a little embarrassment.
“Noah’s in therapy,” he says. “At the hospital. To help him deal with his disease. It mostly involves talking, but art therapy’s a component, too—they say it helps with self-expression—so Noah produces those drawings every once in a while. They’re about his journey through life, or something like that. Fi insists they go up on the wall, though I’m not sure how healthy that is, if I’m honest. I’m more of a ‘get on with it’ sort of person. The thought of talking about everything ad nauseam terrifies me.”
It’s the attitude to therapy that I held before I was forced to take a different view and found myself sitting in a chair opposite Dr. Manelli twice a week for six months, in that dim room where the soft furnishings seem designed to absorb sorrow. But I don’t react to Ed Sadler’s embarrassment about his son’s therapy with the fervor of the converted, because for me the jury’s still out.
“The therapist he sees is based at the hospital,” Ed adds. “Noah quite likes him, I think. He’s been seeing him for years now. His medical team say talking’s good for him, so, anyway.”
“We didn’t see anything belonging to Abdi in Noah’s room.”
“That’s because his sister came round and collected his stuff this morning. Alvard, our housekeeper, was here.”
Woodley and I leave him to get some rest. He seems to be just as broken as his wife.
“I’d like to speak to the therapist,” I say as we drive back to HQ.