Saint Nicholas

I photographed the frame with my phone, straight on, no flash, my hands so clammy that the first shot was blurred. I put the frame back exactly where it had been, turned towards the empty chair. I switched off the green lamp. I went back out onto the landing, flushed the toilet next door for good measure, and returned to the sitting room to eat one last speculoos shaped like a bishop, saying it was the best Saint Nicholas' Eve of my life.

My mother says I'm a bad liar. My mother has never seen me lie with a little boy's face, scratched out with a knife, sitting in my phone.

In the car, Thomas turned the heating up full and put on a jazz station. He asked if his mother had frightened me. I said no. He said she frightened everyone, even the Bishop of Bruges, whom she had once corrected in the middle of Mass over the date of a canonisation. He dropped me on the Sint-Annarei. He didn't kiss me. He looked at me for a long time, hands on the wheel, as if he were waiting for me to say something.