AMY

The school hall was packed.

‘You know, if there aren’t enough seats, I can totally head home again,’ Jack said, unhelpfully.

Amy grabbed his sleeve and dragged him with her, through the crowd, heading towards two empty seats she’d spotted on the other side of the central aisle.

‘This is Claire’s Christmas Concert, and she wants us both here.’ Amy quickened her pace in time to toss her handbag onto the first seat, before the large man in the green jacket could reach it. Actually, was that Claire’s history teacher? Too late to worry about that now, anyway.

Jack threw himself into the second seat, his coat still on and the collar coming up to his ears. ‘Fine.’

Sighing, Amy slipped her own coat from her shoulders and sat down, placing her bag in her lap. Was it so much to ask for just one nice night out, the three of them all in the same place, her and Jack cheering Claire on? Just one, normal, family Christmas event, with carols and song sheets and mulled wine in the interval?

Picking up the programme she’d been handed at the door, she scanned through the list of carols the choir was singing, pieces the school orchestra were playing, and songs that the audience would be expected to join in with, but hardly ever did. It was comfortingly familiar – practically exactly the same as last year, even if everything else in her world was different.

She sat back in her chair, and let the discordant sounds of the orchestra tuning up and the clamour and chatter of all the other parents fade away. This concert was something she looked forward to, every single Christmas. And having missed out on most of her work’s Christmas night out, she was not letting this night be ruined.

‘You didn’t tell me he was coming,’ Jack muttered, his voice dark.

Amy looked up, knowing without Jack having to say exactly who he was.

‘I didn’t know he was coming.’ Even last night, in all the chaos of finding the kids and bringing them home, they hadn’t discussed their separate lives at all. Hadn’t talked about whose turn it was to do all the things they used to do together.

It took her a few moments to find Jim, sat a few rows back on the other side of the hall. But it took only seconds to realise who the petite brunette next to him was.

Bonnie. The famous – infamous – Bonnie.

They hadn’t met before – why would they? Jim had gone out of his way to keep them separate. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t wondered. What she looked like, how she dressed, or walked, or talked. What it was about her that made Jim up and leave a marriage that was about to celebrate two decades of togetherness.

Maybe that was it, she thought, as she watched him take Bonnie’s coat and fold it neatly under his chair. Maybe he’d just grown tired of the same old, same old. Maybe he’d needed a change of pace, some excitement in his life, something new.

While she got stuck with keeping the old life he was bored of running on her own.

She looked away, before she got caught up on Bonnie’s hairstyle, or the dress that was just slightly shorter than Amy would ever dare wear. Or before Jim noticed she was staring, at least.

She had to focus: she wasn’t interested in Jim’s future, any longer, except for how it affected her children. Amy had her own future to concentrate on.

‘He’s got no right to be here,’ Jack said, his arms folded tightly across his chest as he stared mulishly ahead at the empty stage.

‘Claire is his daughter too,’ Amy reminded him evenly, to stop herself from yelling, You’re right! Let’s get a mob together to run him out of here!

‘You don’t think he gave up the right to call himself our father when he walked out and left us?’ Jack looked her in the eye as he asked the question, and Amy knew he was looking for the slightest tell that she was lying as she answered.

‘I think that he’s the only dad you get, whatever he’s done. So you have to think very carefully about the relationship you want to have with him.’ Jack was almost an adult now, and he deserved her total honesty, however difficult the question. He deserved the right to make his own decisions about his own future, the same way that she was.

Amy knew that she couldn’t force Jack to keep his dad in his life. But she could strongly encourage it. Because whether Jack knew it or not, he needed Jim. Last night had proven that to her. Amy could be mother and father every day of the week, but there was going to come the point when Jack needed to talk to someone else. And she would far rather that someone else be Jim than some other seventeen-year-old mate who knew as little about the world as Jack did.

Thankfully, the lights went dark and the curtain went up before Jack was able to come up with an argument against her comments. With a deep breath, Amy settled back into her chair, determined to enjoy what had always been one of her favourite Christmas traditions.

The interval came almost too quickly, after a moving performance of ‘O Holy Night’ from the orchestra and choir. Amy, still wiping her eyes, got to her feet quickly. She knew from experience you had to be quick out the door if you wanted to make it to the front of the refreshments queue before they called everyone back into the main hall again.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one who knew that.

‘Amy!’ Jim sounded surprised to see her, which was kind of crazy since it was her daughter up there in the choir too. At least he seemed to be alone; Bonnie must have run to the bathrooms, or stayed to look after the seats. ‘And Jack. Nice to see you’ve come to support your sister tonight.’

There was an edge in his voice, a hint of the censure he just couldn’t avoid giving – a reminder that the night before he hadn’t been such a good brother. Of course Jim couldn’t just leave it, just for one night, while they were all at Claire’s concert. Because he wasn’t around the rest of the time, he was going to ruin tonight instead.

Great.

‘Jack, why don’t you head back and keep an eye on our seats,’ Amy said, keeping her gaze on Jim. ‘I’ll get us drinks and meet you back there.’

Jack, obviously eager to get away from his father, disappeared back into the hall without a murmur.

‘You’re trying to keep him away from me?’ Jim asked, his cheekbones turning hot and pink with colour.

‘I’m trying to make sure neither one of you makes a scene at Claire’s school concert,’ Amy corrected him. ‘You have to understand his point of view, Jim.’

‘I don’t see him trying to understand mine!’

‘Perhaps you should try setting him that example, then.’ Amy tried not to sound exasperated, but it was hard.

Jim seemed to expect that life should go on exactly the way he wanted it – all the bits he liked about his old life copied and pasted over to the new one, while he dumped the stuff that didn’t work for him any more. Like her. And the kind of responsibilities – financial and otherwise – that meant he couldn’t just drop everything and go skiing for Christmas.

Well, as the person left to deal with all the stuff he chose to leave behind, Amy felt she still had the right to call him out on his behaviour – even if she no longer had that right as his wife.

Which, judging by his current behaviour, she was growing more and more glad about by the day.

‘Jack is still only seventeen, Jim,’ Amy said, keeping her voice soft. ‘Yes, he’s almost an adult in lots of ways, but in others – like understanding the behaviour of people with almost three times the amount of life experience he has – he’s still a child. You can’t expect him to understand what you’ve chosen to do when he has no life experience of his own to match it up with. He’s barely even had a girlfriend that lasted more than a month.’

‘I suppose.’ Jim frowned in the way he always used to when he was puzzling out a new idea. ‘I guess I just expected him to want me to be happy.’

‘I think he’d rather that he got to be happy first,’ Amy said, drily. Then she sighed. ‘I’m sure he will understand, eventually. But you’re going to have to give him time. And you’re going to have to try to understand him, first.’

‘Understand a seventeen-year-old boy? That should be easy,’ Jim joked. ‘After all, I used to be one.’

‘Very true.’ Amy thought about the boy Jim had been at seventeen, and the girl she’d been back then, too. ‘But I don’t suggest you start reliving your misspent youth. Especially since I believe your new girlfriend is on her way over here right now.’

She nodded towards the door from the bathrooms, and Jim turned quickly in time to watch Bonnie walking towards them.

‘So, do you want to introduce us, or would you rather let me cut in front of you in the refreshments line?’ Amy asked, eyebrows raised. She was quite proud of the way she kept her cool, actually.

Even if she hadn’t been concentrating on how brilliant her own future was going to be, she might have battered both of them with little Tommy Finn’s double bass for ruining the future she’d always planned on.

‘Uh, you go ahead,’ Jim said, looking unsettled at the idea of both of them in the same place at the same time. ‘I’ll just …’ he trailed off.

‘Good plan,’ Amy said, as if he’d said something sensible, for once.

Breezing past him, she reached the front of the queue and selected mulled wines for herself and Jack. And a couple of mince pies. Just because.