I feel like I’m a babysitter. Or a nanny. Someone who’s been given custody of a child and is supposed to be in charge of it for an entire day. Eight hours. How hard can it be? It’s—she’s—my own kid, for God’s sake. But when Rosie opens the door—I hear her calling out to Gail from the hall, “It’s Dad! I’ll get it!"—I am suddenly filled with panic. Eight hours. What the hell am I supposed to do with her for eight whole hours?
“Hiya!” I say brightly, bending down to give her a kiss. She throws her arms round my neck and plays with my ears, folding the tops and lobes together so they meet.
“Hello.” She gives me a shy smile, like I’m a new friend in the playground, and checks her watch. “You’re nearly two minutes late.”
“Hey! I was parking the car and combing my hair for my best girl.”
Gail appears in the doorway and drops to her knees, imploring me to come home, saying she can’t live without me.
* * *
OK, OK, fantasy time. Gail appears and composes her face into an expression of total contempt.
“Back by six o’clock.” No please, you notice. No hello, Scott, how have you been keeping, dossing down in other people’s back bedrooms?
“I’m fine, thanks for asking. And how’ve you been?”
And she says I’ve got no manners.
Last Sunday I made the mistake of being early—only by fifteen minutes, not enough to make the cover of the Ashford Advertiser (and God knows almost anything does—drop a gum wrapper on the High Street and it’s FLOG THESE LITTER LOUTS SAYS TOWN). When Gail comes to the door, she looks me up and down from my hairline (which is undergoing something of its own mini-recession at the moment, that’s stress that is, I should sue her for compensation) to my shoelaces (my second-best shoes—I remembered the look my old trainers got that first Sunday, I’m learning fast, see) and back again as if I were trying to sell her something at the door and no, she doesn’t want any thank you and could I not lower the tone and use up the oxygen by loitering there.
She doesn’t speak, just gives me the Braddon Look; they must get lessons in her family—her mum and sisters do it, too—if you had the four of them in a row looking at you, well, you might as well drop down dead on the spot and get it over with. That’s her maiden name, by the way, which I notice she took up pretty sharpish after I’d left that first night—can’t have reached the front gate before she was scraping off the gold-embossed Scott from her matching pen-and-pencil set.
So I’m stood there, getting the Look.
“Hello then,” I say.
“You’re early,” she says.
Well, I knew I was of course, but like a dope, I say,
“Am I?”
This only confirmed her belief that I’m irresponsible (high up on the list of Scott’s Crimes, about Number Three I reckon. You’re familiar with One and Two—I’m a cheat and a liar—and I can bring you up to speed on the other 437 later). Lesson One in Braddon Logic: Responsible fathers always know the exact time so that they aren’t late (ah-ha, I hear you say, but you weren’t late—but we are operating on Braddon rules here, so listen up and learn). If you’re early, you can’t be paying attention to the time so it’s as bad as being late. Now here’s the crowning cherry: except that it’s worse because it means you might be trying to sneak an extra ten minutes with your own flesh-and-blood child—even though you already have a more than generous allowance of all day Sunday plus a phone call every other day. What other woman would be so spectacularly fair and decent about the whole thing?
Gail crosses her arms.
“It’s important for you to turn up at the time when Rosalie’s expecting you.”
Nice, very nice. Blame the kiddy, why don’t you?
“At least I’m not late.” Mistake. Knew it as soon as I said it.
She snorted.
“Not like you were three weeks ago.”
“That was only ten minutes.”
“Fine. Be late if you like, if you don’t mind letting down your only daughter.”
“But I’m early.”
“Oh, so you do know when you’re supposed to be here.”
You’re beginning to see that I might not be the only villain of the piece after all, aren’t you?
See, before this, before I left, it was easy. Being a dad, I mean. I didn’t think about it from one day to the next. Specially not with Nat—it was just like hanging out with a mate, we’d watch a vid, go out on the bikes, down to the coast, fishing sometimes, roller-blading, stuff like that. I’d get in from work, shout, “Hiya! I’m back!” and make myself a cup of tea. Natty’d be up in his room on his computer or in the kitchen leaning against the furniture, he’s always leaning against things or only half sitting on chairs so you think that he’s going to fall over any second now. Any second now.
If he’d been upstairs, he’d shamble down and stand half in the fridge drinking milk or Coke, gulping it down like he’s been in the desert for a month. And I say, “All right?” and nod and that’s the cue for him to tell me what’s occurring, what’s gone on at school. Only Nat never says what he’s learned, nothing like that, it’s all like what’s going down, what the teachers are up to, who’s got in the swimming team, who thinks they’re an ace diver but they’re not, who’s sucking up, who’s clueless and who’s cool. He does impressions, of the teachers mostly, but sometimes all the parts so it seems like you’ve suddenly got a whole class in the kitchen, with him doing the voices and the faces and the way they move, impersonating Miss Robson and the way she tugs at her pants when she thinks no-one’s watching and bangs the board rubber down on the desk to get everyone’s attention, and Mr Marks with the world’s worst ties which he’s always fiddling with, stroking the end, only when Natty does it, he puts on this creepy face like he’s a lech, molesting someone, and it’s dead funny.
Then I see Rosie’s getting all antsy, sitting on her hands to keep herself calm ‘cause she’s more polite than the rest of us and thinks it’s rude to interrupt. Which it is, of course. Even I know that. It’s just I forget. A lot. Anyway, Gail’s attempts to give the kids some manners seem to have rubbed off on Rosie at least. So I say, “And you, Rosie love? Good day at the office?” She likes that. Makes her feel grown up.
And so she tells me, well us, but Nat’s not one of the world’s greatest listeners and Gail’s in the utility room, putting in a wash or taking one out or foraging in the freezer. Rosie says what she did and what she learned and what Kira said and what Josie said and who got told off and if she got a gold star and who’s winning on the star chart, until Nat interrupts, teasing her, “Come on, Rozza, our ears are falling off, they’re worn out.”
Then Gail says we’re having chicken or chops or spaghetti or stir-fry or it’s only sausage, egg and chips because she’s sick of cooking and why doesn’t someone else take a turn, when was she ever appointed Official Family Chef, for goodness’ sake, but seeing as how we all love sausage, egg and chips we can’t see why she’s making so much fuss and at least it’s not pasta something-or-other again, we’ve got pasta coming out our ears. She says will someone please set the table, and we can fight it out among ourselves, she’s not interested, but will someone just make sure it’s done, straight away please, that means now, and don’t forget mats and glasses and God, you’d think we should know by now how to set a table without needing a list itemizing every knife, fork and salt pot. So I grab the cutlery and Rosie gets the mats and Nat tries to look as if he’s helping but mostly he’s slowly pulling out drawers and closing them again until Gail says, “Nathan! Glasses! In the cupboard!” And he gets out four tumblers and when we go to sit down Gail puts hers back and takes a wine glass to fill up from the wine box in the fridge and I swap mine for a bigger glass and get myself a beer and the kids have Coke or milk or squash depending, and we all sit down and sometimes we talk and sometimes we mostly just feed our faces and sometimes we squabble and sometimes we don’t, but any which way I didn’t mind. Because it was us, you see, our family, and I like it that way. Liked it that way.
And now, every second, I’m thinking, should I do this? Should I do that? What do I do now? Nat won’t see me, even speak to me, and I don’t know what to do with Rosie. I can’t bring her back to Jeff’s to watch TV because the place is too depressing and anyway there’s nothing on Sunday daytime.
See, there’s this whole huge day to fill and I feel like I’ve kind of borrowed her or like she’s been let out from prison or the zoo and I’ve got to give her the best treat day ever only I don’t have a clue where to start and what if it’s so awful she says she doesn’t want to come any more? I look at her little face, with her sweet cheeks and her serious straight eyebrows, and I have no idea what she’s thinking or what I should be doing, only I know whatever we do, Gail will hear about it and God knows I better get something right soon if I’m to have a hope in Hell—if we’re to, well, if I’m to have a chance.
I’m just making it up as I go along, hoping no-one will twig, no-one will say, “What are you doing? Don’t you know how to be a proper father? What on earth’s wrong with you?” And I’d have to admit I don’t know, I’ve no idea. And they’ll know I’m an impostor, and so will I, still desperately trying to bluff my way, hoping I’ll never have to show my real hand. Shit, there should be instructions for this, a manual or something: Lessons for a Sunday Father.
On Sundays, my dad comes to pick me up for our day out. Usually, we go for a bike ride by the sea or round the reservoir and Dad says soon we will both be fit as athletes and can enter the Olympics. Last time we had races and whoever won had to let go the handlebars and you put your hands up above your head like this because you know you’re going to get the gold medal. If we go on the road or the promenade, I have to wear my helmet, Mum says, but Dad says I can take it off at the reservoir or in the woods because it is a dirt track and Dad says it’ll be OK if I fall off because my head will bounce and not go splat. Dad doesn’t wear a helmet even on the road because he says it makes him look like a boiled egg. On the promenade, you get people roller-blading. It is boys mostly, like Nat. I’ve been three times with Nat and Dad, but that was before. Nat’s the best but he always said Dad is not bad for an old guy. Dad was the oldest person there. Mum came one time to watch but she hasn’t got skates and she said she hasn’t got the least interest in getting any because she’d be bound to fall over and break her neck and having three daredevil kids in the family’s more than enough to worry about and someone’s got to be the sensible one. But there aren’t three in any case—there is only Nat and me.
Nat doesn’t come with us on Sundays and he keeps getting all cross and kicking things and Mum sighs at him and tells him not to, he’ll damage the furniture and we can’t be buying new things at the drop of a hat now. He acts like it’s all my fault that he’s missing out on everything but no-one said he wasn’t allowed to go. I think he does want to come too, only now he’s said he doesn’t and he can’t take it back without looking stupid. And, anyway, it is fair for me to have Dad all to myself because Nat used to go fishing with Dad loads of times and I only went twice because Mum said it was too cold and I’d catch my death and wouldn’t I rather be all snuggly with her and stay up a bit past my bedtime than be huddled on a beach in the pitch black with the wind whistling through my bones? But Nat said he and Dad used to get chips and it was really brilliant and he caught loads of flatties but that it was right that I didn’t go because it was too tough and I’d only cry and spoil things. But I wouldn’t have.
Kira says I’m the same as her now, but I’m not. I’m different because my mum and dad are not divorced, only separated like Charlotte’s and William’s and Kelvin’s. And there’s Sara and Florence too, but they don’t have dads at all, so they don’t count. Kira said my mum and dad will get divorced because once your parents are living in two houses then it happens automatically she says and there is nothing you can do to stop it, everyone knows that. Only little kids think their parents will make it up and live happily ever after.
My mum has not said anything about a divorce and nor has my dad, but I ‘spect they are not saying because they think I am just a kid and too little to know anything. Parents are always doing that and it is just silly. But I think that they ought to try living in one house again. Mum always says if you can’t do something you should try, try again but they are not trying at all. For a start, it is cheaper because if you live in two places you have to get two loaves of bread and two jars of strawberry jam and two fridges and two cookers and two of everything. And if you only need one of something you’d have more money so you can get proper Nikes instead of lookalike ones from the market and your mum and dad can get you a mobile phone.
Another reason is, why my dad should come back and live with us is that we have four chairs in the kitchen and at mealtimes Mum used to sit on one, me on one, Nat sort of on one and Dad on one. And when Dad finished eating, he used to pick up his plate and pretend he was going to throw it right across the room like a frisbee but then he went over and put it in the dishwasher like Mum taught us to. And now there is an empty chair and Mum moved it away from the table and put it by the wall but it does not look right.
Nat makes sure he’s not at home when Scott calls for Rosie. Once or twice he has been in, but it must have made it that much harder for him—seeing her go skipping down the stairs off for treats with his dad. Usually he disappears to Steve’s for the day. God knows what they get up to; Nat says they do homework or go swimming and just “hang out"—whatever that means.
When he was little, Nat used to act as if Scott was exclusively his dad, and they were best of friends. I’d watch the pair of them chasing round the garden, rolling on the ground and yelling. And it wasn’t just Scott trying to humour Nat either—he was loving every minute of it himself. Then I’d call out, “Tea’s ready!” and tell them both to wash their hands, as if Scott was just another child.
“See this?” Scott would say, holding up a bit of cauliflower on the end of his fork. “It’s a meteor fragment. Gives you supernatural powers if you eat it.”
Nat would sit there with his mouth open, eyes huge and serious, trying to decide if it could really be true. And then he’d eat it. But if I tried to get vegetables down him, he’d cross his arms and shake his head. I’d coax him or bribe him with the promise of something nice for sweet, but he’d sit there shaking his head at me until I gave up.
Scott’s own childhood was—well, short on fun, shall we say? I can’t imagine he ever played like that with his father. Not a man who’s over-fond of children, I’d say, ‘specially not his own. Scott doesn’t like to talk about it much, says the past’s the past and it’s best forgotten. But his face gets this thoughtful look—just like Nat’s when he was little and wondering whether a cauliflower floret could really have come off a meteor—as if he’s imagining an entirely different universe.
With Scott and Nat being so close, Nat never showed much sign of being jealous of Rosie. He’s always teased her, of course, but there was a gentleness to it; if anything, he was protective of her. One time, some older girl at school had had a go at Rosie. I was all for rushing straight down to the school and speaking to the teacher, but Scott wouldn’t let me—"You’ve got to let kids sort this stuff out on their own. She’s got to stand up for herself. You’re not going to be riding to the rescue when she’s twenty-five, are you? Or when she’s forty?” I suppose he was right, but I thought he was being callous at the time. Then, the next morning at breakfast, Nat said Rosie wouldn’t be needing a lift because he’d be walking her in. Rosie just smiled, swinging her legs to and fro, and chewing her toast. And he did. He walked her in and met her at the end of the day three days in a row. And we never heard another peep about this other girl.
But now, since Rosie’s been going off with Scott on their own, Nat’s changed. He’s always trying to get a rise out of her, saying she’s just a baby or that she’s being a goody-goody. So I end up defending her, of course, and telling him off—and that makes it seem like I’m always against him, and never on his side. With Scott gone, it must feel as though no-one’s on his side. I wish I was better at this, or that at least I could be more laid back about it.
Scott always had a way with Nat. If Nat was in a strop or had done something naughty, Scott would make it all right somehow. He’d go up to Nat’s room and the two of them would fool about on the computer for a while or they’d suddenly both appear in the hall and sit squashed side by side on the stairs, putting on their skates and saying they were going “for a blade round the block.” They’d be bumping each other’s arms, their heads bent, racing to see who could lace up their skates first. Then they’d sail off down the front path, leaving the door wide open, Scott taller of course, but looking like a young lad himself, racing Nat to the corner, the two of them, arms swinging, calling to each other. And then they’d come swooping back, banging on the front door and ringing the bell because neither of them had thought to take their keys with them. They’d skate into the hall and come right on into the kitchen till I told them to take their skates off. And they’d be laughing about something they’d seen or some neighbour they’d frightened the life of, whizzing past at 90 miles an hour, and to look at Nat you’d never know he’d even been in a strop.
And when Nat used to come back from swimming practice, Scott would cup his hand like this, as if he was holding up a stopwatch. He’d just look at Nat and Nat would say his fastest time that day and they’d do that high-five thing. Scott was always dead chuffed, bursting with pride. I am too, of course, but I never know what to ask. If I say, “So, how’s the diving going?” it’s the week he’s concentrating on his arm action or if I say, “Fast time today?” they’re doing stamina training and time’s not important. Scott just seemed to know somehow.
It’s not that I wish Scott was back. It’s not that. It’s just that he could handle Nat, you see. And I have to face it, I can’t. I don’t seem to be able even to have a two-minute chat with him without it escalating into a row. I don’t know how to talk to my own son.
Thank heavens for Rosie. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have to throw in the towel and resign from being a mother. It’s odd, if anything, I’d have thought Nat would be the more robust one of the two of them, but I think maybe we’ve underestimated our Rosie quite a bit. She gets this wistful look on her face sometimes, but otherwise she seems to be doing OK. Most of the time, she just seems to get on with it, whatever it is. Like with Sundays and seeing her dad. It must have been so strange for her at first, but now, after just a few weeks, it’s as if she’d never had her Sundays any other way. She has her bag sorted, she’s eaten her breakfast, cleared away her plate and cup, and is all ready and waiting for the second Scott comes walking up the path. I bet we could all learn a thing or two from Rosie.
Yesterday, I phoned Gail at work. No, I wasn’t looking for a repeat of our last civilized discussion, but I was sick of washing out the same four pairs of underpants in Jeff’s basin.
I reckon they have some kind of unwritten code of honour in GPs’ surgeries, like all the receptionists agree to never answer the phone before thirty-two rings, a sort of Customer’s Charter in reverse. Anyway, she answers the phone in her special singsong surgery voice: “Huntsham-Surgery-Good-Morning,” her voice going up at the end as if expecting you to applaud.
“Hi,” I say. “It’s me.”
“Yes? Why are you ringing me here?” Her voice dropping with each word, sounding less and less singsongy and more and more drop-dead-you-bastardy. “Don’t ring me at work.”
“Oh, take a chill pill for God’s sake. I just want to come and fetch a couple of shirts and things.”
“Good. I’ve nearly finished sorting out your rubbish. Come tomorrow morning, at 9.30, after the kids have gone to school.”
“But I—”
“So that’s 9.30 a.m. then, for your appointment.” Singsong again now. And she hangs up on me.
You won’t believe this. I get home about twenty past nine this morning, but I think well, hang on a sec here, let’s hold fire till half past and not give Gail another excuse to have an epi. So I’m sitting in the car around the corner so’s not to look like a complete prat in case one of the neighbours sees me waiting ten yards from my own house. It gets to nearly half past, so I lock up and stroll towards home. Now, get this, as I’m fiddling with the sodding latch on the gate—I always meant to fix that—I see that there’s a note on the front door, like for the milkman or whoever. Then I see that it says SCOTT on it. I mean, is she trying to make me look small deliberately or what? Well, clearly she is. What if someone saw it? So I open it and it says: S—Stuff round the back.—G.
Right. That’s it. Fifteen years of marriage and that’s the best she can manage. So I’m starting to get a bit cross by now, and thinking I’ve had it with being all Mr Calm and Reasonable and bending over backwards and waiting until the exact second just so’s not to annoy her.
So I go round the back and there on our patio is our big green suitcase, two bulging black bin bags and two cardboard boxes. Taped to the suitcase is another note. This one says: You can have any other stuff I find once I’ve had time to sort it out. Don’t [underlined three times, the pen lines gouged deep into the paper] call me at work.
PS The dentist phoned to say you’d missed your appointment on Friday.
Shit. I’d forgotten the sodding dentist. Hardly surprising, given my whole life’s gone down the tubes. My teeth aren’t exactly top of my worries.
I take a look into the boxes, peeling back the carrier bags that Gail had taped on top like lids. I don’t get it. She can barely manage to say hello to me on a Sunday but she goes to the trouble of taping Safeway bags over my stuff so it won’t get wet if it rains. Maybe it means she still cares. Hoo-sodding-ray, she cares. In one of them there’s my waterproof radio, with the hook to hang it from the shower rail, and a weird mixture of stuff: my alarm clock with Superman on it that Nat got me for my birthday one year, two pairs of old trainers that I never wear any more, my mug that says “Shouldn’t you have left for work by now?” on it.
… And there’s my beach towel on top of the other one. I grab one end of it and go to flick it out, thinking huh, surprised Miss Prim and Tidy didn’t fold it properly, realizing the same second that it’s like that ‘cause she’s bundled it round something, something quite light but maybe a bit fragile and as I’m thinking that, the something, somethings it turns out, hit the sodding patio.
They’re face down, but I know what they are, know it straight away, like I’d know Rosie from the back anywhere, with her funny walk, doing a sort of skip every few steps, and her white socks all pulled up so neat and those funny things girls wear in their hair—like plastic ladybirds or bees or butterflies—bugs basically but in pink or, in Rosie’s case, mauve of course. And Natty, shuffling and scuffling along like he’s got astronaut boots on, and it takes too much energy to lift his feet properly, kicking at the paving stones, swaggering from side to side trying to look tough, his hair all over the shop, a stranger to the hairbrush, that’s what Gail says. Yup, I love that, a stranger to the hairbrush. Anyways, they were their school photos, the latest ones, only taken a couple of months ago. I know, I know—we’re sad suckers, aren’t we, we always say we won’t buy them, they’re overpriced, we’ll take our own, they’ll be much better, all that. Then Rosie brings back her envelope and Natty brings back his and they’re saying, “Don’t get them, Dad, Mum—they’re rubbish."—Actually, Nat says “They’re crap” but you get my drift. “Don’t waste your money,” they say, but Gail and me sitting there, looking at them as if they’re photos of the only two children on the entire planet and how could we possibly not buy them?
They’d fallen one half on top of the other. I felt—I don’t know—half scared even to pick them up. Even though I can see what they are, I don’t want to see them really, truly ‘cause I’ll know what it means, what Gail means by giving them to me: This is it. This is all you, Scott, are getting. I have the real thing. You can have the photographs.
The most recent ones, too, so I’ll be reminded every time I look at them that this is when I lost them, this is when they stopped being my kids, like they’d died or something.
I pick up the top one and turn it over. It’s the one of Rosie, unbroken thank God, looking back at me with a small shy smile, her hair in whatsits, bunches, sticking out either side of her head like handles, but all smooth and soft like Gail’s. She’s wearing a mauve top, her best top, specially for the photo. I remember Gail ironing it at the time.
“But Mu-um, I’ve got to have it. It’s the photos today.”
“Well, honestly, Rosie, why on earth didn’t you tell me before? It’s not even dry. You’ll catch pneumonia if you wear it.”
“But I have to. It’s my best one.”
“You’re a little nuisance sometimes, you really are. I’ve got better things to do than stand here all morning trying to iron this dry. Right—I’m putting it in a bag, Rosie, and you can change into it for your photo. It’s too damp to wear all day. No arguments, please.”
And Nat joining in: “Hey, Rozza. Act like you’re a model—Excuse me, Miss, I have to change now for my photographs. Is the make-up lady here yet?”
“Don’t put ideas in her head, Nat, and HURRY UP—you’ll be late.”
* * *
The memory makes me smile. Then I pick up the other photo. Nat. There is a horrible noise as I pick it up. The sound of edges of broken glass grinding against each other. And there is Nat, my Natty, staring coolly back at me, his familiar half-smile covered by a crack, his face fractured by splintered glass. I sink to my knees then, there on the patio, holding this broken picture of my son, thinking what have I done, what have I done? I turn it over, scrabbling at the back, undoing the frame to pull out the picture, rescue him from the sharp shards of glass.
I shake out the pieces from the frame—leaving a sort of semicircle of fragments around me, like when I eat a bread roll in a restaurant, a fan of tell-tale crumbs—Scott was here. That’s it, I thought, that’s what it’ll be like—splinters wherever I go—work, home, in the street, me walking along, leaving a trail of shattered glass behind me, shattered people, lives, a swathe of destruction in my wake. What have I done? What have I done?
I kneel there on the patio, holding the photo in both hands, for what feels like an age but perhaps it’s only a few minutes. Then I get up and cast around for something to sweep up the glass, try to shove it to one side with the edge of my shoe. Ten seconds with a dustpan and brush would do it. What happens next, I don’t think about it, not really, what I’m doing. It just seems the obvious thing to do. I wrap the beach towel round my fist and I smash one of the small windows of the glass lean-to—conservatory, Gail calls it, but it’s not exactly all palms and tea tables, more of a back porch with ideas above its station—and reach down to open the catch on a big window. I clamber in and find the key to the back door Gail stuck under a plant pot after the time Rosie got locked out the back and was calling for ages and we couldn’t hear her over the TV. Too easy, far too easy. We really should have locks on all these windows, I think, as I come into the kitchen. Hunt about for the dustpan, where does she keep the sodding thing? Not in the broom cupboard. Under the sink. What’s she keep it there for? Let myself out the back door, sweep up and come back in. Then realize there’s now even more glass, on the floor of the lean-to and in the plant pots. I clear up as well as I can, picking out bits from the leaves and the soil and going at the floor with a cloth. There’s a whacking great size 10 footprint on the tiled floor near where I’d jumped down. I nearly left it there, like a message to Gail—don’t think you can keep me out.
I check the time. Gail usually finishes work at two and she often trots off to the shops instead of dragging back here and going out again to pick up Rosie from school. So that means that at most I’d have till about ten to four and at least until twenty past two if she comes straight back. Loads of time to get back to work, pick up a new pane of glass, come pack, putty it in, clean up and wah-boom, no sign of Scott on the premises. I begin to feel a bit pleased with myself. I picture myself doing it every week if I felt like it—come in, help myself to a coffee, biscuits, apple from the fruit bowl, have a poke round, see what everyone’s up to. After all, it’s my house. Still, I thought, better not get carried away now, as I’m pushed for time. As it is, the putty won’t dry in time and it’ll pong a bit, but she’s got no reason to be poking about out here this time of year so she’s not likely to notice. Besides, I’ve got no choice. I’ll have to risk it. Either that, or leave it broken and next thing I know I’ll have the police rolling up at work.
Then I catch sight of my house keys, in an ashtray—nice touch, Gail—they still have my key fob on, with the photo of Gail in it, the one I took when we went on holiday to Cyprus. Her hair was longer then and it spilled over her shoulders and she looked tanned and happy and sexy. I pick up the keys and put them in my pocket, then I take them out again. The ashtray’s on the sideboard in the lounge so I reckon she’d twig right away if they were suddenly gone. Another time check. I’d have to take them to the key place on the way back to work, have a new set cut while I pick up the glass for the window, come back, replace my old keys in the ashtray, do the glass, clean up, then skedaddle. And time’s ticking on. Jeez, I hope she goes shopping.
See, told you. It was a piece of piss. Well, almost. I dropped off the keys, then zoomed back to work. Martin was out on a job and Gary was bleating about some bloke who’d told him to get a move on when he was cutting. Denise said where had I been, there were umpteen messages for me in the book, and had I remembered to look in on that job in Hawes Crescent, no. 14, they wanted a quote. Yes, I said, I was going there now, right now, and could she tear out my messages and hand them over, I’d do them on the move, no, I couldn’t stop now, something had come up, and Gary while you’re standing there with your mouth open, cut us a piece of glass, mate, here’s the measurements, and make it snappy. Cheers.
Afterwards, I went back to work and sorted out the thousand and one problems they’d managed to create while I was out, told Lee it was his turn to tidy up, then sat down with Harry and allocated the jobs for the next day. My heart was still racing but I didn’t mind. I kind of liked it, matter of fact. It made me feel alive. I dug my hand down into my left-hand pocket every now and then, just to feel the newly cut keys, pressing my fingertip along the metal zigzag of the latch key, the chunky prongs of the Chubb. They made me feel excited, somehow, hopeful, like they were more than just the keys to my house, that they were the keys that would give me back my life.
It’s not fair. Mum keeps picking on me while Rosie’s little Miss Perfect the whole time. Makes me sick. Mum said she was talking to some doctor at the surgery and he said how it was normal for boys of my age “to be clumsy and knock things over a lot.” He said there was some research done a couple of years ago that showed it was all to do with growing too quick so we can’t tell how far away things are like if we’re putting a mug on the table and we think the table’s nearer than it is. Mum said this all casual like she’s saying what’s for eats tonight, so I said,
“So? What’s your point?” kicking at the other kitchen chair while I’m sitting there.
“My point, Nathan—don’t kick the chair—is that there’s no need for you to worry about being a bit, well, awkward, at this age. It’s just a normal part of growing-up for lots of boys. I’m sorry if I get at you about knocking things over. I’ll try to be a bit more understanding now I know you can’t help it.”
I rocked my chair back onto its back legs, pushing against the table leg and started counting off on my fingers, making my points: “Number one, I do not ‘knock things over a lot.’ Number two, where do you get off talking to some stupid arse—”
“Nathan!”
“—doctor bloke about me? Three, that’s just crap, that is—how can getting tall make you not know where the stupid table is? He must be bonkers. And four—”
She looked at her watch, then back at me. God, that really gets to me. Every time.
“Is this going on much longer, Nathan? Only I’ve got to get off to church to confess to being a bad mother. They let you off with only three Hail Marys if you get there before ten.”
“Oh ha, ha. Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor, I’m laughing so hard. And four—you’re always saying it’s rude to interrupt—”
“Is that number four …?”
“You did it again! You did it again! I don’t believe this.”
“You’ve forgotten what number four is, haven’t you, Nathan?”
“No, I haven’t. I haven’t. It’s just you interrupting me all the time. It’s a miracle I can speak at all having grown up with you lot and Rosie squealing all the time and you being all smart-arsy and Dad being—well—”
I saw her blink when I mentioned Dad. Good. Serves her right for being so mean and talking about me to a doctor as if I’m some kind of loony or something.
“Anyway, I didn’t forget. Number four is, I am not awkward and don’t go round telling everyone I’m some kind of dribbling retard who drops things all the time.” My foot slipped on the table leg then so my chair suddenly rocked forward again with a thunk. Mum rolled her eyes in that “Kids, eh!” way she does, so I kicked the table leg and got up and shoved the chair in until it hit the table. Then I walked out and nearly knocked myself out on the stupid doorframe. So I kicked that as well and went up to my room, digging my toes in to make semicircles on the stair carpet just to annoy her.
She came and knocked on my door when tea was ready but I said I didn’t want any. What’s the point? If I’m not there, she and Rosie can eat on their own and be all giggly and girlie. I’m not listening to all that. So I waited till they’d done, then I went down and put mine in the microwave and had it in front of the TV. I’d rather eat on my own anyhow.
Harry’s taken to asking me if I’m all right practically every half an hour. He’s not clueless, he knows something’s up. If Gail had been sensible and taken me back by now, I’d never have had to tell him. It’s weird though, aside from my kids, Harry’s the last person in the world I’d want to know how badly I’ve loused up—but at the same time, it’d be a real load off my mind to tell him. I don’t like hiding stuff from him. He’s always been straight with me. Maybe it won’t be so bad. I just don’t want to feel like I’ve let him down, you know? Harry wouldn’t cheat on Maureen in a thousand years. It’s not that he’s blind to other women, he’s got an eye for a short skirt same as any man, but he’d never act on it, never. Harry couldn’t tell a lie to save his life.
I feel worse about telling him than my parents. I’ll get round to notifying them at some point, but it’s not like they’re ringing up morning, noon and night enquiring after my welfare, you know? They’re quite fond of Rosie, I guess, in their own way, but I once heard my dad say to Nat, “You’re just like your father was at your age,” and, no, it wasn’t meant as a compliment. Luckily, Nat thought it was—he looked up to me then—and he went round with a big smile on his face. I’ve never forgotten it. I looked at my dad and I didn’t say a word, but inside I was thinking, “See, you miserable git, not everyone thinks I’m a waste of space. My son loves me—and that’s all that matters.” Dad looked away and poured himself some more beer without offering me any.
The only reason I’ll have to tell them at all, the parents, I mean—yeah, that’s how I think of them, the parents, like the Browns or the Smiths, like someone else’s family. We happen to be related but I figure it was just down to a glitch in the universe or a mix-up at the hospital. If it wasn’t for the fact I look practically like a replica of Himself when he was younger, I’d swear for sure I’d been adopted. Though why anyone who doesn’t like kids would take the trouble to adopt them I’ve no idea. Oh yeah, I’ll have to let them know—and suffer the barrage of I-told-you-so and marriage-is-for-life and but-it’s-no-surprise-to-us stuff and other tokens of parental love and support—I’ll have to tell them I’m not at home just now in case one of them croaks, ‘cause they’ll need someone to pay the undertaker.
Anyway. Telling Harry.
Friday. It’s ten to eight in the morning and I’m sitting in the office. One good thing about staying with Jeff is I’m getting in to work earlier and earlier every day to spend as little time as possible in his house. I hear Harry come in. The lads aren’t here yet, but I’ve not got long so I know I’d better get on with it.
“Harry?”
“Yup.” He sits down and looks at me over the tops of his glasses. This is hard. I want to tell him, but I don’t know what to say. Maybe I’ll do it later.
“Coffee?” Just tell him for God’s sake, just say it.
“Oh, go on then.” He nods and stretches up for the green invoice file. “And Scott?”
I’m on my feet, heading for the kettle.
“Fill me in some time about what’s up with you, will you? The suspense is doing me in.”
I stand behind him, so I can’t see his face. “You’ve not got a terminal whatsit, illness, or anything?” he says.
Weirdly, the thought makes me laugh. Life would be a whole lot better, a whole lot simpler if I was dying. I’d be so brave, struggling to speak as Gail lovingly tips a glass of water to my lips, tears pouring down her cheeks as she whispers how much she loves me, how she can’t imagine life without me. Sheila would rush down from Scotland to be by my bedside. Russ might even fly over from Canada, you never know. And the kids—ah, no. No. At least I’m not dying. Things could be worse. (If you’re listening, God, that’s not a request, that last statement; this is plenty bad enough, thanks.)
“No, no.” I pat him on the shoulder. “I might look as though I’m at death’s door. And, yeah, I feel like it too, but physically I am A-OK and—”
We both jump as the bell dings—someone’s come in the main door.
“Aww-right?” Lee’s face appears round the edge of the doorway. He comes barging right in and starts telling us how smashed he got last night, then the phone starts going, Gary arrives, blinking and bleary-eyed, and Denise comes in and starts fussing round my desk.
Finally, I get off the phone and Harry looks across at me.
“We’ve not been fishing for ages,” he says. “Fancy going down the coast one night?”
I nod. Fishing. Fresh air. Sound of the sea. Clear my head a bit.
“Yeah, good one. When?”
“I’m easy. Tonight?”
“Why not? You check the tides, I’ll get the bait.”
Even though I’ve got the keys to home now, I’m not going to chance zipping in and whipping away my fishing gear. I reckon Gail would be bound to notice. We could just take Harry’s tilley lamp and windbreak, but I still need my rods and stool. I’ll have to call Gail. Oh joy, oh joy.
“Hi, it’s me, but you can keep your hair on, I’m not ringing to get up your nose. I just want to pick up my fishing stuff.”
“Good. I’ve been meaning to clear out that cupboard for ages.”
“Well, there you are then. This’ll give you a head start.”
I go over at three, before Gail has to go fetch Rosie from school.
She doesn’t say a word when she opens the door, just gestures to the cupboard.
“I don’t need to take it all now …” I start selecting the stuff I need just for tonight.
“I’d rather you didn’t leave anything.”
It takes me three trips, backwards and forwards to the car.
“Well, that’s that then.” I stand on the front step. “Gail, I—”
She’s not looking at me, but she shakes her head, her mouth pinched tight shut.
“Sorry,” she says, “I can’t—it’s—I have to go. Rosie …” “Course.” I want to hold her, I want to stroke her hair and hold her close as I can, tell her I can make everything all right again. I try to gulp down the lump in my throat. The door starts to close. “Tell her I’ll see her Sunday!”
We pull up by the promenade just after 9.30 p.m. Harry gets out and looks up at the sky. It’s a clear night, cold but not raining at least, and the stars are sharp and bright as pins. There’s already a line of blokes dotted along the shore. Fathers and sons mostly, I reckon, but maybe some are just mates like me and Harry. We lug all the stuff down onto the beach and set up.
And now we’re done fiddling with the rods and the bait and the tripods and the shelter and the lamp. There’s just me and Harry and the sound of the sea sucking at the shingle and the sky dark and huge above us.
“Um …” I start promisingly. Why is this so hard? “Might even land a bit of cod tonight.”
“Only if we go down the chip shop.” Harry laughs and lights up one of those funny slim cigars. God, I’d love a smoke. I haven’t touched one for nearly seven years, but I could murder a fag right now. I mustn’t. I promised Nat I wouldn’t. “So, what’s occurring then?”
“Thing is …” I get up and start fiddling with my reel. “… I’m not exactly living at home right now …” Firm in the tripod a bit more with the edge of my foot “… See, Gail and me—well, she sort of threw me out and she doesn’t seem in a tearing hurry to have me back.”
Harry doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t make any crass jokes. He nods and passes me a Kit-Kat.
“Hm-mm. Another woman, was it?”
“Well, yes—and no. Yes, there was, but it was very brief and it really didn’t count, and no, there isn’t now and it didn’t mean anything anyway. But Gail won’t believe me or, even if she does, she’s using it as an excuse to get shot of me. She looks at me like I’m a bit of dogshit on her shoe.”
Harry laughs at that, but not in a snide way, and he turns to face me.
“So, where’ve you been staying?”
“At my mate Jeff’s. He lives like a student, only without the books or the brains. He’s forty-two but still believes in the washing-up fairy—just thinks it keeps missing his house by accident. I spend every night clearing up. I’ve never done so much cleaning. Still, stops me thinking. About everything.”
“Stay with us.” It’s somewhere between an invitation and a command and his tone takes me by surprise. I wonder if he’s just saying it because he feels sorry for me.
“It’s decent of you, mate, but I—”
“I mean it. We’ve got a spare room. We’d love to have you, give Maureen someone to fuss over again.”
“No, Harry.” I poke another finger of Kit-Kat into my mouth for something to do but it feels thick and sticky on my tongue. “I wouldn’t want to put you out.” I look down at my feet.
Harry picks up the Thermos and pours us both some coffee.
“You wouldn’t be, you daft bugger. Not at all. It’d mean a lot to us, in fact. You know, since Chris went away …” That’s his son, who went off for a trip Down Under years ago, met this Aussie woman and settled down, never came back, ‘cept about once every three or four years “You’ve been—well. You know what I mean.” He gets out his hankie and vigorously wipes his nose with it. It’s a white cotton one, the sort no-one has any more, ‘cept old guys like Harry. “You’re more than welcome’s all I’m saying.”
* * *
“It should only be for a couple of nights,” I assure Maureen as I stand on her front step the next evening, having told Jeff I couldn’t impose on his generous hospitality a moment longer (if I stayed another night there, I’d be tempted to do away with myself—eat the contents of his fridge for a guaranteed death by salmonella). Maureen flutters round me, trying to take off my jacket while I’m still holding my bag plus some chocolates I picked up for her on the way. “I’m sure Gail and I can straighten things out.” My voice sounds confident, the voice of a man barely disturbed by a minor temporary setback. I have resolved to be positive. She can’t really mean it’s all over, can she? She’s just having me on, trying to put the wind up me.
“You stay as long as you like.” Harry claps me on the shoulder and takes my bag.
“It’s nice for us to have a bit of comp’ny.” Maureen toddles off into the kitchen. “Nice cup of tea, Scott?”
I fancy a nice beer actually. Or a nice several beers. Or a double Scotch and soda.
“Tea would be lovely, Maureen. Thank you.” See, I do have manners when I need to. Gail says I’m beyond help, but then everything I do or say is wrong to her, so what can you expect?
The spare room is bright and cheerful enough and the bed feels comfy when I sit on it.
“This was Chris’s room.” Maureen says it with rever- ence, as if he’d died or something, but I resist the urge to bow my head. “You’ve not much with you.” She nods at my bag.
“No.” The back of my car is chock-a-block with my stuff in bags and boxes covered over with that old check blanket, and Harry’s stowed my fishing things in his shed. “There’s a bit more in the car.”
“Fine!” Harry opens the wardrobe doors wide. “Plenty of space in here. Plenty of space!”
I feel like a kid who’s been allowed to go and stay with his favourite aunt. Not that I ever did, ‘cept for one time when Mum was ill with some “trouble in the downstairs department,” as she put it. I don’t know what was wrong with her because everyone stopped speaking any time us kids came in. She had to go into hospital for a few days, though, and because there were three of us—Russ and Sheil and me—and obviously my dad couldn’t take care of a hamster for half an hour, never mind three children, we were palmed off to three different houses. I went and stayed with Jessie, Mum’s younger sister. I don’t know why we never saw her the rest of the time, I think maybe there’d been a bit of a falling-out. Well, for me, it was like being treated like royalty. When I got there with my pyjamas and that in a carrier bag, I didn’t have anything so grand as a suitcase, Aunt Jessie gave me a hug and a kiss then told me to sit by the fire while she made the tea. Then she called me through to the kitchen and I had lamb chops (two!) with crinkle-cut chips and there were peas and tomatoes and mushrooms. And fizzy limeade to drink. It was bright green. Then I had a big deep bath, deep enough to practise holding my breath underwater, and they let me stay up and watch a film on telly with them. Then Aunt Jessie said, “Off to bed with you now, Dennis.” I know, it’s before I decided to call myself Scott. “You pop up and I’ll come and tuck you in in five minutes. Don’t forget to brush your teeth.”
And she did! She came up and tucked me in! Like in a storybook. She sat on the edge of the bed and told me not to worry about my mum (I wasn’t), and she’d be better soon and I said, “If she doesn’t get better, can I come and live here?”
She laughed and said I was a little angel, but that I wasn’t to upset myself, of course Mum would get better.
Then she bent over and kissed me—right here on my forehead. She tiptoed to the door.
“Shall I leave the landing light on, or do you not mind the dark now you’re a big boy?”
At home, we barely had the lights on at all—"I’m not burning money leaving lights on day and night.”
And then I did something I’ve never done since, something we used to have to do at school, something I’d stopped bothering with once I’d realized it didn’t work.
I prayed.
I prayed that I could live there for ever with Aunt Jessie and Uncle Mikey, I prayed that they’d like me so much that they wouldn’t let Mum and Dad have me back. Worse, I prayed that Mum wouldn’t get better so they’d have to keep me. Then I prayed that, if I couldn’t stay, then would God at least let me die in the night so that the last thing I’d know was the smell of chops coming up the stairs, the murmur of my aunt and uncle talking in the front room, the sheets and blankets tucked so tight around me I could barely move and the spot on my forehead where I’d been kissed good night.
Dad has gone to stay at Harry and Maureen’s. He says it is only going to be for a few days most probably but that’s what he said when he went to his friend Jeff’s and he was there for weeks. I said is it like being on a sleep-over like if I go round Kira’s or she comes to stay and we talk in the dark till her mum or my mum comes in and tells us to shut up and go to sleep. Dad said it wasn’t quite the same because he sleeps in a different room, so he has nobody to talk to when they turn the light off. I wanted to know if him and Mum talked in the dark when he was still at home, but I thought maybe it would make him go all sad again so I never asked. I think mostly grown-ups don’t talk much when they have a sleepover because that means they are doing IT. Nat says grown-ups are always shagging and even when they’re not they’re thinking about it or wanting to do it. He says he thinks about it the whole time, but I bet he doesn’t because he won’t even be fourteen for ages and ages, not till next year, and he’s never done more than have a snog. Anyway, I think he’s lying about them doing it all the time because when you listen to grownups they’re always going on about how tired they are and what wouldn’t they give to have more sleep. Dad says when you’re a kid you spend your whole life wanting to stay up late but then when you’re grown-up and can stay up as late as you like, all you want is to go to bed early. But when I’m a grown-up I will stay up till 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning most nights probably and I won’t get tired at all. And I’ll eat sweets in bed, I’m going to have this great big jar of them, pear drops and cola cubes and Fruitellas and sherbert lemons all mixed up together, right by the bed so I won’t even have to get up and I’ll never brush my teeth.
My dad phones me every other day at the same time and I sit on the stairs to be ready for 7 o’clock. Nat shouts at me to hurry up.
He goes, “What can you have to talk to him about? Any normal person would be dead bored of him by now after having to put up with him all day every Sunday.”
“I don’t have to. I like Sundays. You’re just jealous because you keep missing everything and we do lots of things, and make up games and quizzes, and we have a completely brilliant time the whole day, much, much better than we would if you were there because you always spoil everything.”
And anyhow, it’s true. When Dad was at home, he was always talking to Nat and if I tried to say anything, Nat used to talk all over the top of me really loudly and Dad wouldn’t listen to me any more. Nat said he didn’t spoil things, that I was a little liar and he was going to get me. So I ran downstairs to Mum in the kitchen and she said, “What are you two tearing about like mad things for?” and Nat went back upstairs again and made a rude sign at me over the banister.
He is very cross with Dad and when I said I was seeing him on Sunday the first time he wouldn’t even speak to me. He did after a bit, but only ‘cause he forgot that he’d said he wasn’t going to speak to me any more. I told Dad that Nat couldn’t be cross with him for long, because even when he promises to hate you for ever and never talk to you ever, ever again, he always forgets after a while and then he is just Nat again and it is all right. And Dad said, yeah, he guessed so, then he patted me on the head as if I was only little, but I never said anything.
It was suppertime, so I knocked on Nat’s door.
“Hey—www-dot-Nathan, it’s mother-dot-com here. Any chance of seeing your adorable little face some time this century? I’m beginning to forget what you look like.”
“Mn.”
“Chicken stir-fry with noodles.”
“Mn.”
“Now, please. While it’s hot.”
It’s so nice, I feel, that now my son is starting to grow up we can really communicate with each other. I’m thinking of buying another computer so at least I can e-mail him. It’s the only language these people understand.
Only the other day I asked Rosie to call Nat down for their tea but when I came out to the hall, she was on the phone. She was phoning him on his mobile—in his bedroom, rather than go upstairs and call him.
“But you said you don’t like us shouting in the house,” she said, when I asked her what on earth she thought she was doing. As if this was a satisfactory explanation.
“And have you lost the use of your little legs?”
“This way is faster.”
“No, it isn’t, Rosie. It’s lazy and it’s a waste of money. Please don’t do it again.”
Eventually, Nat came shambling down the stairs, half folded over the stair-rail for some reason. It would be great if just once he could walk normally. He always seems to be moving in a peculiar way, like some action toy you’d test out to see how many poses you could put it in.
“Ah. You look kind of familiar,” I said, ushering him to the table. “Nat, isn’t it?”
He jerked his head up. Never try to be humorous with your children; it only gives them another reason to regard you with contempt.
“Anyone ever told you you’d make a great comedian? Really, I’m like totally laughing my socks off here.”
I sighed, an all-too-familiar sigh which seems to have become a part of me. I am a woman who sighs. Most worrying. I never used to sigh. It’s probably an age thing, which is even more worrying. I doled out the food—wrestling the noodles into three portions and roughly tipping the chicken and vegetables on top. It felt like I was filling a cattle trough, just providing fodder for hungry mouths, with no thought for pleasure or presentation. But cows probably have better table manners than Nat. Sorry, that was mean of me, he’s not that bad. Actually, he is that bad. You should see how he eats spaghetti. I just make sure I’m not sitting directly opposite him so I don’t have to have a full frontal view. I’ve given up trying to get him to eat normally. Maybe he’ll grow into it in time.
“It’s just I think it’s important for us to sit down and eat together as a family …” There was a pause. I think I could have phrased that better. “It’s good to eat together and talk, swap news and so on, hmm? I s’pose if it was up to you, Nat, no-one would ever have a real live conversation face-to-face; we’d sit in three different rooms and only communicate using a chat room on the Net, hmm?”
No response.
“You like us all eating together, don’t you, Rosie?” Come on, can’t I have someone on my side? Call for back-up, as Nat would say.
Rosie swung her legs and took a sip of her lemon squash.
“It’s OK.”
Massive enthusiasm all round, then.
“We’re not becoming one of those families who eat on trays in front of the TV every night.”
Nat stabbed at a piece of chicken as if he were trying to kill it. I fought a strong urge to rest my head gently on the pillow of noodles in front of me.
“Why ask then?” Nat picked up a single strand of noodle and lowered it from a height into his mouth. “You make out you’re asking us what we think, but it’s just some act so you can pretend you care. If me and Rosie wanted to eat nothing but chips and stay in our rooms the whole time, you wouldn’t let us. You go on and on and on about having family meals, but we’re not a family anyhow, so what difference does it make?”
Then he scraped his chair back from the table and walked out.
Well done, Gail, I thought. You handled that really well. I’d best give him a while to cool off. Still, it’s more than he’s said in days.
“Is this free-range?” Rosie said, poking at the chicken with her fork as if it had some disease.
“Yes,” I lied, crossing my fingers under the table, the way I did when I was little. “Eat up now.”
“'m not really hungry. Besides, I think I’m vegetarian again.”
“Oh, Rosie. Well, just try and eat a little bit then, OK?”
“Can’t I have a choc ice instead?”
I give up. I haven’t got the energy for all this. It’s not fair that I have to do everything on my own. I vote for somebody else to be the grown-up for a while so I can lie down in a darkened room. Preferably for about ten years. Maybe when I wake up, Rosie and Nat will be delightful, civilized adults bringing me cups of tea in bed and—who knows?—even putting their own clothes in the washing-machine. True, it’s not that Scott was ever much help either, but at least I could kid myself that there was another adult at the helm. Don’t tell anyone I said this but: Roll on Sunday. Rosie’s out with Scott, Nat goes to Steve’s. I make myself some breakfast and have it on a tray and it’s back to bed for a couple of hours with a good book or the Sunday papers. Bliss. Sheer bliss.
I had a couple of jobs to do within spitting distance from home, and they took less time than I thought, so I figured I might as well pop in. Ever since I had those extra keys cut, they’ve been burning a hole in my pocket. So I parked round the corner, dodged from tree to tree up the road to give the net-twitchers something to worry about, then let myself in.
It was pretty weird, being in my own house yet feeling like a thief. The thought made me tempted to nick something, you know? So I’m looking round the living-room—the TV? Video? I think they might just notice that. Whip a couple of CDs instead. OK, so I’ve got nothing to play them on. It’s the principle that counts, right? The gesture, I mean.
Then I pad upstairs, having taken off my shoes so there’s no tell-tale size 10 impressions in the squashy landing carpet. Pleased with myself that I thought of it—I reckon I’m quite good at this. I probably could have been a private detective. You don’t have to go to college or anything for that, do you? Meanwhile, moving back to reality for a sec. Actually, Nat’s feet can’t be far off size 10s—must be all those hormones or whatever they say there is in meat. Number of burgers Nat eats, I can’t understand why there’s supposed to be a crisis for British farmers. They should stick him on the cover of the paper:
LOCAL LAD SAVES BEEF INDUSTRY SINGLE-HANDED
Go for a piss. Leave the seat up, thinking nyah-ner to you, Gail, Goddess of Nag, go out, then back in again to put it back down, reckoning she’d throw a wobbly at Nat. Into Gail’s room—sod it—our room. Perch on the edge of the bed for a minute as if sitting next to someone sick. Then I flop back and just lay there staring at the ceiling, looking at the lampshade and thinking how I didn’t like it all that much—it’s pretty horrible really, but I’d never thought about it before even though I must have looked at it—at least twice a day, say last thing at night and first thing when I wake up. We’ve been in the house bit over eight years, so what’s that make? Over 5,000 times? A lot anyway. Actually, no, it’s less than that because we redecorated in here only two years ago and got a new shade, so—oh, bollocks, who cares? The point is. I don’t know. Yes—the point is that I’m a bloody good husband—and the lampshade is proof. See, I’ve put up with this vile lampshade for over two years and never complained once. That ought to count for something. None of the things that ought to count ever do, do they? Why is it always up to the women to decide what matters? Like having one brief shag with someone else is everything—OK, two brief shags, whatever—but being nice day in, day out and putting up with the Lampshade from Hell means bugger all? Whoever said we’ve got a male-dominated society wants his head looking at. Her head probably.
I pull back the bedspread then and curl up under it, lay my head on Gail’s pillow, but she must have just changed the bed because there’s only a clean laundry kind of smell and not a Gail-smell at all. I slip my hand under the pillow and pull out a nightie of Gail’s, made of some slithery, shiny stuff. I press it to my face and there’s a trace of her on it. A definite whiff of Gail, that perfume she wears and some other smell that’s just her, her skin, her hair, whatever. I feel a bit choked up suddenly, tell myself I’m a daft bugger, rubbing the cloth against my cheek. It’s all soft and silky. I wonder if …? Sod it, why not? It’s not like I’ve got anything left to lose. I attempt to stuff the nightie inside my jacket but it just slides out again, so—I know this sounds a bit pervy but I can’t think what the hell else to do with it—I wind it round my waist, tucked into my trousers all the way round, then tuck my shirt back in over it. With my jacket on, you couldn’t see a thing. Then I carefully smooth the pillow and put the bedspread back so it’s all neat and peer at it from every angle.
I poke my head round Rosie’s door. She is so tidy. Funny kid. Take a quid out of my pocket and hide it in one of her shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe. I’m just leaving then when something catches my eye. A new poster. Before she used to have this poster of dolphins on the wall. But now I see it’s been bumped—demoted to the far end next to the window. Pride of place, where she’d see it when she woke up each morning is a pop poster, one of those bands where they all look about twelve and they’re all singers—well, allegedly anyway—and you can hear music but no-one seems to be playing any kind of instrument, you know? But she’s way too young to be into bands and stuff. Actually, maybe last Sunday she did say something about a band. But she’s only a little kid for chrissakes. Next thing she’ll be dolling herself up to the nines and rolling in at two o’clock in the morning off her head on E. I’ll ask her Sunday, about bands I mean, what she likes and that.
Still, the thought made me feel a bit weird, to be honest, like she was growing up without me—you know that playground game they used to play way back when I was alive—Grandma’s Footsteps, was it? You turn your back and the others try and slowly sneak up on you, but you turn round suddenly and try to catch them moving. Like that.
I come back home once or twice a week now, whenever I can fit it in. I come in the day of course, usually mid-morning, just to—I don’t know—have a look, I suppose. See what’s occurring. It’s not against the law or anything, is it? Couldn’t be—it’s my house after all, right? Our house. Besides, it’s not as if I’m breaking in or anything. I’m using a key—'cept for that first time and there were extenuating circumstances, i.e. I was very pissed off, so I really had no other option. Now, it’s no different than if I was a totally normal husband doing shift work, say, and coming home when the rest of the family were out. Completely normal and ordinary. The only difference is that I’m not on shift work, of course. Oh yeah—and the family have no idea that I’m even here. But it’s not as if they’d really mind. Aside from Gail, obviously.
Still. It’s good to be here. I don’t think I ever really appreciated having a nice home before. You don’t till you suddenly find yourself living out of a bin bag. Oh, you know what I mean, in someone else’s back bedroom then. Being at Harry’s is all right, and I’m not ungrateful, but it’s not the same as having your own place where you can just drop yourself onto the settee and put your feet up or wander round in your underpants. This is no palace, I grant you, we’ve not got gold taps or silk wallpaper, but it’s warm and comfy and got everything we need. Everything I need. Telly, video, music centre, all the gear. Decent power shower all tiled round by yours truly. Dishwasher. Wife. Children. Shame you can’t replace them out of a catalogue: “I seem to have lost my wife and kids, but I see you’ve a nice set there on page 72. Have you got them in stock, but with a less stroppy looking wife? Fine, I’ll take them. Deliver them on Tuesday. Thank you.”
It’s so quiet here now. Looking back, I think I was hardly ever in the house on my own, so you could always hear, well, just typical family noise really: the TV, Nat thundering up and down the stairs, music—Gail listening to the radio in the kitchen while she made the tea, Nat playing his CDs, the dishwasher humming away or the clothes washer or the ping of the microwave or the kettle coming to the boil. And Rosie, asking questions, the way she does: “Da-a-a-d, you know Mount Everest? Well, why do people keep climbing up it?” It’s a mystery to me, love, I can barely manage life down here. Mind you, Everest sounds kind of tempting after the last few weeks I’ve just had.
Just have a quick scout round, I’ve not got long today. Harry’d never say a word, bless him, but he must be wondering why my calls keep taking me so long. I go in the front room and stretch out on the settee to watch a bit of telly. God, it’s crap, daytime TV, isn’t it? No wonder people want to go out to work. I channel-hop every six seconds or so then give up on it. Tidy the cushions and shake them to plump them up again. See, I am a good husband. Admittedly, I never used to bother doing that, but I’m a changed man, really I am.
A nose round upstairs. No sign of male occupation, thank God, other than Nat’s spot cream in the bathroom. I wonder if Gail’ll start seeing someone. A boyfriend, I mean—you know, just to get back at me. It’s way too soon, of course, but she might as a sort of retaliation, revenge thing. Nah. She wouldn’t. She wants me back, I’m sure of it, it’s just she’s painted herself into a corner with all this playing the Outraged Innocent Victim crap and she doesn’t know how to get out of it.
Rosie’s room is shipshape as usual, but with hundreds of little bits and bobs everywhere—I don’t know, girlie stuff, her snow shakers, of course, and tiny glass animals and boxes with shells stuck on them and small soft toys with googly eyes and dishes filled with elastic thingies for her hair and grips or clips or whatever they are, and flowers carved out of wood and boxes with secret catches so you can’t open them and funny plastic rings with outsize jewels on them that she’s saved from Christmas crackers.
Inside the wardrobe, her clothes are all put away properly. Not like me, King of the Plastic Sacks. The dresses and skirts are neat and straight on hangers, the tops and trousers folded on the shelves. I walk my fingers along the line of hangers to find her favourite dress. It’s this one, see, with the light blue spots all over it? She loves this one, though it must be too small for her now. She wore it last summer when we went on her friend’s birthday picnic. There were three families in all and we just lazed around most of the day, having too much beer and stuffing our faces with chicken and cold meat loaf, snoozing in the sun while the kids played some game that seemed to involve lots of running and pushing and shouts of “You cheat!” I remember this one moment—I must have just woken up from a bit of a doze—and I half sat up. And there was Rosie in her spotty dress—running, picking her feet up high because of the long grass and literally shrieking with delight. She looked like a picture. The dots on her dress were exactly the same colour as the sky behind her—bang on they were, you couldn’t have got a better match if you’d been sat there all day with a paintbox.
I felt ridiculously proud. I know, she wasn’t doing anything especially clever or amazing, but she was my daughter and she looked so pretty and happy, running like the wind, and just bursting with life that I was dead chuffed. And then, just as suddenly, I came over all sad. How much longer would she be like this, I thought, leaping through the grass and without a worry in the world. All too soon she’ll be a teenager and she’ll be skulking in her room and throwing a strop every two minutes and slamming doors and wanting to be pierced all over the place. And then she’ll be like the rest of us, struggling to earn a living, pay the mortgage, find someone to settle down with, raise a family, trying to put a bit by for a holiday or a new kitchen or a new car, worrying about her tax or the latest food scare or whether her husband’s shagging someone else. Ahem. Whatever. And there’ll be no more running through the grass, shrieking with joy, outrunning the wind.
I guess I felt sad for myself, too, sad that I’ve become a pathetic old git, wasting my life worrying and moaning and going nowhere when I should be out there rushing through the long grass, whooping at the sky. No, not necessarily literally. You know what I mean.
I plucked out the dress and swung it round, the way I used to swing Rosie when she was little, remembering her laughing and bossing me, telling me to put her down, put her down right now, but knowing from her laughter and her eyes that she’s loving it. I held the little dress close for a minute till I thought, “Hang on a tick, you’re losing it, mate. You’ll start blubbing like a baby in a minute if you don’t pull yourself together.”
I didn’t think I could face Nat’s room after that. Not the untidiness, ‘cause I never gave a toss about that, not like Gail. Just—well, you know. I patted his door as I passed then went downstairs. Checked my watch. Gail’s not due back for hours. Easy-peasy. Shoes back on and I’m out the door and off back to my car with no-one any the wiser.
His rods are gone. Everything. The whole lot. The lamp. And the tent. And the big green umbrella. Now there’s just my rod in the cupboard, all on its own. I guess he’s really not coming back. See, I said he wasn’t, didn’t I? I always said it.
Tonight, the phone rang and I picked it up without thinking. It went all slow motion like an action replay, watching my hand lift the phone and suddenly knowing it was him but too late to let go. I didn’t say anything.
“Hi,” Dad said, “Gail? Who’s that? Rosie, is that you?”
I said nothing, holding the phone away as if it had germs. He phones Rosie like every day practically. She sits on the bottom step, twirling the ends of her hair round and round her finger and telling him what she’s done at school. I say, “That your boyfriend? C’mon, get off the phone—you’ve been on for hours.” It really winds her up.
“Nat? Nat. Come on, Natty, don’t be like this. It’s me—Dad.”
Uh-duh. Yeah, like who else would I refuse to speak to? He can be really thick sometimes. I wanted to speak, wanted to say, “Dad who?” in a snotty voice, “Not the dad who fucked up everything and is nothing to do with me any more? That dad?”
“Natty?” he said again. “Hey.” He didn’t say anything for what felt like ages. Well, two can play at that game. I could stand there all day. “Well. Get Rosie for me will you then?”
Rosie was out at a friend’s, but why should I tell him?
I put the phone on its side with a loud clunk and shouted up to Mum.
“Mu-um. Ph-o-o-o-ne.”
“Who is it?” She came running down the stairs.
I shrugged.
She gave me one of her looks. Like really scary—not. I went into the kitchen so I could still hear and opened the fridge. Stood in the cold eating a hunk of cheese, nibbling it like a rat, making ratty squeaks, ratty-Natty, and swigging some juice from the carton.
“… he doesn’t want to, Scott. I can’t make him.
“I’ll do what I can, but frankly you should have thought—hang on a sec—”
I saw her arm reach across to close the kitchen door. I snuck closer, just in time to hear her bang the phone down. The door opened immediately. She’s so suspicious all the time.
“What?” I said, sidling back towards the fridge.
“Nathan!” she was practically bellowing.
“I can hear, you know. I’m not deaf.”
“Nathan,” she said again, all quiet and scary—but really this time. “Don’t eavesdrop on other people’s conversations all the time.”
“I wasn’t—I’m just here having a small piece of cheese. I suppose you’d rather I starved to death?”
“Don’t interrupt when I’m cross, Nathan, or I’ll get a lot crosser. And don’t be melodramatic. I won’t have you snooping—it’s very rude for a start, and no-one ever heard good of themselves that way, so I—oh, for goodness’ sake—” Mum came towards me and I suddenly thought she was going to hit me. OK, I know she never has, well not for years, ‘cept about twice maybe—one time after I ran out in the road and nearly got run over and the other time I made a V-sign at an old lady but it wasn’t fair I got a smack—I only did it ‘cause she swore at me for no reason, shouted at me right in the street. She was a total loony. And she was smelly.
I dropped the cheese and Mum went even more ballistic.
“Whatever’s wrong with you, Nathan? Pick that up right now and cut off the bit where it’s touched the floor. Come out of there, you’re practically in the fridge. I must have told you a thousand times, don’t stand there with the fridge door open. It makes it over-rev. You’re as bad as—well. Please, please, Nat, just close the fridge door, OK?”
* * *
As bad as your dad, she was going to say. Just like your father. That’s what everyone says. You take after your dad. You’re so like your dad. Aaah, they say, Aren’t you just like your dad?
I’m not, I’m not, I’m NOT, I wanted to shout—I’m not like him. I wouldn’t run off and leave us all in this mess and abandon a little kid who’s practically a baby and expect my son to sort everything out and grow up overnight and be the man in the family just because I was stupid and selfish and mean. I’m not like him. I’m not.
I have to admit things aren’t looking so promising on the Gail-begging-me-to-come-back front. You’d think she’d be missing me a bit at least. She’s probably hiding it. That’ll be it. But if I’m not moving back in the next couple of weeks, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and notify the parents. No, I know it’s not like they give a toss about my marriage or my happiness and well-being or anything, but just in case they do ring, I’d rather they didn’t hear it from Gail. My mother has been known to phone from time to time and ask me to come round, say if a tap needs a new washer or they’ve a shelf wants putting up, you know, the kind of job that only a precious and much loved son who can’t say no could do. Why should they call for a handyman and waste their hard-hoarded money when Idiot Boy keeps coming to the rescue?
I reckon it’s best if I just drop in on the off-chance. There’s no point phoning in advance, ‘cause it’s not like they’re going to be cracking open the Champagne in my honour, is it? No, I’m being unfair. Give her credit, my mother always makes me a cup of tea when I go round there. And she always says, “And how’s life treating you, dear?”
That’s how she sees the world—like you’re a discarded plastic bag in the street and life may pick you up and fly you about in the wind or leave you laying in the gutter and you’ve got no say in it whatsoever. Actually, I feel like that at the moment, but it’s no way to carry on, is it?
If I’m moronic enough to say “Not too bad, thanks,” then they usually start dropping heavy hints about things that need doing round the house and they were thinking of getting some lamb in for the freezer but they’re a bit strapped for cash just now—and the pension’s not much, is it?—of course they’ve never been extravagant—not like some people they could name—specially her along at number 6, all fur coat and no knickers—they’ve always been careful, of course—waste not, want not—but it’s nice to have a bit extra, isn’t it?—you never know when you might need it—oh, am I sure—can I really spare it?—well, it’s appreciated—they’ll tuck it away safely—oh, not the bank, no—some-where safe—it’s been nice having a visit—and p’raps I’d remember to bring some sweets next time—it’s fruit jellies, she likes, she can’t eat toffees now, with her teeth—and your dad’ll take some tobacco—you know the kind he has—he likes a smoke, does your dad—all he’s got now is a smoke and a flutter on the dogs.
My father’s retired now, of course. Used to work on the railways. And the house isn’t far from the tracks, you can hear the trains. He likes that, my dad, the noise of the trains, the sound as it crosses the points. There’s not many things he likes, but that’s one of them. Mum used to take whatever work was going, seasonal jobs on the farms, fruit-picking when she was younger, then piece-work from home, stuffing envelopes and making up crackers for some company ahead of Christmas, bright red crépe paper and shiny gold stickers spread out on the table in the middle of July. We used to try to get the jokes, to read them out, but she told us not to touch them, case our filthy hands made marks on them and the customers complained.
I’ve got to drive down Westbury Road, so I pull over and nip into the bakery there for some cream cakes. My mum’s like a junkie when it comes to cakes. You see her eyes light up and her pupils go all glinty as she fusses in the cupboard, looking for the little tea plates, not the best ones, of course, they’ve not been used once, since they got them for a wedding present nearly fifty years ago. She gets out the cake forks, though, as she would if they ever had company round—which they never have, not being over-fond of people in general—having company’s an expense, isn’t it?—people expecting scones and fancy cakes and all sorts—thinking you’re made of money—it’s not necessary, is it?— they’ve not got the time or the patience to be putting on airs with that sort of thing.
* * *
Miracle of miracles, my father’s out when I arrive, so my mother—apron apparently glued to her front as always—is in what passes for a good mood in this household.
“Ooh! Dennis!” This is not an expression of maternal delight at seeing her youngest return to the family fold, you understand. No—she has spied the promising white cardboard cake box, tied with ribbon. Still, I bestow a rare kiss on her cheek in a sudden fit of something-or-other and she waddles through to the front room to fetch the cake forks.
“Where is he then?”
“Gone for his tobacco.” My father smokes the thinnest roll-ups you’ve ever seen. No, thinner than the thinnest ones you’ve ever seen. Each one contains about three and a half strands of tobacco, which he carefully arranges and straightens and rearranges on the cigarette paper balanced on the arm of his chair. He then licks along one edge with trembling tongue and rolls it up unbelievably slowly. The whole process takes so long, you have to fight the urge to grab it from him and say, “Here—I’ll do it!” He then pokes this sad apology for a cigarette in his mouth and leaves it hanging there, stuck to his wet bottom lip for another few minutes, while he stomps around looking for a light and blaming whoever crosses his path for hiding the matches.
I should tell her now, quickly, before he gets back. Then she can pass on the joyous news after I’ve left.
“And how’s life treating you, dear?” She says the words, but her attention is focused solely on the three plump cream cakes as she opens the lid of the box to reveal their glory. There is no question but that she’ll have first pick. Her hand hovers, then settles on the chocolate éclair. One fat finger darts back into the box to recapture a tiny blob of cream that has brushed off the éclair onto the side of the box.
I grab the meringue, leaving my father with the vanilla slice—the one we all like least. Ah, you’re thinking, why didn’t he just buy another éclair instead then? Or another meringue? Or something else altogether? Why bother with the vanilla slice at all? But of course, that would be missing the point. In our family, at least half the pleasure depends on knowing that you’re eating the cake that someone else would have wanted. My parents only ever really enjoy themselves if they’re certain that someone else is thoroughly miserable. I will just say, I’m not like that the rest of the time—it’s just when I’m around them, I find myself acting the way they do.
“Life,” I say, ignoring the dolly-sized cake fork and lifting the entire meringue up to my mouth, “has given me a ruddy great kick in the teeth.” She’s not listening anyway, concentrating on her cake, so I might as well carry on. “Fact is, Gail and I had a bit of a barney and things got a bit out of hand …”
“You never give her a slap, did you, Dennis?”
“No! Of course not!” My mother, of all people, should know I’d never hit anyone. Specially not a woman or a kid. How could she think for even a second I’d be like—that I’d do that?
She looks round with a guilty face then lifts the cake’s paper case to her mouth to lick the traces of cream and chocolate left on it. “No. But we’re—we’re having a kind of a trial separation.”
That sounds good. I must use that again. Trial separation. Sounds very adult—you’ve had a ruck, you’re thinking things over, you’re both having a bit of space, sort yourselves out. Sounds a lot, lot better than she chucked me out on the street and won’t let me come back.
It is at this moment that the old man returns.
“Dennis is here!” my mother calls out, though her tone sounds more like a warning than an exclamation of joy.
“Oh. Is he?” His voice comes from the kitchen, where he’s entered round the back. I hear him shedding his coat, the same old brown one he’s had for ever, smelling of tobacco and musty rooms and that haircream that only old guys seem to use; I think you have to show your pension book before they let you buy it.
“What’s ‘e want then?” he calls out. The tap goes on in the kitchen, water splashing onto the metal sink. There’s a bar of soap at the side that sits on one of those funny little pink mats covered in rubber suckers like the underside of an octopus. The soap is the old, hard, green sort that lasts for ever. I don’t think you can even buy it any more. My mother no doubt bought a box of 100 bars thirty years ago and they’re still slowly working their way through it, pacing themselves so it lasts them till they die.
“There’s a cake on the side there for you, dear.” My mother, trying to please.
“No éclair then?”
I wink at my mother, briefly conspirators.
“They were all out,” I call back.
Finally, he enters the room, gives me a nod and settles into his chair. His chair. It smells like his coat and has the same brown, worn feel—its whole life has been spent moulded to his body. There’s a darker patch where his head rests. One time, my mother got one of those white things, you know, like a serviette you put on the back of your chair, but he said he couldn’t be fiddle-faddling with that like some old woman. That was way back, when we walked around holding our breath, never knowing what might set him off. He tugs at his waistband then undoes his trouser button. Sets the cake, still in the box, on his lap.
“Shall I fetch you a plate?” My mother, pathetically trying to preserve the niceties.
“Do I look like I’m wanting a plate?”
You’ll have gathered that charm is not one of my father’s outstanding qualities.
“So, what’s up with him then?” He’s not looking at either of us, but he’s talking to her, to my mother.
Her teacup rattles, suddenly loud, in its saucer.
“Dennis was just saying …” She looks at me and her voice falters.
I am forty years old, for God’s sake. I don’t have to be afraid of him any longer. Still—I stand up—to feel taller, bigger, more grown-up. I lean against the mantelpiece, a man at ease.
“Gail and I are having a trial separation.” There. Not a waver in my voice.
“What’s that when it’s at home? Chucked you out, did she? Always thought she was too good for us, that one.” He laughs and looks round for a cup of tea. My mother heaves herself up with as much speed as she can manage and goes through to the kitchen.
“No. It’s a mutual thing. We agreed—”
“A what? Speak normal, can’t you?”
“We’re just working things out.” It sounds lame, pathetic, untrue.
“Marriage is till you go to your grave.” Funny how he makes it sound like a life sentence rather than a source of happiness. “I’ve stuck by your mother all these years.”
The other way round, more like. Who else would put up with him? He starts looking around him, feeling down the side of the seat cushion, already losing interest.
I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know why I did. Why, after all these years, am I still stupid enough to hope it’ll be any different? No, I’m not saying I want them to hire a brass band to welcome me home. It’s just—it’d be nice if just once they’d say, “How are you, son? It’s good to see you.” That’s all.
“Where’s them bloody matches gone?” he says.
“Hey, babe, how’s it going?” Cassie phoned me at work. She and Derek had been away for a fortnight’s holiday in New York and I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to rely on her daily calls, checking that I was still bearing up.
“Oh, you know. So-so.”
“So-so—not bad? Or so-so—fucking awful?”
I laughed. I can’t remember the last time I laughed.
“The second one.” I was about to ask her about her holiday when I sensed someone behind me. They’re not keen on personal calls at the surgery because the lines are so busy as it is. “Yes, Mrs Dickson, if it’s just a repeat prescription, there’s no need for you to see the doctor.”
“Big Brother’s watching, I take it. Can I come over later and bore you with my holiday piccies? Eightish?”
“Yes indeed. Goodbye now.”
Dr Wojczek leant a little closer.
“Sorry to interrupt you, Gail, do you have a minute for me?”
“Of course!” I called over to Tess to cover the desk then followed Dr Wojczek to his room. I stood with my back against the door, clutching my notepad in front of me.
“Please …” he gestured to the other chair, the patient’s chair.
I perched awkwardly right on the very edge of the seat. He has a way of looking at you that is incredibly intense, so you imagine he knows every single thing you’re thinking. His eyes are really deep, dark brown, and also he rarely blinks so I can’t look at him for more than a split second without feeling peculiar. One night a few months ago, I had a dream with him in it and, well, to be honest it was, you know, a—a naughty dream. Then the next day, when he said good morning and looked at me, I was so embarrassed. I was convinced he was going to say, “You disgusting slut! How dare you have such obscene thoughts about me?” He didn’t, of course, but I still say he knew and ever since then I find it even harder to meet his gaze.
“Is this about my work?” I sounded flustered and defensive. Of course, I’ve been distracted, but I don’t think I’ve made any serious slip-ups.
“I don’t know. Should it be?”
“Look, I know I haven’t been as focused as I normally am—but it’s just a temporary problem—it really is—and I’m sorry—but—” I plunged on, getting faster and more pointless as I went on. God knows if he could make head or tail of it. I’m not making fun of his English, no; he’s been here for years, and, if anything, he speaks better than most English people, more precise. Only his voice tends to rise at the end of his sentences, so it sounds as if he’s asking a question, even when he isn’t.
He nodded calmly.
“There is nothing wrong with your work. As always, you are efficient, capable, good with the patients?”
“Then that’s not why you wanted to talk to me?” I felt such a fool. He shook his head.
“I notice, of course, that you are not happy …?” Then he looked right into my eyes and it was all I could do not to burst into tears and sob hysterically in front of him. I could feel myself welling up so I looked down at my notepad and started drawing a series of loops across the page, the way Rosie would. “… and I am here any time you want—or perhaps you would prefer Dr Kerr?” Jane Kerr, my own doctor. “But, no. It is not for me to intrude in your personal life? If you are unhappy with something here at the surgery, you must tell me, yes?”
“Yes. No. There’s nothing. I love it here.”
“Good. Perhaps you will think about becoming fulltime then?” he smiled. They’d asked me twice before, but I’ve always put my family first. It would mean Rosie going to after-school club or round to Kira’s. Still, we could do with the extra money.
“I’ll think about it.” I got up and made to leave.
“And you will remember that I am here?”
“Yes. I will. Thank you.”
Cassie. Thank heavens for Cassie. She brought Rosie a snow shaker for her collection with the Statue of Liberty in it, and a baseball cap for Nat that he said was “Ace. Like majorly cool with a capital C"—which I think meant he liked it. Once the kids had gone upstairs, Cassie whisked out a pair of pink pants for me from Bloomingdale’s—with “Bloomies” across the bum.
“They’re great—shame no-one else will get the good of them.”
“Your choice, babe. I bet there’s no shortage of blokes who’d like a closer look at your lingerie.”
We started looking through her photos.
“You thought any more about having Scott back?”
“Of course. There’s nothing else I can think about. I’m so sick of myself, listening to the same old thoughts going round and round my head, it’s driving me crazy. At least work keeps me sane, being so busy means there’s no time to think.”
“So what’s the verdict?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know. I really don’t. I suppose it sounds awful but sometimes I think if I had never found out, maybe that would have been OK. I’d never have known and I wouldn’t have had to do anything, d’you see?”
“Mm. Ignorance is bliss, yeah?”
“Sort of. But I can’t go back. I do know and I can’t un-know it now. And anyway …” I held a photo up close. “God, don’t tell me you let Derek out in that hat?”
“Don’t change the subject. And anyway, what?”
“Can I ask you something first? If Derek left, what would you miss most about him?”
“Seeing his artificial leg propped against the chair first thing when I wake up.”
“No, stop kidding. Really.”
“I’m not kidding. Every time I see it, standing there on its own, still with its shoe and sock on, I feel this great rush of tenderness towards Derek. He’s such a strong person, and he’s always been there for me 100 per cent, when I got made redundant, when I had that horrible cyst thing, remember? And—most of all, about not having any kids. He’s a rock. He never moans. Then I see his leg, or I watch him hop across the room, and I go all mushy inside and I just want to cover him in great big sloppy kisses.
“Anyway, never mind me,” Cassie gathered up the photos and packed them away briskly. “What do you miss most about Scott? Let me guess. Not the way he helped so much around the house, presumably?”
“No.”
“Not his love of serious intellectual conversation?”
“Right again.”
“Still, he is a laugh, you have to give him that. It is that, right?”
I shook my head.
You know, if anyone had asked me, back when we were still together, if anyone had said, “What would you miss most?” I’d have guessed it would be that. That’s what it used to be, you see. In the beginning, in the very beginning, he made me laugh. He was always clowning around. But someone clowning around when they’re twenty-four and you’re out with a whole bunch of you going for pizza or to a disco, it’s great. But when he’s forty and you’ve got a family and you’re trying to juggle the bills and worrying about your kids and planning and organizing, well, it just doesn’t seem so funny any more.
“What then?”
“I miss having him deal with it when there’s a spider in the bath and I miss having someone to put my cold feet on in bed.”
“Seriously?” she said, scanning my face, then seeing the answer there. “Holy shit.”
“I know.”
“But then that means …?”
“Yes,” I said. “It does.”
Afterwards, I felt strange inside, all churned up, and I couldn’t think straight. Saying it out loud, admitting it to Cassie, wasn’t the same as just knowing it in my head. As long as it was just in my mind, I could try to hush it up, ignore it, hum a tune to drown it out.
I made some coffee, even though it was after eleven by the time she left, then I went upstairs and ran a bath. I kept thinking of Cassie’s face, that look of near-horror because she realized exactly what it meant.
I dropped my clothes on the floor. Deliberately. Sounds silly, but it felt like a treat, telling myself I didn’t care, that I could be like a child tossing my things in a heap instead of folding them on the chair, that I could be irresponsible and—well, and spontaneous, that I could be like Scott, I suppose. Except, of course, even as I dropped them, I was thinking all this and knowing that when I got out of the bath I would pick them up and that I would hang up my towel properly and leave everything tidy, so it wasn’t all that spontaneous.
I sank back into the bath, and let my mind wander, thinking about friends and couples I’d known over the years where one of them had had an affair and what had happened. Sometimes they’d split up but sometimes they hadn’t. And, suddenly, now I knew why, what the difference was. It was so simple. The ones who’d stayed together had stuck it out—because they wanted to. It wasn’t that they were stronger than us or that the wife didn’t care so much that her husband had cheated on her or even that she believed that he’d really change. It wasn’t any of that. The simple fact was that they wanted to be together whatever it took and they would go through all the pain and hurt and anger they felt in trying to work things out because at the end they would still be with the person they wanted to spend their life with.
And now I was left with this cold, sad fact that I knew I didn’t want to be with Scott for the rest of my life but, much worse than that, in some part of me I must have known it for quite a while. Which meant that the moment I found out about Scott’s pathetic little fling wasn’t the beginning at all. The beginning was much, much earlier. Years ago even. And I hadn’t really noticed. Or, if I had, I’d decided to ignore it. I’d concentrated on the children, fussing round them and bustling round the house being busy, nagging Scott because it was easier than facing up to the fact that we had nothing to talk about, that we just happened to be sharing a house for convenience’s sake. And it meant that I’d been doing exactly what I’d always accused Scott of. I’d blamed him and blamed him and blamed him, making out—and really, truly believing it in my own mind—that it was 100 per cent his fault and that it was all just to do with him and his stupid wandering willy.
But now, this—this was much harder because it means that I’m responsible too. I knew how serious our problems were but I pretended nothing was wrong, even to myself. And now Scott’s hurting and I’m hurting and far, far worse than anything else, Nat and Rosie must be hurting and I can’t bear it. As long as it was all Scott’s fault, I could be angry and self-righteous and kid myself that at least I was still a good mother. And now I can’t and I don’t know if I can bear it, I don’t know how to bear it. I don’t know how.
Last Sunday, Steve had to go away with his family to visit his grandparents. Normally, I go round there and we play games on his new PlayStation and do a bit of homework and have a big Sunday dinner. His mum says she likes having me and it’s no more trouble to cook for six than it is for five anyway. Steve says going to his grandparents’ is a real drag and that they’re like majorly sad crumblies, but he really likes his gran, he just won’t admit it. I like my nan and grandad, that’s Mum’s parents, not the other lot. We never see my dad’s mum and dad much, ‘cause Mum hates them. I mean, even before—y’know. It’s OK by me, because I don’t like them either. We call them Granny Scott and Grandad Scott, but the nice ones are just Nana and Grandad. Grandad Scott stinks of tobacco and he’s always got this titchy roll-up stuck to his lip like it’s just landed there by accident, and his hair looks all greasy and he scratches himself. And he makes snide remarks the whole time, specially to my dad. And Dad goes all funny around him—he won’t sit down hardly, tapping his foot like he’s about to make a run for it, and he never laughs when he’s there, not ever.
Whatever. Anyway, I told Mum I couldn’t go round Steve’s on Sunday and she said why didn’t I stay home and hang out with her. That’s what she said: “You could hang out with me if you like.” It sounded funny when she said it, like she was putting it on, trying to sound like me. But she’s all right, I guess. For a parent. Steve thinks my mum’s really cool and he starts talking all polite if he comes round and smarming up to her, but I told him he wouldn’t like her so much if he had to live in the same house as her the whole time and be nagged to death about hanging up the towels and putting your shoes away and doing your homework and stacking your plate and stuff in the dishwasher and phoning if you’re going to be late. Steve says they all do that, it’s what parents are for. But, I mean, get a life. You’d think if you were grown-up you’d be out having fun and doing whatever you like, not worrying about whether your son’s left his trainers halfway up the stairs.
But Jason said I could go out with him and his dad on Sunday. He says his mum and stepdad dump him on his dad on Sundays so they can stay in bed all day, doing it.
“Nah!” I go. “They’re too old. They must be past it by now.”
“They’re always at it,” he goes. “One time I found a pair of my mum’s pants by the breadbin.”
“Euch! That’s gross! What’s she leave ‘em there for?”
“'cause they were shagging in the kitchen, stupid.”
I give him a shove.
“Don’t call me stupid. Why’d they do it in the kitchen then, smart-arse?”
He shrugged.
“Dunno. ‘s what people do, innit?”
“Maybe in your family, dipstick. D’you cook your tea in the bedroom then? Wash your dishes in the bath? Sound like a bunch of loony-tunes to me. You wanna watch it or they’ll send you up the hill.”
That’s what we say if someone’s a bit psycho—"up the hill"—'cause that’s where the loony bin is, on that hill on the edge of town. If you get taken there, they give you injections with a whacking great needle as thick as your finger practically. My dad said they stuff you full of tablets, whatsits—tranquillizers and that—dope you to the gills, he says, so you’ll be nice and quiet and not give the staff any trouble. He said it’s disgusting and they should close the place down. Then my mum told him off and said to stop exaggerating, you’re scaring the children, and that she’s sure it’s not like that any more, it wouldn’t be allowed, blah, blah. I bet it is.
Mum said I could go with Jason on Sunday as long as I did some homework on Saturday and would promise to finish it Sunday evening and she’d want to see it to make sure. Yeah, yeah, drone, drone.
So Sunday, him and his dad come and pick me up. They couldn’t come till eleven o’clock, so I had to hide out in my room when you-know-who came to collect Miss Goody-Goody. I looked down from my window, hiding behind the curtain. I’d make a great spy. See him come bounding up the front path, looking like really heartbroken—NOT—that he’s about to spend yet another Sunday without his only son. His hair’s going thin on top. I wanted to tell him to wind him up, ask him if he was planning on being a monk. We like to wind each—Used to like. Whatever. He’s getting old. Becoming a crumbly. He’ll be forty-one soon. Rosie keeps on about this idea she’s had for his present. Yawn. I don’t see why I should get him anything. I haven’t got any money anyway. I can’t even use my mobile now ‘cause I’ve run out of talk credits and Mum said she wouldn’t get me any unless I started helping out around the house more and we all have to watch the money a bit more now. I don’t see why me and Rosie have to suffer.
We went bowling. Like we did on my birthday. But Jason’s dad’s not the same. For a start, he’s like always got to be the best, yeah? I mean, course he’s bigger than us and that. And stronger. He’s bound to be better, but when we went before, with my dad, he still made sure everyone was having a good time. I mean, he’s like an ace bowler, my dad, but he still helps anyone else who wants him to, and he offers you a lead if you want one, and if you do a good bowl he cheers for you. But when I nearly got a strike this time, I knocked down eight pins, right? And Jason’s dad just goes,
“Not bad, son. Not bad.” And winks at me.
“I’m not your son, creep,” I went—only quiet, so he wouldn’t hear me.
And he kept on telling knock-knock jokes like as if we were only Rosie’s age or something and we had to pretend to laugh. It was so embarrassing.
When he brought me back, I remembered to say, “Thanks for taking me out, Mr Hall. I had a really good day.” Without Mum having to nudge me or anything. But it wasn’t a really good day. I only said it ‘cause you’re supposed to.
“Hey, pardner!” he goes, bellowing from the car like so loud my eardrums start trying to climb out my ears to escape. Like he thinks he’s in a Western or something. “You can call me Rob next time!”
Like he’s doing me a favour. Can I really? Gee, the excitement’s like getting too much, you know? I’ll call you Creep instead if you don’t mind, how’s that?
At least my dad’s not a creep.
I can’t stay any longer at Harry’s, it would put a strain on everybody. Maureen’s a nice woman, don’t get me wrong, but she will not stop fussing. I don’t know if she thinks I’m completely clueless or what, but she treats me like I’m an invalid. If I go to put sugar in my tea, she rushes across to do it for me. She even cleaned my shoes the other day; I left them by the front door and when I came down in the morning they’d been polished. Well, it was either her or the pixies. It’s kind of her, of course, but it just makes me embarrassed. A couple of days ago, I was padding about the house in my socks and one of them had a hole in it. I know, I know—bit sad, but I can’t find anything in these great sacks full of stuff that Gail so lovingly packed for me. Maureen’s making her thousandth cup of tea of the day—it’s a wonder she’s ever off the toilet long enough to drink it, I don’t know why she doesn’t just tip whole teapots of the stuff straight down the drain, cut out the middle man—and she says, “Ooh, look, you’ve a hole there wants darning, Scott. Just pop that sock off and I’ll see to it.”
I’m thinking of putting her up to go on the telly— now, in captivity, the last woman on planet Earth who still darns socks. It’s like, sorry, but have you not got enough to do with your time or what?
Anyway, so I lift my jaw up from the floor and say no thanks, not to worry and I go up to my room and tip one of the sacks out on the bed to hunt for some more. There’s a bit of a shortage of ones that actually match, far as I can see—it’s like playing Snap! only I’m having no luck finding a pair, unless you count one grey one black as being close enough. And then I start thinking, which is never a good idea if (a) your entire life’s gone down the plughole and (b) you happen to be me.
What the fuck do you think you’re doing? I ask myself. You’re forty years old. Nearly forty-one in fact. You’ve screwed up your marriage. Your only son won’t even speak to you. Your nine-year-old daughter’s got more sense in one of her pigtails than you’ve got in your whole body. You’ve got no home, no family, no life and no future, and you’re sitting on some other bloke’s single bed in someone else’s house just ‘cause they took pity on you and if you’re not careful you’ll still be here in ten years’ time. The three of you’ll be toddling round together in nylon zip-up jackets and brown crêpe-soled shoes, going out for cream teas or a nice little drive of a Sunday or, if you’re lucky, the occasional pub lunch with one pint of beer. You’ll be one of those boys who never left home but still goes everywhere with their parents. Only they’re not even your own sodding parents, you’ve had to nick someone else’s—how sad is that? And you’ll go to Bournemouth or Margate for a week packed full of thrills every summer or off-season because it’s very reasonable then and you can always put on another sweater, can’t you, and a little drop of rain never hurt anyone. And you’ll be fifty years old but you’ll be the youngest person on the whole promenade and no woman will ever look at you ‘cept it won’t matter a toss because your cock will have long since fallen off from disuse and you will be without question the saddest bastard on the entire planet.
So I reckoned it really was time to move on.
The next morning, I checked the tourist office’s website and printed out their list of Bed and Breakfast places. I’d rather be in a proper flat or house of my own of course, somewhere I can bring the kids, so they can stay over. If they want to. But what’s the point? Gail will probably be on the phone any day now, asking me to come back. At least with a B&B I can clear out any time I get the word.
It was an out-and-about day for me anyway, mostly doing quotes—in town and a couple in outlying villages. I figured I could look at a few possibles on my route.
The first one is down a back street near the station. The window in what the landlady immediately—and unbelievably optimistically, as it turns out—refers to as “your room” has curtains the thickness of tracing paper, only less attractive. You can kind of see that they must once have had some sort of pattern, but they’ve been so faded by the sun and dust and age that they can’t be bothered to be patterned any more. They’ve just shrugged their shoulders and given up. God knows how they’ve got faded by the sun because this is not a sunny room we’re talking about here. We are talking welcome to the Land of Gloom. She switches on the overhead light, but the bulb must be about 3 watts because it makes absolutely sod all difference. The wallpaper is some colour that can’t be arsed to work out whether it’s grey or green with a knobbly design on it that makes me want to pick bits off with my fingernail. The bed is low and would be perfect for a kid of about ten. I doubt Rosie could even fit in it. There’s a rug the size and sumptuousness of a pocket handkerchief set mysteriously at an angle in one corner—presumably to cover up the bloodstain of the last tenant who must surely have shot himself out of depression.
Hideous is not the word. It is through hideous and out the other side. It is so awful that I can barely speak. Instead, I nod vigorously and pat the bed pointlessly to make it look as if I’m considering it all seriously. She tells me that it is very spacious, which might work if I was a blind person, but given that I’ve still got the use of my sight I can clearly see that it is not only not spacious, but that it is in fact only a nice size if you were planning on using it as a spare closet. I nod anyway, heading for the door, saying thank you so much, I’ll certainly give it some serious thought, yes indeed, I’ve got your number, thank you.
* * *
At least the next one can’t be as bad. I comfort myself with this thought as I pull up outside an OK looking terraced house in a quiet street on the north edge of town.
For once, I’m right. It’s not “as bad.” It is worse, much much worse. There is the distinctive odour of reheated cabbage, always a favourite with me, and it almost—but not quite—manages to cover up a sort of undercurrent whiff of piss. The room has been decorated by someone who thinks orange and brown is the way to go when it comes to colours—except for the bed, which has a quilted velvet pink headboard with—oh, joy!—a yellowish head-shaped stain in the centre. The bed is bigger than the last one at least but when I bounce gently on the edge of it, it feels and sounds as if the mattress has been stuffed with old newspapers. The wardrobe is a child-size one in genuine wood-effect melamine with Disney cartoon stickers on the insides of the doors. There is a dark green old person’s type chair with one of those doily things on the back and, in the corner—I kid you not—a tubular framed commode that looks like it’s been nicked from a hospital and it’s half-covered with an old army blanket. I tell her it’s terrific, really, but I think I need something a bit nearer the junction for the M20. In fact, I’d rather sleep on the junction for the M20, with my head sticking out from the slip road.
By the time I get to the third one, I’m ready for anything. But the room’s all right actually. It’s bright and you can even turn round without accidentally rearranging the furniture with your elbows. The woman seems nice enough but on the side of nosy. Where am I from? What do I do? I’d already decided to be a bit economical with the truth and say I was a rep for a pharmaceuticals company because I figured that’d make people’s eyes glaze over and they wouldn’t know what else to ask. That’s what my mate Roger does and it is boring beyond belief, even he says so. I say I’m seeing new customers in the area so I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying, maybe just a couple of nights or maybe a few weeks, it’s hard to say. But this one wants to know am I married, have I got children, what do I like for breakfast, do I prefer tea or coffee and I’m finding it all a bit much when I hear a loud banging on the wall. She flushes then and scurries out, closing the door behind her.
I hear her raised voice through the wall:
“That’s enough now! Enough! There’ll be no dinner for you if you carry on like that!”
I’m thinking “Poor little mutt"—but I’m not sure I want to stay somewhere with a dog, could be barking its head off at all hours. Funny how I never heard it bark though and I’m wondering how it made that banging noise when she comes back in.
“All sorted!” Her voice is bright and chirpy and she claps her hands like a nursery teacher calling the children to attention. She sees my face and realizes she better say something. “It’s just Raymond. He’s fine really. No trouble 99.9 per cent of the time. It’s just we had a teensy problem this morning getting him to take his medication. Now, don’t you worry—he stays in his room most of the time. You won’t hear a thing. Good, thick walls, these.”
At this, there is a low moan from the other room, followed by more rhythmic banging. She smiles even more brightly and I hotfoot it out to the hallway, saying thanks so much, I’ll have a think, be in touch, cheers now. Bye!
I get some quotes sorted out and measure up for some french windows a few miles south of town, then go and have a dekko at this barn conversion down on the marshes. Some total prat has put in cheapo council-house type windows and they’ve been badly done anyway and the whole thing’s a right old pig’s breakfast. Fortunately, the woman agrees with me and she wants decent casements put in instead and she’s thinking of having some doors done while we’re at it so Harry’ll be pleased. Anyway, I trot round to do a bit of measuring and calculating and she brings me a cup of tea and we’re nattering away and she tells me the reason they’ve got so much space is they’re planning to do B&B but they can’t start advertising for guests because it’s not finished yet but they’ve got a bank loan as big as India’s national debt so they better get on with it.
I ask to have a nose round one of the bedrooms and it’s all right. Better than all right, but it’s not been decorated yet and the old wallpaper’s peeling off in places. So I say how would you like your first proper customer and you do me a good deal and I’ll wallpaper the room for you and give you a good price on the windows. And we barter a bit and then we shake on it and she says come back tonight and the bed’ll be made up and she’ll even throw in some supper seeing as how I’m their first real guest.
Now all I have to do is tell Harry I’m moving out.
Yesterday, Nat said I was just being nice to Dad ‘cause he buys me chips and toys and stuff. He was leaning against my wardrobe and I ran at him and hit him as hard as I could until he held my wrists and threatened to give me a Chinese burn. When I charged him, it shoved him hard against the wardrobe and it made a bang against the wall, so Mum came running upstairs saying what was the matter, what were we up to and Nat said it was nothing, he had just dropped something and why did she have to fuss over everything all the time, no wonder Dad had left.
Mum went all quiet then. I thought she was going to say something, but then she made her mouth go all tight and squished like it was just sewn on like Alfie-Bear’s. She looked at me, then she looked back at Nat.
“Is that what you think?” she said.
Nat jerked his chin up, the way he did when that big boy down the road said he was going to sort him out and he put his hands in his pockets and twisted his trainer into the carpet as if he was squishing a bug. He shrugged and made one of his noises that isn’t a real word.
“Mn.”
Then Mum told me to go downstairs or to my own room and I said why should I, it wasn’t my fault, Nat started it, it wasn’t fair, just because I’m little I always have to miss out on everything, then Mum told me not to answer back but to go downstairs right this minute and play quietly or look at my book. I kept my mouth closed but I stuck my tongue out at her inside my cheek so she couldn’t see. When I got to the stairs, I heard her say, “Rosie?”
“Mn,” I copied Nat’s noise.
“Have a chocolate cup cake if you like. In the red tin.”
I had meant to go only halfway down the stairs so I could hear what she said. I bet she was going to give Nat a good telling off. You can always tell ‘cause she starts calling him “Nathan” and her face goes all serious like this and she folds her arms like a teacher. Serves him right, horrible pig. I meant to listen, but by the time I was halfway down I was thinking about how many stairs I could jump to the bottom and how I bet I could do four instead of three, but how I would wait till later in case I made too much noise and Nat might get let off. And how I would eat my chocolate cup cake.
It’s best if you peel the icing off slowly first, all in one go. It’s all smooth and shiny and round, like a brown ice rink. So, you carefully peel it off and put it to the side ‘cause it’s the best bit. Then you pull back the silver paper from the spongy bit and eat the sponge. Then you eat the icing, really slowly, letting each bit melt in your mouth. Then at the end you go round the silver paper case where all the chocolate icing has got stuck in the grooves and you scrape it off with your bottom teeth.
When my dad eats a cup cake, he eats it all at once in three bites—gulp, gulp, gulp. But he lets me have the silver paper.
Nat is disgusting when he eats his. He licks at the icing until it is all sticky, then he folds the icing bit over like a sandwich and eats that. Then he puts the sponge in his mouth, the whole thing in one go and it makes his cheeks go all fat and he tries to talk and crumbs come out of his mouth and Mum tells him not to talk with his mouth full and can he please just try and eat something normally for once, he’s not a baby any more, for goodness’ sake, can he just make an effort.
Mum does not eat chocolate cup cakes.
I am lying in bed with the quilt half over my face, telling myself that it’s not rain I can hear pattering against the window. It is definitely not raining—because, if it is raining then Scott’s Master Plan of taking Rosie for a long, leisurely bike ride along the coast will have to bite the dust. So much for Plan A. And, because I barely possess two brain cells to rub together, I haven’t given much thought to a Plan B. That’s not much thought as in no thought at all, not of any kind. We’ve done McDonald’s to death. We’ve seen every film out that’s suitable for kids.
It’s probably just a little light drizzle. We can wear our waterproofs and she’s got a helmet anyway. Barely more than the odd spot of rain. A passing shower. Check the clock: it’s already after nine. Bugger—it’s already cutting it fine if I want a cooked breakfast. My sole treat of the week in this black hole that I laughingly call my life is tucking in to a decent brekkie on a Sunday. After all, what’s the point of staying in a B&B if you’re only getting B but no B?
Drag myself to the window and open the curtains. Just an inch. No point in overdoing these things.
It is pissing down outside. An entire crew of effects people must be up there chucking down bucketloads of water from a great height. This isn’t rain, this is a monsoon. I need webbed feet to go out in this. And where are my wellies and my walking boots? In the garage at home. Of course. Much though Queen of Tidiness likes chucking out my stuff, I notice she never gets round to offloading anything that I might actually need. Still, maybe as the weather’s so foul she’ll let me come back in the house and spend some time with Rosie indoors. I mean, she’s not going to want Rosie to get pneumonia, is she? I could see Natty as well. He can hardly ignore me if I’m right there in the house, right? Yeah, and maybe Gail’ll put down a nice big plate of steak and chips in front of me, give me a big squelchy kiss and say, “Welcome home, darling!” Dream on, Scotty, dream on.
What the hell do people do with their children all day? The dads, I mean. Is there some secret place they all hang out that I haven’t been let in on yet? It’s probably a club, like Freemasons. The Sunday Fathers. Once you’ve been through all the initiation rites—your wife telling you to drop dead, your son pretending you don’t exist, your nine-year-old daughter feeling sorry for you, sponging off your friends like a sodding charity case, living like a student in a bedsit—then maybe you get your club badge and they tell you how it’s done. They teach you the special Sunday Father look, the cheery wave to your kid as you get back in your car feeling like someone’s just ripped your guts out and it’s another week before you’ll see her little face again.
They always say museums and art galleries, don’t they, but what would I know about stuff like that? What would I do in a museum? That’s for smart-arse proper dads, ones who can tell their kids all clever stuff and show off how much they know. What if you don’t know anything? I’m not going to show myself up in a museum. I’ll feel like a right prat, watching the other dads point out all the different bones in a Tyrannosaurus or explaining the principles of aerodynamics. I never know things like that. Jeez, I barely know what day of the week it is half the time.
When I come down, Fiona asks have I time for a proper breakfast, it’s filthy weather out there, have I seen? I put on the toast while she cracks some eggs into a pan.
She’s a woman. She might know what to do. I clear my throat and she half turns towards me.
“Say you had a nine-year-old girl to entertain on a rainy day, where would you take her, d’you think?”
“Would this be your daughter by any chance?”
“Mmn.”
Fiona reaches into a cupboard for a plate, talking to me over her shoulder.
“Well, what sort of things does she like doing?”
I shrug. “Dunno, really.”
* * *
I say it casually, without thinking, but suddenly it makes me realize that I really don’t know. What does Rosie like doing? My own daughter who I’ve known her whole life and I’m here asking a virtual stranger who’s never even met her what the hell I should do with her.
I turn away and concentrate on buttering the toast, fiddling with the jars on the counter as if I can’t make up my mind whether to have marmalade or jam or Marmite. Fiona flips the eggs out onto the plate, carefully slides two halves of grilled tomato alongside.
“How about taking her swimming? Can she swim?”
Swimming. Swimming without Nat? Unthinkable. It was Nat who taught Rosie to swim when she was only five or six. Nat’s a star swimmer, swims for his school. Beats me every time and it’s one of the few things I’m not bad at. Whenever I walk past a swimming baths and get a whiff of chlorine, I think of Nat. No. No swimming.
I shake my head.
“Yeah, she can, but I don’t fancy it myself.” It sounds lame, selfish. I gesture at the rain outside the window. “Feel I’d never get dry again, you know?”
The pan hisses as Fiona plunges it into the sink.
“Oh, OK. Cinema perhaps? There’s a paper there with the listings in if you want. Or ice-skating? I’m not sure where the nearest rink is though …”
It’s about 30 miles away. Sixty miles round trip. Sounds a bit far, but it’s easier when we’re in the car. Facing front, playing games with the cars and the registrations. Racking up points every time you spot a car with the latest reg. or shouting out a word that uses all the letters on the number plate. Rosie’s good at that. Better than me half the time.
“… or a museum?” Fiona tops up my coffee and leans against the counter. I don’t know what my face looks like, but it must be a picture, ‘cause she says, “Oh, come on—they’re much better now, not like they were in our day.” She makes it sound as though I’m hundreds of years old rather than a man still (virtually) at his peak. “There are plenty of things for the kids to do and try out. None of those dusty exhibits mouldering in glass cases with faded labels on any more. Everything’s interactive now. You might even enjoy it yourself.”
My memories of museum visits are not so hot, as you’ll have gathered by now. A few depressing school trips (my parents are not exactly the museum-going type), with teacher making all us “difficult” boys hold hands with the “good” girls as an attempt to keep us under control. The girls are outraged by being lumped with us and we’re not exactly chuffed either even though we take pleasure in pinching them and giving them Chinese burns, flirting with them by being obnoxious, the only way we know how at the age of ten. As soon as teacher’s eye is off us, we shake off the girls’ hands and are up to whatever mischief we can think of. It all sounds pathetically mild now, what with the papers full of children sniffing glue and smoking crack on every street corner. We just ran around like wild things, touching anything that said do not touch and capering about, whooping and pretending to be chimpanzees. No, I’ve no idea why. It seemed like fun at the time.
And that awful, awful moment on a day trip when everyone gets out their packed lunch and you sit with the boy who lives next door ‘cause at least you know he won’t have any posh cake or cans of orangeade or fruit either, just a single round of cheese or sardine sandwiches, a couple of plain biscuits—and a flask of tea as if you were a grown-up navvy on a building site and not a kid out for the day wishing he was someone else. And you make out you’re not all that hungry, you had a massive breakfast you say, with bacon and eggs and that, and you make fun of your mum, she must be going scatty, she’s forgotten to put your crisps and your drink in, shame ‘cause they were salt and vinegar and there was a can of 7-Up, you know ‘cause you saw them right there on the counter, still you’re not fussed, you’ll have them later while you’re waiting for your tea. And you drink the contents of your flask because you’re thirsty, but all you can think of is how much you’d give to be normal and to hear the sharp hiss as you open your can of Coke or 7-Up or Fanta, still cold from the fridge, sweet and fizzy glugging down your throat, bubbles giggling up your nose, gulping it down fast so you can do burps deliberately—see who can do the biggest burp—me now—no, me. It doesn’t work with tea.
How did my life get to be like this? I didn’t ask for this. When I was a little girl, I used to dress up and play weddings with my sisters. Mari used to make some poor boy down the road be the groom (which was a non-speaking part as far as we were concerned, aside from saying “I do”) and the two of us would take it in turns to be the bride and the vicar. Lynn was always the bridesmaid, of course, because she was the youngest, but we let her wear this sparkly headband as a tiara and catch the bouquet so she put up with it. I thought that when you grew up, you got married, got your washing-machine and your fitted kitchen, your three-piece suite and your drinks cabinet, and then you lived happily after. I mean, I literally thought that that’s what happened—just because you were grown up.
And then, even when I was a teenager and supposedly had enough sense to know better, each time I started going out with someone new, I’d have this flutter of excitement in my insides, thinking, “What if this is it?” And I’d start picturing it in my head, our wedding I mean. And this is after I’ve been out with the guy once. I’d be thinking about my dress and what sort of sleeves it would have and how low cut it should be at the front and whether it should be pure white or maybe ivory would be better, and wondering if it would be best to go the whole hog and have the big fairytale number with the enormous skirt like an outsize meringue or should I be a bit more sophisticated and have something draped and elegant with a little beaded bolero jacket. I’m serious. I’d go on and on like this in my head.
Then, of course, I’d go for the second date, and we’d see a film or something, and he’d try to grope me in the back row or we’d go for a meal and he’d eat with his mouth open and all my dreams—the dress, the flowers, the speeches, my dad looking pleased as punch—the whole lot would go out the window and I’d be looking over this guy’s shoulder in the restaurant trying to see if anyone better had come in the door.
Then I met Scott. Right away, I liked him. The other guys I saw, they were all smooth, trying to impress and thinking they were slick. But him, he couldn’t get his words out. I knew he liked me from the way he would hardly look at me and the way he spilled his tea when I smiled at him. I thought he was sweet, just like a big kid really.
And, guess what? Scott is just like a big kid. He doesn’t plan for the future most of the time, he doesn’t remember anything important, only silly stuff that you’d never need to remember, stuff about sports and bands and strange things he’s picked up from quiz shows. “How many sides in an icosahedron?” he’ll suddenly say while we’re driving along. “I’ve no idea, Scott. Just tell me and get it out of your system.” He calls me a spoilsport, wants me to guess. Once, taking the mickey, I said why don’t we play I Spy (Rosie wasn’t even in the car). “Righto,” said Scotty, taking me seriously, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with S—B—.” Know what it was? No? Neither did I. It was Squashed Bug, on the windscreen. What can you do with a man like that?
Our Big Day turned out to be nothing like all my childish daydreams, of course. By then I was a bit more hard-headed and we were saving up to buy our first house. My parents said they’d be happy to splash out on a fancy wedding for me, or I could have the money for a deposit on a house. Scott said it had better be my choice as the money was coming from my family (I think his parents’ sole contribution was an extremely ugly fake crystal bowl that I gave to the Oxfam shop at the first opportunity) and he knew what girls were like about weddings. So we put the money down on a house and had a small wedding at a registry office, with me in a pale pink suit. See, here’s our wedding photo, God knows why it’s still out. I’m wearing this ridiculous flower thing in my hair and Scott’s in a grey suit with sleeves that were just too long so he looks like a boy out in his first grown-up jacket.
Then we had family and friends back to my parents’ home for a buffet and my father made a proud speech, telling everyone about what I was like when I was little, how neat and organized I was, standing in the lounge playing teacher, my dolls all sitting in a row, me telling them to behave themselves or they’d be sent to the headmaster. Thank God Scott’s father didn’t try to make a speech. I don’t remember him saying anything much, I mean not congratulations or anything. Scott’s mother stationed herself by the buffet table, as far as I can recall, refilling her plate every few minutes and looking round nervously as if she thought someone would come up and stop her at any moment. Still, it was a good day, and we were both very happy.
But, after all my dreams, now look at me. It was awful telling my family about Scott moving out, I felt so ashamed, like I’d let them down somehow. Mum was beside herself, twittering round the kitchen and making cups of tea every two minutes. Mari lost no time in saying how she’d always known it would come to this, if only I’d listened to her in the first place, she’d always said, hadn’t she, that Dennis was no good, wouldn’t ever amount to anything, coming from council house stock (yes, she actually says that) and trying to drag himself up by marrying me—as if we’re royalty or something. She’s a terrible snob, Marian, she thinks having a four-bedroom detached and a double garage with remote-control doors makes her a bloody Duchess. “That Dennis,” she calls Scott when she’s stuck in her you-could-have- made-something-of-yourself-if-you-hadn’t-married-a-loser groove—"that Dennis has done nothing but hold you back.” I’ve always claimed that I don’t feel held back, which isn’t exactly 100 per cent true, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
To be fair, I don’t think she meant to be unkind. It’s just she’s got one failed marriage behind her already and I don’t think everything’s exactly a bed of roses with Robert either. He’s Husband No. 2, but he might as well be the Invisible Man, I can’t think when we last saw him. He’s one of those men who’s all hearty handshakes and rather crass jokes, trying to seem jolly the whole time, but when you actually talk to him, he sounds depressed. He wears those trousers with the permanent perfect creases down the front, and it always looks as if they’re holding him up somehow, rather than the other way round.
Dad was lovely, though: “All marriages have their ups and downs,” he said, making sure Mum was out of earshot first. “Maybe you’ll find a way to work things out. Scott’s a good man at heart, you could go a long way and find worse.” Then he stood there, holding me, the way he used to when I was just a girl and had got in a stew about something or other.
I shook my head slowly.
“I think it’s too late for us to work things out.”
“Well, if not, not. So long as our Gaily’s happy though, eh? That’s all that matters to us.”
“I’m OK, Dad. I’ll be OK.”
You know, I look back and think about why I ended up in bed with Angela and I know, whatever I say, it’s going to sound like I’m trying to shift the blame and I’m not. I’m really not. All I’m saying is, if the restaurant’s always closed you can’t blame a bloke for trying the café, can you? After all, it’s not as if I’d gone off Gail or anything. I still fancied her. She’s got this gorgeous smile—well, used to have, can’t say I’ve seen so much of it the last couple of years come to think of it—and really nice straight teeth. That sounds a bit like she’s a horse that I’m judging or something but I don’t mean it like that. She’s sort of clean and pretty looking but her smile is really sexy, like she’s all wholesome on the surface but dead horny underneath. And she’s got knockout legs ‘cept you’d have to have X-ray vision to see them because she almost always wears trousers these days because they’re more practical and she’s not messing about tarting herself up to please someone else thank you very much. But she used to—wear skirts, that is.
First time I saw her she was wearing this dress. It was white with little red dots all over it. It wasn’t especially short or anything but it swirled around her legs when she moved so that you noticed them and wished it were shorter and her hair was all shiny and I wanted to touch it. It was in that old caff that used to be in the middle of town—the Mocha Bar it was called; still had its fittings from the Fifties, chrome and padded banquette seats and jazzy-patterned lino. So, I was there with a mate and she’s there with her mate and then she goes up to the counter for something and I’m up there faster than a whippet out of a trap, then looking all casual. She’s standing, waiting for Sylvie behind the counter to brew the tea. And Sylvie’s got it well sussed already and giving me this “So are you going to chat her up or not?” look and swirling the teapot round and round slowly, giving me time.
“Yeah, tea for me as well then, please Sylvie.” My opening remark. Stunning. Who could resist me? And if you thought that was cool, how about my dazzling follow-up? “Got any doughnuts left?”
Anyway, this dream creature in the dotty dress, instead of giving me the pitying look I deserved, actually turns and smiles at me. So I’m a goner then. There’s no hope for me. I’m practically dribbling. And this is when I lead up to the Big Move. I nod at her.
“All right?” I say. Can you believe it? And, remember, I wasn’t fifteen when I met her. I’m too embarrassed to say. Oh, sod it, I was twenty-four—and no problems with the girls normally, I’d been around. But this one reduces me to a bumbling idiot. No patter. No clever compliments. No nifty innuendoes. Bloody hopeless.
“Yes, thank you,” she says, smiling at me as if I’ve said something quite intelligent or amusing. “You?” she adds.
“Yup,” I say, then, thinking it sounds too curt and abrupt, instead of keeping my big mouth shut like any sensible person I carry on: “Yes, indeedy, I’m all right. Certainly. All right, all righty. No worries.” By now I’m swearing at myself inside, digging my fingernails into my palms to jab some sense into me, ready to stick my head in the urn and end it all. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sylvie slowly shake her head to herself and start to pour the tea.
Then she says she hasn’t seen me in there before and I say I do come in there, often actually, meaning to encourage her to come there again so I can accidentally on purpose bump into her but it comes out a bit rushed and a bit strange and it sounds like I’m being defensive, offering an alibi or accusing her of being dumb or a liar or both.
And so I realize that it’s all hopeless and I might as well have two doughnuts and bugger the spots, so I turn to Sylvie for my tea.
“Well, maybe see you around then?” says the dream creature. “I’m Gail, by the way.”
The cup rattles in its saucer as I lift it, slopping some over the side. I stare at it, trying not to spill any more at the same time as trying to look casual as if it doesn’t really take 99 per cent of my concentration to transport a cup of tea all of ten feet to my table.
“Yes. Definitely. Yes.” I risk a quick glance away from the cup to look at her. What a smile. “I’m De—Scott.” This was round about the time I’d decided to skip the Dennis altogether and use my surname instead.
“DeScott?”
“Scott.” I square my shoulders and try to look smooth. “Just Scott.” I nod coolly. “See you around then.”
As I clunk my tea down on the table, more of it slops into the saucer, which now looks like a ruddy soup bowl. I won’t turn round, I tell myself. I won’t turn round. I won’t.
I turn round. She is laughing with her mate, probably giggling about what a fathead I am and about how I can’t manage to hold a cup of tea properly.
“I wouldn’t mind either,” says Roger, my mate. “You jammy bugger.”
He was right. That was it, with Gail. On good days, I always feel—felt—I was a bit of a jammy bugger. And what the hell does that make me now?
Mum said, “Well, of course, I won’t make you go. Don’t see how I could make you. But …”
I sat there, yawning, wishing she’d hurry up and get the lecture over so I could go round Steve’s. Mum was watching my foot as I jiggled it up and down and you could tell any second now she was going to say, “Nathan, please stop fidgeting, I’m trying to talk to you,” but she bit her lip. I stopped anyway for a second to watch her face, then started again, trying to speed her up a bit.
“Nat, you know your dad loves you very much …”
I snorted. Yeah, right. Funny way of showing it. That’s why he couldn’t stand to live in the same house as me any more. Mum does come out with some crap sometimes.
“He does, Nat. I know it’s hard for you to see while you’re still so angry with him. You and Rosie mean everything to him.”
I raised my left eyebrow at her to show I knew it was total crud what she was saying. It looks really cool.
“It’s just your dad and I—well—you know, some-times grown-ups find they can’t live together any more and they decide it will be better for everyone if they live apart for a while.”
Give me a break, puh-leese. Why’s it up to the parents to decide? What bright spark came up with that idea? They should have left it up to me or Rosie. I yawned again. I think she’s been reading all those sad self-help books. How To Tell Your Kids You’re Getting a Divorce, that stuff. Should be How To Tell Your Kids You’ve Fucked Up Big Time.
“Scuse me? You talking to me?” I leant back in my chair. “I’m not Rosie, you know, you can’t pull that ‘sometimes grown-ups need to be apart for a while’ stuff with me. Why don’t you cut the crap and just tell me when you’re getting a divorce?”
She sighed and slumped down onto my bed and started trying to straighten the duvet out which was a non-starter because she was sitting on it.
“Oh, Nathan. I don’t mean to talk to you as if you’re a baby, but you’ve no idea how hard this is.”
“Shouldn’t have got married in the first place then, should you?”
She looked up at me.
“How can you say that? You and Rosie are the best thing that’s ever happened to me and your dad …”
“Yeah, yeah … and the divorce?”
“We’re not at that stage yet, Nathan. Your dad and I—”
“Can I go yet? I said I’d go round Steve’s.”
“Well, I think this is pretty important, don’t you?”
I shrugged.
“It’s no big deal. People get divorced the whole time. Celebs never stay married more than two years. It’s to keep themselves in the papers—big battle slugging it out in the courts then fairytale wedding to the next one.”
“That’s hardly the same thing, is it? This is a big deal, Nat, because this is us. Anyway, I just can’t bear the thought that you or Rosie would ever think—even for a second—that your dad and I having this time apart means we don’t love you.”
I put my feet up on my desk to loosen my laces, thinking when I got round to Steve’s I would check out this new game he got sent from his aunt over in LA. She sounds pretty cool. How come he gets an aunt who knows all the best games and sends him brilliant new ones like months before they’re even out here and I get the kind of aunts who knit me crap sweaters barely big enough for a four-year-old and who ruffle my hair and ask me how I’m enjoying school. ‘Cept Sheila, that’s Dad’s big sister. She’s cool, but she lives all the way up in Scotland.
I looked back at Mum. She had that look, like she was waiting for something, so I figured maybe she’d asked me a question.
“Mmn,” I said and sort of smiled a bit.
“Good.” She got up and put her arms round me and tried to give me a hug.
“Mu-uum.” I pulled away.
“Oh, you. You’re not too old to give your mum an occasional cuddle, are you?”
“Mn.”
“Anyway.” She stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders. “I’m glad we’ve had a chat. And you will think about it, eh?”
“Right.” Think about what? I got up, shrugging her off. “I’m off to Steve’s.” I stopped in the hall as I grabbed my jacket and shouted back up the stairs. “What’s for tea tonight?”
“Not sure. Pasta with some devastatingly delicious and unusual sauce probably.”
“Pasta again. Can’t we go down the chippie?”
“We’ll see. No promises. And Nathan?”
“What?”
“Back by quarter to seven at the latest if you want to eat, please. If you get held up, phone. No excuses.”
“Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. Why don’t you just get me an electronic tag so you know where I am the whole time?” Unbelievable.
When I come back from seeing my dad, Mum is ironing or getting the tea ready. She kisses me and says, “Had a good day, darling? Do something nice?”
Now I know what to say and what’s best not to tell. One time, I came home and told Mum that I had chips and a Coke and a chocolate nut sundae and then we had cake in a little café. She said I must be sure and make Daddy give me a proper meal, not just chips and then I heard her on the phone to Dad and she was very cross and said he was like a bloody kid himself, didn’t he know anything, what was he thinking of and that he would never change, he was always irry-something and he must jolly well get a proper hot meal inside me with vegetables and not be pouring rubbish down my throat all day long and spoiling me for normal food.
Natty doesn’t ask me about what I do with Dad, but I know he wants to know, so when I come in I creep up to his room. I lie on his bed while he watches his TV or plays on his computer. He says he is not playing but “doing stuff” but it is mostly games or e-mailing his friends or surfing the Net or talking to people in chat rooms until Mum notices and gets cross about the phone bill and that she can’t use the phone. Nat says she’s mean and how come we’re the last people on the planet with only one phone line, then Mum says he’s becoming a right little spoilt brat and that lots of people don’t even have enough to eat and he should be grateful. Then he makes that face he does when he’s in a funny mood. He doesn’t say anything, but he tilts his head like this so his hair falls forward over his eyes and there’s no point saying anything to him then because he won’t answer.
Nat has old toys under his bed which he says he doesn’t play with any more but when Mum said we should pass them all on to the children’s ward at the hospital, he said he had to sort them out first and then he didn’t do it. Also he has magazines with pictures of motorbikes in and one time I found a rude one with naked ladies in it and I said I was going to tell Mum but Nat said he would give me a Chinese burn if I did and I better not. I wouldn’t have told anyway. Nat said it wasn’t his, but that Steve must have left it to get him in trouble, and the next time I looked it wasn’t there.
I look through whatever’s lying around on his floor or under the bed and say where we went and what we did and what I ate and what we bought and what we saw. Nat never asks anything but when he wants to know more about something, his hand goes still on his mouse and he leans back in his chair and kicks his feet forwards until they touch the wall. Mum will tell him off because he’s always kicking things and he leaves big black marks everywhere from his shoes. He leans back and I tell him things like, “So then we went to the beach and we saw a funny man with a hat on and he was talking to himself and I said he must be a loony and Dad said no, he might be a spy or a detective working undercover and was just pretending to be a loony so that no-one would suspect anything and that we should just act natural and then run and hide behind the breakwater. So we did and we crouched on the pebbles and Dad looked over the top and then I looked over the top to see if the man was still there. But he wasn’t.” Then Nat said the man was probably hiding behind another breakwater because he thought we must be the loonies because we were acting so daft and suspicious and if we weren’t careful someone would call in the men from the loony bin. But Nat was only saying it to try to scare me. He didn’t mean it. I could ask Dad. Mostly he doesn’t know the answers to things when you ask him, but he doesn’t mind. Before, when he was at home, if I asked him questions, he’d say, “Ask Mum” or “Ask your teacher” only now he says, “Mmm, let’s see now, where would we find that out?”
Hello, yes, it’s me. Here I am, back home again, playing silly buggers, acting like a prowler round my own house. Well, I had an hour or two to kill before my next call and I couldn’t be arsed to go back to work. I wander through to the kitchen. Looks tidy. Pick up an apple from the bowl on the counter and bite into it. Ha! I guess it’s a bit of a pathetic victory but I feel as if I’ve just pulled off a major bank job. At least it’s a crunchy one. Have a stretch out on the settee for a few minutes. I mean, it’s still half mine, right? Do you think you can get, what’s it called?—you know, access rights or whatever, to a settee? It’s dead comfy, this one, and big enough so your legs aren’t hanging off the end.
Then I trudge upstairs—yes, shoes off first. You’re proud of me, aren’t you? I can tell. Quick look at Rosie’s room, everything all neat and in its place, even the postcards and photos on her pinboard are all pinned on dead straight. Go into Nat’s room and snort with laughter at the contrast with Rosie’s. You’d never guess they were related. Don’t even see how I can get in without treading on everything. Not that he’d notice. You could let a Tyrannosaurus rampage around in there and the place’d probably look a whole lot tidier than it does now.
I sit at his desk for a minute and lean the chair back on its rear legs the way Natty does, pushing my feet against the wall. The monitor and hard drive lights are on on his computer, so I just sort of nudge the mouse a tad to clear the screensaver. He’s supposed to turn it all off if he’s out for hours but he’s always forgetting. Can’t think who he gets that from, must be Gail’s side of the family. Well, I reckoned he might have left it mid-game and I could just play for a couple of minutes. Sure as hell wasn’t likely to be his homework on the screen. Anyhow, I was just looking, OK? Not snooping. All right, maybe a bit of snooping, but I didn’t think it was going to be anything, nothing private.
It’s a word document, with his address at the top, on the right, like you do for a business letter, as if he’s applying for a job or something. And then there’s the date but three days ago. And then underneath that, it says,
Dear Dad
And that’s it. The rest of the page is blank.
I sit there for what feels like forever, a lump in my throat. I keep trying to swallow. Then those two words go kind of blurry and my chest feels tight and I can’t move. I feel like I might stay like that for the rest of my entire life, picture them finding me, a skeleton in Nat’s chair, my bony fingers still clinging to the mouse, my jaw gaping.
I’d probably still be there now if something hadn’t jolted me out of it, something that’s the one thing I absolutely don’t want to hear, can’t believe I’m hearing: the slam of a car door right outside and Gail’s voice from the front step.
“Can you manage that, Rosie? Leave it if it’s too heavy.”
Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. I’m up on my toes and out to the landing in a second. Peering over the stair-rail to see Gail’s outline through the frosted glass of the front door—skid into the bathroom—no, you idiot, not in here—into Rosie’s room—everything way too small to hide in or under—back into Nat’s room—try to crawl under the bed but there’s too much crap—back into our room—open the window—Christ, I’ll break my sodding neck jumping from up here—yank open the wardrobe—Jeez, why do women have so many sodding clothes? How’s a man supposed to hide in the wardrobe when it’s full to bursting with 400 sodding outfits you’ve never seen her wear even once? Footsteps running up the stairs. Quick—under the bed. Bathroom door closing. So glad I didn’t hide in there. Right, that gives me at least a minute if she’s having a wee, as long as Rosie’s not in the hall. Back out from under the bed—onto the landing—coast’s clear. Flush of the toilet. Bloody hell, that was fast. She’s never that fast when we’re at the pictures or having a meal out and I’m sat there like a lemon for hours. Down the stairs, heading for the front door. Oh, dear God, shoes—where the hell did I put them? I know, I know—in the front room. Can hear Rosie in the kitchen—whizz past the half-open door—dash in—grab the shoes—heading back to the door when I hear Gail again, coming downstairs. Jesus H. Christ, can’t the woman spend a minute tidying her hair or something? Why’s she in such a hurry all of a sudden? Leap back into the front room and crouch down behind one of the armchairs. Marvellous. This is comfortable—I can’t stay like this for long, I’ll get cramp. I’m not designed to be folded. Round and round in my head, I’m saying, “Keep calm, keep calm,” telling myself it’s OK, that I’ll look back and laugh about all this at some point. Big mistake. Soon as I think that, I realize it is kind of funny and I nearly laugh out loud. Bite the inside of my cheek hard, too hard, nearly take a whacking great chunk out of it. Then I take a sneaky look over the top of the armchair. I reckon I only need about 30 seconds clear to scoot to the front door, open it quietly and sprint down the front path and round the corner. As they’ve only just come in, I don’t even have to shut the front door because they’ll think they’ve left it open by accident. I creep to the door and listen.
“Peanut butter sandwich, Rosie?”
Excellent. She’ll have her back to the door for at least a minute. I tiptoe to the front door, still clutching my shoes, turn the latch slowly, out and pull the door to behind me and I’m down that path faster than Linford Christie being chased by a velociraptor. The front gate clangs behind me but I don’t look back. Don’t stop till I’m at the car. Then I shove my feet into my shoes, get in and lean my head on the steering wheel.
Then a nasty thought comes to me. I don’t believe this. Oh shit. Where the hell did I leave the sodding apple core?
At school, we did like how to write a proper letter like if you’re applying for a job or something. Useful, huh? Kind of thing you need to do the whole time when you’re thirteen. Miss Farnham showed us how you lay it out with the address and the date and all that, then she asked us like when would you use it and Toby who’s a total nerd said,
“Please, Miss, if you were reserving a hotel room in advance.” He is such a suck-up.
There were a couple of other “Please, Miss” type ideas, writing to your bank manager and stuff. It was such a thrill, I could barely sit still, you know? We were all supposed to be taking notes. Then Miss says, “Nathan, how about you? Do you have a suggestion? When might you want to write a formal letter?”
“I wouldn’t, Miss, I’d send an e-mail.”
“Yes, Nathan, but that wouldn’t always be the most appropriate method of communication, would it? And, even if you were to send it by the e-mail, you might still want to phrase your letter in a formal fashion.” She is the Teacher that Time Forgot, no doubt about it.
I thought a sec, doodling in my rough book, then I said, “Yeah, right, like if you wanted to complain about something …”
“Good, yes, that’s right. What kind of complaint would merit a formal letter, do you suppose?” Can you believe it? That’s how she talks the whole time. I’m glad she’s not my mum—What do you think would merit being selected as an edible item for the breakfast table, Nathan? Jeez.
“Dunno. Well, yeah, like if you wanted to complain in a shop say if you bought some Nikes and they were loads of money then they fell apart after you’d worn them like only one time and the shop never give you your money back, you could write to the chairman …”
“Yes …”
“—Or if you thought someone was incredibly boring, you could write to complain and tell them to be like less boring …”
There were a few laughs round the class but Miss went all red and said, yes, fine, let’s not get carried away and that it was best to confine your letters of complaint to issues that were specific such as faulty goods or booking hotel rooms rather than just your subjective views on other people which were really only a matter of opinion and not what we were concentrating on just now.
Then Joanne Carter stuck up her hand.
“But Miss? Miss, in the papers, people are always writing in to complain about everything. And that’s only opinions, isn’t it? My dad reads them out at breakfast.”
“Yeah, that’s right, Miss,” I said to back up Joanne. She looked back over her shoulder at me and smiled. She’s dead pretty. She’s got really nice hair. I might ask her out. Dunno. Have to see.
For our homework, we were supposed to write a formal letter. You put your own address at the top, then you put the other person’s address or the company you’re writing to or whatever. And you do the date and then you start off Dear Sir or Dear Mr Snotface. Miss said I should have a go at doing a complaint letter seeing as how I seemed to have so many ideas on the subject. I think she was trying to get back at me, but in that special smarmy way teachers have like they’re much cleverer than you and there’s no way they’re going to let you forget it. So I thought about going one better and writing to her.
Dear Miss Farnham
Further to my recent comments in your class this morning, I am writing to complain formally about the tremendous, mind-blowing, stratospheric tediosity of your lessons. Might I enquire as to whether you have any plans to make any of your lessons even slightly interesting? If not, I should like to inform you that I will be unable to attend for the rest of the term. I have consulted my doctor and he thinks I am well in danger of dying of boredom and that it is better for me not to risk it.
Also, as well as being very BORING, you had a ladder in your tights which my Mum always says is something that looks dead trashy.
Yours sincerely
Nathan Scott
I was getting quite into it by the end so I thought I’d have a crack at writing a letter to my dad as well, but it was a whole lot harder. I put my address and then the date and then I put,
Dear Dad
Then I just sat there. I thought of everything I wanted to say:
Dear Dad
I hate you so much. You have left us in a right mess. Mum keeps crying in the bathroom with the door locked and turning up the radio so we can’t hear, but we’re not stupid. Rosie has started sucking her thumb again and Mum says she must stop because she can’t afford to be getting her braces for her teeth. Every time I ask Mum for money, she does that frowny face and says we have to be more careful now. Plus another thing is I think Rosie misses you, like when you used to go in and kiss her good night and make up stories about spaceships and bionic rabbits and girls with magical powers. I never seem to have any money and I haven’t been bowling for ages. I am fine. How are you?
I read it back and then I deleted it, all except for the Dear Dad bit, and I tried again.
Dear Dad
I am writing to complain about what you have done to our family. It doesn’t bother me any, but you have got Rosie to think about because she’s only little and she needs two parents not just one. Also since you went Mum gets in a big state every time anything goes wrong like the car or the washing machine. She says it’s not that you used to fix them or anything but at least she could moan at you or you’d call the garage so we wouldn’t get ripped off, like she would because she’s a woman.
Nah. Another go:
Dear Dad
Is it true that you were unfaithful to Mum and slept with another woman? Was it going on for ages or more of a one-off sort of thing? You are always saying to me that I should think ahead and not rush into things that might get me into trouble, so I guess you should have thought of that before and then you would still be at home and it would be OK still.
It’s hard, this letter thing, isn’t it?
Dear Dad
Come back. Please. I wish you hadn’t messed up but you did and it’s too late. You and Mum said there’s no problems in the whole world that can’t be fixed by people sitting down and talking about it, but all you have done is gone off and all Mum’s done is cry and get cross and drop plates.
Sod it. Delete, delete, delete, delete … I went back letter by letter, don’t know why, watching the words disappear one by one until it just said “Dear Dad.” Maybe I’ll have another crack later. Dunno. S’pose it was a stupid idea, writing to him. And I still had to turn in something for homework. I looked round at the walls of my room, and my posters, then wrote my formal letter to the chairman of Ferrari.
Dear Sir
I am writing to complain about the acceleration in your latest F40 model. At that price, I was expecting it to reach Mach 3 in under 10 seconds and parachute-assisted brakes as standard. However … etc. etc.
Miss was well impressed.
It’s not fair. Nat said I was in his room but I wasn’t. He told Mum that I’d touched his computer and she said maybe I was doing my homework on it and it was only fair for him to let me use it when I need to. And she said if he couldn’t be sensible about it, we’d have to move the computer downstairs and that would be the end of it. Nat said I’d left my apple core on his desk and Mum said why didn’t he just put it in the bin and stop going on about it because she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life keeping the peace between us two and we could sort it out between ourselves. Then she said that, seeing as how Nat’s the oldest, she didn’t think it was too much to ask for him to be a bit more grown-up about this sort of thing and it was only an apple core and could we all just move on and forget about it.
Then Nat came in my room and said I’m not to use his computer without asking first and he shouted at me and said I’m not to eat or drink near the keyboard. He said I was just a baby and I might have broken it or made it all sticky. I told him it wasn’t me and I never used it and I wasn’t even in his stupid old room, but he said, well, who else could it have been then? Mum never uses it and there isn’t anyone else. But it wasn’t me.
I told Dad on Sunday about the apple core and about Nat being so horrible, and he was really nice and got me some new mauve sandals for summer and said I could have some nail varnish too. It’s got all silver glitter bits in it. But then when I went home and showed Mum, she said I was too young to wear nail varnish. I told her that loads of girls in my class wear it and she said she didn’t care and she wasn’t having me look like a—well she wasn’t having it anyway. Then she said maybe I could wear it for family parties and things like that, but not for school. So I said OK, but can I put it on my toes ‘cause no-one would see it then, but I can still show it to Kira and Josie at breaktime, and she said I could.
It is my dad’s birthday on Friday. He is forty now, which is already fairly old. He says that it isn’t and that you are only as old as you feel on the inside, and that’s what matters. He said that last year, on his birthday, and Mum said if that was true then she must be about 120 because she is tired all the time. Nat said he feels like about eighteen or nineteen so everyone should treat him like a grown-up, and Dad said if he wanted to be treated like an adult, he’d have to start acting like one. And Nat said, huh, he could talk. So Dad made like he was going to punch him, but he was only playing, and Nat did it back. That was when they were still friends. That was before. And Dad said he thought I was about twenty- eight on the inside because I’m always so sensible. I said I’d like to hurry and grow up, but Mum said you shouldn’t wish away your childhood because it’s the best time in your life. And Nat said yeah, right, how could it be the best time in your life when all it meant was that you got bossed round by everyone else and couldn’t do what you wanted?
I am nearly 10. But not yet. I will be 10 in four months, one week and three days. In the evening. I was born at 10.28 p.m. It says so on this little pink card they gave my mum at the hospital. And it says Sex: F. That stands for Female. It doesn’t say my name: Rosalie Anne Scott, because they didn’t know yet that I was me.
I have got my dad a present but I’m not going to tell you what it is because it’s meant to be a surprise. I made it myself. Well, I did part of it anyway. Mum said I could give it to him when I see him on Sunday but it’s got to be on the actual day, or it’s not the same. Nat hasn’t got him anything and he says he’s not going to. I think he’s really mean. I asked Mum if we could deliver my present for Dad on Friday after school and she said it all depends, we’ll have to see, but that’s usually what she says when she means no.
I went in the sweet shop on the way home from school. I got some crisps and a Mars Bar then when I go to come out, I see Joanne looking at the birthday cards. You know, that Joanne. So I go over and stand like I’m choosing a card too and I’m trying to think of something cool to say. Only I can’t think of anything.
“Hello, Nathan.” She’s smiling.
“Hello.” I have to do better than this. How crap am I?
“Who are you getting a card for?”
Who am I getting a card for? I’m about to say, “No-one. How d’you mean?” but I manage to stop myself just in time. I’m stood here staring at the cards, right, so I must be getting a card.
“Er, my dad. It’s his birthday.”
“How old is he then?”
She tucks her hair behind her ears and starts fiddling with that little silver star she always wears round her neck. I can feel myself going red.
“Er, really old. Forty-one.”
She laughs and turns back to the cards. There are loads for fortieth birthdays, lots of cartoon ones with blokes looking in the mirror and jokes about being old and past it. I can’t see any for forty-one.
“That’s not all that old,” she says, “My dad’s forty-six. Anyway …” She takes out a card from the Grandmother section of the rack and looks at it, staring down at this picture of flowers in a vase. “Jason said your dad’s left.”
I look at the cards and grab one with a red Ferrari on it.
“Yeah. So?”
She shrugs.
“Sorry. I wasn’t being funny. I just—well, I’d miss him if it was my dad, that’s all.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
I open up the card to read the inside, but the lettering’s kind of blurry. I can feel Joanne right next to me. Her arm’s touching my arm. She’s reading the message on the inside.
“Oh,” she says, then leans across me to reach out another one from the rack. “How about this one? This one’s for dads.”
She holds it out to me and looks at me. Then she opens it out and reads the inside.
“See,” she says, reading the verse out singsong. It’s one of those crap poems you get in birthday cards. Dead corny, you know?
I shrug and dig into my pocket for a tissue. My nose is running and I’m fighting the urge to wipe it with the back of my hand. No tissue. Just half a packet of chewing gum and some change.
“'s all right, I guess. Bit over the top.” I offer her some gum and she takes a stick and slowly unwraps it.
“Yeah, but I bet he’d like it. Last year, I made up a poem for my dad’s card and he said it was the best poem he’d ever read.”
“If I did that for my dad, it’d be the only poem he’d ever read.”
She laughs then taps the card for her gran against her nose so all I can see are her eyes over the top of it, like she’s looking over a wall. You can tell she’s still smiling even though you can’t see her mouth any more.
“Well, s’pose I better go and pay for this then.” She’s still standing there. What’s she waiting for?
Then I get it. She’s waiting for you, you dipstick. I hit my forehead. I try to make it look like I’m just pushing my hair out my eyes.
“Walk you back if you like?” Casual as you please. Not bothered one way or the other.
“OK. You getting the card?”
I look down at the two I’m holding, one in each hand.
“Might as well.” I hold up the one she picked out. I don’t have to send it if I don’t want to, but it’d look rude if I shove it back in the rack after she chose it.
Then I open the Ferrari one again, just to read it before I put it back.
It’s not for dads at all. Inside it says: Happy Birthday Dearest Son.
How did I get to be so old? Tomorrow I’ll be forty-one. Practically as good as dead. I know—I should have got over the whole forties hideousness, mid-life crisis thing last year. I thought I had. Actually, no—being thirty-nine was the worst. Because at thirty-nine, there’s no getting round it, you’re nearly forty—and the only way to not turn forty would be to top yourself, and that’s not getting you ahead of the game either, is it? Last year, the nearer it got to my birthday, the worse I felt. I’d look in the mirror while I was shaving and be thinking “You’re nearly forty. You’re not a young man any more.” But, inside, I still felt like I was about seventeen—and that was on a mature day. In my early twenties, I was still a bit of a lad, you know, fancying myself as having the gift of the gab with the girls; then I met Gail and we fell in love and all that, got engaged, got married. But even doing grown-up stuff, like buying our first home, getting a mortgage and what have you, it always felt a bit like I was playing at it, and that any second someone would come along and ask me what the hell I thought I was up to. Then the kids came along and I was working all hours to pay for everything and I was too knackered to notice that I’d stopped being a lad. You see—inside, I still was. But on the outside, I must have looked like a normal adult going to work and taking care of my family and falling asleep in front of the TV. The whole of my thirties just zipped by. One minute, I had a new baby; the next, two kids both at school and wanting new trainers every week.
And because I’d built the whole thing about turning forty into this enormous great deal, and was so grouchy about it and thinking I’d have a crap birthday, of course it ended up being brilliant. Gail threw me a surprise party with all our friends and a great spread and I drank beer and wine till it was coming out my ears and kept telling Gail how much I loved her. Yeah. Anyway, I enjoyed myself. So really, being forty-one should be easier. I’ve jumped the major hurdle so this should be a piece of piss. But now I feel like I’ve got off on the wrong foot for doing my forties. They say life begins at forty, in which case I’ve managed to screw up right at the start. Say I manage to struggle on till I’m eighty or so—that means I’ve another forty years to spend trying to sort out the mess I’ve made of the first forty. You’d think I’d be due some kind of good luck by now, wouldn’t you? A few years sipping rum punch on a Caribbean beach having various portions of my anatomy licked by skimpily clad totty?
I figure I must’ve got some other sad git’s life by mistake. I didn’t ask to have a dead-end job and a semi-detached in a crap provincial town with the worst ring road in the history of mankind, you know. That’s not the box I ticked when I filled out the application form. I ticked Big Mansion with Swimming Pool, Slick Car and Hefty Wodges of Cash, far as I remember. There must have been a mix-up. I’m only in this life as a result of an administrative error. I want a refund. And somewhere there’s some toerag swimming up and down my pool who can’t believe his luck.
This year, what are the odds on Gail organizing me a birthday surprise? I’ve got more chance of being struck by lightning. Actually, with my luck, I’ve got a lot more chance of being struck by lightning. If you’re listening, God, that’s not meant as a reminder. I wasn’t volunteering—just pointing out it’s my birthday tomorrow so feel free to have a day off if you’re getting tired of pulling out all the stops to make my life a complete misery. Sod it, I’m not even going to tell anyone. I’ll just forget the whole thing and reschedule it for a couple of months’ time once Gail’s calmed down and we’re all sorted out again.
I am forty-one today. I am a forty-one-year-old man living in a bed and breakfast and hoping that I’ll wake up any second now and discover it was all just a lousy dream. At least I should get cards from the kids though. I mean, Natty would send me a card, right? Gail’s got the address. I have my shower and shave, telling myself in the mirror that I could easily pass for a man in his early thirties. I go on down to breakfast and ask Fiona if there’s been any post.
“Don’t think so. Why—you expecting something?”
“Yeah, well, no—not really. It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s not your birthday, is it?”
“It is actually.”
“Ooh, happy birthday! Sorry, I’d have got you a card. Is it a big one? Let me guess, it’s not your fortieth, is it?”
So much for thinking I can pass for thirty-two in a dim light.
“No. Forty-one.”
“Well, that’s all right then. You’re past the worst.”
Is that the best that can be said of my life, that I’m past the worst? Cheers.
I sit down and scan the paper, trying to cheer myself up by reading about the misfortunes of others. Never works that, does it? Think of the starving children in Africa, the teachers used to say at school when you didn’t want to choke back the pigswill we got dished up as dinners. Send it to them, then—that’s what we thought, what we always thought. Sure, I feel grateful I happen to have been born in a country where I’m not likely to actually starve to death, where I’ve got some sort of roof over my head, but I don’t say it makes me actively happy. Besides, it’s not like I’ve never been hungry, coming in from school and being doled out a thick slice of bread and marge sprinkled with sugar and trying to eat it slowly ‘cause you don’t know if you’ll get anything else later and you can’t ask case you get a clip round the ear. I’d never go back to that. I’d do anything to keep my kids from living like that. Anything. I mean it. I’d rob a bank if I had to. Once you’ve lived like that, you feel like it’s still out there, waiting to drag you back—and you have to keep away from it or it’ll get you, and all you’ll be able to think about will be money and food, food and money the whole time and you won’t be lucky enough to escape a second time, you know it, so you better make damn sure you stay away from it in the first place.
Fiona puts down half a grapefruit in front of me. There is a glacé cherry in the middle, an unexpected birthday treat, and a single small candle with a flickering flame. It is so pathetic I want to cry.
“Come on then, birthday boy. Make a wish and blow it out.”
I puff out my cheeks as if I am blowing out a flaming bank of forty-one candles and not just one standing alone. One blow and it’s out.
I wish I was someone else.
At work, things go from bad to worse. None of the lads have remembered. No surprises there, but Harry, who might remember, is a no-show. Maureen phones to say he’s feeling off-colour so he’s not coming in and nor is she because she wants to keep an eye on him. Lee and Martin keep messing about and between them manage to crack a double glazing unit that we’d just finished. Gary has just been chucked by his girlfriend and is mooning about with a face as long as a wet weekend. It is Denise’s day off. No-one even offers to make a cup of tea.
At five to twelve, I hear the toot-toot of the sandwich van and I go out, thinking well, at least I can stuff my face and bollocks to everybody else. Thingybob, the sandwich girl—woman—whatever, smiles at me which I notice, partly because it feels like the first proper smile I’ve had all day, and partly because I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for her. No, I don’t mean I want to jump her bones, just she’s got a nice face and a nice smile and well, you know. OK, I would jump her bones given the chance, but I don’t want you thinking I’m just a shallow bastard who’s always up for a shag.
I order Spanish omelette in a bap which might sound odd but I can assure you is the dog’s bollocks when it comes to filling you up and making the world seem a better place. I tell her not to bother wrapping it and I take an enormous bite straight away, asking her for two chocolate muffins at the same time.
“No chocolate ones left. Sorry.”
Could today get any more crap?
“Oh, come on! It’s not even twelve o’clock. How can you have run out already?”
She looks a bit taken aback and she flushes.
“I said sorry. It’s been really busy today. I can’t anticipate it when half my customers are in need of a chocolate fix, can I?” She looks at me and then her face sort of softens. “Having a bad day?”
“You could say that, yeah. Sorry.” I dig down into my pocket feeling my eyes prick, and make heavy weather of hunting for change so I don’t have to look up. I am definitely losing it today. Get a grip, man. Get a grip. “It’s my birthday actually and so far it’s been a non-stop jamboree of laughs, treats and extravagant gifts, you know?”
This is her cue to make some smart comment about my age—when’s my Zimmer frame arriving and can she offer to drop me off at the post office to collect my pension. Any second now.
“I’m sorry,” she says, treating me to another one of those smiles. It feels like a gift. It’s a smile that deserves a bit of rustly paper and fancy ribbon round it. “Happy birthday.” She ducks down beneath the counter. “Would you settle for a piece of lemon cake instead? Or cherry and almond? It’s home-made.”
“Go on then. I’ll take the cherry.”
I offer the money but she raises her hand firmly like a cop stopping traffic.
“Hold it right there. It’s on the house.”
“Really?” I wonder whether I should chance my arm and ask for a birthday kiss, too, seeing as how she’s in a good mood, but she might just give me a slap round the chops instead. Also, standing there in her van, it makes her higher up than me, and she seems impossibly out of reach. With my luck today, it’s probably best not to push it.
I realize I’m standing there with my mouth open, just looking up at her, without saying anything. She must think I’m not quite the full quid.
“Well, cheers then,” I wish I could think of something clever to say. I wish I could at least remember her name so I could drop it in casually. I wish … I wish. “Thanks again. See you.” Stunning. You’d think a man of forty-one would be better at this by now.
“Hope your day picks up,” she calls after me.
Of course it’ll pick up. At least once you hit bottom, the only way is up, right?
Wrong. Gail always said I was too optimistic.
In the afternoon, I hear on the grapevine that one of our regular clients has just gone out of business. I check the invoices and, yes, they still owe us money. Not a lot, but not so little we won’t notice it. I make myself a cup of tea to go with cherry and almond cake, but the milk—which admittedly had been a bit of borderline case in the morning—has given up the ghost and gone blobby and disgusting in my mug. We’ve no more fresh, so I have to make do with black coffee.
I ask the lads if they fancy going down the pub after work for a birthday booze-up but Lee’s got a date with some hot-to-trot babe who lives miles away and he’s got to go home first to change. Martin’s going bowling with his wife and another couple. Couples, couples everywhere. And Gary doesn’t feel like it, thank you, and to be frank, he looks in a worse state than I do. So then I call up Colin and Jeff and Roger and say, hey, lads’ night out, come on—let’s get slaughtered, thinking I should have sorted this weeks ago but I didn’t because I’ve been concentrating on surviving from one day to the next and my birthday didn’t seem like top of my list of priorities. But Colin says he’s not allowed out (What is he? Twelve?) because he got pissed one night two weeks ago and Yvonne still hasn’t forgiven him for falling over the hall table at two in the morning and making her think they were being burgled. I get Roger on his mobile, but he says no can do, he’s over 200 miles away at a sales conference. Jeff—who of course has even less of a life than I do, but not by much—says yeah, all right then, with his usual level of enthusiasm; he doesn’t mind tagging along, but he’s a bit skint and I say that’s OK, I’m paying, my treat, you daft bugger. But if you were looking for someone to cheer you up, Jeff wouldn’t exactly be Number One on your list, you know?
So we go to the pub and for the next three hours and over the course of several pints and one or two shorts, or possibly three or four, we take it in turns to moan about how crap our lives are. We get into a rhythm with it after a while, him then me, then him, then me, and I’m thinking what we really need’s one of those timers so we get fair shares, you know—like you have in the kitchen to time your eggs or remind you to take the pizza out the oven. We’ve got one—Gail’s got one at home which looks like a miniature kettle and you sort of wind it up to set it, then it goes off with an incredibly loud ring which makes you jump out your boots. It’s bloody loud. God, I don’t even have that any more. No life, no wife, no sodding kitchen timer.
Then we go for a curry up the High Street and stuff our faces with poppadoms and chicken balti and lagers, and by now I’m way too drunk to drive home and I’ve left my car in the pub car park anyway, but I can’t face staying at Jeff’s in the Land where Everything is Brown so we lean against each other at the taxi rank and he says he really, really loves me, I’m his old mate and I’ve never let him down, not ever and I say something stupid along the same lines and we give each other a big hug and I fall into a taxi and he weaves his way back up the High Street.
To start with, I give the driver my address. My home address. And it’s only when he pulls up outside and asks for the fare that I remember that I don’t live there any more and can he carry on and take me to where I should be. He’s overjoyed, of course, and says am I just messing him about, do I realize he’s got a living to earn, he can’t be driving all round town on the off-chance I might remember where I live, and I’ve clearly had far too much to drink and I better not be making a mess in the back of his cab or there’ll be trouble. And I say no, no trouble, I don’t want any trouble, thank you, I’m not messing, I just need to go to my good old B&B, it’s just round the ring road a ways—and then out a bit.
When we finally get there, I unfold myself from the back seat, give him too big a tip, and concentrate on slotting my key into the lock, trying to do it silently which of course means I make fourteen times as much noise as normal.
Miraculously, some flowers have appeared in my room, with a card propped up against the vase, signed from Fiona and Dave. On the bed are another two cards and a package, plus a note from Fiona saying they were dropped off earlier in the day.
Three birthday cards. See, not everyone in the world hates me.
The first envelope says Dad in childish writing. I knew Rosie wouldn’t forget.
The card says “Happy Birthday Daddy! You are 41! [thanks] Lots of love from Rosie. XXX” The writing is in blue, with mauve kisses. She’s made it herself. On the front is a purple butterfly, made of cut-out bits of felt, with silver glitter on its wings. The package is also from Rosie. I tear off the paper, which is patterned with yellow teddy bears, and find a box. Inside is something heavy, wrapped in pink tissue.
It is a mug. White and hand-painted. On one side there is a man with dark hair and a blue shirt, I guess meant to be me, holding hands with a girl—Rosie—wearing a mauve dress. On the other side, it says, in shaky lettering, I LOVE MY DADDY.
The other card—amazingly, unbelievably—is from Nat. As I open it, I realize I’ve spent the whole day trying to tell myself there’ll be no card from him, preparing myself for the fact that my son wants nothing to do with me. But here, right here on this bed, is a card. Inside, Nat’s written “To Dad.” Then there’s one of those verses:
I hope this birthday is the best
That you have ever had
Because to me you are the tops,
The greatest living Dad.
I’ll spare you what happens next, but let’s just say I get a bit choked up and—well, it’s a pitiful sight and I’m just dead glad—for once—that I’m in that room all on my own. I’m a forty-one-year-old man sitting on a single bed in a rented room with no life and no future sobbing his guts out. So why is it that, suddenly, I feel like this is the best birthday I’ve ever had?