1 January 2005
Today I am five years old.
It is five years since I was shocked back from eighteen minutes of death. Five years since the only woman I’ve ever loved pummelled my chest and breathed air into my empty lungs.
It is also my son’s tenth day on the planet.
Why don’t I feel what I should for this new person, my flesh and blood? Kerry looked at me as if I was a zombie when I told her I didn’t want anything to do with the kid.
Perhaps that’s what I am, an emotionless monster who doesn’t deserve anything good.
I get up off the sofa to go to grab a beer from the mini-fridge. Fuck it. I haven’t had a drink since my detox in the summer, but I need to get wasted—
I catch sight of myself in the mirror. Do you really want to do this?
I turn away.
Through the window of the den I can see my mother at the bi-fold doors in the kitchen. Last night I couldn’t face her epic New Year bash and she’s staring at me now, her face twisted with worry. That’s what parenthood is like. I’m twenty-two years old and she’s still scared about what I’ll do next.
No wonder I don’t want that.
I step closer towards my reflection in the mirror.
Does my son really have my eyes, like Zoë said?
The bottle is cold against my hand. The lid pops off with a hiss. I sit back down on the sofa and I can smell the yeastiness. It’s only beer. Barely counts as alcohol.
Ten days old.
I don’t even know how big he is or what he can and can’t do.
Nothing to do with me.
I lift the beer up to my lips. The smell sickens me but the effect will make up for it.
Zoë took a choice away from me by having the kid. But should she also have the choice about whether he’s allowed to have a dad? I know how hard her life has been, but that makes her even less able to make the right decisions on behalf of her defenceless son.
Our defenceless son.
I throw the bottle across the room in anger but it doesn’t even smash, it just coats the timber wall in beer. What a mess I make of everything.
The last few days, I’ve been mourning my relationship with Kerry. The best thing in my life and I killed it. I’ve considered calling her, telling her I’d try to find the baby if she’d reconsider. But even I know it would be a terrible reason to be in a child’s life.
I wonder who is caring for him. Is Zoë allowed to spend time with him, or is it only people who are paid to be there?
Could I make a difference? It’s something I’ve been wrestling with since talking to Kerry on Boxing Day. Being a dad terrifies me but there’s more at stake now than my own cowardice.
I know what Kerry would say: being afraid is not an excuse for me to let him down.
I get to the Department of Social Services just before 8 a.m. the next day. Their webpage tells me they open at nine, so it means waiting another hour outside, but it’s worth it to be first in the queue.
I’ve been up all night, thinking it through. Even though I never wanted a kid, knowing my son exists makes everything different. Five years ago, I came back to life and maybe this was why. I don’t want to waste any more time.
While I wait, I stamp my feet to stay warm, rehearsing what I am going to say in my head. The words make me sound exactly like the scumbag I am, but at least they’re the truth.
When they open the doors, the Christmas decorations still hang limply off the ceiling, and there’s a faint smell of pine air freshener and candy cane. The two women behind reception are giggling as they catch up on festive gossip, and look faintly put out to be interrupted by a customer. Client. Whatever I am.
I know nothing.
‘Happy New Year,’ I say brightly. ‘I don’t know if I’m in the right place, but want to enquire about a baby.’
The older one stops laughing; her red-framed glasses make her look a bit like a kid’s TV presenter, but there’s no warmth in her scowl. ‘What about a baby?’
‘I think . . . a former partner of mine has had a baby and I want to meet him.’
‘You want us to help you meet your ex-partner?’
Is she doing this on purpose? ‘No, the baby. His mum takes drugs so I think the council will probably be involved.’
She sighs. ‘What’s the name of your ex-partner? I can’t reveal anything personal but I might be able to make you an appointment with a member of staff who can advise.’
‘It’s Zoë.’
She looks up from the Post-it she’s writing on and waits. ‘Zoë what?’ she prompts, eventually.
‘The thing is . . . it wasn’t a surnames kind of relationship.’
Her eyebrows rise. I’ve dressed carefully, to look more mature than I feel, but I know I must seem so bloody irresponsible.
The entrance door opens behind me and a teenage girl tries to manoeuvre her double buggy inside, as both her children cry out in protest. I want to help, but don’t know where to begin.
‘Date and place of birth?’ the council official asks, her voice sharp.
I open my mouth, pleased that I can answer something in full. ‘August the tenth, 1982. Sussex Hospital.’
This time her sigh almost blows a pile of leaflets off the desk. ‘The child’s, not yours.’
Shit. ‘Um, the twenty-third of December. Ten days ago. It’s a boy but I don’t know where she had it. Possibly Brighton, though.’
Glasses Woman turns to her colleague and says, ‘I’m already wishing I hadn’t got out of bed this morning.’ She turns back to me. ‘I don’t suppose you’re named on the birth certificate?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘This isn’t the Number 1 Ladies’ bloody Detective Agency. There’s nothing I can do without a bit more to go on.’
I take a deep breath. This might be my last chance to get her on my side. ‘I’m sorry. I know I sound mad. But I didn’t even know I was a dad till a few days ago when my ex called. She’s . . . vulnerable. Struggles to look after herself, never mind a baby.’
A couple more people have arrived by now. I have quite an audience, all women.
‘I’m not saying I’d be any better than she would. But kids want to know who their parents are, don’t they? I want to be there if he needs me.’
The room is silent. Even the babies in the double buggy have stopped grizzling.
‘Look, love, it’s not as simple as that . . .’ Her voice is softer now, more maternal. ‘If your ex is going to struggle, then social work will decide what’s best for the baby. But that won’t automatically be you.’
I know this from the research I’ve done online last night, but still, it feels more final coming from someone in authority. ‘I have to try. Don’t I?’
‘Go on, give him a break,’ the teenager behind me says. ‘Most dads don’t give a shit about their kids.’
Glasses Woman rummages in a drawer and holds up a leaflet about parental rights. ‘There’s a helpline number on the back there.’ She turns it over, circles it with her pen. ‘They might be able to help you work on legal stuff. If it’s something you really want to do?’
I nod.
‘Have you got money? Or can you get hold of some?’
‘I can try.’
‘You shouldn’t need it, but . . . it might help. Either way, it’s not going to be easy.’
I take the leaflet. ‘Probably shouldn’t be. Thanks.’
As I turn to go, the girl with the buggy winks at me. ‘If you don’t find your actual kid, you’d be welcome to play daddy to these two.’
I look down at them: a big kid and a little kid. I can’t even guess their ages, never mind how you’d start to feed or soothe or play with them. What the fuck am I doing?
I smile weakly. ‘They’re lovely.’
She nods. ‘They can be. Good luck.’
By the time I’ve walked home from the social services office, I’ve realized one thing: if I need cash to fight this, I have to tell my parents immediately. Mum’s poring over cookbooks deciding what to tell the caterers to cook for her next ‘casual’ kitchen supper. Dad’s holed up in his office, working on new show ideas that will never get commissioned.
I ask them into the kitchen. As I make a big pot of tea, I try to imagine there’s a child in the room with us, grubby fingers poking into power sockets, tiny hand reaching up towards the kettle lead. Can I really keep a small human safe?
My parents face me across the kitchen island. I used to think their marriage only survived because Mum went away so often. But I’ve changed my mind. Now I think the constant fighting for me – first, to get me to the top in football, and later, to stop me dying – has cemented them together in another, slightly healthier way. They seem happier lately, and I think Dad might even have got rid of his ‘secret’ mobile phone, the one he always used to communicate with his latest fling.
Are they ready to be grandparents?
Here goes.
‘This is going to be a shock . . . and it was to me, too. I’m a dad. I’ve got a kid. And I want to be a part of his life.’
Dad inhales with a small whistle. Mum’s mouth opens but she says nothing. Lynette Greenaway, who has never, ever gone blank on live TV, is lost for words.
‘I only found out a few days ago. I don’t know his name but he was born on the twenty-third of December.’
‘Jesus,’ my mother says.
‘I didn’t even know you had a girlfriend,’ Dad says.
Mum raises her eyebrows as if to say, that’s how little notice you take. Except she didn’t know about Zoë either.
‘Her name is Zoë and she wasn’t really a girlfriend. More like someone I used to hang out with. Back when things were difficult.’
‘She’s a junkie?’ my mother says.
I feel protective of Zoë, suddenly. ‘She has used drugs, off and on, like I did. But when we were together . . . when the baby was conceived, we were both clean.’
‘You knew she was pregnant?’ Dad asks.
‘Yes, but we agreed it wasn’t the right time. Or at least, I thought we had. I gave her money for an abortion and I didn’t hear from her again until she called me on Christmas Day.’
My mother shakes her head. ‘We can all guess where that money went.’
‘Mum, you don’t know her.’
Her eyes widen with anger. ‘This is some girl who went ahead and had your baby without telling you. Yet you’re defending her?’
But my father reaches across the marble countertop to touch her hand. ‘Lynette. Let him finish.’
‘What more is there to say? Our son got some druggie pregnant with our grandchild and this is the first we hear of it?’
‘To be fair, it seems like it’s the first he’s heard of it too,’ Dad says. ‘Why did you originally decide to end the pregnancy?’
I tap the place where my ICD sits under my skin. ‘I was scared a baby might inherit whatever it was that made me need this.’
Mum’s face falls. ‘The baby is ill?’
I hear the change in her voice, and I love her for it. Why did it take her seconds to begin to care, when it took me days? I suppose it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I do care now.
‘I don’t know for sure. He was premature, but only by a few weeks. It’s possible that Zoë started taking . . . stuff again after we broke up.’
‘What kind of a mother does that?’ Mum says.
‘The kind of mother who is desperate. Zoë’s a good person at heart. Grew up in care; I don’t think she ever knew her parents, never mind had the support you two have given me. But when she’s not using, she’s funny and sharp and full of life.’
‘That’s what Zoë means,’ my mum says softly. ‘Life. I always liked the name. It was on the list for you if you’d been a girl, Joel.’
Dad looks at me. ‘The child, your child, where is he now?’
‘I don’t know where he was born. When she called I think it was because she wanted to hurt me. She said she wanted to keep him, but if she’s not allowed to, she’d rather he were adopted than come to me.’
‘What do you want?’ Mum asks.
‘At first I freaked out.’ I shake my head, remembering how I responded and how Kerry – rightly – disapproved. ‘But now I want to be in his life. Or at least, for him to know I cared enough to try.’
Dad taps his fingers against the counter. ‘Are you sure? Adoption would be better than you getting involved and then changing your mind.’ His face is stern, testing me.
‘I’m sure.’
Mum and Dad glance at each other and I see, so briefly, a look of solidarity pass between them. ‘What do you think, Granny?’ my father says, and I expect her to slap him, but instead she grips his hand and mine.
‘OK, Grandpa.’ They smile at each other, almost shyly, and for the first time in days I know I’m not alone. ‘Joel, what can we do?’
‘I’ve been reading up on what it’s going to involve. It might be expensive.’
Mum looks around the room, with its designer appliances and its double-height glass atrium. ‘That’s fine. We can handle expensive.’
For a moment, their love takes my breath away. They never gave up on me, no matter what I did. I want my son to know how that feels, too. ‘The other thing is, if it ends in some messy fight between me and Zoë, you might hear stuff about me that I’m really not proud of.’
My mother’s face doesn’t change. ‘We love you, no matter what you’ve done. You’ll understand this soon: we’re your parents and we’ll do whatever it takes.’
It takes money, and determination, and still there are no guarantees.
First, Dad hires an iffy private detective from his investigative TV days to find out where Zoë gave birth.
While we wait, we plan for the next stage. Apart from when I was first sick, it’s the only time I can remember us acting the way families do in the movies: cheerleading and urging each other on whenever one of us begins to doubt that this will work out.
It’s a fortnight before the detective confirms that my boy exists and was actually born here in Brighton. While I was imagining some fairy-tale future with Kerry, my son was coming into the world only a couple of miles away.
It feels as though I should have known, somehow.
But now I do, the world seems different.
The helpline tells me to do everything by the book: fill in the forms in my best block capitals, agree to the DNA test, wear a suit and a passive smile to all meetings, agree my past has been problematic, work to prove I deserve a role in his life.
As his mother, Zoë doesn’t have to prove that to the social workers, but she’s not making it easy for herself. Her decision to drop out of the system and not get any antenatal care has meant our child was born an addict. Edwina, my social worker, says she did well after the delivery, agreeing to rehab and even expressing milk for the baby. But now she keeps going AWOL and it’s not looking quite so promising.
Meanwhile, I wait some more: for the results of the DNA test, for my assessment, for crumbs of news about my son’s progress. He doesn’t even have a name yet, and Zoë can wait till the beginning of February to register his birth. I don’t know if it’s because she’s waiting deliberately, or because her life is still chaos.
‘We can’t just call him baby,’ my mother says, ‘but a name feels wrong, because we’ll get used to it and then it’ll be weird when she calls him something else.’
‘Spud,’ Dad says. ‘That’s what we called you before you were born. The baby could be Son of Spud.’
‘Spud will do for now,’ I tell them.
I dream of walking along rows and rows of those plastic hospital cribs, looking for my son. When I finally get to the end crib, there’s no baby but a redcurrant-sized heart, pumping madly on its own.
What if he’s sick because of me and my faulty genes?
I try to focus on other things: my online nutrition course, my own fitness. One afternoon, I go to the big WHSmith at Churchill Square and buy every mother and baby magazine on the shelf.
I pore over their cheery advice about night feeds and colic remedies and milestones, even though the same magazines suggest I have no real role to play in my son’s life. The soft-focus photos show mothers and babies; men, if they ever appear, are blurs in the background. When they’re mentioned in the articles, it’s because they’re pestering for sex or jealous of the attention their baby is getting . . .
Apart from meeting my son, there’s one other thing I am desperate to do: tell Kerry that she stopped me making the worst mistake of my life. I’ve come so close to calling or turning up at her work. The only reason I haven’t is because I am scared something could still go wrong. So I promise myself that as soon as I know I’m going be allowed to be part of my son’s life, I will tell her I came to my senses.
I want so much more: a reunion, forgiveness, a future. I lie awake in the den, imagining me and my son and Kerry coming together to create a family, as though all the trials we’ve endured have been leading up to our deserved happy ending.
‘You’ve passed the checks so far,’ the lawyer says when she calls in late January, my parents with me, listening on speakerphone, ‘though you can expect some hard questions on your past drug use and future plans. Your ex is still trying, too, though given her erratic behaviour, I’d say she’s got a bigger fight on her hands.’
The lawyer expects me to be glad that Zoë is failing, because it might make it easier for me to succeed. But I’m not: I know how much she wants this, because I feel the same way. More than that, I want Spud to be loved.
At my next meeting with Edwina, she hands me a photograph, face down. I hesitate before I turn it over.
‘Don’t expect too much,’ she says. ‘His foster mum isn’t exactly Annie Leibowitz.’
She’s right. The picture is blurry – perhaps on purpose – with the child’s face turned away, his hair merging with the soft fleecy rug he lies on. Yet it affects me more than anything else has so far. I stare at him, fascinated but also terrified, because I don’t yet recognize him or know if I can be what he needs.
‘My little Spud.’
‘Oh!’ Edwina smiles, and the lines around her eyes fan out like sunrays. ‘Ah, I have news about his name, too.’
‘Tell me?’ I hold my breath, preparing to pretend I don’t care if my kid is called Pluto or Turnip or—
‘Leo. Your son’s given names are Leo Zachary.’
Leo.
I don’t have to pretend I like it. It sounds . . . right. So close to my own name, and to Zoë’s, too.
Did she do it consciously, wanting to give him a lasting connection to us both, however tenuous? I take my share of the responsibility. I treated her badly, tried to railroad her. We are both to blame for the fact that our child was born in distress.
The delays nearly do my head in but today – 3 March – is the day I get to meet my boy.
Edwina is due to meet me outside the children’s centre. They don’t want me to have the foster parents’ address, in case something goes terribly wrong at the hearing. I pace the pavement, the photo of Leo in my hand, the only thing I have of him so far.
‘Joel!’ Edwina scuttles across the street towards me. She has the look of a woman who has seen it all. She gives me a cursory smile. ‘Ready?’
Never. But I try to pretend. ‘Yeah. Been looking forward to this.’ The words seem inadequate and I worry that I’ve already failed.
We climb the tiled steps. The building is a nondescript 1960s block, but to me it’s a fortress. The building is brightly decorated inside, with murals and wall stickers in primary colours. But the hospital-like smell – disinfectant and hot-running radiators – brings back memories of my worst times and, with them, the girl who was always there at my side.
As Edwina heads off to check everyone is ready, I sit on a plastic chair, my hands under my thighs. I want to run. What do I know about my son? Of his first months, or his pain? I have nothing to offer him.
I remember the words Kerry hissed at me the last time we met. You don’t deserve a kid. She’s the person who knows me best in the world. What if she’s right?
No. She doesn’t know the new me, the one who has grown up more in nine weeks than the previous twenty-two years. Kerry did that, held a mirror up so I could see my selfishness and my cowardice.
I want to prove her wrong. And once I have met my son, my Leo, I will make sure she knows she made it happen.
Yet as I sit here, trying to rehearse what I’ll say to her, my brain starts melting and the words start jumbling. It matters so much that I get this right.
Unless . . . it’s her birthday tomorrow: I never forget. I could send her a card, with a copy of Leo’s photo. The message could be simple, so that even if bloody Tim reads it, he wouldn’t understand the significance.
But Kerry would.
Will it make her want to see me again? I can’t know, but I can hope . . .
‘Joel? We’re all set.’ Edwina stands halfway down the corridor, beside a door.
I stand up and a horrible sensation starts at the bottom of my chest. Is this the ICD? Am I about to be shocked and end any hope of being a dad?
No. I smile when I realize the truth. It’s not my heart misfiring, it’s something more normal. Butterflies.
The glass in the door is papered over with pages from superhero comics, so no one can see through. As Edwina grabs the handle, I see Batman.
And then I see Leo.
He is lying on a mat, with a baby gym arching over him. I can’t see his face at first, but his body is solid, even chunkier than I expected in a bright green onesie. His hips look disproportionally wide. Is there something wrong with his legs? Why haven’t they warned me?
I realize it’s probably the nappy underneath.
He has so much hair, loose brown curls covering his head.
I wait, not knowing what to say or do. A plump blonde woman sits opposite him on the floor: his foster mother. She smiles at me, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She beckons me over.
As I approach, I am almost afraid to look at his face. I’ve been told that he is developmentally delayed; that the drugs Zoë took may continue to affect his behaviour and his learning. What if I am so shallow that I find him too strange, too different? Impossible to love.
I look at his face.
I know you.
I am flooded by certainty. He looks like me in my own baby photos. Even if I’d seen him in the street, I think I would have known he was mine. People say it’s a biological evolution, that babies resemble their dads more at this age to reassure them the child is theirs. It works.
Leo stares at me. He doesn’t recognize me. I am nothing to him. Worse than nothing. A person who wished for him never to exist.
But he is here now. Eyes darting everywhere, hungry for what life has to offer. He can’t raise his head yet so it’s the eyes that move the most. As I lower myself onto the mat, he smells of vanilla. His hands poke out from the sleeves of the onesie. They are wonderful, chubby and perfect, and as for his fingernails, they are . . . well, miraculous.
‘Hello, Leo,’ I say, testing the name out.
His smooth forehead wrinkles momentarily. I hold my breath, terrified he’s about to cry. Instead, he blinks and his eyes seek out the familiarity of his foster mother’s face.
I already know that proving I am fit to be this person’s father is going to be the toughest thing I’ve ever done.