On Friday evening Dan was gazing at his good-deeds spreadsheet, in particular the blank spaces in the ‘Gabe’ and ‘Bea’ columns, when Zoe rang. ‘I know it’s short notice but I don’t suppose you could have Gabe for a few hours tomorrow, could you?’ she asked. ‘He was meant to be spending the day with his friend Jack, but Jack’s brother fell off the climbing frame at the park and has fractured his wrist – they’re operating first thing in the morning. I’m a bit stuck now because Ethan’s out, doing a workshop at the Tate, and I promised Bea ages ago we’d go to see some terrible unicorn movie that Gabe would rather die than watch, so—’
‘It’s fine, I can have him,’ Dan said when she paused for breath. It was as if Fate had made an intervention, right there. He was not about to refuse Zoe anything, not least because of the extra guilt he’d been carrying around since meeting Lydia. The still-to-be-resolved, what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do? guilt, which was becoming more onerous with every day that passed. He was feeling so queasy about the whole thing that he’d probably have agreed to commit a series of crimes on Zoe’s behalf, if she went on to request such a list. ‘Whenever you like,’ he added for good measure.
Zoe exhaled with noisy relief, and the sound of it made Dan feel better. Needed. This was the first time she had specifically asked him for help since Patrick’s death – perhaps ever, now that he thought about it. She had come to him, and he had been able to say yes. Plus, hadn’t he just been thinking that he needed to find something he and Gabe could do together?
‘Oh, thank you,’ Zoe sighed. ‘Thanks so much. I really appreciate this.’
‘No problem. What time do you want me to get him?’ He was positively jaunty by now. The middle of the night? Five in the morning? I’ll do it. You want me to walk to your place barefoot along a path of burning coals and broken glass? Absolutely.
‘About ten, is that okay? Sorry – I hope you’re not having to rearrange anything around us or change your plans.’
‘No, not at all,’ he assured her. This wasn’t entirely true. He’d planned on finishing painting the Whitecliffe Road flat on Saturday, it having taken far longer than he’d anticipated – admittedly, largely because he’d been so hungover on Thursday that he’d hardly been able to open the emulsion bucket without retching. Today had been more productive at least, but there was still all the woodwork left to gloss and . . . Well, never mind, there would be time on Sunday. ‘Ten is fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of something fun we can do together.’
‘Oh, gosh, don’t feel you have to. You can stay in the house and play computer games all morning with him, if you’d rather. Whatever’s easiest, Dan.’
How was it possible to feel simultaneously pleased by another person’s gratitude, yet also sick to the stomach with shame at your double-crossing? Whatever, Dan was absolutely not about to cop out and play computer games with his nephew, when he could seize the opportunity to be Super Uncle and Kind Brother-in-Law. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said. ‘See you tomorrow morning.’
That grandiose sort of posturing was what had led to Dan now shepherding an extremely excited Gabe towards his first skateboarding lesson at a skate park just off the Westway. Gabe liked dangerous activities; he was a bold, reckless and well-coordinated boy. The moment Dan had seen ‘skateboarding’ come up in his ‘fun things to do with your nephew’ Internet search, he had thought: Bingo. Okay, so Zoe didn’t look completely thrilled by the prospect when Dan arrived earlier and made his big announcement – she had turned a little pale, if anything, and started talking anxiously about broken bones – but unfortunately for her, Dan had made the rookie error of airing his suggestion in front of Gabe as well, resulting in a whoop of ‘YES!’ from the boy, followed by a frenzy of karate kicks and ‘KAPOW!’ noises around the kitchen. It would have taken an utter killjoy to forbid the trip now, and so Zoe had dubiously agreed, albeit with pleas to return her son in one piece rather than in an injured mash.
‘Fancy having a go yourself?’ the instructor joked to Dan when they arrived and set about registering Gabe and hiring the necessary kit. Dan was about to laugh and say, ‘No, thanks, I value my limbs’ when Gabe looked up at him, eyes shining, and said, ‘Do you, Uncle Dan? Oh, go on!’
When was the last time anyone had looked at him like that? As if he were a king or a rock star, someone important. Here was his nephew specifically asking for his company, flattering him with hopefulness – was it any wonder Dan heard himself replying, ‘Um . . . sure, okay’ without properly thinking about what he might be letting himself in for?
In hindsight, this was rookie error number two. No turning back now. Five minutes later, they were both rigged up in brightly coloured helmets, elbow and knee pads and choosing their skateboards, before being greeted by a terrifyingly young instructor called Aki. Oh, shit. Dan was already regretting his decision to take part. Was it too late to backtrack?
All around them, kids in hoodies and skate pants were whizzing up and down ramps of varying sizes and gradients, leaping and twisting in mid-air from the half-pipe and – most alarming of all – rattling along steep rails with apparent ease. It was a massive place, with indoor and outdoor sections, a skate shop and a café, which looked particularly tempting right now. Damn it.
Having been guided to the beginners’ area – an almost entirely flat section of the skate park that was shunned by anyone over the age of eight, they waited for Aki, who had stopped to back-slap a couple of moon-faced teens in oversized tartan shirts. Gabe fidgeted with barely contained excitement, stepping from foot to foot, eyes wide with the thrill of so many cool kids in the vicinity. ‘This is awesome,’ he breathed happily.
‘Too right,’ Dan agreed, trying to mask his sudden rush of dread with a stern talking-to. Here we are, uncle and nephew, and we’re going to have a great time, he reminded himself. We are cementing a new bond together; we’re starting something really good that will last forever; I am stepping into the role of Number One Male Adult in his life, and I will not fuck this up. What was it he’d heard Ethan mutter that first time in the car? Something like ‘Puts the “tit” in “substitute”’. Well, he wouldn’t be doing that, either.
He glanced up at the sky. It wasn’t as if he believed in an afterlife, but he liked the thought of Patrick looking down and seeing them here together, appreciating the expression of utter joy on Gabe’s face and maybe chalking up a tick for Dan. Dan found himself thinking of the photos by his nephew’s bed, of Gabe and Patrick together at various football matches. Patrick had always been sure-footedly sporty, able to catch and throw and kick with skill; it was obvious that Gabe had inherited the same physical competence. If Dan was ever going to attempt to compensate for the loss of Patrick, then this was the least he could do. He must not let the kid down.
‘Okay, guys!’ Aki said, clapping his hands together. He was short but stocky, with insane muscles rippling through his shoulders whenever he moved; dressed in a thin hooded top and baggy shorts, his feet in massive dark-blue Nikes, the exact name of which Dan felt he was twenty years too old and not nearly cool enough to know. Gabe immediately fell silent, staring up at Aki with something bordering on love, or at least Massive Great Crush. Dan was not one to cast aspersions on under-tens, but he felt quietly confident that his nephew never gave the teachers at school such devout attention.
‘Let’s get started,’ Aki said. ‘First up: how to stand on your board.’ He elbowed Gabe with a wink. ‘We’ll see who’s better, shall we – you or the old guy?’
Dan prickled all over at being called ‘the old guy’, but Gabe sniggered disloyally. ‘That’s my Uncle Dan,’ he said, blushing with the honour of speaking to his new hero.
‘Uncle Dan, hey?’ Aki grinned and raised an eyebrow at Dan, who couldn’t quite bring himself to grin back. Wanker. He tried to pull a face that said, Yeah, whatever, I’m not intimidated by you, but felt his teeth baring in more of a snarl. ‘Okaaay,’ said Aki, clapping his hands together. ‘So: standing on the board. One foot in front of the other, yeah? Most people like to have their left foot at the front, so that the right can do all the pushing. But it’s up to you – there’s no right or wrong way about it. See how I’m keeping my back foot at an angle? That helps my balance. You try it for me now, little dude.’
Gabe stepped confidently onto the skateboard, following Aki’s instructions. There was a slight wobble and a brief arm-flail, but then the boy found his balance with a triumphant grin. Easy, his face said.
‘Boom!’ cried Aki, reaching over for a high-five. He was already getting on Dan’s wick. ‘Now your turn, Uncle Dan. Let’s see what you’ve got.’
Patronizing twat. Dan stepped onto the board, praying it wasn’t about to roll away beneath him or tip up, or anything embarrassing. One foot in front of the other. There. What was all the fuss about? He was only raised two inches off the ground. Big deal!
‘No sweat,’ said Aki. ‘Cool as a cucumber. Okay, now let’s get moving. I’m going to push off with my back foot, slow and strong, and we’ll walk the boards around for a little while. Like so. See? Hey – you paying attention there, Uncle D?’
‘Sure,’ said Dan, momentarily distracted by the sight of a small girl with plaits poking out from a pink baseball cap. Seeing her had made him think about Lydia’s daughter – this unexpected niece he’d just discovered he had – and then his thoughts had turned to Lydia herself, and her pale, anxious face frowning at him over her coffee. What should he do? he fretted for the hundredth time, as Aki demonstrated how to scoot along on the skateboard, and he and Gabe followed behind. Their fraught conversation had nagged away at him since then. How he wished he could have handled the situation better. How he wished, moreover, that he had remained ignorant of Lydia’s existence altogether. But the genie was out of the bottle now and there was no way of persuading it back in there.
Anyway. He needed to concentrate. Satisfied that his pupils could competently walk a skateboard along, Aki now wanted the two of them to shift into the riding position with both feet on the board. ‘Back straight, knees a little bent, find your balance,’ he ordered, sailing around them in a wide loop on his own board to demonstrate. But then his attention was dragged elsewhere and he whistled under his breath. ‘Back in a minute, guys,’ he said, before skating across the park towards a young woman with a swingy black ponytail and a heart-shaped bottom encased by tight white jeans.
‘Look, Uncle Dan, I’m doing it!’ Gabe crowed with breathless glee, having pushed off. He rocked perilously backwards and forwards for a moment, arms windmilling, before righting himself. ‘I’m skateboarding!’
‘Nice one,’ Dan cheered, glad to see his nephew so happy and excited. When he thought back to how peevish the boy had been the other week, winding up his brother, surly to Zoe and glued to the computer game he was playing, it was like looking at a different child altogether. Check this out, Patrick. Are you watching? I’m doing good here, I swear.
Flushed with self-congratulation, he hopped on his own board, wanting to share the moment, only to lose his balance almost immediately. It was harder than it looked and he’d pushed off too strongly to control what was happening beneath his feet. ‘Whoa,’ he cried, desperately trying to maintain equilibrium. But then somehow or other he was tipping over and falling, and as he put his right foot down, his ankle rolled under with a sickening crunch. ‘Fuck!’
‘Uncle Dan!’ said Gabe in shocked delight, coming to an abrupt stop. ‘Uncle Dan, I heard that.’
Pain was shooting around Dan’s body like pinballs in a machine and he was unable to speak for a moment. Breath hissed out from between his clenched teeth as he lowered himself to a sitting position on the floor, clutching his wrenched ankle. Shit, had he broken it? He was in agony. Fuck! He could practically hear Patrick laughing at him from wherever he was watching. Wait – no, that wasn’t Patrick, it was actually Aki, racing back to them.
‘What the . . . ?’ roared the man-child. ‘Are you kidding me? I turn my back for two minutes and you go and injure yourself, D?’ He squatted next to Dan and prodded the ankle knowingly. ‘We’re gonna need some ice here. A whole bag of ice.’ He looked up at Gabe. ‘You okay, kid? Hey, don’t worry. Happens all the time, especially to the old guys. You’re not gonna hurt yourself though, right?’
Gabe’s expression of glee had turned to one that looked very much like embarrassment. ‘Mm-hmm,’ he said, eyes hooded, his gaze flicking to Dan and back.
Oh God, thought Dan, picturing the scene from above: all the cool, edgy kids whizzing around fearlessly while the middle-aged has-been lay crippled and contorted on the cold concrete floor. This was not the fun experience he had planned for either of them.
‘Ice,’ said Aki again, rising to his feet. ‘And a chair. You’ll live, don’t worry,’ he added, as he hurried off.
When Zoe got home later she found Dan sitting there with one foot up, ice-pack resting on his ankle, while Gabe eagerly told her about his lesson in a single unceasing sentence without taking a breath. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Or whether she should just roll her eyes up to the ceiling and yell, ‘I could have told you this was a stupid idea from the start!’
Okay, so she felt a grudging amount of sympathy for Dan, who was white-faced with pain and looking very sorry for himself as Gabe regaled them with full details of his glories on the skateboard, but her overriding reaction was one of exasperation. Because nobody had forced Dan to go along to the skate park in the first place, had they? Certainly nobody had insisted that he have a go himself. And now Gabe was hyped up with this exciting new pursuit, and guess who was going to have to be the mug who took him along from now on? Zoe, that was who. Zoe, who already had a million other things to be dealing with, and who was only surprised that reckless Gabe hadn’t been the one to break a bone or rip a ligament. When she had already lost one member of the family and was trying her hardest to keep the rest of them safe from harm. Marvellous. Just marvellous!
‘Sounds fun,’ she said, taking off her shoes, feeling light-headed as she bent down. She’d had another poor night’s sleep and, following her morning spent watching the God-awful unicorn movie with Bea, she wanted nothing more than to sit for five minutes on her own and drink a cup of tea in peace, eyes shut, zoning out. It appeared she might have to wait a while before such a thing was possible. ‘Mmm. Great,’ she murmured when Gabe finally paused for breath. Then she got a grip on herself. ‘Coffee, Dan?’ she asked, feeling bad for her churlish thoughts when the guy was only doing her a favour, after all. Make an effort, Zoe. ‘Do you need me to take you to the walk-in clinic – have someone look at that?’ she asked, mentally crossing her fingers that the rest of the day wouldn’t be spent in a noisy A&E waiting room. ‘Were you able to drive back okay?’
‘He did swear a few times in the car,’ said Gabe the snitch. ‘You did, though, Uncle Dan,’ he added, when Dan shot him a reproachful look.
‘Sorry,’ mumbled Dan, hobbling through to the kitchen after her. ‘Braking was kind of painful,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s just a twist, nothing serious. Might even teach me to remember my age. Coffee would be great, please.’
Zoe felt herself soften a little. ‘Thanks for taking him. You know, I bet Patrick would have done exactly the same thing. Exactly. In fact he’d probably have come home having bought them each a skateboard and all the gear.’ She shook her head affectionately, finding it all too easy to imagine the scene. Patrick had always launched into new hobbies with the greatest enthusiasm, as the rowing machine, ice-cream maker and box kites still gathering dust in the cellar could testify.
Dan’s face cleared at her comment. She would go so far as to say that he actually looked delighted. ‘Really? So I was just . . . doing what Patrick would have done?’
‘God, yeah.’ She laughed. ‘Sometimes I wasn’t sure who was the biggest kid in the family. Do sit down,’ she added, glancing back from the mug cupboard to see him hovering awkwardly by the fridge. ‘Keep the weight off that foot.’
They made chit-chat while the kettle boiled, and Zoe felt her tension start to ebb away. She had always liked Dan after all; he was a good guy, even if, like his brother, he sometimes rushed into a so-called great new idea without actually thinking it through. He told her about painting one of Patrick’s flats, and how he was getting to know the tenants from wading through the backlog of all their recent complaints. She hadn’t realized quite how hard he had been working on their behalf and her heart swelled with gratitude.
‘Thank you,’ she said humbly, adding milk to his coffee. ‘That’s really good of you. Obviously let me know how much I owe you for the paint and everything. I’ve been meaning to log into the business account and start getting to grips with it, so having to transfer some money over to you will force me to pull my finger out.’
His eyes darted away for some reason, though. ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine, you’ve got enough on your plate,’ he said.
‘As if! I’m not having you paying out of your own pocket,’ she told him, passing his mug over. ‘In fact – wait there,’ she added, digging in her purse and getting out the company credit card Patrick had given her. ‘Use this for anything you buy online from now on, okay? And save any other receipts for me, so that I can settle up. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask: was all the paperwork there with the accounts? I know you said you were going to sort out the VAT return; I hope everything was in order.’ She smiled at him. ‘No dodgy payments, I take it? Patrick not up to anything naughty behind my back?’
She’d intended the questions to be light-hearted – she was joking! – but Dan spluttered on his coffee at her words. Was she going mad or did a weird expression flash across his face even? ‘Um . . .’ he said, raking a hand through his hair.
‘Dan, I’m kidding,’ she laughed, although she couldn’t help peering at him, wondering why he was hesitating like that. Her laugh died away as confusion set in. ‘Everything all right?’
He shook his head, recovering himself. ‘Yes! Sorry. Yes, all fine. The accounts – of course. My mind went blank for a moment. I was thinking about my own accounts; forgot I’d even taken a look at Patrick’s. Yes. No problems. Very straightforward. I’ve sent everything off to the accountant, just waiting to hear what’s owed on the VAT.’
He was talking quickly, seemingly keen to convince her, but Zoe wasn’t fooled. Not for an instant. The hair on her arms stood up on end, her mouth becoming dry as he continued in this poor, rambling attempt at covering up. But what was he covering up? Was there something untoward about Patrick’s paperwork?
Before she could investigate further, he had already changed the subject to an idea he’d had about taking Ethan to see some sculptures over the school holidays, and began reeling off a list of ones that were scattered around the capital – from a Barbara Hepworth piece on Oxford Street, to a Rodin at Westminster Palace – and she found herself caught up in his enthusiasm. Yes, Ethan would be thrilled to have his uncle taking this level of interest in him. Then Dan was offering to take Bea out on her bike, because Gabe had mentioned that this was something she and Patrick had always done together, and Zoe’s eyes became quite moist with a rush of gratitude, followed immediately by guilt. She wasn’t managing to do enough for them; she was still dragging herself through life like a zombie, performing the basic functions but little more, she reprimanded herself. What do you even DO all day? she heard Ethan jeer again. Meanwhile, here was Dan, taking care of Patrick’s landlording on top of his own life, and still managing to add a bit of flavour and excitement to her family.
‘Thank you,’ she said, humbly. ‘They’d love those ideas.’ Must try harder. Must find the energy, she told herself as he finished his coffee and hobbled out of the front door. She’d plan a trip to her mum’s, she decided on the spur of the moment. Maybe for Easter weekend, cheer everyone up a bit at the seaside, not least her own self.
It was only later on that her thoughts returned to the strangeness of her and Dan’s earlier exchange about the accounts; how he’d faltered and stiffened, every inch a guilty reaction. What, exactly, had Dan been hiding? Or was she better off not knowing?
‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten,’ she muttered to herself with a frown.