Gone

42

It was gone seven. Cory hadn’t made an appearance, but Janice didn’t care. She’d had a great afternoon. Truly great – under the circumstances. Prody had been as good as his word and had stayed on. He hadn’t watched television or made phone calls but had spent most of the time sitting on the floor with Emily, playing snakes and ladders and ‘Tell me’. Emily thought Prody was hysterical: she’d used him as a climbing frame, charging into him, hanging on to his shoulders and pulling herself up by his hair in a way that would have infuriated Cory. Now Nick had gone, Emily was in the bath, supervised by her grandmother, and Janice was in the kitchen with Prody. The salmon was in the oven.

‘I think you’ve got kids.’ Janice was using her thumbs to push the cork out of the bottle of prosecco they’d bought in Marks & Spencer. ‘You’re, you know, sort of natural.’

‘Yeah, well . . .’ He shrugged.

‘Yeah, well?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I think you need to explain that to me.’ She popped the cork, poured the wine into two of the tumblers she’d discovered in the back of a cupboard and handed one to him. ‘Come on. The salmon’s got a bit longer to go, so we’re going into the living room and you’re going to tell me all about “Yeah, well”.’

‘Am I?’

She smiled. ‘Oh, yes. Indeed you are.’

In the living room, Prody pulled the mobile out of his pocket, switched it off and sat down. The room was strewn with Emily’s toys. Ordinarily Janice would have raced around tidying up so that the place wasn’t a mess when Cory got home. Today she sat with her shoes off, her feet curled under her and her arm on a cushion. To start with, Prody needed prompting. These were things he didn’t like talking about, he said, and, anyway, didn’t she have enough problems of her own?

‘No. Don’t worry about it. It helps keep my mind off my own situation.’

‘It’s not a pretty picture.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Well . . .’ He gave an awkward smile. ‘It goes like this. My ex got full custody of the kids. It never went to court because I pulled out of the case, gave way to what she wanted. She was going to tell the court I’d been beating her and my sons ever since they were born.’

‘Had you?’

‘I smacked the eldest once.’

‘What do you mean, “smacked”?’

‘On the back of his legs.’

‘That’s not beating him.’

‘My wife was desperate to get out. She’d met someone else and wanted the boys. She got friends and family to lie for her. What could I do?’

‘The kids would have said if it wasn’t true, wouldn’t they?’

Prody gave a small, harsh laugh. ‘She got them to lie too. They went to a solicitor and told him I was hitting them. As soon as they did that everyone was on her side – the social workers, even the teachers.’

‘But why would the children lie?’

‘It wasn’t their fault. She told them she’d hate them, take away their pocket money, if they didn’t. And if they did there’d be a trip to Toys R Us. That sort of thing. I know because my oldest told me. He sent me a letter two weeks ago.’ Prody pulled a piece of folded blue paper out of his pocket. ‘He said he was sorry what he’d told people but Mum had promised him a Wii.’

‘She sounds – and I’m sorry to say it because she is your ex-wife – like a right bitch.’

‘There was a time I’d have agreed with you – I thought she was just plain evil. But now I think she was probably doing what she felt she had to.’ He put the letter back in his pocket. ‘I could have been a better dad, could have stopped work taking over like it did – the hours, the shift work. And call me old-fashioned but I always wanted to be the best at my job. No point doing something if you don’t do it perfectly.’ He kneaded his hands, pressing his knuckles into the palms. ‘I suppose I just never saw what it would take from my home life. I was missing school plays, Easteregg hunts . . . Privately I think that was why the kids said what they did – it was their way of teaching me a lesson.’ He paused. ‘I could have been a better husband too.’

Janice raised her eyebrows. ‘Girlfriends?’

‘God, no. Not that. Does that make me a mug?’

‘No. It makes you . . .’ she watched the bubbles breaking in her glass ‘. . . faithful. That’s all. It makes you faithful.’ There was a long silence. Then Janice pushed her hair off her forehead. She felt flushed and warm from the prosecco. ‘Can I . . . can I tell you something?’

‘After you’ve let me bump my gums like that? I s’pose I could give you a moment or two.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’ve got ten seconds.’

She didn’t laugh. ‘Cory’s having an affair. Has been for months.’

Prody’s smile faded. He lowered his hand slowly. ‘Christ. I mean . . . I’m sorry.’

‘And do you know the worst thing?’

‘What?’

‘That I don’t love him any more. I’m not even jealous he’s seeing someone. I’ve gone way past that. It’s just the injustice of it that gets to me.’

‘Good word, injustice. You put everything into something and get nothing out.’

They were silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts. The curtains were still open even though it was dark, and on a scrappy stretch of common opposite the flat the wind had piled fallen leaves into a long drift. In the streetlamp they were like tiny skeletons. Janice gazed at them blankly. They reminded her of the leaves that used to pile up in the garden at Russell Road. Back when she was a child. Back when everything was possible and there was still hope. Still so much hope in the world.