Man And Wife

The Most Beautiful Girl in the World

My son comes to my wedding.

He’s my best man. That’s what I tell him. ’You’re my best man, Pat. He looks pleased. He has never been a best man before. Not that he makes a smirking speech about what I got up to with sheep during my wild youth, or tries to get off with the bridesmaid, or even gets to look after the rings. He’s only six years old.

So Pat’s best man duties are largely ceremonial. But I mean it when I tell him that he is my best man.

He’s the best of me, my son, and this special day would feel hollow if he wasn’t here.

In a few days’ time, when the wedding cake has gone and the new married life has begun, and the world starts getting back to normal, some teacher will ask Pat what he did at the weekend.

I went to my dad’s wedding,’ he will say.

And although he doesn’t tell me any more than that, I can guess at the knowing laughter that unguarded, innocent remark, endlessly replayed, will cause in the staff room. How they will chuckle. How they will sigh. A sign of the times, my son’s teachers will think. Children spending the weekend watching one of their parents get spliced. What a world, eh?

I know that my father would have felt the same way, although the old man wouldn’t have found it remotely funny.

Even in his last years, when he was finally becoming resigned to what modern men and women do to their lives, and to the lives of their children, I know that my dad really wouldn’t have wanted his grandson to spend his Saturday afternoon watching me get married.

A nice kickabout in the park would have been all the excitement he needed.

But I think they are all wrong – my son’s teachers, my father, anyone who thinks that the first time should be considered more special than the last time.

Placing no other above thee…

What can be bad about placing no other above thee? How can another try at getting it right ever be wrong? Unless you’re Elizabeth Taylor.

As the years pass, and I start to see more of my father staring at me from the mirror, I find myself more often than not in agreement with his views on the lousy modern world.

But you were wrong about this one, Dad.

We all deserve a second chance to find the love we crave, we all warrant another go at our happy ending, one final attempt to turn our life into something from one of those songs you loved so much.

You know.

One of the old songs.

It’s a small wedding. Tiny, even. Just a few close friends, what’s left of our families – our mothers, our children, her sisters, my dad’s brothers, my mum’s brothers – and the two of us.

Me, and the most beautiful girl in the world.

And I can’t stop looking at her.

Can’t take my eyes off that fabulous face.

Can’t get over how wonderful she looks today, smiling in the back of our black cab, making our way to that little room on Rosebery Avenue where we are to be married.

I feel like I am seeing Cyd for the very first time. Does every man feel this way? Even grooms with plain brides? Does every man feel that his bride is the most beautiful girl in the world? Probably.

With all my heart, I want the best for her. / want this day to be perfect, and it chews me up because I know that it can never be perfect,

There’s no father to stand by her side, and no father to welcome her into a new family.

Our dads were both working men from the old school, strong and gentle and unsentimental, and those tough men from that tough generation had hearts and lungs that proved surprisingly fragile.

Our fathers went years before their time, and I know that we will miss them today, today more than ever.

And there are other reasons why there will be a few clouds hanging over this perfect day.

There will be no church bells for us, no hymns, no doting vicar to join us together, and tell us when we are allowed to kiss. Because no church would have us. Too many miles on the clock, you see. Too much life lived.

I thought that I would regret that too. The lack of the sanctified. I thought that would be a definite damper on the proceedings.

But when she takes my hand, somehow it doesn’t matter any more, because I can seme something sacred in the small, secular room with the women in their hats, the men in their suits, the children in what my mum would call their Sunday best.

Everybody smiling, happy for us, white lilies everywhere, their scent filling the air.

There’s no place more sacred than this place.

And if anyone is blessed, then we are blessed.

A small wedding. It’s what we both wanted. Making official what we have known from very near the start – that we are building a life together.

And to tell the world – the best is yet to come. What could be more hopeful than that? What could be more right? More sacred?

If I am honest, there’s a large chunk of me that is relieved to be avoiding the traditional wedding.

I am glad to be skipping so much of it – from the dearly beloved pieties of the church to the mildewed graveyard waiting just beyond the shower of confetti to the multi-generational disco where drunken uncles wave their arms in the air to ’Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’.

Goodbye to all that.

Just a simple ceremony joining together two complicated lives.

Lives that are not just beginning, lives that already have a history. And you can see the happiest part of those lives, those histories, in the two small children who stand with their grandmothers in the front row of what passes for the congregation.

A solemn little girl in a long yellow dress, primly clutching a bouquet of white flowers to her chest, a child with her mother’s wide-set eyes, dark hair and lovely face.

And a slightly younger boy in a bow tie and frilly dress shirt, no jacket – what’s he done with his jacket? He was wearing it the last time I looked-who can’t match the girl’s show of unsmiling formality, can’t even get close to it, so he grins shyly and shuffles inside his brand-new shoes, looking as though this is his very first time out of trainers.

Peggy and Pat.

Her daughter and my son.

My beautiful boy.

Pat is holding my mother’s hand. And as the registrar asks about the rings, I notice that my boy’s face is changing.

The smooth, sweet roundness of the baby and the toddler he once was is dissolving to be replaced by sharper, more angular lines. Time is moving on, slipping by when I wasn’t looking, and my boy is starting to look handsome rather than pretty. Growing up, every day.

Cyd smiles at me as though we are the last lovers left alive. And I think – no huts. I have absolutely no reservations about this woman. She’s the one. In sorrow and in joy, from this day forward. She’s the one.

And my spirit lifts because today I feel brand new, as though the good old days are about to finally start. Although there are many things behind us, some of them wretched and sad and painful, there’s also so much ahead of us, so much to look forward to, so much yet to come.

I am certain about this woman. I want to spend the rest of my life with her. In sickness and in health. For richer, for poorer. Forsaking all others. Fine by me. I want her face to be the last thing I see at night and the first thing 1 see in the morning. I want to watch that face as it changes through the years. I want to know every birthmark on her body, to commit every freckle to memory. To have and to hold. Until death do us part. Count me in. Good. Great. Where do I sign up?

There’s just one tiny, tiny pang of doubt…

And I force it from my mind, refuse to acknowledge its existence. It doesn’t go away. It’s a small and distant misgiving, lurking in some secret part of my heart, but I can’t deny it’s there.

Not so much a cloud over this perfect day, more of a distant rumbling of thunder.

You see, I know that I am in this room for two reasons. Because I love her, certainly. I love my bride. I love my Cyd. But also – how can I put it? – because I want to rebuild my family.

It’s not just the husband bit that I want to get right this second time around.

It’s also being a father.

To her daughter. To any children we may have together. And to my boy. I want a family for him, too, as well as myself. A family for my boy. For both of us.

A family once more.

I am here for this incredible woman. But I am also here for my son.

Is that okay? Is it forgivable to be here for two reasons? For two people? Is it all right that our love story isn’t the full story?

Someone is talking to us so I try to ignore that sound of faraway thunder. The registrar is asking the bride if she promises to love and to cherish.

’I do, ’ says my wife.

I draw a deeper breath.

And I do, too.

one

My son has a new father.

He doesn’t actually call the guy dad – come on, he wouldn’t do that to me – but I can’t kid myself. This guy – Richard, bloody Richard – has replaced me in all the ways that matter.

Richard is there when my son eats his breakfast (Coco Pops, right? See, Pat, I still remember the Coco Pops). Richard is there when my boy plays quietly with his Star Wars toys (playing quietly because Richard is more of a Harry Potter man, not so big on light sabres and Death Stars and Jedi Knights).

And Richard is there at night sharing a bed with the mother of my son.

Let’s not forget that bit.

’So how’s it going?’

I asked my son the same question every Sunday as we took our places in the burger bar, our Happy Meals between us, among all the dads and little boys and girls just like us. You know. The weekend families.

’Good,’ he said.

That was all. Good? Just good? And it’s funny, and a little bit sad, because when he was smaller, you couldn’t stop him talking, he was full of questions.

How do I know when to wake up? Where do I go when I am asleep? How do I grow up? Why doesn’t the sky stop? You’re not going to die, are you? Obviously we’re not going to die, right? And is a Death Star bigger than the moon?

You couldn’t shut him up in the old days.

’School’s okay? You get on with everyone in your class? You’re feeling all right about things, darling?’

I never asked him about Richard.

’Good,’ he repeated, poker-faced, drawing an impenetrable veil over his life with one little word. He picked up his burger in both hands, like a baby squirrel with a taste for junk food. And I watched him, realising that he was wearing clothes that I had never seen before. What family day out were they from? Why hadn’t I noticed them before? So many questions that I couldn’t even bring myself to ask him.

’You like your teacher?’

He nodded, biting off more Happy Meal than he could possibly chew, and making further comment impossible. We went through this routine every weekend. We had been doing it for two years, ever since he went to live with his mother.

I asked him about school, friends and home.

He gave me his name, rank and serial number.

He was still recognisably the sweet-natured child with dirtyblond hair who once rode a bike called Bluebell. The same boy who was so cute at two years of age that people stopped to stare at him in the street, who insisted his name was Luke Skywalker when he was three, who tried to be very brave when his mother left me when he was four and everything began to fall apart.

Still my Pat.

But he didn’t open his heart to me any more – what frightened him, the things that made him happy, the stuff of his dreams, the parts of the world that puzzled him – why doesn’t the sky stop? – in the same way he did when he was small.

So much changes when they start school. Everything, in fact. You lose them then and you never really get them back. But it was more than school.

There was a distance between us that I couldn’t seem to bridge, no matter how hard I tried. There were walls dividing us, and they were the walls of his new home. Not so new now. Another few years and he would have spent most of his life living away from me.

’What’s your Happy Meal taste like, Pat?’ He rolled his eyes. ’You ever have a Happy Meal?’ ’I’ve got one right here.’ ’Well, that’s exactly what it tastes like.’ My son at seven years old. Sometimes I got on his nerves. I could tell.

We still had a good time together. When I gave up my inept interrogations, we had fun. The way we always had. Pat was a pleasure to be around – easy-going, sunny-natured, game for a laugh. But it was different now that our time together was rationed. This time together had a sheen of desperation because I couldn’t stand to see him disappointed or sad. Any minor unhappiness, no matter how temporary, gnawed at me in a way that it really hadn’t when we still shared a home.

These Sundays were the high point of my week. Although things were going well for me at work now, nothing was as good as this day, this whole glorious day, that I got to spend with my boy.

We didn’t do anything special, just the same things we had always done, bouncing merrily between food and football, park and pictures, games arcade and shopping mall. Happily frittering away the hours.

But it felt different from when we lived together because now, at the end of all these ordinary, perfect days, we had to say goodbye.

The clock was always running.

There was a time in our lives, in that brief period when I was looking after him alone, when his mother was in Japan, trying to reclaim the life she had given up for me, when I felt Pat and I were unique.

I stood at the gates of his primary school, separate from all the mothers waiting for their children, and I felt that there was nobody like us in the world. I couldn’t feel like that any more. The world was full of people like us. Even McDonald’s was full of people like us.

On Sundays the burger bar was always packed with one-day dads making stilted small talk with their children, these wary kids who came in all sizes, from lovely little nippers to pierced, surly teens, all those fathers making the best of it, looking from their child or children to their watch, trying to make up for all the lost time and never quite succeeding.

We avoided eye contact, me and all the other one-day dads. But there was a kind of shy fraternity that existed between us. When there were unpleasant scenes – tears or raised voices, the Egg McMuffin abruptly and angrily abandoned, an overwrought demand to get Mummy on the mobile phone immediately – we felt for each other, me and all the other Sunday dads.

As Pat and I lapsed into silence, I noticed that there was one of them at the next table being tortured by his daughter, a saucer-eyed ten-year-old in an Alice band.

’Je suis végétarienne’,’ said the little girl, pushing away her untouched Big Mac.

Her father’s mouth dropped open.

’How can you possibly be vegetarian, Louise? You weren’t a vegetarian last week. You had that hot dog before The Lion King, remember?’

’Je ne mange pas de viande,’ insisted the little girl. ’Je ne mange pas de boeuf.’

’I don’t believe it,’ said her father. ’Why didn’t you tell me you’ve turned vegetarian? Why didn’t your mother?’

Poor bastard, I thought, and I saw the man’s love life flash before my eyes.

Probably a corporate romance, the woman in from the Paris office, trailing clouds of charm, Chanel and an accent that would make any grown man melt. Then a whirlwind courtship, seeing the sights of two cities, the time of moonlight and Interflora, an early pregnancy, probably unplanned, and then the woman buying a one-way ticket back to the old country when the sex wore off.

’Je suis allergique aux Happy Meals,’ said the girl.

Pat had stopped eating. His mouth hung open with wonder. He was clearly impressed by the girl at the next table. Everything bigger children said or did impressed him. But this was something new. This was possibly the first time he had seen a bigger child speaking a foreign language outside the movies or TV.

’Japanese?’ he whispered to me. He assumed all foreign languages were Japanese. His mother was fluent.

’French,’ I whispered back.

He smiled at the little girl in the Alice band. She stared straight through him.

’Why is she talking French then?’ he asked me, suddenly perking up. And it was just like the old days – Pat bringing me one of life’s little puzzles to unravel. I leapt upon it with gratitude.

’That little girl is French,’ I said, keeping my voice down. I looked at the poor bastard who was her father. ’Half French.’

Pat widened his eyes. ’That’s a long way to come. French is a long way.’

’France, you mean. France is not as far as you think, darling.’

’It is, though. You’re wrong. France is as far as I think. Maybe even further.’

’No, it’s not. France – well, Paris – is just three hours in the train from London.’

’What train?’

’A special train. A very fast train that runs from London to Paris. The Eurostar. It does the journey in just three hours. It goes through a tunnel under the sea.’

My son pulled a doubtful face. ’Under the sea?’

’That’s right.’

’No, I don’t think so. Bernie Cooper went to French in the summer.’ Bernie Cooper – always addressed by his full name was Pat’s best friend. The first best friend of his life. The best friend he would remember forever. Pat always quoted Bernie with all the fervour of a Red Guard citing the thoughts of Chairman Mao at the height of the Cultural Revolution. ’Bernie Cooper went to the seaside in French. France. They got a Jumbo. So you can’t get a train to France. Bernie Cooper said.’

’Bernie and his family must have gone to the south of France. Paris is a lot closer. I promise you, darling. You can get there from London in three hours. We’ll go there one day. You and me. Paris is a beautiful city.’

’When will we go?’

’When you’re a big boy.’

He looked at me shrewdly. ’But I’m a big boy now.’

And I thought to myself – that’s right. You’re a big boy now. That baby I held in my arms has gone and I will never get him back.

I glanced at my watch. It was still early. They were still serving McBreakfasts in here.

’Come on,’ I said. ’Let me help you with your coat. We’re going. Don’t forget your football and your mittens.’

He looked out the window at the rain-lashed streets of north London.

’Are we going to the park?’

’We’re going to Paris.’

We could make it. I had worked it out. You don’t think I would just rush off to Paris with him, do you? No, we could do it. Not comfortably, but just about. Three hours to Paris on Eurostar, an afternoon wandering around the sights, and then – whoosh – back home for bedtime. Pat’s bedtime not mine.

Nobody would know we had gone to Paris – that is, his mother would not know – until we were safely back in London. All we needed were our passports.

Luck was with us. At my place, Cyd and Peggy were not around. At Pat’s place, the only sign of life was Uli, the dreamy German au pair. So I didn’t have to explain to my wife why I needed my passport for a kickabout on Primrose Hill and I didn’t have to explain to my ex-wife why I needed Pat’s passport to play Sega Rally in Funland.

It was a quick run down to Waterloo and soon Pat had his face pressed against the glass as the Eurostar pulled out of the station, his breath making mist on the glass.

He looked at me slyly.

’We’re having an adventure, aren’t we? This is an adventure, isn’t it?’

’A big adventure.’

’What a laugh,’ smiled my son.

Three little words, and I will never forget them. And when he said those three little words, it was worth it. Whatever happened next, it was all worth it. Paris for the day. Just the two of us.

What a laugh.

My son lived in one of those new kind of families. What do they call them?

A blended family.

As though people can be endlessly mixed and matched. Ground up and seamless. A blended family. Just like coffee beans. But it’s not so easy with men and women and children.

They only lived a mile or so away from us, but there were things about their life together that were forever hidden from me.

I could guess at what happened between Gina and our son – I could see her still, washing his hair, reading him Where the Wild Things Are, placing a bowl of green pasta before him, hugging him so fiercely that you couldn’t tell where she ended and where he began.

But I had no real idea what went on between Richard and Pat, this man in his middle thirties who I didn’t know at all, and this seven-year-old child whose skin, whose voice, whose face were more familiar to me than my own.

Did Richard kiss my son good night? I didn’t ask. Because I really didn’t know what would hurt me more. The warmth, the closeness, the caring that a good-night kiss would indicate. Or the cold distance implicit in the absence of a kiss.

Richard was not a bad guy. Even I could see that. My ex-wife wouldn’t be married to him if he was any kind of child-hater. I knew, even in my bleakest moments, that there were worse step-parents than Richard. Not that anyone says step-parent any more. Too loaded with meaning.

Pat and I had both learned to call Richard a partner – as though he were involved in an exciting business venture with the mother of my son, or possibly a game of bridge.

The thing that drove me nuts about Richard, that had me raising my voice on the phone to my ex-wife – something I would really have preferred to avoid – was that Richard just didn’t seem to understand that my son was one in a million, ten million, a billion.

Richard thought Pat needed improving. And my son didn’t need improving. He was special already.

Richard wanted my son to love Harry Potter, wooden toys and tofu. Or was it lentils? But my son loved Star Wars, plastic light sabres and pizza. My son stubbornly remained true to the cause of mindless violence and carbohydrates with extra cheese.

At first Richard was happy to play along, back in the days when he was still trying to gain entry into Gina’s pants. Before he was finally granted a multiple-entry visa into those pants, before he married my ex-wife, my son’s mum, Richard used to love pretending to be Han Solo to my son’s Luke Skywalker. Loved it. Or at least acted like he did.

And quite frankly my son would warm to Saddam Hussein if he pretended to be Han Solo for five minutes.

Now Richard was no longer trying, or he was trying in a different way. He didn’t want to be my son’s friend any more. He wanted to be more like a parent. Improving my boy.

As though improving someone is any kind of substitute for loving them.

You make all those promises to your spouse and then one day you get some lawyer to prove that they no longer mean a thing. Gina was part of my past now. But you don’t get divorced from your children. And you can never break free of your vows to them.

That’s what Paris was all about.

I was trying to keep my unspoken promises to my son. To still matter to him. To always matter. I was trying to convince him, or perhaps myself, that nothing fundamental had changed between us. Because I missed my boy.

When he was not there, that’s when I really knew how much I loved him. Loved him so much that it physically hurt, loved him so much that I was afraid some nameless harm would come to him, and afraid that he was going to forget me, that I would drift to the very edge of his life, and my love and the missing would all count for nothing.

I was terrified that I might turn up for one of my access visits and he wouldn’t be able to quite place me. Ridiculous? Maybe. But we spent most of the week apart. Most of the weekends, too, even with our legally approved trysts. I was never there to tuck him in, to read him a story, to dry his eyes when he cried, to calm his fears, to just be the man who came home to him at night. The way my old man was there for me.

Can you be a proper dad in days like these? Can you be a real father to your child if you are never around?

Already, just two years after he went to live with his mother, I was on the fast track to becoming a distant figure. Not a real dad at all. A weekend dad, at the very best. As much of a pretend dad as Richard. That was not the kind of father I wanted to be. I needed my son to be a part of my life.

My new life.

Cyd and I had been married for just over a year.

It had been a great year. The best year ever. She had become my closest friend and she hadn’t stopped being my lover. We were at that stage when you feel both familiarity and excitement, when things are getting better and nothing has worn off, that happy period when you divide your time between building a home and fucking each other’s brains out. Shopping at Habitat and Heal’s followed by wild, athletic sex. You can’t beat it.

Cyd was the nicest person I knew, and she also drove me crazy. The only reason I went to the gym was because I didn’t want her to stop fancying me. My sit-ups were all for her. I hoped it would always be that way. But if you have been badly burned once, you can never be totally sure. After you have taken a spin through the divorce courts, forever seems like a very long time. And maybe that’s a positive thing. Maybe that stops you from treating the love of your life like a piece of self-assembly furniture.

It wasn’t like that with my son. I planned to stay with Cyd until we were both old and grey. But you never know, do you? In my experience, relationships come and go but being a parent lasts a lifetime. What’s the expression? Till death do us part.

There were lots of things we were planning to do in Paris.

Pat wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower, but the queues were dauntingly long, so we decided to save it for some other time. I contemplated taking him to the Louvre, but I decided he was too small and the museum was too big.

So what we did was take a bateau-mouche down the Seine and then grabbed a couple of croque-monsieurs in a little café in the Marais.

Trench cheese on toast,’ Pat said, tucking in. ’This is really delicious.’

After that we went for a kickabout in the Jardin du Luxembourg, booting his plastic football around under the chestnut trees while young couples necked on park benches and pampered dogs sauntered around with their noses in the air and everybody smoked as though it was the fifties.

Apart from the boat trip down the river, and the fancy cheese on toast, it wasn’t so different from our usual Sundays. But it felt special, and I think our hearts were lighter than they ever were in London. It was one of those days that you feel like putting in a bottle, so you can keep it for the rest of your life and nobody can ever take it away from you.

It all went well until we got back to the Gare du Nord. As soon as we went up to the departure gates on the station’s first floor, you could see something was wrong. There were people everywhere. Backpackers, businessmen, groups of tourists. All stranded because there was something on the line. Leaves or refugees? Nobody knew.

But there were no trains coming in or leaving.

That’s when I knew we were in trouble.

I was glad that my own father was not alive to see all of this. The shock would have killed him, I swear to God it would.

But I knew in my heart that I didn’t spend endless hours with my own dad. My old man never took me to Paris for the day.

I may have grown up with my dad under the same roof, but he worked six days a week, long hours, and then he came home speechless with exhaustion, sitting there eating his cooked dinner in front of the TV, reflecting silently on the latest dance routine from Pan’s People.

My old man was separated from me by the need for work and money. I was separated from Pat by divorce and residency orders. Was it really so different? Yes, it was different.

Even if I rarely saw my father – and perhaps I am kidding myself, but even now I believe I can recall every kickabout I ever had with my old man, every football match we went to together, every trip to the cinema – my father was never afraid that someone would steal me away, that I might start calling some other man dad.

He went through a lot in his life, from a dirt-poor childhood to world war to terminal cancer. But he never had to go through that.

Wait until your father gets home, I was told by my mum, again and again.

And so I did. I spent my childhood waiting for my father to come home. And perhaps Pat waited too. But he knew in his heart that his father was never coming home. Not any more.

My old man thought that the worst thing in this world you can be is a bad parent to your child. But there’s something almost as bad as that, Dad.

You can be a stranger.

And of course I wanted my son to have a happy life. I wanted him to be a good boy for his mother, and to get on okay with her new husband, and to do well at school, and to realise how lucky he was to have found a friend like Bernie Cooper.

But I also wanted my son to love me the way he used to love me.

Let’s not forget that bit.

two

By the time the black cab finally crawled into the street where he lived, Pat was fast asleep.

I rarely saw my son sleeping these days, and I was surprised how it seemed to wipe away the years. Awake, his sweet face seemed permanently on guard, glazed with the heart-tugging vigilance of a child who has had to find a place between his divorced parents. Awake, he was sharp-eyed and wary, constantly negotiating the minefield between a mother and father who at some point in his short life had grown sick of living under the same roof. But, asleep, he was round-faced and defenceless again,.his flimsy shields all gone. Not a care in the world.

The lights in his home were blazing. And they were all out on the little pathway, lit up by the security light, waiting for our return.

Gina, my ex-wife, that face I had once fallen in love with now pinched with fury.

And Richard, her Clark Kent lookalike, gym-toned and bespectacled, every inch the smug second husband, offering comfort and support.

Even Uli the au pair was standing watch, her arms folded across her chest like a junior fishwife.

Only the enormous policeman who was with them looked vaguely sympathetic. Perhaps he was a Sunday dad, too.

Gina marched down the path to meet us as I paid the driver. I pushed open the cab door and gently scooped my son up in my arms. He was getting heavier by the week. Then Gina was taking him away, looking at me as though we had never met.

’Are you clinically insane?’

’The train -’

’Are you completely mad? Or do you do these things to hurt me?’

’I called as soon as I knew we weren’t going to make it home by bedtime.’

It was true. I had called them on a borrowed mobile from the Gare du Nord. Gina had been a bit hysterical to discover we were stranded in a foreign country. Lucky I had to cut it short.

’Paris. Bloody Paris. Without even asking me. Without even thinking.’

’Sorry, Gina. I really am.’

’”Sorry, Gina,’” she parroted. ’”So sorry, Gina.”’

I might have guessed she was going to start the parrot routine. If you have been married to someone, then you know exactly how they argue. It’s like two boxers who have fought each other before. Ali and Frazier. Duran and Sugar Ray. Me and Gina. You know each other too well.

She did this when our marriage was starting to fall apart – repeating my words, holding them up and finding them wanting, throwing them back at me, along with any household items that were lying around. Making my apologies, alibis and excuses all seem empty and feeble. Below the belt, I always thought.

We actually didn’t fight all that often. It wasn’t that kind of marriage. Not until the very end. Although you would never guess that now.

’We were worried sick. You were meant to be taking him to the park, not dragging him halfway round Europe.’

Halfway round Europe? That was a bit rich. But then wanton exaggeration was another feature of Gina’s fighting style.

I couldn’t help remembering that this was a woman who had travelled to Japan alone when she was a teenager and lived there for a year. Now that’s halfway round the world. And she loved it. And she would have gone back.

If she hadn’t met me.

If she hadn’t got pregnant.

If she hadn’t given up Japan for her boys.

For Pat and me. We used to be her boys. Both of us. It was a long time ago.

’It was only Paris, Gina,’ I said, knowing it would infuriate her, and unable to restrain myself. We knew each other far too well to argue in a civilised manner. ’It’s just like going down the road. Paris is practically next door.’

’Only Paris? He’s seven years old. He has to go to school in the morning. And you say it’s only Paris? We phoned the police. I was ringing round the hospitals.’

’I called you, didn’t I?’

’In the end. When you had no choice. When you knew you weren’t going to get away with it.’ She hefted Pat in her arms. ’What were you thinking of, Harry? What goes on in your head? Is there anything in there at all?’

How could she possibly understand what went on in my head? She had him every day. And I had him for one lousy day a week.

She was carrying Pat up the garden path now. I trailed behind her, avoiding eye contact with her husband and the au pair and the enormous cop. And what was that cop doing here anyway? It was almost as if someone had reported a possible kidnapping. What kind of nut job would do a thing like that?

’Look, Gina, I really am sorry you were so worried.’ And it was true. I felt terrible that she had been phoning the hospitals, the police, thinking the worst. I could imagine how that felt. ’It won’t happen again. Next Sunday I’ll -’

Til have to think about next Sunday.’

That stopped me in my tracks.

’What does that mean? I can still see him next Sunday, can’t I?’

She didn’t answer. She was finished with me. Totally finished with me.

Tracked by her husband and the hired help, Gina carried our son across the threshold of her home, into that place where I could never follow.

Pat yawned, stretched, almost woke up. In a voice so soft and gentle that it did something to my insides, Gina told him to go back to sleep. Then Richard was between us, giving me an oh-how-could-you? look. Slowly shaking his head, and with this maddening little smile, he closed the door in my face.

I reached for the door bell.

I just had to get this straight about Sunday.

And that’s when I felt the cop’s hand on my shoulder.

Once I was the man of her dreams.

Not just the man who looked after her kid on Sundays. The man of her dreams, back in the years when all Gina’s dreams were of family.

Gina yearned for family life, ached for it, in the way that is unique to those who come from what were once called broken homes.

Her father had walked out just before Gina started school. He was a musician, a pretty good guitarist, who would never quite make it. Failure was waiting for him, in both the music business and the smashed families that he left in his wake. Glenn – he was Glenn to everyone and dad to no one, especially not his children – gave rock and roll the best years of his life. He gave the women and children he left behind nothing but heartache and sporadic maintenance payments.

Gina and her mother, who had given up a modestly successful modelling career for her spectacularly unsuccessful husband, were just the first of many. There would be more abandoned families like them – women who had been celebrated beauties in the sixties and seventies, and the children who were left bewildered by separation before they could ride a bike.

From her mother Gina got her looks, a perfect symmetry of features that she was always dismissive of, the way only the truly beautiful can be. From Glenn her inheritance was a hunger for a stable family life. A family of her own that nobody could ever take away. She thought she would find it with me because that was exactly where I came from. She thought I was some kind of expert on the traditional set-up of father, mother and child living in a suburban home, untouched by divorce statistics, unshakably nuclear. Until I met Gina, I always thought that my family was embarrassingly ordinary. Gina made us feel exotic – and that was true of my mum and dad, as well as me. This smiling blonde vision came into our world and up our garden path and into our living room, telling us we were special. Us.

Our friends all thought that Gina and I were too young for marriage. Gina was a student of Japanese, looking for a way to live her life in Tokyo or Yokohama or Osaka. I was a radio producer, looking for a way into television. And our friends all reckoned it was much too soon for wedding vows and a baby, monogamy and a mortgage. Ten years too soon.

They – the language students who thought the world was waiting for them, and the slightly older cynics at my radio station who thought they had seen it all before – believed that there were planes to catch, lovers to meet, drugs to be taken, music to be heard, adventures to be had, foreign flats to be rented, beaches to be danced on at dawn. And they were right. All of those things were waiting. For them. But we gave them up for each other. Then our son came along. And he was the best thing of all.

Pat was a good, sweet-natured baby, smiling for most of the day and sleeping for most of the night, as beautiful as his mother, ridiculously easy to love. But our life – already married, already parents, and still with a large chunk of our twenties to go wasn’t perfect. Far from it.

It wasn’t just a job. Gina had given up a whole other life in Japan for her boys, and sometimes – when the money was tight, when I came home from work too tired to talk, when Pat’s brand-new teeth were painfully pushing through his shining pink gums and he could no longer sleep all night

– she must have wondered what she was missing. But we had no real regrets. For years it was fine. For years it was what we had been waiting for. Both of us.

A family to replace the one that I had grown up with.

And a family to replace the one that my wife had never known.

Then I spent one night with a colleague from work. One of those pale Irish beauties who seemed a little bit smarter, and a little bit softer, than most of the women I worked with.

And it was madness. Just madness.

Because after Gina found out, we all had to start again.

I sent money every month.

The money was never late. I wanted to send it. I wanted to help bring up my son in any way I could. That was only right and proper. But sometimes I wondered about the money. Was it all being spent on Pat? Really? Every penny? How could I know that none of it was being blown on the guy my ex-wife married? Bloody Richard.

I didn’t know. I couldn’t know.

And even that was okay, but I felt like the money should give me certain basic human rights. Such as, I should be able to call my son whenever I needed to talk to him. It shouldn’t be a problem. It should be normal. And how I missed normal. A few days of normality, full board – what a welcome mini-break that would be.

But when I picked up the phone I always found I couldn’t dial the number. What if Richard – strange the way I called him by his first name, as if we were actually friends – answered? What then? Small talk? Small talk seemed inadequate for our situation. So words failed me, I replaced the receiver, and I didn’t make the call. I stuck to the schedule worked out in advance with Gina, and my only child and I might as well have been on different planets.

But I still felt like the monthly money – which my current wife, I mean my second wife, I mean my wife thought was a tad too generous, by the way, what with us wanting to move to a bigger place in a better area – should mean something.

It wasn’t as though I was some wayward bastard who didn’t want to know, who had already moved on to his new family, who was quite keen to forget all that went before. I was not like one of those scumbags. I was not like Gina’s old man. But what can you do?

I’m only his father.

My wife understood me.

My wife. That’s how I thought of her. Second wife always sounded plain awful. Like second home – something you get away to at the weekend and during the longer school holidays. Or second car – as if she was a rusty VW Beetle.

Second wife sounded like second-hand, second choice, second best – and Cyd deserved far better than all of that. All that second business wasn’t good enough for Cyd, didn’t describe her at all. And new wife – that was no good either.

Too much like trophy wife, too much like so-many-years-myjunior wife, too many images of dirty old men running off with their secretaries.

No – my wife. That’s her. That’s my Cyd.

Like Cyd Charisse. The dancer. The girl in Singiri in the Rain who danced with Gene Kelly and never said a word. Because she didn’t have to. She had those legs, that face, that flame of pure fire. Gene Kelly looked at Cyd Charisse, and words were not necessary. I knew the feeling.

Cyd understood me. She would even understand about Sunday afternoon in Paris.

Cyd was my wife. That was it. That was all. And this life I was returning to now, it was not new, and it was second to nothing.

This was my marriage.

Before I went into our bedroom I checked on Peggy.

She was out for the count but she had kicked off her duvet and was clutching a nine-inch moulded-plastic doll to her brushed-cotton pyjamas. Peggy was a pale-faced, pretty child with an air of solemnity about her, even when she was what my mum would call soundo, meaning fast asleep.

The doll in her tiny fist was a strange-looking creature, cocoa-coloured but with long blonde hair and blue, blue eyes.

Lucy Doll. Marketing slogan – I Love Lucy Doll. Made in Japan but aimed at the global market place. I was becoming an expert on this stuff.

There was nothing WASPy about Lucy Doll, nothing remotely Barbie about her. She looked a little like the blonde one in Destiny’s Child, or one of those new kind of singers, Anastacia and Alicia Keys and a few more I can’t name, who are so racially indeterminate that they look like they could come from anywhere in the world. Lucy Doll. She had fully poseable arms and legs. Peggy was crazy about her. I covered them both up with an official Lucy Doll duvet.

Peggy was Cyd’s child from her previous marriage to a handsome waste of space called Jim. This good-looking loser who did one right thing in his life when he helped to make little Peggy. Jim with his weakness for Asian girls. Jim with his weakness for big motorbikes that he kept crashing. He came round to our house now and then to see his daughter, although he was not on a fixed schedule like me with Pat. Peggy’s dad turned up more or less when he felt like it.

And his daughter was crazy about him.

The bastard.

I had met Peggy before I met Cyd. Back then Peggy was just the little girl who looked after my son, in those awful months when he was still fragile and frightened after I had split up with his mother. Peggy looked after Pat in his early days at school, spent so much time with him that they sometimes seemed like brother and sister. That bond was fading now that their lives were increasingly separate, now that Pat had Bernie Cooper and Peggy had a best friend of her own sex who also loved Lucy Doll, but Peggy still felt like more than my stepdaughter. It felt like I had watched her grow up.

I left Peggy clutching Lucy Doll and went quietly into our bedroom. Cyd was sleeping on her half of the bed, the sleep of a married woman.

As I got undressed she stirred, came half-awake and sleepily listened to my story about Pat and Paris and broken trains. She took my hands in hers and nodded encouragement. She got it immediately.

’You poor guys. You and Pat will be fine. I promise you, okay? Gina will calm down. She’ll see you didn’t mean it. So how’s the weather in Paris?’

’It was sort of cloudy. And Gina says she has to think about next Sunday.’

’Give her a few days. She’s got a right to be mad. But you’ve got a right to take your boy to Paris. Jump in bed. Come on.’

I slipped between the sheets, feeling an enormous surge of gratitude. What Gina saw as an unthinking, reckless act of neglect Cyd saw as a good idea that went badly wrong. An act of love that missed the train home. She was biased, of course. But I said a prayer of thanks that I was married to this woman.

And I knew it wasn’t the wedding band that made her my wife, or the certificate they gave us in that sacred place, or even the promises we had made. It was the fact that she was on my side, that her love and support were there for me, and would always be there.

I talked on in the darkness, feeling the warmth of my wife next to me, trying to reassure myself that this mess could be fixed.

I would call Gina in the morning, I said. I had to get it straight about next Sunday and if I should pick Pat up at the usual time. And I had to apologise for worrying her sick. I hadn’t meant to cause all this trouble. We only went to Paris because I didn’t want Pat to be like the other kids with their part-time dads. The half-French girl who had turned vegetarian, and the countless millions like her. I wanted Pat to feel he had a real father, who did special things with him, adventures that he would remember forever. Like my dad did with me.

My wife kissed me to cheer me up, and no doubt to shut me up, and then she kissed me some more.

It soon became a different kind of kissing. It became the kind of kissing that has nothing to do with soothing and cuddles and reassurance. The kind of kissing that had started everything.

I’ll say this for our marriage – it hadn’t changed the quality of the kissing.

Then she was waiting for me, her black hair fanning out across the pillow, her face lit only by the glow of a streetlamp coming through the slats of the blinds. This woman I was still mad about. My wife.

I moved towards her without reaching for the little wooden box in the bedside drawer that contained our family planning.

Then I heard her sigh in the darkness.

’Don’t make me go through this every time, Harry. Please, darling. Come on. You already have a kid. Didn’t we agree on all that?’

I had been reading a lot about baby hunger recently. It was regularly featured in the ’You and Yours’ pages of our Sunday paper. Women desperate to give birth. It was supposed to be all the rage. But my wife didn’t have baby hunger. She acted like she had already eaten.

We had discussed having a child of our own, of course. I wanted it now, because it would make us a family. Cyd wanted it one day, because there were other things she had to do first. Work things. Business things. We both had a vision of a happy life. But no matter how much I loved my wife’s adorable bum, I couldn’t kid myself that they were the same vision.

So I reached for the little box of condoms, wondering what she meant about already having a kid. Did she mean Pat? Or Peggy? Or whichever one I happened to be with at the time?

That was the trouble with being a guy like me. It got complicated. All these parts of your life that never seemed to fit together. Sometimes you couldn’t even recognise your own family.

But after we made love I slept facing the same way as my wife, our bodies tucked tight together, my right arm lightly curled around her waist.

And for all those sweet hours that we slept like that, making spoons and dreaming, she was the only one for me, and it wasn’t complicated at all.

three

’You can’t make an omelette by keeping your dick in your trousers,’ Marty Mann told me. ’That’s the trouble with you, Harry. You’re a born romantic. You’re going to get your foolish heart broken. You’re going to get butt-fucked by fate. What other way can it end?’

We were sitting in his well-appointed office at Mad Mann Productions, talking about work. Only work. But Marty was one of those go-getting, self-made businessmen who always made work sound like something else. Like the rougher end of jailhouse sex, in fact.

Marty was always promising male, middle-aged commissioning editors that he would ’make you my bitch’. He didn’t get merely excited about the TV programmes he produced, he ’got a boner’. He was never let down in a business deal, he was ’humped and dumped’. He didn’t just work hard, he ’fucked like a rattlesnake’.

It made me wonder what his married life was like. After a couple of drinks on a Saturday night, I could imagine him asking his wife if she would consider a co-production deal.

I had known Marty a very long time. Siobhan, his wife of about two years, had once been my kind of girlfriend, of about two hours. Just before my first marriage broke up.

Marty and I had started out together, on late-night talk radio, working the nut shift. I produced, and Marty made sad, lonely people sound wildly entertaining. Then we went into TV together and I thought that our partnership was my meal ticket for life. Right up until the lunch where he sacked me.

We eventually made it up. Because I bounced back with a younger, hotter talk-show host, while Marty lost his bounce altogether. When he had been suitably humbled by the grim realities of zero-rated daytime television, trying to sell jewellery that would make your skin turn green, we found that we could be friends again.

These days we were on the same side of the camera. Mad Mann Productions no longer produced shows featuring the dyed-blonde shock jock who caused so much controversy back in the nineties. Now Marty was a programme maker. He was always on my case because my production company made just one show, Fish on Friday. You might have seen it. The one with Eamon Fish, that young Irish comic? Eamon was famous for dating weather girls. It was said he knew more about warm fronts than any man in the country. Marty would never put his faith in one young stand-up comic pretending to be a talk-show host. Marty had a whole raft of programmes.

’Six Pissed Students in a Flat,’ he said, hitting a button on the remote. One wall of his office was covered with TV screens and every one of them switched to his latest concept. Beautiful young people in minimal clothing raising their voices in rented accommodation. ’It’s got the lot – sex, youth, drama, low overheads, pierced nipples. Six Pissed Students in a Flat, Harry. The advertisers are weeping with gratitude.’

He hit another button. The screens switched to a weird-angle black-and-white shot of two young men struggling with the owner of a convenience store. ’Ah, this bit is great,’ Marty chuckled as the man behind the counter produced a baseball bat and began wildly lashing out. One of the young men pulled out a gun.

’You’ve Been Robbed!’ Marty said. ’Hilarious – and sometimes tragic – real-life footage of violent robbery. A, er, savage indictment of, you know, our violent society.’ Another button. Footage of Vietnam villages exploding into orange flames, hippies fornicating in the mud at Woodstock, students confronting the National Guard, all given a coating of melancholy by the Kinks singing ’Waterloo Sunset’. ’All Your Yesteryears. Making the past funky. One for the baby boomers – and their children. Show the spoilt little bastards what they missed.’

Our production companies couldn’t have been more different. I worked out of a back room in Soho with a couple of part-timers, Marty had a big office full of staff. I had Eamon Fish on the midnight shift, Marty had Six Pissed Students in a Flat on prime time.

’You can’t have just one show,’ Marty insisted. ’It’s no good having all of your eggs in one chicken. And Eamon’s not going to be hot forever.’

’But I like working with just one production. That means I can really focus on Eamon. Get the most out of him.’

’What if it all goes wrong? What happens then? You know what TV programmes are like, don’t you?’

’Women?’

He slapped his desk. ’Exactly. TV programmes are just like women. You’ve got to have your chicken in a number of pies. Diversify, dude. You’ve got to spread your seed.’

Marty had a wife at home who was expecting their second child. Siobhan was a former programme maker who had made the switch to homemaker. She was a smart, beautiful Irish redhead who I sometimes saw at launch parties and screenings but I had no idea if she was happy or not. I couldn’t help noticing that Mad Mann contained a greater proportion of attractive young women than you would expect in a production company of this size.

But I listened to Marty. He knew his stuff. And I listened to him because work was increasingly important to me. Not just because I was self-employed now. Not just because the number of bills I had to pay seemed to be growing every year. The real reason I worked so hard was because I was good at it. This was what I did best.

Dealing with commissioning editors, production co-ordinators, and the talent. I could talk to these people, I could get them to do what needed to be done. Tearful make-up girls, surly floor managers, drunken lighting technicians. I had seen it all before. Guests with stage fright, guests who turned up drunk, guests who froze when the red light above the camera came on. That was nothing new. This was my world, and I spent time here because there was nowhere else that I felt so comfortable.

Even if you have just the one show, television demands that you work long days. Early mornings and late nights, script meetings and full rehearsals, too much coffee and not enough daylight. Sometimes I lost sight of why I worked so hard. And then I remembered.

I worked hard for Pat, of course. For Cyd and Peggy too. Also for my mum, now that my dad had gone. And whatever my wife said, I couldn’t stop myself feeling that I was also working for my child. Not the little boy who lived with his mother, or the little girl who lived with me. My other child. The one who hadn’t been born yet.

A young woman came into Marty’s office without knocking. She was one of several slim young redheads who worked at Mad Mann, women who looked a lot like Siobhan did when she was single. This one bent over Marty’s CEO-sized desk, rummaging in one of his drawers.

’What’s the matter, darling?’ Marty smiled. ’Lost your stapler?’

’I need the pilot of Six Pissed Students in a Flat. For your Hungarians.’

Marty pulled out a battered-looking VHS and gave it to her.

’We’re selling the concept all over,’ he told me. ’There’s going to be Six Pissed Chinese Students in a Flat, Six Pissed Polish Students in a Flat. The world is sporting a stiff one.’

We watched the redhead go.

’We’re going for a couple of drinks at the Merry Leper,’ Marty said. ’Want to come, Harry? She’s got a friend.’

’I’ve got to get home. There’s a bit of a party.’

’Sounds good.’

’Well, it’s a party for seven-year-old girls.’

’Some other time then.’ Marty saw me to the door of his office.

’Don’t forget what I said about keeping your eggs in more than one chicken.’

Til remember.’

He embraced me.

’You know the trouble with you, Harry?’

’What’s that?’

’You believe in true love.’ My old friend smiled sadly. ’That stuff always ends in tears.’

It should have been a happy moment.

The four of us were eating cake. Cyd and me and Peggy and Pat. Our newly blended family, enjoying their pudding. But when Pat had finished wolfing down his cake, my son – at an age when he was highly amused by all bodily functions accidentally let out a surprisingly resonant belch.

’Ha!’ he said, grinning sheepishly. ’Now that’s funny!’

Peggy daintily dabbed her lips with a napkin. ’No, actually, it’s not remotely funny, Pat. It’s just disgusting. Isn’t it, Mummy?’

Cyd smiled at the pair of them. ’It’s just – well, it’s not very nice. But I’m sure Pat’s not going to do it again.’

’Well, / don’t find it funny,’ said Peggy, who for a little girl could already do a convincing impersonation of minor royalty.

’And I’m sure a big boy like Pat doesn’t find it funny,’ said Cyd, ’not when he thinks about it.’

My son was devastated.

I knew that the belch had just slipped out, and that he had only drawn attention to it because he was certain it would be a source of general hilarity and rejoicing. And for the first time, but not the last, I was Tom. Tom between loyalty to my son and loyalty to my wife.

To be honest, I didn’t particularly want him burping and farting and belching around me either – he could save the gas-orientated gags for his leering little friends at school, who would no doubt reward every windy emission with a standing ovation, and tears of helpless mirth, and much thighslapping. But when I saw his cheeks burning with humiliation and his eyes filling up with tears, I could feel my blood rising.

He didn’t deserve to be shamed. Not for one lousy burp.

’He’s only a kid,’ I said to Cyd. ’What do you expect? Oscar Wilde? Let him eat his cake in peace, will you?’

Peggy and Cyd stared at me. My wife said nothing, just sort of widened her beautiful eyes in surprise. But her daughter smirked knowingly.

’Well, goodness me, somebody got out of sleep the wrong side today. May I please have some more cake, Mummy, please?’

Cyd reached for the cake. It had a little bride and groom on top. Because this was at our wedding reception. We had been married for just under two hours. And although I didn’t realise it yet, the honeymoon was over.

When my wife was still my girlfriend, she was wonderful with my son.

Cyd would talk to him about school, ask his expert opinion on how The Phantom Menace compared with the first three Star Wars films, wonder if he would like some more ice cream.

He grinned shyly at this tall stranger with the Texan accent, and I could tell he shared his old man’s feelings for this woman. He was nuts about her.

Cyd acted like she had known him all his life, this little boy who she didn’t actually meet until he was ready to start school. She didn’t try to be his mother, because he already had a mother, and she didn’t try to be his best friend, because he soon had Bernie Cooper. She didn’t force her relationship with Pat – and that’s why it worked. It all seemed to come naturally to her. There was genuine warmth and real affection between them, and it was more than I could have hoped for.

Cyd was as easy with Pat as she was with her own daughter, caring and sweet but not afraid to administer some gentle discipline when he got out of hand. Getting out of hand didn’t happen very often – Pat was an engaging, even-tempered boy of four when Cyd met him, and any infringements were mostly because he was overexcited about some Star Wars-related game. Bouncing on a sofa while wearing muddy trainers and brandishing his plastic light sabre. These were his most heinous crimes.

And when she talked to my son, this girlfriend who would become my wife, when I heard the fondness in her voice, the warm, casual familiarity that she bestowed on him, I felt almost giddy with happiness and gratitude.

But after we were married, I needed more than that. I knew it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair at all, but this need came from some secret chamber in my heart, and I just couldn’t deny it.

From the moment we were pronounced man and wife, I needed her to love him.

I came home to loud music, wild dancing and a house full of three-foot-high females in their party clothes.

Peggy was eight years old today.

The walls of her bedroom were covered in the moody images of the latest hunky, hairless boy bands, papering over the Pocahontas posters of a few years ago, and many of her games featured Brucie Doll – Lucy Doll’s official, moulded-plastic constant companion.

But at all of Peggy’s social gatherings, the sexes were now separated by a strict apartheid. A couple of years ago Pat would have been invited to this party. Not any more.

I picked my way across a living room full of little girls trying to move like Kylie Minogue in her latest video. There was a wrapped present from Hamleys under my arm. Peggy’s eyes widened with theatrical glee as I handed it over.

’Happy birthday, darling.”

She tore off the wrapper and gasped with wonder.

’Lucy Doll Ballerina!’ she read, hungrily devouring the words on the pink cardboard box. ’You’ll love her! Marvel at her elegance! Not suitable for children under three years of age! Small parts may pose a choking hazard! All rights reserved! ’ Peggy threw her arms around my neck. ’Thank you, Harry!’ She handed the doll back to me. ’Make her dance! Make Lucy Doll dance to Kylie!’

So I jigged around with Lucy Doll Ballerina for a bit. You couldn’t do much with her arms, they either stayed stiffly at her side or had to be raised into a vaguely Fascist salute, but she could do the splits with alarming ease, her plastic pelvis as flexible as any porn star’s.

Peggy snatched her back from me to show to one of her little friends.

’Look at this, Agnes,’ she said. ’Lucy Doll Ballerina. Small parts may cause choking! Fantastic.’

Cyd was in the kitchen with the mothers. I don’t know what had happened to the fathers, but they were all somewhere else. My wife was covering a tray of tapas with clingfilm. She ran her own catering business, so our house was always full of food that someone else was going to eat. She came over and kissed me on the mouth. ’Did you get her Ibiza DJ Brucie Doll?’

’Sold out. No more Ibiza DJ Brucie Dolls until next week. So I got her Lucy Doll Ballerina instead.’

’They’ve never got any of the Brucie Doll merchandise in stock,’ said one of the mothers. ’It gets right on my tits.’

’Maybe we shouldn’t be encouraging the Lucy Doll thing,’ I said.

The mothers all stared at me in silence. Most of them were a good few years older than Cyd. My wife became a parent when she was in her middle twenties. Like me. A lot of these mothers had left it until the biological clock was nearing midnight.

’Why on earth not?’ one of them demanded in the tone of voice that had once frozen an entire boardroom of middle-aged male executives with bollock-shrivelling fear.

’Well,’ I said, looking nervously at their disapproving faces. ’Doesn’t the whole Lucy-Brucie thing reinforce unhealthy sexual stereotypes?’

’I think Lucy Doll is a great role model,’ one of the mothers said.

’Me too,’ said another mother. ’She’s in a long-term relationship with Brucie Doll.’

’She works,’ said yet another. ’She has fun. She travels. She has lots of friends.’

’She’s a musician, a dancer, a princess.’

’She lives a very well-rounded and fulfilled life,’ said my wife. ’I wish I could be Lucy Doll.’

’But-but,’ I stammered, ’doesn’t she dress like a bimbo? Just to please men? Isn’t she a bit of a tart?’

The silence before the storm.

’A bit of a tart?’

’Lucy Doll? ’

’She’s in touch with her sexuality!’ they all said at once.

I made my excuses and retreated to my study at the top of the house.

There was something about the mothers that baffled me. They were all well-educated, intelligent women who had grown up reading their Germaine Gréer and Naomi Wolf, women who had gone out into the world and made serious money from high-powered careers, often raising their children alone.

But inside their Lucy Doll Playhouses, their little girls pretended to be women who were nothing like them. They cooked, cleaned and fretted about when Ibiza DJ Brucie Doll might deign to come home.

Peggy and her friends, all these children born in the nineties, were confident, self-possessed little girls who spent what felt like every waking hour parodying old-fashioned female virtues. They loved fashion, adored dressing up, knew all about the singers and supermodels of the moment. They had an obsession with shoes that would have shamed Imelda Marcos. For hours on end, they preened, they posed, got lost in the mirror. They constantly practised putting on make-up – seven, eight years old and they were addicted to cosmetics, two years at school and already they put cheap creams and potions on their brand-new, perfect skin. They aspired to be all that their mothers had fled from. They dreamed of being fifties housewives. Perhaps that was why the mothers often seemed on the verge of losing their temper.

My wife had the balance right. She was a great mother, but she also had this business that was really starting to take off. She could make money, make a home, and make it all seem like the most natural thing in the world.

I was so proud of her.

When I ventured back downstairs the mothers had all gone, and their children with them. Cyd and Peggy were plucking party streamers from the carpet.

’Poor Harry,” my wife laughed. ’Did they give you a rough time?’

Peggy looked up and smiled. ’What’s wrong with Harry?’

’He’s just not used to a world run by women,’ my wife said.

It was true. For the first thirty years of my life I had lived in homes where males outnumbered females by two to one. First with my dad, my mum and me, then later with Gina and Pat. Now I was in the minority.

Cyd held out hands that were covered in multi-coloured paper streamers.

’Come on, handsome, dance with your two girls.’

Sometimes my world felt like one of those warnings on a box

– the bit about small parts causing choking.

But when Cyd and Peggy and I danced to Kylie Minogue in the remains of the party, burst balloons and coloured streamers underfoot, bits of birthday cake trodden into the parquet floor, then we laughed out loud, laughed with pure, undiluted joy, laughed so much that we could hardly sing along to ’Can’t Get You Out of My Head’.

And for once my life seemed as well-rounded and fulfilled as the one lived by Lucy Doll herself.

four

My mother still slept with the lights on.

In the house where she had spent most of her married life, where she was a young wife and mother, the house that had been her home for so long, she attempted to sleep at night with all the bedroom lights blazing.

’I can’t seem to nod off, Harry. I lie there with my Hello! and Radio 2 on low – next door have got a new baby, did I tell you? She’s a little smasher – and as soon as I drop off, I wake up again. Funny, isn’t it? Isn’t it strange?’

’It’s not strange at all, Mum. The reason you can’t sleep is because you’ve got a hundred-watt bulb burning right above your head. It’s a sleep deprivation technique. A form of torture.’

’Oh, I don’t know about that, love.’

’Of course you can’t sleep. You can’t sleep because you don’t turn your light off. Can’t you try sleeping with the light off? Can’t you try it just once, Mum? Please?’

’Oh, I couldn’t do that,’ she said, smoothing my son’s golden bell of hair as he sat on the floor between us, consulting the TV listings in the Radio Times. ’I couldn’t lie there all night in the dark. Not without your dad.’

My father had been dead for two years.

It was already two years since my father lay in that hospital bed, his brain fogged by pain and the killers of pain, the sickness overwhelming him. And I thought that the old man’s lung cancer would surely kill both of them. I didn’t think that my mother could live without my father. But they were tougher than they looked, women like my mum, those forever wives, the dutiful homemakers whose one act of rebellion was wearing miniskirts for a brief period as the sixties became the seventies. Women like my mum were built to survive anything. Even their hard man husbands. She couldn’t sleep without leaving the lights on, it was true. But she could live without him. She had proved that by now.

My parents had seemed like one living organism for so long

– Paddy and Elizabeth, who made the long journey from teenage sweethearts to doting grandparents, the grand tour that so few married couples still get to make – and I could never imagine one of them without the other.

I knew that my father couldn’t live without my mother. Her going first would have killed him, it would have robbed him of his main reason for living. And I always assumed that she could not survive without him.

I was wrong.

My mother was from the last generation of women who expected to be taken care of by the men they married. She saw nothing strange in letting my dad do the driving, make the money, sit in the big chair, coming back from work and scoffing his dinner – his ’tea’ – like a tribal chieftain home from the wars.

But in old age, in widowhood, it turned out that my mum’s generation of women had an independent streak that they were never given credit for. All those housewives from the fifties and sixties, all those brides of austerity, the last generation of women who made clothes for their children inside their sensible pastel-coloured cardigans, they were made of steel.

My mum didn’t die. My dad’s death didn’t kill her. She refused to let his death be her death too.

She saw her friends for coffee and cake, exchanged gossip with a floating social forum known simply as ’the girls on the bus’, she knitted chunky jumpers for the neighbour’s baby, the little smasher next door – my mum thought that all babies were little smashers – she played Dolly Parton at full volume on her Sony mini stereo system.

’Lovely voice,’ she said of Dolly Parton. ’Lovely figure.’

She called her pack of brothers every day – it was almost impossible to reach her on the phone, she was always engaged

– she fretted about their jobs, their children, their health.

My mum was living without my father, the man she built her world around. She was living her life without him. That seemed incredible to me. And, I suspected, to her too.

My dad’s death had left her maddened with grief. She cried in supermarkets, on the bus, at all the wrong times. She couldn’t help herself. She cried until the tears were all gone. But she coped. More than that, she learned to engage with life, to fend for herself, to laugh again.

Tm not dead yet,’ she was fond of pointing out.

Apart from the lights burning all night long – what did she think would happen to her in the darkness? – my mum carried on. Not as normal, because normal was gone now, but in a world that had changed, a world without her beloved Paddy. And she did it because my mother was a woman who didn’t just love my father. She loved people. All kinds of people.

The young neighbours and their new baby. The old woman on the other side, my Auntie Ethel, who wasn’t really my auntie at all, who was a young wife and mother with my mum, more than half a lifetime ago.

She loved those old friends who met her in the new Starbucks in the high street of the suburban town where she had made a life. And her family. All her brothers, their numbers only now starting to dwindle. The women they married. Their grown-up children, now with children of their own. And then there was me, her only child.

But above and beyond all the rest of us, my mum loved her grandson. Her Pat. My son was the best reason she had for carrying on with my old man gone.

’He’s the love of my life, aren’t you, gorgeous? He’s my little darling.’

My son smiled patiently, reaching for the remote.

There was a kind of genius about my mother, and it was a genius for making you feel loved. Not just because her conversation was peppered with terms of endearment, all these sweethearts, loves, darlings, beautifuls and angels that seemed second nature to her and to women of her background and generation. She had a way of making you feel as though you were more important than anything else in her world, even if she was only making you a cup of tea, or smoothing your hair, or knitting you something that you would only wear when you saw her.

She was not exactly a merry widow – she spent too many days at the graveyard, and I feared that she would sleep with the lights on forever – but my mum had learned to go on living. My father’s clothes were still in the wardrobe, still not ready for the charity shops, but his spirit did not haunt this house.

My mum had finally filled it with her own spirit.

The smell of Old Holborn and Old Spice was gone. There was no longer brown ale sitting on top of the fridge and a bottle of Irish whiskey standing on top of a little chest of drawers that was known as the drinks cabinet. And the music had changed. That was what I noticed most of all. That was how I really knew that my father’s ghost had flown.

I walked into the house where I was a boy and I no longer heard Sinatra and Dean Martin and Nat King Cole. There were none of the old songs playing – Sammy Davis Junior moaning ’What Kind of Fool Am I?’, Frank during the Capitol years, Tony Bennett’s 16 Most Requested Songs, soundtrack albums that spanned the years between Oklahoma! and West Side Story.

My mum gave all of my dad’s music to me. She had her own records to play.

My mother loved country and western. Songs with stories and tunes, songs that let you know exactly where they stood. Happy songs. Sad songs. Songs for dancing, drinking, mourning the man you had lost. She was wild for all that twangy, tear-stained stuff, although I had no idea if she had always loved it or if Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline were new tastes. It was my old man who was the DJ in this house. me Paddy Silver and his swinging vinyl. Not any more.

My mother had been dealt two terrible blows in recent years. She lost my father, the man she had loved ever since he came back to her East End home with one of her brothers after they had sparred together at the local boxing club. She lost the man she spent a lifetime loving, that roaring boy, that strong man who learned to be gentle. Lost him to lung cancer, lost him to time.

And although I could hardly stand to admit it to myself, let alone to her, in some crucial way she had also lost her grandson.

It was just not so easy now I was divorced. Now that Pat was living with his mother, and I was not living with either of them, it was not so easy for my son to spend endless hours with his grandmother.

With all my heart, I wished it were different. I wished it was as simple as the old days, when I was still with Gina and my mum saw Pat all the time, or even later, when Gina was trying her luck in Japan, attempting to get her life back, and I was looking after Pat alone, that time when my mum was like a mother to both of us. I wished it was as straightforward as it used to be, because I knew that Pat was the centre of my mum’s universe. But it would never be like that again. The centre of the universe had shifted.

That’s who gets forgotten in a divorce. The grandparents. These old people who worship the little boys and girls who are produced by their own grown-up, messed-up children, the fallible somehow begetting the perfect. Divorce makes grandparents feel as though all that unconditional love they have to give is suddenly surplus to requirements.

So I made an effort. I did everything to pretend that the centre of the universe was where it had always been. Half of my time with Pat was time spent with my mum. We jumped in my car and drove out to Essex, on roads that I had known all my life.

I remembered those roads when I was a child coming back from my nan’s house in the East End, asleep on the back seat of my old man’s Morris Minor. And I knew those roads as a teenager, zipping around in my Escort trying to impress the big-haired girl by my side. And later still, on those roads as a young husband and father, driving my little family out to see my proud parents. And much later, driving on those roads in my little two-seater sports car, Pat by my side, struggling against sleep, missing his mother, not wanting to talk about it.

I knew those roads. I remembered driving on them to see my dad getting sicker, my dad dying, the day of his funeral. All those car rides from London to Essex, from the edge of the city to the edge of the sea, measuring out my life, never imagining what would be coming next, never dreaming.

Now once more it was Pat and me driving out on those Essex roads to see my mum in the house where she slept with the lights on.

Gina gone. My old man gone. Cyd and Peggy not really a part of these rides out to Essex, to this old established part of our lives. My new wife and her child had their lives in London, and we left them there without even having to discuss it.

Growing up, growing old. You expect all of that. But my little family was growing smaller and more fragile. And you are never ready for that.

Pat was comfortable in the house where I grew up. Something wound tight inside him seemed to relax out here. He spent the best part of his childhood in the old house. No parents fighting, crying, going their separate ways. No great upheavals or infidelities or thrown mobile phones out here in the sprawl where the town finally gives way to the countryside. Just Star Wars videos and cups of tea, and going to the fridge without having to ask anyone’s permission. Sweet, simple hours spent sitting on the floor listening to familiar voices singing old songs in the back garden. And every moment of those easy days filled with an uncomplicated, unconditional love. First from both of my parents, and now from just my mother. The love remained.

’He’s the man of my dreams. Aren’t you, gorgeous?’

My son smiled patiently, and wandered off to rummage around upstairs. His oldest toys were out here, many of them too young for him now. A collection of Star Wars videos of course, and plenty of stuff he would no longer watch, wrestling tapes and cartoons from Disney, gathering dust, marking the years. He had a bedroom here, stacks of clothes, and a life. He could have followed the path from television to fridge and back again with his eyes closed.

Everything was easy out here. The stilted conversations we often had over our Sunday Happy Meals were not needed. We slumped in front of the TV, my son and I, while my mum made lunch, which she called dinner, or dinner, which she called tea, or a cup of tea, which she called a nice cup of tea.

She refused our help with used cups, cutlery and dishes. Pat and I had been well trained by the women in our lives, and we did our bit around the houses we lived in without even thinking about it, without being asked.

But my mum would not hear of it. In her own home, she laid down the rules and one rule said that she did the lot. She was the boss who served. Her word was law, her way of doing things was not negotiable. Sometimes I watched her through the little serving hatch, singing a Dolly Parton song, clanging about in the kitchen, and I wanted to hug her in that fierce, unembarrassed way that my son sometimes hugged her.

We loved her, and we loved it out here because we did not have to think about anything. What a relief – to just switch off brains that had been taught to negotiate the marshland of divorce, remarriage and blended families. Can he have a Coke? Can he watch a video? Can he leave the table and does he really have to eat all of those lentils? How good it is to not have to think about what is good for you. But it never lasts.

After our star-crossed trip to Paris, my timekeeping became meticulous. Getting back to London, getting Pat back to his mother, I always allowed for road works on the A127, pile-ups on the M25, Sunday afternoon football in north London. We just couldn’t be late again.

’Time to go home, darling,’ I told my son. And he gave me a look that you should never see on the face of a seven-year-old. More than anywhere, said the look on my son’s face, this place feels like my home.

So what’s that other place?

We left my mum just as it was getting dark, and I knew that soon the lights would be on and would stay on all night long, while my mum lay in bed humming Dolly Parton songs to keep her spirits up, and my father’s old suits waited in the wardrobe, far too precious to be given away to Oxfam.

five

Gina was waiting for me in the school car park.

She must have come straight from the office because she was in a two-piece business suit, wearing heels and carrying a battered old briefcase. She looked great, like some fashion editor’s idea of a working woman, although thinner than I ever remembered her being. My ex-wife was still beautiful, still a woman who turned heads in the street. But she looked more serious than she ever did in her twenties.

’Sorry I’m late, Gina.’

’It’s okay. We’re both early.’ She gave me a peck on the cheek, squeezing my arm. She had forgiven me for Paris, I guess. ’Let’s go and see teacher, shall we?’

We went into the main school building and walked down corridors that seemed unchanged from the ones I remembered from all those years ago. Children’s paintings on the wall, the aroma of institutional cooking, distant shouts of physical exercise. Echoes and laughter, the smell of disinfectant and dirt. We made our way to the office of the headmistress without having to ask for directions. This was not the first time we had been summoned to our son’s school.

Pat’s headmistress, Miss Wilkins, was a pale-faced young woman with a white-blonde crop. With her Eminem haircut and funky trainers, she didn’t look old enough for the top job, she just about looked old enough to be out of school herself. But promotion came fast around here. Pat’s school was ringed by tough estates, and many teachers just couldn’t stand the pace.

’Mr and Mrs Silver. Come in.’

’Actually it’s Mr Silver and Mrs McRae,’ Gina said. ’Thank you.’

Miss Wilkins softened us up with the usual comforting preamble – our son was a lovely boy, such a sweet nature, adored by teachers and children alike. And then came the reason why we were here.

He was completely and totally out of control.

’Pat is never rude or violent,’ said Miss Wilkins. ’He’s not like some of them. He does everything with a smile.’

’He sounds like Mr Popularity,’ I said. I could never stop myself defending him. I always felt the need to put in a good word.

’He would be. If only he could stay in his seat for an entire lesson.’

’He goes walkabout,’ Gina said, nervously biting her thumbnail, and for a second it was as if she had been brought here because of her own misbehaviour. ’That’s it, isn’t it? He just wanders around the class. Chatting to other children. Chatting away while they are trying to do their work.’ She looked at me. ’We’ve been here before. More than once.’

’May I ask you a personal question?’ Miss Wilkins said. She may have had a different kind of haircut, but she still sounded like every teacher I ever knew.

’Of course,’ said Gina.

A beat.

’Was it a very stressful divorce?’

’Aren’t they all?’ I said.

We followed Miss Wilkins down the corridor. There was a small square pane of glass in the thick slab of every classroom door. Like the spyhole in a prison cell. The albino head of Miss Wilkins bobbed in front of one of them for a moment and then she stood back, smiling grimly, raising an index finger to her lips. Gina and I peered through the window into our son’s classroom.

I spotted him immediately. Even surrounded by thirty other six- and seven-year-olds, some of them with the same shaggy mop top, all of them in the same green sweater that passed for a uniform in these parts, I couldn’t miss him.

Pat was in the middle of the class, bent over a drawing, just like all the other children. And I thought about how shiny his hair always looked, like something from a conditioner commercial, even when it needed what my mum would call a good old wash.

On the blackboard the teacher had sketched a cartoon of planet earth, a chalky globe lost in all that black space, the blurry lines of the continents just about recognisable. She was writing something above it. Our World, it said.

The children were all drawing intently. Even Pat. And for a moment I could kid myself that everything was all right. There was something moving about the scene. Because of course these inner-city children came from every ethnic group on the planet. But the trouble was the drawing my son was bent over belonged to someone else. He was helping a little girl to colour it in.

’Pat?’ the teacher said, turning from the blackboard. ’Excuse me. I’ve asked you before to stay at your own desk, haven’t I?’

He ignored her. Still radiating that rakish charm, peering out shyly from under that golden fringe, he eased between the desks, peering over the shoulders of his classmates, flashing smiles and muttering comments to children who were all concentrating on planet earth.

’Yes,’ Gina said, and I didn’t need to look at her to know that she was holding back the tears. ’In answer to your question. It was a very stressful divorce.’

We did these things together.

There was no question that only one of us would go to the school, get lectured to by the surprisingly prim punk headmistress, and have to fret about our son all alone.

We were both his parents, no matter where he lived, and nothing could ever change that fact. That was our attitude.

Gina was miles better at all of this stuff than me – not feeling the need to be defensive about Pat, always communicating with the staff, opening up about our personal problems, giving anyone who was vaguely curious a guided tour of our dirty laundry, which was surely getting a bit threadbare and old by now. And I took it to heart a lot more than she did. Or at least I let it depress me more. Because deep down, I also blamed the divorce for Pat’s problems at school.

’Cheer up, Harry, he’ll grow out of it,’ Gina told me over coffee. This is what we did. After being dragged along to the school every few weeks or so we went to a small café on Upper Street. We used to come here in the old days, before we had Pat. Now these mid-morning cappuccinos were the extent of our social life together. ’He’s a good kid. Everybody likes him, he’s smart. He just has difficulty settling. He finds it hard to settle to things. It’s not attention deficiency syndrome, or whatever they call it. It’s just a problem settling.’

’Miss Wilkins thinks it’s our fault. She thinks we’ve messed him up. And maybe she’s right, Gina.’

’It doesn’t matter what Miss bloody Wilkins thinks. Pat’s happiness – that’s all that matters.’

’But he’s not happy, Gina.’

’What do you mean?’

’He hasn’t been happy since – you know. Since we split up.’

’Change the record, Harry.’

’I mean it. He’s lost that glow he had. Remember that beautiful glow? Listen, I’m not blaming you or Richard.’

’Richard’s a very good stepfather.’ She always got touchy if I suggested that perhaps divorce had not been an unalloyed blessing in our child’s life. ’Pat’s lucky to have a stepfather like Richard who cares about his education, who doesn’t want him to spend all his time with a light sabre and a football, who wants him to take an interest in museums.’

’And Harry Potter.’

’What’s wrong with Harry Potter? Harry Potter’s great. All children love Harry Potter.’

’But he has to fit in, the poor little bastard. Pat, I mean. Not Harry Potter. He has to fit in everywhere he goes. Can’t you see that? When he’s with you and Richard. When he’s with me and Cyd. He always has to tread carefully. You can admit that, can’t you?’

’I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

’The only time he’s relaxed is with my mum. Children shouldn’t have to fit in. Our little drama has given Pat a walk-on part in his own childhood. No child deserves that.’

She didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t blame her. I would like to have thought that our son’s trouble at school was nothing to do with us, and everything to do with the fact that he was a lazy git. But I just couldn’t believe it. The reason he had ants in his pants at school was because he wanted to be liked, he needed to be loved. And I knew that had something to do with me and my ex-wife. Maybe it had everything to do with us. How could I not wonder what it would have been like if we had stayed together?

’Do you ever think about the past?’

’How do you mean?’

’Do you ever miss us?’ I said, crossing the line between what was acceptable and what was not. ’Just now and again? Just a tiny bit?’

She smiled wearily at me over her abandoned cappuccino. There was no warmth left in either the coffee or her smile.

’Miss us? You mean staying home alone while you were playing the big shot out in the glamorous world of television?”

’No, that wasn’t really -’

’You mean going to your launches, and your parties, and your functions and being treated like the invisible woman because I looked after our son, instead of presenting some crappy little TV show?’

’Well, what I was actually -’

’People thinking I was second-rate because I was bringing up a child – when what I was doing was the most important job in the world. Telling people I was a homemaker and some of them actually smiling, Harry, some of them actually thinking it was funny, that it was a. joke.’

Not all this again.

'I'll get the bill, shall I?’

’When what was really funny was that I had the kind of degree that these career morons could only dream about. When what was funny was that I was bilingual while most of those cretins hadn’t quite mastered English. Miss any of that? No, not really, Harry, not now you come to mention it. And I don’t miss sleeping in our bed with our little boy sleeping in the next room while you were out banging one of the office juniors.’

’You know what I mean. Just the lack of complication. That’s all. There’s no need to drag up all that old -’

’No, I can’t say I miss it. And you shouldn’t either. You shouldn’t miss that old life, because it was built on a lie. I like it now, if you really want to know. That’s the difference between you and me. / like it now. I like my life with Richard. To me, these are the good old days. And you should be grateful, Harry.’

’Why’s that?’

’Because Pat has a stepfather who cares about him deeply. Some step-parents are abusive. Some are violent. Many of them are indifferent.’

’I should be grateful that my son is not being abused? Give me a break, Gina.’

’You should be grateful that Richard is a wonderful, caring man who wants what’s best for Pat.’

’Richard tries to change him. He doesn’t need changing. He’s fine the way he is now.’

’Pat’s not perfect, Harry.’

’Me neither.’

’Oh, Harry. We all know that.’

We glared at each other for a few moments and then Gina called for the bill. I knew her well enough not to try to pay it.

We always did this – supported each other, tried to be friends, and then for an encore drove each other nuts. We couldn’t seem to stop ourselves. In the end we maddened each other by picking at old wounds, we turned the closeness between us into an infuriating claustrophobia.

I knew that I had angered her today. And that’s why the news she told me as we were walking back to our cars sounded like an act of supreme cruelty and spite.

’None of this matters,’ she said. ’The trouble at school. All that tired old crap we keep dragging around the block. None of it matters any more, Harry.’

’What are you talking about?’

’We’re going to America.’

I just stared at her.

’I’ve been meaning to tell you. But it wasn’t definite. Not until this week.’

I thought about it for a while. But I didn’t understand. Not yet.

’How long would you be gone? I’m not saying taking Pat out of school for a couple of weeks is a bad idea. Might do him some good. A break might be what he needs. It’s not as though he’s learning very much right now.’

My ex-wife shook her head. She couldn’t believe that I could be so slow.

’Come on, Harry.’

And as we stood in that deserted school car park, I finally started to get it. I finally started to understand that my ex-wife could do whatever she liked. What a sucker I had been.

’Hold on. Tell me you mean a vacation, Gina. Tell me you’re talking about Disneyland and Florida?’

’I’m talking about leaving London, Harry. And leaving the country. I’m talking about us moving there for good. To live, Harry. Richard and me and Pat. Richard’s contract is ending, and he’s never really settled here -’

’Richard hasn’t settled here? Richard? What about Pat? What about Pat being allowed to fucking settle?’

’Would you like to watch your language? He’s seven years old. Children are very adaptable. They get used to anything.’

’But his school is here. And his grandmother is here. And Bernie Cooper is here.’

’Who the hell is – oh, little Bernie. God, Harry, he can make some new friends. It’s a work thing, okay? Richard can get a better position in the States.’

’But your job is here. Look at you, Gina. You finally got your life back. Why would you throw that away?’

’My job’s not quite what I wanted. I don’t even get to use my Japanese. What’s the point in working for a Japanese company if I don’t even get to use my Japanese? Don’t worry, we’re not talking about a place in the city. From Connecticut the train into Manhattan only takes -’

’Don’t worry? But when would I see him? What about his grandmother?’

’You would see him all the time. The school holidays go on for ages. You could come over. London to New York is nothing. What is it? Six hours?’

’Have you talked to Pat about this? Does he know it’s not going to be a quick tour round Minnie Mouse and then back home?’

’Not yet.’

I shook my head, trying to get my breathing under control.

’I can’t believe you’re thinking of dragging him to the other side of the world,’ I said, although that really wasn’t true. I could believe it very easily. I began to see that she had always had this thing inside her, this belief that life would be better at the other end of a long-haul flight.

For years Gina had felt this way – when she was single, after we split up. And she still did. In the past Japan was the Promised Land. Now it was America. It was completely in character, this desire to start again on the other side of the world. Oh, I could believe it too easily.

’What’s wrong with London? This is where he belongs. His family and friends – Gina, he’s happy here.’

She lifted her hands, palms raised to the heavens, taking it all in – Miss Wilkins, the trouble at school, the impossibility of our son sitting still for an entire lesson, Paris and the broken Eurostar, life in north London.

’Well, obviously not. It will be a better life over there. For all of us. I don’t want Pat’s childhood to be like mine – always different homes, always different people around. I want his childhood to be like yours, Harry.’ She placed her hand on my arm. ’You have to trust me. I only want what’s best for the boy.’

I angrily shook her off.

’You don’t want what’s best for the boy. You don’t even want what’s best for yourself. Or that loser dickhead you married.’

’Why don’t you watch your mouth?’

’You just want revenge.’

’Believe what you want, Harry. It really doesn’t matter to me what you think.’

’You can’t do this to me, Gina.’

She was suddenly furious. And I saw again that we could never recreate what had once existed between us. We could be polite, affectionate even, concerned about Pat, but the love we had lost was impossible to duplicate now. Because it was all used up. What do they say? Married for years, divorced forever. That was us. Gina and I were divorced forever.

’You broke the promises – not me, Harry. You fucked around

– not me. You were the one who got bored with the marital bed, Harry. Not me.’

She shook her head and laughed. I looked at the face of this familiar stranger. From his mother my son got his Tiffany-blue eyes, his dirty-blond hair, those slightly gappy teeth. She was definitely his mother, and I no longer recognised her.

’And now you tell me what I can and can’t do, Harry? You’ve got some nerve. I am taking my son out of the country. Start living with it.’

Then she pressed her car key, and the double flash of lights as the central locking came off seemed to glint on her wedding ring.

Not the one she had when she was with me.

The new one.

Richard was one of those pumped-up business types that were starting to show up all over town. The bespectacled hunk. The six-pack nerd.

Ten years ago a man like Richard – who does things with other people’s money – would have been all spindly legs and narrow shoulders. But you have to be tough to live in the city these days, or look like you are. I didn’t know what he was doing – a lot of weights, some cardiovascular stuff, maybe a few boxercise classes – but when I barged into the restaurant where he was having lunch with some business colleagues, for once he looked more like Superman than his mild-mannered alter ego.

Richard was the last one to look up at me. The other three saw me coming. Maybe it was my clothes – the kind of jacket that my mum would call a car coat, old chinos and boots. Pretty much standard uniform for a TV producer, although those clothes stood out in a swanky restaurant where they served hearty Tuscan peasant food for executives on six figures a year.

Richard’s companions saw me all right – the young Armani hotshot, the older, silvery geezer and the fat guy – but they were not quite sure what to make of me. I swear that one of them – the fat guy – was about to ask me for another bottle of sparkling mineral water. But when I opened my mouth, he realised I wasn’t there to pour the Perrier.

’You’re not taking Pat away from me, you bastard,’ I said. ’Don’t you even think about taking Pat out of the country.’

His dining companions stared from Richard to me and back again, uncertain what to make of this scene. A cuckolded husband? A homosexual love spat? I could see that they didn’t know Richard well enough to get it immediately. So he spelled it out for them, never taking his eyes off me.

’This gentleman is the father of my stepson,’ Richard explained. ’The poor little bastard.’

And that’s when I lost it, lurching across the table, scattering bread rolls and little silver dishes of olive oil, which I am almost certain the peasants don’t have in their Tuscan farmhouses. Richard’s dining companions recoiled, half rising from their chairs, shrinking from the trouble, but two waiters were on me before I could reach him. They started pulling me away, one of them trapping my arms to my side in a bear hug, the other trying to get a grip on the collar of my car coat.

’You leave us alone,’ I said, digging my heels into the sawdust-strewn floorboards, managing to reach out and grab a fistful of linen tablecloth, despite my pinned arms. ’You just leave my son alone, Richard.’

The waiters were too strong for me. Unlike Richard, I hadn’t spent hours pumping iron and running on the treadmill. I felt all the strength go out of me as they easily pulled me away. But because I still had hold of the tablecloth, I took it with me, and it all came crashing down: the glasses, the plates of robust pasta dishes, the rough-hewn chunks of bread, the little silver dishes of olive oil.

On to the floor and into their laps.

And Richard was on his feet, angry at last, ready to try out his new biceps and eager to punch my lights out, seafood linguini dripping down the front of his trousers.

’You’re not taking my son away just because you can’t cut it in this city, Richard.’

’That’s for Gina and me to decide.’

’I’m his father, you bastard. And I’ll always be his father. You can’t change that.’

’One question, Harry.’

’What’s that, dickhead?’

I watched him wipe a prawn from his tomato-stained flies. ’What the hell did she ever see in you?’

It was Eamon Fish who first told me about the blended family. Which is ironic, because Eamon was the most single man I knew. The sap was still rising in Eamon, but it hadn’t quite reached his head yet.

Although he was a modern boy about town, Eamon was painfully old-fashioned when it came to love, marriage and all of that. Blame it on his Kilcarney background. He had a single man’s view of wedlock, simultaneously wary and romantic. But I’ll say this for Eamon – he was the only one who warned me about what I was walking into.

’Harry, good man you are,’ he called to me across my wedding reception. ’I want a word with you.”

I watched him weave his way through the crowd, nodding and smiling as he went, polite and friendly to people who recognised him, grateful to the ones who didn’t. He was holding his champagne flute aloft to prevent spillage, looking even more dishevelled than usual, all shirt tails and floppy fringe and droopy eyelids, but he had those dark Irish good looks that belonged to a young Jack Kennedy, so even in his cups he resembled a rake rather than a slob. He put his arm around me, clinked our glasses.

’Here’s to you. And your lovely bride. And your – what do they call it? – blended family.’

’My what?’ I was still laughing.

’Your blended family. You know. Your blended family.’

’What’s a blended family?’

’You know. It’s like The Brady Bunch. When a man and a woman put their old families together to make a new family. You know, Harry. A man living with kids that are not his own. A woman becoming a mammy to children she didn’t give birth to. A blended family. Like The Brady Bunch. And you, Harry. You and The Brady Bunch. God bless you, one and all.’ He put his face next to mine, and pulled me close. ’Good on you, pal. Here, let’s sit for a minute.’

We found a quiet table in the corner and Eamon immediately produced a small cellophane bag from out of a jacket that was still sporting a beat-up carnation. This was new. The Charles was new. When I first met him, he had never taken anything stronger than draught Guinness and a packet of pork scratchings.

I looked anxiously around the room as Eamon carefully tipped a mound of white powder on to the back of our wedding invitation and began chopping out chunky white lines with his black Am Ex.

’Jesus, Eamon. Not in here. You can’t take this stuff when there are kids around. At least take it to the toilets. This is not the time or the place.’ Then I came out with one of my father’s lines, almost as though the old man was speaking through me. ’Moderation in all things, Eamon.’

That gave him a chuckle. He started rolling up a ten-pound note.

’Moderation? You’re – what? Thirty-three now? Thirty-two? You’re already on your second marriage. You’ve got a son who doesn’t live with you and a stepdaughter who does. So don’t lecture me about moderation, Harry. There’s nothing moderate about you.’

There are children around. And my mum. And my Auntie Ethel.’

’Your Auntie Ethel doesn’t mind, Harry.’ The chopped white lines were deftly hoovered up his nose. ’She was the one who sold it to me.’ He held out the rolled-up, slightly damp tenner to me. I shook my head and he put his drugs away. ’Anyway congratulations to you, mate.’

’Thank you.’

’Just don’t ruin it this time.’

’What does that mean?’

’Keep your head out of the clouds and your dick in your trousers.’

Oh yes, that’s one of the traditional wedding vows, isn’t it? Church of England, I believe.’

’I mean it. Don’t get restless when the fever wears off Don’t start thinking about the grass being greener next door, because it’s not. Remember that your knob is attached to you, rather than the other way round.’

We watched Cyd coming towards us across the crowded room. She was smiling, and I don’t think I’d ever seen her looking lovelier than at that moment.

’And don’t forget how you feel today,’ Eamon said. ’That above all. I know what you are like, because all men are the same. We forget what’s in our hearts.’

But I wasn’t listening to him any more. I thought that the day I needed marital advice from a coked-up comedian would be a black day indeed. I got up to talk to my wife.

’You look happy,’ she said.

Tm better than happy.’

’Wow. Better than happy. Then I hope I don’t disappoint you.’

’You could never disappoint me. As long as you do one thing.’

’What’s that?’

’Dance with me.’

’You’re easy to please.’

So I took her in my arms, feeling that long, slim body in her wedding dress, and as Ella Fitzgerald sang ’Every Time We Say Goodbye’ we moved in perfect harmony and, although there were friends and family all around, for as long as the music played my wife’s face was all I could see.

The police finally let me go.

Richard and the restaurant both decided not to press charges. So I drove home, thinking about all the things that Cyd and I had talked about before we were married. We had spent hours discussing all the big stuff. It was what our relationship was built on. That and our desire to fuck the arse off each other, of course.

We talked about our parents, those old-fashioned husbands and wives who married young, stayed together all their lives and were parted by death too soon. We talked about our parents, not simply because we loved them, but because that was the kind of marriage we intended to have.

And we talked about our own wrecked relationships – hers worn down by Jim’s constant tom-catting, mine blown up by a stupid one-night stand that crawled into the daylight. And we talked about our children, the lives we wanted for them, and our fears that the divorces would leave scars that lasted for a lifetime.

We talked about how my son would fit into our new family, how we would make him feel like a full member, even though he lived with his mother, even if he was only visiting. And we talked about my relationship with Peggy, how I was going to be some kind of father to her, even though she had a dad of her own. When we looked at our lives it sometimes all seemed convoluted and scary, but we thought that being crazy about each other would be enough to get us through. And it was, for a while. Because we loved each other. Because we could talk about anything. Almost anything.

The only thing we kind of edged around was having a child of our own. The baby subject – the biggest subject of all – was put on hold. We blamed work. What else does anyone ever blame?

’I just want to get Food Glorious Food up and running before we start trying for a baby,’ Cyd had said. ’It’s really important to me, Harry. Please try to understand.’

Cyd’s company was named after the Lionel Bart song from Oliver! Serving sushi, baked ziti, spring rolls, chicken satay and mini-pizzas all over the West End and the City.

’But you never know with a baby,’ I said. ’Sometimes people try for a baby and it takes time. My parents waited years for me.’

’And you were worth waiting for. And our baby will be worth waiting for. She’ll be a beautiful baby.’

’Might be another boy.’

’Then he will be a beautiful baby. But this isn’t the time. Look, I want a child as much as you do.’

I wondered if that was true.

’Just not now. Just let me get this thing off the ground. One day, okay? Definitely one day. There are things I want to happen first.’

Food Glorious Food was good, and growing really fast. Launches, openings and promotions were all asking Food Glorious Food to feed the faces of their partygoers. It took up a lot of Cyd’s time, but this was something she had always dreamed of doing. Her own business. So she rushed from fashionable new hotel to first night, while I queued for condoms in Boots like a teenager from the dawn of time. Anything else, sir? Well, yes

– I’d quite like a baby, now you come to mention it. Got any in stock?

’I want to build something of my own,’ she said. ’I’ve never done that in my life. I’ve always worked for other people in little jobs that didn’t mean a thing to me. For most of Peggy’s life I’ve been a waitress. But I’ve got this thing I’m good at, Harry. This thing I can do really well. I can cook anything, and I’m not afraid of hard work, and I’m smart enough to understand what my clients want. I’m not useless. I’ve got skills.’

’I know you do, I know you do.’

’I want to make something of my own, make some money, make you and Peggy proud of me.’

’I’m proud of you already.’

’But you understand? Please try to understand. I want this marriage to work. And of course children are one of the things that marriage is all about. But so is understanding each other.’

’I understand.’

And I smiled when I said it, to show her it was true. I understood. At least, I think I did. I wanted her business to do well. I knew it was important to her. I could see Cyd wasn’t like the mothers of Peggy’s friends who had retired from high-octane careers to have children. My wife was doing it the other way around. And she was at least as smart as those other mothers. Why shouldn’t she have it all, too?

But I guessed it wasn’t just her catering business that was staving off baby hunger. She had been worn out by Jim, and maybe she just wanted to give our marriage time to grow before adding any more complications to the mix. And in my heart I suspected that there was some other reason, a reason that could never be spoken, that Cyd wanted to defer pregnancy.

I had a hunch that my wife didn’t completely believe that I could keep all those wedding vows, that in the end I would turn out to be nothing special. Just another Jim. She didn’t want a baby with someone who wouldn’t stay with her. Not a second time. And I could understand that. Because I felt the same way.

But as I drove home from the restaurant, I saw that having a baby wouldn’t make things more complicated for us. It would make everything a lot simpler. A baby of our own was just what we needed. To hold it all together. To create a home that would find room for all of us. Including Pat.

As I felt the muscles in my upper arms throb, still sore from the grappling techniques of the waiters, I realised we needed a baby to make our blended family into a proper family.

I needed to be a real father again. To Peggy. To the baby that Cyd and I would have together.

And to the boy they wanted to take away.

’Can you give me a hand with this stuff, honey?’

Cyd was getting ready to go out to a gig. The kitchen was full of silver trays covered in clingfilm. Tonight it was antipasti

– fat tomatoes stuffed with rice, prosciutto served with figs, thick slices of mozzarella decorated with sprigs of basil, pane allé olive, and tiny pizza marinara the size of compact discs.

So I helped my wife to carry it all out to the car, while she told me about the event. The business was still new enough for her to be excited.

’First night. Off-Shaftesbury Avenue. Some Hollywood star who wants to do theatre. Ibsen, I think. I don’t know. Something Scandinavian. We’re catering for 200 at the after-show party.’

When her station wagon was loaded with Italian delicacies she slammed it shut and looked at me. And that’s when she knew that something was wrong.

’What is it?’

’Gina. And that loser she married. They want to leave the country. Taking Pat with them.’

’For good?’

I nodded. ’Bastards, the pair of them.’

’What’s caused all this?’

’Richard. London hasn’t worked out for him. He wants to try his luck in New York. As if his little career is the only thing that matters. As if Pat hasn’t got any rights.’

She put her arms around me. She knew what this meant.

’How would you feel about Pat coming to live with us?’ I said.

’Gina wouldn’t agree to it, would she?’

’What if she did? Would it be okay with you?’

’Whatever makes you happy, babe.’

’Thanks.’

I felt a stab of sadness. Because she didn’t say that having Pat come to live with us would make her equally happy. Of course she didn’t say that. How could she? She said that she wouldn’t object – and I knew that my wife was a kind-hearted, generous woman, and that she loved me, and that she meant it.

So why wasn’t that enough?

Because I wanted him to matter as much to her as he did to me. Even though marriage had changed everything, and being the wife of Pat’s dad was very different from being the girlfriend of Pat’s dad. But I wanted her to see him with my eyes – how unique he was, how special, how beautiful. I wanted Cyd to look at Pat with the eyes of a parent. But only blood can make you feel like that. And with the best will in the world, you can’t fake blood.

’Jesus,’ she said, looking at her watch. ’I’ve got to run. Can we talk about this when I get home?’

’Sure.’

She squeezed my hand, kissed my cheek.

’It’ll all work out, babe, I promise you. Got to run now. Don’t forget that Jim’s picking up Peg.’

How could I forget?

Jim’s sporadic outings to see his daughter had taken on the importance of a state visit. Excitement mounted in our house days before the event. I should have been sympathetic to Jim another part-time dad, separated from his flesh and blood. But I was resentful, bitter and jealous. For all the usual reasons – that my wife loved him first (definitely) and best (probably). And there were reasons that had nothing to do with my jealous heart.

Jim turned up when he felt like it. He stayed away when it suited him. This should have reduced his stock in our house, but somehow it didn’t. He got away with murder. No matter what he did, Peggy was mad about him, was delirious with excitement when he came to call on his Norton.

And from Jim and Peggy I learned that children want to love their parents, want to love them with all their heart.

Even when they don’t deserve it.

Jim was late. Very late.

Peggy was perched on the back of a chair by the window, her face pressed against the glass, waiting for the appearance of her father’s motorbike.

But Jim wasn’t coming. I could sense it, because it had happened before. There would be no night out with Peggy’s old man. Not this time.

The phone rang and Peggy rushed to get it. I knelt on the floor, picking up the accessories of Air Pilot Lucy Doll and her high-flying friends. It’s so easy for a kid to lose these fiddly bits, and then they go crazy because they can’t find them. I carefully replaced a male flight attendant’s drinks tray.

Peggy came back into the room with the phone, trying to be brave, sucking in her bottom lip to stop it shaking.

’It’s Daddy. He wants to talk to you.’

I took the phone. Jim?’

In the background I could hear the music. ’Baby, pull my love pump I Baby, pull my love pump I Baby, pull my love pump I But not so hard next time. ’

’I’m at the dentist,’ Jim said, raising his voice above the music. ’I can’t make it this time. Bloody shame. Try to explain it to her, will you, Harry? I feel really bad, but I’ve found something that urgently needs filling.’

I hung up the phone.

Peggy had disappeared.

I found her in her bedroom, hiding under her duvet. On the walls were posters of boy bands and Lucy Doll in all her incarnations, their fixed grins and perfect worlds shining down on one sad little girl.

I stroked her head. ’Your dad will see you next time, darling. You know he loves you.’

’He’s got a bad tooth.’

’I know.’

’And it hurts him.’

She sat up and I dried her eyes with an official Lucy Doll tissue, thinking what a great kid she was, and how she deserved better than her feckless father. But then every child in the world deserved a better father than Jim.

’Tell a story, Harry. Not from a book. Tell a story from your head. A real one.’

’A real one?’

’Urn.’

’Okay, Peg.’ I thought about it for a minute. ’Once upon a time, there was an old man called Geppetto.’

’That’s a funny name.’

’And Geppetto found a magical piece of wood that – guess what? – could laugh and cry.’

She gave me a dubious smile.

’Really?’

’Honestly.’

’You’re making this up, Harry,’ she said, her smile growing.

Tm not, Peg,’ I said, smiling back at her. ’Every single word is true. And from that piece of magic wood – guess what? Geppetto made Pinocchio.’

’Who was Pinocchio?’

’He was a puppet, Peg. Just this piece of wood that could act like a human. He could laugh and cry and everything. But what he wanted, more than anything in the world, was to be a real dad.’

Did I say dad?

I meant boy.

Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy.

seven

’Only twice in your life do they pronounce you anything,’ Eamon said. ’The first is man and wife. The second is dead.’

There was always work. Even when my mother was sleeping with the lights on, and my wife was directing me to the condoms and my son was packing for a new life on the other side of the ocean, there was always work.

Work is far easier than family. It is easier to feel like you are some kind of successful human being at work. Whatever you do, don’t try that at home.

’I come from one of those huge Irish families,’ Eamon said, moving across a TV studio floor that was set and lit to look like one of those clubs where he honed his stand-up routine. ’Ten kids.’

Whistles from the audience, who were encouraged to act as though they were in some intimate Soho basement, rather than an antiseptic television studio in White City.

’Yeah, I know. Can you believe it? Ten of us. But after the tenth my parents had this great method of contraception. Never failed. Every night before they went to bed, they would spend a couple of hours with me and my brothers and sisters.’

Even when my ex-wife was accusing me of harassing her husband, and talking about restraining orders, when there was really no need because soon I would be restrained by the Atlantic Ocean, there was still work. And when every hour with my son felt like another hour gone – that’s what the absent dad feels most acutely, not the being with, but the countdown to the being apart – there was still work, with its cold crumbs of comfort, with its quick fix of fulfilment, and Eamon and his brilliant career.

’One day my dad came home early and found me mam in bed with the milkman,’ Eamon said. ’She was naturally horrified. ”Oh God!” she says. ”Don’t tell the postman!’”

Eamon Fish had come a long way since he first showed up at my door two years ago, dark-eyed and good-looking and scared, fresh off the stand-up circuit, wondering if TV was going to make him famous or swallow him alive. Now he had all the trappings of success – a show that was in its fourth series, three National Television Awards, two undecorated flats in fashionable neighbourhoods (Temple Bar, Dublin and Docklands, London) and – oh yes – a £200-a-day cocaine habit.

Despite coming so far from the green fields of Kilcarney, and despite making such a splash in London, Eamon still enjoyed playing the wide-eyed Irish boy, fresh off the farm and the early Aer Lingus flight from Cork. He clung to the myths of his past life like a drowning man with a wonky lifebelt.

I had produced Eamon’s late-night talk show from the start. Fish on Friday worked because we played to Eamon’s strengths. Despite those two years on the box, he was still a stand-up at heart. He could talk to the guests, banter with all the bit players of the showbiz whirl, but he was never so good as when he was talking to himself.

’Most of the babies in Kilcarney are very beautiful. It’s true, I tell you.’ The little nervous cough he used for punctuation. Stolen from his hero, Woody Allen, although Eamon had made that cough his own. ’But I was so ugly when I was born that the midwife said, ”He’s not done yet,” and shoved me back in. I don’t know. It’s so different over here – all the gynaecologists are men. What’s that about? That’s like getting a mechanic who has never owned a car.’

His monologues about the men and women back in his home town of Kilcarney were always the best segments, with the biggest laughs, and when he was most at ease. And he was young enough to still be getting better. After two years in front of the cameras, Eamon had a confidence that wasn’t there before. These days Eamon wasn’t quite so desperate to be liked, he could relax into his material, knowing that he still had control over his audience. Like other people I had worked with in television, his audience was the one thing in his life that he could actually control.

’I’m thinking of getting back together with my girlfriend. Mem. She’s Thai. A dancer. Well, not really a dancer.’ Cough. ’More of a stripper.’ Cackles all round. The studio audience were eating out of his hand. They laughed even when he wasn’t joking. ’Great, great girl. And I look at all these photographs of when we were together – on holiday in Koh Samui, at Christmas in Kilcarney, the lap dance she gave me for my birthday – and it just feels like we should be together. But those photographs are a warped record of our relationship. I know that. Where are all the bad times? We didn’t take photos of those. And I wonder why we only take pictures of the good times. Why didn’t I take a photograph of Mem when she had cystitis? Her PMT – where’s that in the photo album?’ Rueful laughter. Mocking catcalls from the girls. ’We broke up because we disagreed about marriage. Single men actually know more about marriage than married men. If we didn’t, we would be married too. Personally I think that marriage consists of overestimating the difference between one woman and all the other women. And my ex-girlfriend thinks – oh, Jesus, Jesus.’

Suddenly there was blood everywhere. The blood was over Eamon’s hands and face, splashing on the microphone. So much blood that you couldn’t see where it was coming from.

The floor manager stared at me, as Eamon reeled backwards, covering his face with his hands, and the audience gasped shocked, appalled, but laughing a little, wondering if this was all part of the act. I was making cut-it, cut-it, cut-it gestures across my throat to the director up in the gallery when it dawned on me that the blood was coming from Eamon’s nose.

There was always work. No matter how bad things got at home, there was always that.

Then Eamon’s nose almost fell off on live television. And then there wasn’t even work.

Pat didn’t talk about moving.

I knew Gina had discussed it with him, had tried to explain why it was happening and what it would mean. She had spoken of Richard’s job in Manhattan, the family home in Connecticut

– names that were as remote to Pat as Mars and Venus. She had attempted to reassure him that although he wouldn’t see me every Sunday, like now, there would be long, long holidays where he could stay with me and see his grandmother and Bernie Cooper and all the things he loved in London. She had told our son that he would be happy.

All that old bullshit.

And in the end – I could imagine his pale face staring at her, giving nothing away, not even his fear – she played her trump card.

When they left London and moved to their new home in Connecticut, surrounded by all those fresh green pastures on the far side of the hill, she would buy him the one thing that he had always wanted.

A dog.

That’s what my ex-wife promised her son, that was his compensation for giving up London, his grandmother, his father, his best friend, his life. When he moved to another country, she would buy him a dog. A magical mutt who would make everything all right.

I cursed Gina, and the way her decisions, her choices, could still tear my world apart. After all this time I still wasn’t free of her. Fragments of Gina were embedded in every part of my life, like a grenade that had exploded long ago, like the black shards of shrapnel that wormed their way out of my father’s body for fifty years. The past never setting you free, long gone and there forever. I would never be free, because she had my son. And now she was planning to take him away.

Only the lawyers could stop her.

When I raised the subject of moving – always with a breeziness I did not feel – that little face I loved so much seemed to turn into a mask.

’You going to send me a postcard, Pat? You going to send your dad a postcard as soon as you get to America?’

’I’ll text you. Or email. Or phone on the telephone, maybe.’

’You don’t want to send me a postcard? I like getting postcards. Postcards are great.’

’But I don’t know how.’

’Mummy will show you.’

’Will she? Then I might post a card to you. I might!

’The important thing is – come home soon. Come and stay with me. In your holiday. That’s what matters. Okay, darling?’

’Okay.’

’And Pat?’

’What?’

Til miss you.’

’Miss you too,’ he said, and I got down on my knees and held him in my arms, my face buried in his dirty-blond hair, smelling the hot chocolate on his breath, and choked with love for him.

’America will be lovely,’ my mum said, and I felt she was trying to cheer up both her grandson and her son. ’New York, New York – my word! So good they named it twice! What a lucky boy.’

’It’s over the water,’ Pat said, tilting his face to her. ’Like France. In Paris. Only a bit further. You can’t get a train, you know. You have to go on the plane.’

’You’ll have a lovely time in America, sweetheart.’

And the funny thing about my mum is that she probably meant it. She loved her grandson so much, and with such a purity of love, that what she cared about most was his happiness.

And if she thought that it was barking madness – Gina dragging him around the globe, leaving his friends and school, abandoning his father, and his grandmother, and a life that was finally starting to settle into some kind of routine – then my mum said nothing.

We were at my father’s grave.

Both my mother and my son considered a trip to the cemetery to be an ideal way to spend a Sunday afternoon. They were both big grave visitors. I was less keen. I had seen my dad’s body in the back room of the funeral director’s office, and I had no doubt that the spark that had made him the man he was had flown. I didn’t believe that we would find him in the graveyard of the old church on the hill, that church that looked down on the fields where I had roamed with my air rifle as a boy. My father was somewhere else now. But coming to this place didn’t make me sad any more.

I can’t remember when visiting my father’s grave stopped being sad. It was after the first year or so, when we were all starting to be grateful for his life, rather than shattered by his death. Now the visits didn’t really feel like acts of mourning. They were more practical in nature – to change the flowers, to wipe the headstone clean, to remove the odd cigarette butt or beer can left by some local punk who was trying to be a man.

These visits were also ceremonial. We came here to remember my dad, to state that he still mattered, that he was still loved. We came to this place because otherwise there was nowhere else to go. Only into memory, and into dreams, and all the photos that were starting to fade.

And there was something else.

With the packing for America already begun, I felt the need to bring my boy to his grandfather’s grave today, just as – against all advice – I had felt the need to bring him to see his granddad when the old man was dying in hospital. They worshipped each other, that hard old soldier and that sweet-faced child, and then, as now, I believed I owed it to them both to give them a chance to say goodbye.

Later we went back to my mum’s place and she put on her carpet slippers to kick a ball around with Pat in the back garden.

She seemed to be in high spirits, blasting a plastic football in the rose bush, singing snatches of Dolly Parton, claiming against all the evidence that she was Pele, and it was only when her grandson got bored and mooched off to watch a video that the mask slipped.

’He’s in a right old pickle,’ she said, shaking her head, furiously cleaning her gleaming sink. ’My darling boy is in a right old pickle.’

She was right. And her words made me think about how momentous this move would be, how unimaginably huge in my son’s life. Pat leaving London. Pat leaving one half of his parents, his best friend Bernie Cooper, his school, his home, the only life he had ever known. I still couldn’t begin to comprehend how all this could happen.

My mum was right. Pat was in a right old pickle. Her boy was in a right old pickle.

It took me quite a while longer to realise that my mother was talking about me.

We sat in my car outside Gina’s house, both of us reluctant to go inside.

We sat there for ages – Pat fiddling with the radio, trying to find some Kylie Minogue, and me just staring at him

– his uncombed hair, his grass-stained clothes, and all his careless beauty.

Eamon reckoned that I would get him back when he grew up. But I knew by then my son would be someone else, and the child I loved so much would be gone forever. So we sat in the car, silenced by all that was about to be lost. Then lights started coming on in Gina’s house, and I knew it was time to go inside.

Usually Pat was handed over like a Cold War hostage at Checkpoint Charlie. I escorted him to the gate, Gina waited at her front door. And the pair of us watched him cross no-man’s-land – the garden path – that marked the gap between one world and another.

Tonight was different. Tonight Gina came out and approached the car. I lowered the window, expecting to get an earful for assaulting her husband or getting back late or ruining her life or something. But she smiled at me with what looked a little like the old warmth.

’Come inside for a bit, Harry. Don’t look like that. It’s okay. Richard’s playing golf.’

Pat was suddenly excited, Kylie forgotten. ’Yeah, come inside, Daddy, and you can see my room where I live!’

I had never been inside their home before. Ironic that I should be shown around now that there was a For Sale sign outside. I made half-hearted attempts to cry off, but they both insisted. I admit I was curious. So with my son taking my hand and my ex-wife following me, I was escorted into a real metropolitan home, a temple to urban affluence, lots of light and glass and open space, all polished floors and Asian knick-knacks and tasteful black-and-white photos on the walls.

’Nice place, Gina.’

’The mortgage is a killer. That’s one of the reasons…’

Her words trailed off. She knew I wasn’t interested in their financial woes.

You would never guess that a child lived in this house. Where were the toys, the mess, the clutter? Pat took my hand and dragged me up a flight of stairs. Gina followed us, her arms folded across her chest, still smiling.

Pat’s room was the one thing that looked familiar. There were ancient Star Wars toys everywhere – a couple of plastic light sabres, lots of eight-inch action figures, the grubby grey wrecks of the Millennium Falcon and X-Wing fighters that he had played with a few years ago. And there were the books I knew from bedtimes past, books that I had read until he was sleeping – Where the Wild Things Are, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, The Snowman, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and of course all the Star Wars movie tie-ins and picture books. And there were really old toys – a cracked Speak and Spell, a battered stuffed simian who went by the name of George the Monkey, Pat’s one excursion into the comforting world of cuddly toys. There was some new stuff too – a Phantom Menace duvet and pillowcases, books from school, Harry Potter paperbacks on his little desk.

It was a bigger room than he had slept in when we were living together, and it was also a lot tidier. Either he had changed his laid-back ways or he was living in a far more disciplined household.

’What do you think of my room, Daddy?’

’I think it’s fantastic, darling. I can see that you’ve got all your stuff here.’

’That’s right. I do.’

Gina touched his hair. ’Pat, why don’t you go downstairs and watch a video for a bit?’

Our boy looked stunned. ’Can I? Isn’t it bedtime yet?’

’This is a special night. Why don’t you go and watch the first film?’ When Gina talked to Pat about the first film, she meant the first Star Wars film. ’Not all of it – just until the ’droids get taken prisoner, okay?’ That was the old deal, wasn’t it? That was what she always used to say -just until the ’droids get taken prisoner. I had heard that one before. I had even used that one myself. ’Then brush your teeth and put your pyjamas on. I want to talk to your daddy.’

Pat rushed downstairs, not believing his luck, and Gina smiled at me in our son’s bedroom.

’Harry,’ she said.

’Gina,’ I said. She was so thin and pretty. My ex-wife.

’I just wanted to say something to you.’

’Go ahead.’

’I don’t know how to put it into words. I guess I just want to tell you – I’m not trying to steal him away from you.’

’That’s good.’

’Whatever happens – wherever we are – you’ll always be his father. And nothing will ever change that.’

I said nothing. I didn’t tell her that I was seeing a lawyer in the morning. I didn’t tell her that Pat would be making his way to the departure gate over my dead body. I knew she was trying to be kind. But she wasn’t telling me anything that I didn’t know already.

’Life can’t always be about the past, Harry. We’re only thinking of the future, Richard and me. The future of our family. That’s what the move is about. I want you to try to understand. We’re just thinking about the future. That’s what a family does, Harry.’ Then she laughed. ’Can I show you something?’ Suddenly she looked all anxious, as though we were newly introduced strangers, paralysed by politeness. ’Are you okay for time?’

’I’ve got all the time in the world, Gina.’

So I followed her from Pat’s bedroom to a room one flight up. It was some kind of small study. There was a blue iMac, filing cabinets, a bookcase. A photo of Pat on the desk, two years old, naked and grinning in a paddling pool. Gina’s room.

She opened a large flat cardboard box and took out a sheaf of photographs. They were all of Pat. There must have been two dozen of them. Eight by ten, black and white, professional quality.

And they were beautiful.

They must have been taken a couple of months ago, when the summer was holding on, because Pat’s hair was still long and shaggy, before he had it cut, and his skin had a light tan. He was bare-chested, happy, glowing with life. He was laughing in most of the photographs, smiling with a shy kind of amusement in the others. They had all been taken on the same sunny afternoon. He was fooling around for the camera in a garden I didn’t recognise. Probably Gina’s garden. The garden of this house.

And these black-and-white pictures of my son took my breath away. Because the photographer had captured him to perfection.

In the pictures Pat kicked up a glistening sheet of water in a paddling pool, he slid across wet grass, almost exploding with delight, he smashed a plastic football into the garden fence, he rocked with laughter. His eyes, his face, his shy limbs – the photographer hadn’t missed a thing. I was stunned that anyone could catch him so absolutely.

’You take these?’

Gina shook her head. ’Only this one,’ she said.

And she showed me another picture. Clearly taken on the same day, with the same camera, but not by the same photographer. In the picture Pat was standing still, smiling bashfully at the camera. With him was a young woman – exotic, smiling, one arm draped around my son’s bare shoulders. She looked beautiful. And sexy. And nice. All the things that anyone could ever want.

’You never met my friend Kazumi, did you?’ Gina said. ’We shared a flat in Tokyo for a year. She’s in London now. Trying to make it as a photographer. She fell in love with Pat. As you can see.’

And all at once I wanted to meet her. This photographer who looked at my son and saw with total clarity his gentle, laughing spirit. This stranger who saw through the careful, unsmiling mask he had learned to wear. This woman who could see my son with exactly the same eyes as me.

It was suddenly alive in my head, the thought that was the very beginning of betrayal, the most dangerous thought that a married man could ever have.

She is out there. She exists.

I just haven’t met her yet.

eight

I had thought that my lawyer would help me to keep my son. I had assumed he would tell me Gina was planning to break some inviolable law of nature, and that justice wouldn’t allow her to get away with it.

And I was dead wrong.

’But parents have certain rights. Don’t they?’

’Depends what you mean by parent,’ said Nigel Batty. ’There are all kinds of parents, aren’t there? Married parents. Unmarried parents. Adoptive parents, step-parents, foster parents. Define parent, Mr Silver.’

’You know what I mean, Nigel. Love-and-marriage parent. Sperm-and-egg parent. A birds-and-bees parent. A biological parent. The old-fashioned kind.’

’Oh, the old-fashioned kind. That kind of parent.’

Nigel Batty was a small, pugnacious man with a reputation for fighting for the rights of husbands and fathers who were being shafted in the divorce courts.

When I had first met him, when he had acted for me during my divorce from Gina, and our subsequent scrap over where Pat would live, Nigel’s beady eyes had been hidden behind milk-bottle glasses. Laser vision had corrected his myopia and dispensed with the spectacles. But he still squinted out at the world from force of habit, and it made him seem distrustful and wary and hostile, looking for trouble.

I had never really let him off the leash with Gina. He had wanted to make her look like the Whore of Babylon, destroy her in court, and I just didn’t have the heart for it. Whatever had happened between us, Gina didn’t deserve that kind of fight. And neither did my son.

I had thrown in the towel in the fight for custody, believing that it was the best thing for Pat. I had tried to do the decent thing. And now I felt like the biggest sucker of all time.

Batty had his own reasons for being fanatical about the rights of men. In his past there was an international marriage, twin daughters and a messy divorce. I knew that he never saw his daughters. But for some reason I imagined that he could make it all work out differently for me.

’My wife can’t do this, can she? She can’t just take my son to live in another country. I mean – can she?’

’Is the residential parent preventing contact?’

’Speak English, Nigel, will you?’

He sighed.

’If this move takes place, will your ex-wife stop you from seeing your child?’

’It’s the Atlantic Ocean that will stop me seeing my son.’

’But your ex-wife is not intending to deny you access to your child?’

’She’s denying me access by moving to another country.’

’I see.’

’Look – what can we do? How can we stop her? I don’t care what it takes, Nigel. I don’t care what you have to say or do. It’s all fine.’

’I hate to say I told you so. But you were the one who wanted to play by Marquess of Queensberry rules.’

’Bottom line, Nigel – can she just take my boy out of the country?’

’Bottom line? Not without your consent.’

’My consent?’

He nodded. ’If she takes your son out of the country without your consent, then she is doing something very naughty.’ He smiled nastily. ’We call it abduction.’

’She needs my okay?’

’Exactly.’

’But that’s great news! Isn’t it? That’s terrific news, Nigel. And what can she do if I don’t give my consent?’

’She would have to make an application to court for leave to remove the child permanently from jurisdiction.’

’So just by withholding consent, I can’t be sure I’d stop her?’

’If you wanted to deny consent, and she wanted to fight, then the court would decide. That’s what it comes down to. Would it be difficult for you to visit your child if the move went ahead?’

’Well, it’s Connecticut. I can’t nip round on a Sunday afternoon, can I?’

’No, but her side would no doubt argue that there are plenty of cheap flights from London to the East Coast. And you’re in gainful employment, as I recall.’ He glanced at his notes. ’Television producer. Of course. That must be interesting. Anything that I might have seen?’

’I started out on The Marty Mann Show. Now I do Fish on Friday.’

’Ah, excellent. Why do Kilcarney girls close their eyes during sex?’ Little Woody Allen cough. He did it very well. ’Because they hate to see a man enjoying himself. Most amusing.’

Which reminded me that Barry Twist, the show’s cornmissioning editor, had been leaving messages for me to call him all week. The station was suddenly worried about Eamon just as I had other things to worry about. But for the first time it really dawned on me what Marty meant about not keeping all your eggs in one chicken. If Eamon went down, I would go with him.

’If this move to America goes ahead, is your ex-wife denying you reasonable access?’

’How do you mean?’

’Would you ever see your son again?’

’Well, she says I could come over. And see him in the holidays. Or he could come back here. But it’s not the same, is it? It’s not the same as being in London together. It’s not the same as having a life together.’ I shook my head. ’I can feel him… slipping away.’

’I know the feeling.’

’I don’t know how we can explain it to him. Moving to America, I mean.’

’Oh, you can sell a seven-year-old anything. The question is

– why should you? Listen, Mr Silver. We can make her seek permission to take the child out of the country. Convince the court that your child would be at risk in some way if the move goes ahead. Letting it go to court would be time-consuming, traumatic and expensive though. I have to warn you – it would also be unpredictable.’

I made an effort not to look at the photograph of two smiling small girls on his desk. Because I knew that Nigel Batty had fought exactly this same fight and lost.

’What happened to me wouldn’t necessarily happen to you,’ he said, reading my mind. ’Your wife would need to give details of the proposed arrangements for your child. Accommodation, education, health, maintenance, childcare, contact. Then the court would decide if it needed to exercise any of its powers.’

’What are the chances?’

I could hear him breathing in the silence.

’Not good. There’s something called the maternal preference factor. Do you understand that term?’

’No.’

’It means that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the father gets fucked.’

’But that’s not fair.’

’Post-divorce parenting is almost always the prerogative of the mother. The law is meant to care about the welfare of the child. In reality, the law cares about the wishes of the mother. Spot the difference? Not the welfare of the child, but the wishes of the mother. If your ex-wife can convince the court that she has no intention of denying you contact, and that your child’s wellbeing would not suffer because of the change of residence, then she can pretty much take your child where she wants. And if I may get personal for a moment – that is exactly what happened to me.’

He picked up the photograph on his desk, studied it for a moment, and then placed it down again, now facing me. I saw two smiling children, lost forever to their father.

’Then there’s no hope.’

’There’s always hope, Mr Silver. You can withhold consent. We can apply for a contact order. At the very least, that would slow her down. Make her go to the airport the long way round. Who knows? It might even stop her leaving the country.’

’And the order would say that I must be allowed to see my boy? She couldn’t stop me seeing Pat?’

’Well, not exactly. You would have contact as the named person in the contact order.’

The named person. Once I was a father. Now I was a named person.

’We hear a lot about absent fathers in our society, Mr Silver. We don’t hear so much about decent fathers who are denied contact with their children because of the whim of a judge. I have seen men destroyed by losing contact with their children. And I mean quite literally destroyed. Nervous breakdowns. Suicides. Alcoholics. Heart attacks. Blood pressure so high that a stroke was inevitable. Men killed by the loss of their children. Men who had done nothing wrong.’

’But I did.’

’What?’

’I did something wrong. I’m not like those other men. My first marriage. The break-up. It was all my fault.’

’What was your fault?’

’Our divorce. The break-up of our marriage. It was my fault. I slept with someone else.’

My lawyer laughed out loud. ’Mr Silver. Harry. That’s completely irrelevant. You don’t have to be true to your wife. Goodness me, that’s what this country is all about.’ His face became serious again. ’There’s something else you have to consider, Mr Silver, and it’s the most important thing of all.’

’What’s that?’

’You have to ask yourself what happens if you win.’

’That’s all good, isn’t it? That’s nothing but good. If I win, then Pat stays in the country and Gina has no choice. That’s just what we want to happen, isn’t it?’

’Well – how’s your ex-wife going to feel if you stop her moving to America?’

’I guess… she will start to hate me. Really and truly hate my guts.’

Not for the first time, I remembered Gina’s dream of living in Japan that I stole on our wedding day. Now I would be stealing her dream of living in America. I would have denied her two shots at happiness.

’That’s right, Mr Silver. You will be preventing her from living her life where she chooses to live it. And that is highly likely to have some impact on your son. In fact, you can count on it. Frankly, if you stopped her leaving, then she could poison him against you. Make it harder to visit. Make it harder all round. That’s what usually happens.’

’So you think I should give her my consent to take Pat out of the country?’

’I didn’t say that. But you have to understand something about family law, Mr Silver. We don’t get involved. The lawyers, I mean. As long as the parents agree, we leave you to it. If you can’t agree, then we come in. And it can be very hard to get rid of us.’

I thought of what my life would be like with Pat in America. How empty it would feel. And I thought about what my life with Cyd and Peggy would be like with Pat gone. The three of us had had some great times together, and we would do again. I remembered mostly silly things like dancing to Kylie, mucking about with Lucy Doll, and all of those still, quiet moments when we closed the door on the world and didn’t even feel the need to talk. But with Pat in another time zone, there would always be a shadow hanging over even the best of times. I looked forward to watching Peggy grow up. Yet at the same time I wondered how well you could bring up someone else’s kid when you couldn’t even bring up your own. And I thought of my life if Gina and Pat stayed. I could see her loathing me, resenting me for her husband’s stalled career, blaming me for everything that was wrong in her life. I tried to think about what was best for my son – I really did – but I was consumed by the knowledge of how much I was going to miss him.

’Whatever I do, I lose him,’ I said. ’I can’t win, can I? Because if I give my consent or withhold it, the same thing happens. I lose him for a second time.’

Nigel Batty watched me carefully.

’Make the most of your family,’ said Nigel Batty. ’That’s my advice. Not as a lawyer, but as a man. Count your blessings, Mr Silver. Love your family. Not the family you once had. But the family that you have now.’

nine

At the entrance to the supermarket, Peggy and I had our way barred by a fat young mother stooping to shout at a small, grizzling boy of about five.

’And I’m telling you, Ronan, for the last time – bloody no!’

’But I want,’ sobbed Ronan, snot and tears all over his trembling chin. ’But I want, Mum. I want, I want, I want.’

’You can’t have any more, Ronan. You might want but you can’t have, okay? You’ve had enough, all right? You’ll be sick if you have any more today. You can have some more tomorrow, if you’re a good boy and eat up all your dinner.’

’But I want now, Mum, I want right now.’

’You’re not getting any more and that’s final. So shut it, Ronan.’

’Want, want, want!’

’This is what you want, Ronan,’ said the woman, suddenly losing it, and she grabbed Ronan’s arm, spun him around and slapped him hard across the top of his legs. Once, twice, three times. And I realised the woman wasn’t fat at all. She was pregnant.

Ronan was silent for a split second, his eyes widening with shock, and then the real howling began. The pregnant young woman dragged him away, his screams echoing all the way from cooked meats to household goods.

Peggy and I exchanged a knowing look.

She was sitting in the supermarket trolley, facing me, her legs dangling, and I could tell that we were thinking the same thing.

Thank God we are not like that.

The pair of us often felt a bit superior in the supermarket. We looked in mute horror at all those frazzled, frequently pregnant young mums dragging their sobbing brats past another sugar counter, and all those ominously silent, red-faced fathers ready to explode at the first wrong word from their sulking, surly children, and we thought – we are better than that.

I think Peggy thought that it was just a question of good manners. For an eight-year-old child, she had a sense of decorum worthy of Nancy Mitford. These dreadful people clearly didn’t know how to act in a supermarket. Common as muck, most of them. But for me it was about more than correct supermarket etiquette.

When Cyd was working, out catering for a conference in the City or a launch party in the West End, and Peggy and I did the supermarket run alone, I often looked at those real mums and dads shopping with their real sons and daughters, and I thought – what’s to envy?

When you looked at the bickering reality of genuine parents and their genuine children, what was so great about it? In a crowded supermarket near closing time, it was easy to believe that the real thing wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.

Peggy and I had fun. Perhaps it was because going to the supermarket together was still a rare enough event to feel like a minor adventure, although it was happening more and more now that Food Glorious Food was taking off, but we always zipped happily up and down the aisles, Peggy holding our list in her snug trolley chair, laughing appreciatively as I casually disregarded the aisle speed limit. And although to the world we must have looked like just another dad out with his daughter, there was none of the petty squabbling that we saw among many of the real parents and their real children.

We were better than that.

Peggy and I always had a laugh in the supermarket.

At least we did until today.

It was Tony the Tiger’s fault. If Peggy hadn’t had a hopeless three-bowls-a-day addiction to Frosties, then this trip to the supermarket would have been just as painless and uneventful as all the rest.

But Tony the Tiger spoilt everything.

’Bread,’ Peggy said, frowning as she read her mother’s shopping list.

’Got it,’ I said.

’Milk?’

I held up a plastic pint of semi-skinned. ’Da-da!’

Peggy laughed, then scrunched up her eyes. ’To… to-i… er.’

’Toilet rolls. Check! That’s it, Peg. We got the lot. Let’s rock and roll.’

’Just my breakfast then.’ We were in the aisle next to all the cereals. The brightly coloured boxes and leering cartoon characters were all around. ’Frosties. They’re grrreat!’

’Don’t need any, Peg. There’s lots of cereal at home.’

’Not Frosties, Harry. Not Tony the Tiger. They’re grrreat!’

Peggy liked her Frosties. Or perhaps she just liked Tony the Tiger and his catch phrase. But I had seen her have this exact confrontation with her mother a few times before.

Peggy liked Frosties, but Cyd always bought multi-packs of cereal. And the unwritten rule in our house clearly stated that Peggy had to eat the lot – including Coco Pops, Wheaties and the dreaded Special K – before we bought another multi-pack. We couldn’t get another multi-pack just because she had noshed all the Frosties.

When the Frosties controversy had arisen in the past, Cyd simply moved on down the aisle, and the subject was dropped. But with me, Peggy sensed that victory and extra Frosties were in her grasp.

’Mummy said, Harry.’ She reached out and pulled a jumbo pack of Frosties from the shelf. Tony the Tiger grinned at me. He kept grinning even when I took the box from her and put it back on the shelf. ’Oh, Harry. You disappoint me, you really do.’

’No, Peg. Listen, we’ll get some more Frosties when you’ve eaten all the other stuff. I promise, okay?’

A dark cloud passed over her face. ’We will get some now. This very minute. I mean it, Harry. I’m not kidding.”

’No, Peg.’

She started climbing out of the supermarket trolley. She was getting a bit too big to ride in there, and suddenly the trolley lurched to one side and I had to catch her.

’Jesus Christ, Peg, you’ll split your head open.’

’Don’t swear, Harry. It’s very vulgar.’ She pulled a pack of Frosties from the shelf. I took them from her and threw them back. People were starting to stare. The way we stared when Ronan was getting smacked for his whining and his wanting.

’Now stop making a fuss, Peg, and let’s go home.’

I went to pick her up and place her back in the trolley, but she wriggled and shook. ’Don’t touch me, Harry. You’re not my father.’

’What did you say?’

’You heard me, I believe.’

I went to pick her up again but she took two steps backwards and raised her voice.

7 want my mummy. You are not my daddy. Stop acting like you are.’

An old lady with a basket containing two tins of cat food and a packet of Maltesers stopped to investigate.

’Are you all right, dear?’

’She’s fine,’ I said.

’Excuse me,’ said the cat lady. ’I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the little girl.’

’He acts like he’s my daddy but he’s not,’ Peggy said, her eyes suddenly filling with self-pity. ’He’s really not. He’s just pretending.’

’Oh, here we go,’ I said. ’Here come the tears.’

’What an awful man you are,’ said the old girl.

The young pregnant mother and Ronan happened to be passing. Ronan had cheered up considerably. He was just finishing off a bag of California Roll-flavour crisps. ’Are you all right, darling?’ said his mum.

’She’s upset,’ said the old cat lady. ’She wants her mummy.’

’Who’s he when he’s at home?’ said the young mum, indicating me.

’I don’t think he’s anyone,’ said the old girl. ’Are you anyone? Are you her daddy?’

’Well, not exactly.’

’No, he’s certainly not,’ said Peggy, hugging the leg of Ronan’s mum. ’My daddy has a motorbike.’

The old lady smoothed her hair. Ronan stared at me with wary curiosity. Flakes of crisps were all around his mouth. Saving them for later, my mum would have said.

Then suddenly there was a store detective, all brown shirt and shaven head and biceps. ’What’s going on here then?’

’This is ridiculous,’ I said. ’We’re going home now.’

I made to pick up Peggy, but she recoiled as if I was approaching her with a bloodstained chainsaw in my hands.

’Don’t let him touch me!’

’He’ll never get you,’ said the old lady.

’I’d like to see him try it,’ said Ronan’s mum.

’Mum?’ said Ronan, starting to cry. You could see the masticated chunks of crisps in his mouth.

Til sort this out,’ said the store detective.

Then he was in my face, this crop-haired white boy with a sprinkling of acne running down his thick pink neck. His meaty hands pressed lightly against my chest. Over his shoulder I could see the old lady and the young mum with their arms around Peggy, all of them glowering at me.

’I need to have a word with you, sir,’ said the detective, taking my arm. ’In the supervisor’s office. Then we’ll see if the police need to be involved.’

I furiously shook him off. ’The police? This is nuts.’

’Are you this child’s father?’

’I’m her mother’s husband.’

’We’ll see about that.’

’I’m not going anywhere with you. We’re going home right now.’

The thin veil of politeness slipped from his eyes. I got the impression he was glad to let it go.

’You’re coming with me, pal,’ he said, his voice a little lower now but somehow more convincing. ’We can do it nicely or the other way, but you’re coming with me.’

’Crazy,’ I said. ’It’s plain crazy.’

But I let the store detective lead me away, leaving Peggy with her new protectors.

’Mum,’ I heard Ronan say. ’Can I have -’

’No, you fucking well can’t,’ said his mum.

I spent two hours in a little room set aside for shoplifters, the perpetrators of trolley rage and other assorted crazies. Just me and the spotty detective. In the end, they didn’t call the police. They called my wife.

I heard them before I could see them as their footsteps echoed through the warren of storerooms and offices in the bowels of the supermarket. The door opened and there they were, my wife and my stepdaughter, escorted by some sort of white-coated manager.

’Hello, Harry,’ Peggy said. ’What’s this room then?’

’Madam?’ said the man in the white coat. ’Is that him?’

’That’s him,’ Cyd said. ’That’s my husband.’

She didn’t sound too happy about it.

’Try to have a good time,’ Cyd said, as our black cab crawled through the early-evening traffic of the West End. ’I know you’re not in the mood for going out. Not after being arrested.’

’I wasn’t arrested.’

’No?’

’I was only taken in for questioning.’

•oh;

’There’s a difference.’

’Of course. But please try to have a good time. For me.’

’I will,’ I said. Tor you.’

And I meant it. I knew that this was a big night for her.

Cyd was always accompanying me to work-related functions. Start-of-series dinners, end-of-series dinners, award ceremonies galore, and all the other compulsory fun that we had to endure as part of my working life as the producer of Fish on Friday. She never complained.

Unlike Gina, who usually came home from these things in tears of rage after someone had treated her like a moron because she was a homemaker. Unlike Gina, Cyd actually seemed to have a good time at these things. Or at least pretended she did, for my sake.

And tonight it was my turn to stand by Cyd. We were going to a dinner organised by the Caterers Guild. It was the first year that the chief executive of Food Glorious Food had been invited. I was her plus one.

’Are you sure I shouldn’t have put on a tie?’ I said. I was still in the sweatshirt and chinos that I had been apprehended in. ’They’re not all going to be in suits and ties, are they?’

Cyd stared at me doubtfully. She had been so wrapped up in what she was going to wear – in the end she slid into this little black number that showed off those legs that I loved so much, dancer’s legs, legs that could have belonged to Cyd Charisse herself – that she hadn’t taken a lot of notice of me.

’Well, what do you wear at one of your dinners? You know, the ones we have to go to when Fish on Friday comes to the end of a series?’

’You come as you are. You wear what you like. But that’s

TV:

’Oh, you’ll be fine. I was told it’s only an informal thing.’

The do was in a restaurant called Deng’s that I had been to with Eamon and a couple of executives from the station. A great big barn of a place that served Modern Asian – which meant immaculately presented variations of what you would get in the restaurants of Soho and Chinatown, but served under ironic Andy Warhol-style pictures of Deng Xiaoping, and in much smaller portions. The waiters at Deng’s wore beautiful Mao suits from Shanghai Tang. The clientele usually wore the expensive-casual that we sported in my game.

But not tonight.

As our taxi pulled up, my stomach lurched when I saw that tonight the men were all in black tie.

Apart from me, of course.

’Oh, Christ,’ said Cyd. ’I’m so sorry, Harry.’

’Whoops.’

’Do you want to go home?’

Til butch it out.’

’You don’t have to, babe. This is my fault.’

’I want to support you tonight. What’s the worst that can happen?’

’You’ll feel like a complete dickhead?’

’Exactly.’

We went inside. I moved through the black-tie crowd like a nun in a knocking shop, conscious of stares and sniggers, but ignoring them all.

I wasn’t going to let a bunch of chicken satay merchants stop me accompanying my wife on her big night. Sally, Cyd’s assistant, waved like mad from the other side of the room, and started forcing her way over to us. Sally was a kind of relation – Gina’s half-sister, and my former babysitter. She was wearing some kind of elaborate ball gown, silky and strapless, like something Lucy Doll would sport on a big date with Brucie Doll. It was the first time I had ever seen her looking like a grown-up woman. She was very excited, but calmed down when she saw me.

’What’s wrong with Harry?’

’He didn’t know,’ said Cyd.

’Luke Moore wants to meet you,’ Sally said, taking Cyd’s arm.

’Luke Moore? He’s here?’

’And he wants to meet you.’ Sally was babbling now. ’He told me he’s heard lots of good things about Food Glorious Food and might put some business our way.’

’Who’s Luke Moore?’ I said.

’He’s only, like, the biggest thing in the world,’ Sally said. ’He runs Cakehole, Inc.’

’Luke Moore does most of the blue-chip catering in the financial district,’ Cyd said. ’If you put something in your gob in the City, chances are Luke Moore and Cakehole, Inc. did the catering.’

’Come on,’ Sally said, dragging my wife away. I followed close behind.

Luke Moore was a big man. Tall, stocky, builr like a former athlete who was only just starting to pile on the pounds. His hair was a little too long for someone who wasn’t Rod Stewart. About forty, I guessed, but looking good in that tuxedo.

I disliked him immediately.

He was surrounded by chortling sycophants who were hanging on to his every word.

’Apparently scientists have discovered a food that reduces the female sex drive by ninety-nine per cent,’ he said. ’It’s called wedding cake.’

While his flunkies howled with laughter and wiped away their tears of mirth, Luke Moore saw Sally, who was pushing Cyd forward.

And then he saw Cyd. Then he saw my wife.

’You must be the woman behind the best little catering firm in town,’ he said, taking her hand and not letting it go.

’And you must be a smooth-talking devil.’ Cyd smiled.

’It’s true -1 have heard so many good things about your cornpany. We must get together. See if we can’t help each other.’

’Sounds good,’ said Cyd, and I noticed that she wasn’t exactly breaking her arm trying to free her hand from this old rake. ’This is my husband.’

Luke Moore looked at me for the first time. ’I thought he was your janitor.’

The sycophants started splitting their sides. But, as my cheeks burned, my wife stuck up for me.

’Actually my husband is a very important man, Mr Moore. He’s the TV producer, Harry Silver.’

’Of course,’ said Luke Moore, who had clearly never heard of me. ’I am an enormous fan of your work.’

’Right.’

’Marty Mann was really something special when you were working together. Rather sad, what’s happened to him, don’t you think? All these dreary little programmes with low overheads and high impact. Six Pissed Students and all the rest. I’ve nothing against making money. Far from it. But I am so glad you’re working with Eamon Fish now.’

I was impressed. And flattered.

’Eamon Fish,’ said one of the sycophants. ’He’s bloody good.’

’Yes,’ said Luke Moore. ’He has a sort of B-list style about him.’

I smiled, biting my tongue. Why is it the only people who talk about the B-list are people on the C, D and E-lists?

’Plus,’ said Luke Moore, ’junkies always have a certain appeal, don’t they? You always wonder what’s going to happen next.’

’He’s not a junkie,’ I said. ’He’s suffering from exhaustion.’

But Luke Moore had finished with me. He bowed forward slightly, lifted Cyd’s hand and – right there in front of everyone

– gave it a kiss.

I nearly puked.

’I always need good people,’ he said. ’My business needs a woman like you, Cyd. We really must try to do something together.’

Td like that,’ said my wife. Then they exchanged cards, and I knew it wasn’t just trying to be polite.

These two would see each other again.

’Maybe you should get Luke Moore to go to the supermarket with Peggy,’ I said in the cab going home. It had been a rotten evening, and I was drunk and jealous and tired of people looking at me as if I should have used the tradesmen’s entrance. ’Maybe Luke bloody Moore could explain to her why she can’t have Frosties every time she wants them. Maybe Luke Moore could explain to Peggy why her useless bastard father only turns up when he feels like it. Maybe good old Luke Moore -’

’Harry,’ Cyd said, taking my hand. ’Calm down, babe. Luke Moore doesn’t want to marry me. He doesn’t want to care for me and read to Peggy and help us to cook Christmas dinner.’ She stroked my face with all of the old tenderness. ’He just wants to fuck me.’

’Oh,’ I said, starting to sober up.

’Do you know how many times a day a woman sees that look?’

’Once or twice?’

She chuckled. ’Maybe even more. But I’m a married woman. So shut up and kiss me, stupid.’

So I kissed her, feeling stupid, but also feeling grateful, and lucky, and as much in love as I had ever been. There was no way I was going to lose this incredible woman. Not to Luke Moore or anyone else. Not unless I did something crazy.

And why would I ever do a thing like that?

ten

Emblazoned diagonally across the For Sale sign outside Gina’s home – SOLD. When she came to the door, I could see packing crates stretching the length of the hall. It was really happening.

I wanted to do something different with Pat. The usual Sunday trinity of pictures, park and pizza didn’t seem like quite enough. I wanted him to have a great time. I wanted to see his face lit up with joy. I wanted him to remember today.

So we drove down to Somerset House on the Strand. It’s a grand old building but we weren’t going inside. We were here for the fountains.

They gave us coloured umbrellas to cover ourselves and we began racing through the forest of fountains in the courtyard, my son’s face screwed up with delight as the water bounced off his brolly.

Gene Kelly, I thought. Singiri in the Rain. Just singing and dancing in the rain.

The courtyard was crowded when we arrived, but after a while the other children and their parents wandered off for drier, more sedate entertainment. But Pat couldn’t get enough of the mini-fountains that some genius had installed in the courtyard of that beautiful old building. So we stayed at Somerset House all afternoon, running through the water with our umbrellas above our heads. Soaked to the skin, our hearts pumping, and almost bursting with happiness.

Then as it started to get dark, we drove out to my mum’s place and went to the old park. Just the three of us. My mother and my son and me, walking by the lake in the dusk of a November afternoon. The park was empty. Everyone gone. Last year’s leaves underfoot, and that winter smell in the air, fireworks and mist and another year slipping away.

And it reminded me of another day in this same park. The day we took the stabilisers off Bluebell, Pat’s bike.

I remembered my old man, the cancer already growing inside him, although we didn’t know it yet, running behind Bluebell, always losing ground, but saying those three words again and again.

I’ve got you.

I’ve got you.

I’ve got you.

Then, when it was dark, I took Pat home to his mother. I walked him to the door, and knelt in front of him, so that we were the same height.

Kissed him, told him to be a good boy, and squeezed him like I would never let him go.

And the next morning Pat, and his mother, and her new husband, all caught the plane to their new life in another country.

There was still no sign of Eamon.

The warm-up man had come and gone and the studio audience were getting restless. Their mood was darkening by the minute. They were here to have a good time and, as my mum would have put it, would laugh to see a pudding roll. But waiting for the star to show up was starting to feel too much like hard work. The cameramen looked bored. The autocue lady sat behind her monitor and did her knitting. The floor manager pressed his headphones and muttered something to the director up in the gallery. He looked over at me and shrugged.

Til get him,’ I said.

The dressing-room door was locked. I banged on it and called Eamon’s name. No reply. I banged harder this time, called him a little gobshite, and told him to open up. Silence. And then, finally, the patter of classic trainers.

Eamon unlocked the door and as I went inside he sank to his knees and began searching for something under his dressing table. I cursed him, assuming he was looking for a few misplaced grains of cocaine. But it wasn’t that.

’She’s here somewhere,’ he said. ’I know she is – ah!’

He got up, a few grubby scraps of paper in his hand. He began spreading them on his dressing table, and putting them together like a jigsaw puzzle for the under-fives. It was a photograph of a girl. An East Asian woman. Dark. Lovely. Someone I had met.

’Mem,’ he said. ’My beautiful Mem. Oh, how could you be so cruel? I loved you so much, you dirty little bitch.’

I watched him assemble the photograph he had Tom to pieces. It was a Polaroid, one of those pictures taken for lovers at tourist spots. A man and a woman on a summer’s day, squinting into the camera in front of Notre Dame. Eamon and his Mem in Paris.

’What happened, Eamon?’

’She’s married. Turns out she’s fucking married.’

’Mem’s married?’ I remembered Mem pulling off her dress in the table-dancing club where she worked. She didn’t look married. ’But she always seemed so… single.’

’Got a husband and a kid back in Bangkok. A little boy. Pat’s age. Turns out she’s been sending money to them all this time.’

’Jesus.’ I put my arm around him. ’I’m sorry, Eamon.’

’We met up. To talk about getting back together. She seemed keen. Missing me. And I had bought her a ring. An engagement ring from Tiffany. A real one. Isn’t that a laugh? When she went to do whatever it is they do in the toilet, I tried to hide it in her wallet. Thought it would be a surprise. And that’s when I found the picture of her and the husband and the little kid. Bitch. I thought she meant it when she said she wanted to come back to me, Harry. But I was just a fucking cash-point machine.’

We both stared at the destroyed picture he was trying to put back together.

’Do you think if I sellotaped it up it would look okay, Harry? What do you reckon? Or should I try superglue?’

’Listen, Eamon. You have to worry about that later. There’s a few hundred people out there waiting for you to do Fish on Friday.’

’The show? How can I think about the show when Mem’s got a husband and kid?’

’You have to. That’s what it’s all about. Going on when you don’t feel like it. Doing a great show when you’re down. This is the life you chose. You can’t take a night off because your heart got kicked around.’

’Kicked around? It’s been mashed and mangled. The girl I wanted to be my wife can’t marry me because her husband wouldn’t like it. I need a line, Harry. It’s in my coat. I’ve been saving it for an emergency. And here it is. Chop a couple out, would you?’

Now it was my turn to be angry. I took the small packet of cocaine from his coat and flung it in his face.

’Is she the reason you’re falling to pieces? Some girl? She’s got a husband and kid back in Thailand so you reach for the magic dust? Are you nuts? You’re going to throw it all away for one girl?’

’Not one girl – the girl. Don’t you understand anything about love, you miserable bastard, Harry?’

’Plenty, pal. Look, I know Mem’s a lovely-looking woman. But there are plenty more fish in the sea.’

’And all of them so slippery, Harry. ’

He picked up the cocaine and stuffed it in his pocket, followed by the scraps of torn-up photograph. Then he brushed past me, pausing at the dressing-room door.

’Ah, but how could you ever understand, Harry? Sure, you’re a married man. What would you know about romance?’

The Sundays were the worst.

With Pat gone, the day of rest was never-ending.

I wandered around the house feeling lost, unable to recognise my life, while in the kitchen Peggy was helping Cyd to make her special recipe for dumplings.

I could tell that the dumplings were for Food Glorious Food rather than our dinner because there must have been about six hundred of them. They were on silver trays all over the kitchen, these little packets of dough that my wife and her daughter were carefully stuffing with meat, chopped garlic and herbs, getting them ready for grilling.

’Texan dumplings,’ Cyd said.

’Like the cowgirls eat,’ Peggy said.

I stood in the doorway, watching the pair of them working. They were both bare-armed, wearing matching aprons, their black hair pulled back off their lovely faces. They looked as though they were having a great time.

’Lonesome without him, huh?’ Cyd said.

I nodded, and she rubbed my arm. I didn’t have to explain how I felt on Sundays. She loved me enough to understand.

’Need any help?’ I said.

’What – from you?’ Peggy said.

Cyd smiled. ’Sure.’

Peggy showed me what to do.

You had to get a circle of dough, put some meat in the middle, sprinkle on the herbs and garlic, and then fold it shut, pinching the top together so that you got this pattern of indentations.

Surprisingly enough, I was completely crap at it. My overstuffed dumpling fell apart before it could even be placed on one of the silver trays. At first it was highly amusing to all three of us that my dumplings were rubbish. But after a while, as they continued to collapse, the joke wore thin.

’Not like that, Harry,’ Peggy sighed. ’You’re putting too much stuff inside.’

She showed me how to do it with her nimble fingers and soon my technique improved. I could tell that Peggy got a kick out of being the teacher, and for a while we were all working in happy dumpling-making harmony. Then from somewhere, I felt a kind of restlessness.

’You know what?’ I said. ’Maybe I’ll go and see my mum.’

’Why don’t you?’ Cyd said. ’She’d like that.’

’Think you can manage here without me?’

They were both far too kind to answer such a silly question.

I wasn’t the only one who was missing Pat. There was a small boy outside our house. A good-looking, dirty-faced kid whose beat-up old bike was slightly too big for him.

’Where’s Patrick then?’ he said.

’Pat? Pat’s gone. He went last week. To America.’

The boy nodded.

’I knew he was going. But I didn’t know if he was goned yet.’

’Yes, he’s goned. Gone, I mean. Were you at school with him?’

But the kid had gone. Pedalling off on that bike that looked as though it had belonged to an older brother or sister. That small boy, wondering how he was going to fill his day without my son.

Bernie Cooper. Pat’s first best friend.

When I was a boy there were lots of people I could go to visit without warning.

All those friends whose doorsteps I could just turn up on, and know I would receive a warm welcome. Now the friends were all grown, and I was a man, and the only person in the world I could visit unannounced was my mum.

’Harry,’ she said, letting me in. ’Hello, love. I was just about to go out.’

I was dumbfounded.

’On a Sunday? You’re going out on a Sunday?’

Tm going to the Union Hall with your Auntie Ethel. We’re going line dancing.’

’Line dancing? What, that cowboy dancing? But I thought we could watch a bit of telly.’

’Oh, Harry,’ laughed my mum. ’I can watch telly when I’m dead.’

The door bell rang and a seventy-year-old cowgirl came inside. Instead of her usual sensible cardigan, floral skirt and chunky Scholl sandals, Auntie Ethel from next door, who wasn’t really my auntie at all, was wearing a stetson, a fringed, spangly jacket and cowboy boots.

’Hello, Harry love. Coming line dancing with us?’

’You look great, Ethel,’ said my mum. ’Annie get your gun.’

’Granny get your gun, more like,’ said Auntie Ethel, and they both laughed like overflowing drains.

’Ethel’s been before. She’s already a bit of an expert. Aren’t you, Ethel?’

Auntie Ethel smiled modestly. ’I can do the Sleazy Slide, the Hardwood Stomp and the Crazy Legs. I’m still having problems with my Dime A Dance Cha Cha and my Shamrock Shuffle.’ She began to jerk stiffly around the living room, almost colliding with a lime-green pouffe. ’Step forward on left, stomping weight on to it – hitch right knee slightly whilst swinging foot side to side – hitch right knee a little higher.’

’Is that your Dime A Dance Cha Cha, Ethel?’

’No, love, that’s my Shamrock Shuffle. And I’ll tell you what

– it’s doing wonders for my lumbago.’

I looked at Auntie Ethel and then at my mum.

’You’re not going out dressed like that,’ I told her.

But I needn’t have worried. My mum was going to see if she liked it before she bought any of the cowboy kit. I saw them off. And it was only when my mum was waiting for Auntie Ethel to edge her Nissan Micra out of the drive that she turned to me.

’You’ll get him back, love. Don’t worry. We’ll get him back.’

’Will we? I’m not so sure, Mum.’

’Children need their dads.’

’Dads don’t matter the way they used to in your day.’

’Every kid needs both of its parents, love. They do. It takes two to tango.’

I didn’t have the heart to point out to my mum that nobody did the tango any more.

Not even her.

Auntie Ethel beeped her horn and rolled down the window of her Nissan. ’

’Wagons roll,’ she said.

It was after midnight when I got home.

The bed was full. Peggy was sleeping in her mother’s arms, sucking methodically on her thumb, her dark hair plastered to her bulging baby’s forehead, as if she was fighting a fever.

’Bad dream,’ Cyd whispered. ’Something about her dad falling off his motorbike. I’ll make sure she’s off and then take her back to her room.’

’It’s okay. Keep her here.’

’Do you mind, babe?’

’No problem.’

So I kissed my wife and went to sleep on the sofa. And I truly didn’t mind. Peggy needed her mum tonight. And alone on the sofa I didn’t have to worry about Peggy waking up, or Cyd feeling too tired for sex, or if I was taking up too much of the duvet. There was nobody to cuddle downstairs, but also nobody to spoil my sleep.

That’s the thing about sleeping on sofas. You get used to it.

’You need to get some romance back in your life,’ Eamon told me. He pushed some pasta from one side of the plate to the other. He wasn’t eating much these days. ’Some excitement, Harry. Some passion. Nights when you don’t go to sleep because you can’t bear to be apart. You must remember all that. Think back, think hard.’

’You think I should get my wife some flowers?’

He rolled his eyes. ’I think you should get yourself a mistress.’

’I love my wife.’

’So what? Romance is a basic human right. Like food, water and shelter.’

’You don’t mean romance. You mean getting your end away. You’re thinking about your nasty little knob. As usual.’

’Call it what you will, Harry,’ eyeing up one of the waitresses as she took his uneaten food away. ’But if you got a bit on the side, you wouldn’t be harming your marriage. You would be keeping it together.’

’Try explaining that to my wife.’

’Ah, your wife wouldn’t know.’

’But I would. You don’t understand. I don’t want a new •woman. I just want my wife back. The way we were.’

You married men make me laugh,’ Eamon chuckled. ’You complain about a lack of excitement under the old marital duvet. But you don’t have the nerve to go out and look for some. You know exactly what you want, but you don’t have the guts to get it.’

’That’s what being married is all about.’

’What – frustration? Disappointment? Disillusion? Sleeping with someone you don’t fancy? Sounds fucking great, Harry. Sounds terrific. Remind me to stay single.’

’I still fancy Cyd,’ I said, and I meant it.

Sometimes I watched her face when she didn’t know I was looking and I was shocked at how lovely she was, shocked at the emotion she could stir in me without doing a thing.

’And I think she still fancies me. When she remembers to, that is.’

Eamon had a laugh at that.

’What I mean is – a marriage can’t end just because the honeymoon is over,’ I said.

’But the honeymoon is the best bit.’

’Don’t worry about our sex life – it’s fine. When we can work up the energy. It’s just – I don’t know. The spark seems to have gone out. She’s always busy with work. Or she comes home tired. Or the boiler has burst. It never used to be this way.’

’Women change, Harry,’ Eamon said, leaning back, getting expansive. ’What you have to understand is that at different times in her life, a woman is like the world.’

’How’s that?’

Well, from thirteen to eighteen, she’s like Africa – virgin territory. From eighteen to thirty, she’s like Asia – hot and exotic. From thirty to forty-five, she’s like America – fully explored but generous with her resources. From forty-five to fifty-five, she’s like Europe – a bit exhausted, a bit knackered, but still with many places of interest. And from fifty-five onwards, she’s like Australia – everybody knows it’s down there somewhere, but very few will make the effort to find it.’

’You’re going to need some better material than that when you come back.’

’Yeah,’ Eamon said dryly. ’When I come back. Excuse me.’

He went off to the bathroom. We had agreed with the station that Eamon would take a sabbatical for however long it took to pull himself together. I knew he was depressed about taking a break from the show. But the station was demanding that he cleaned up his habit before he went back on air. That’s why we were having this lunch. So I could convince Eamon that he needed professional help.

Eamon came back to the table, his eyes glazed and watery, his skin parchment pale. Not again, I thought. I tapped my nose and he dabbed his linen napkin at a flake of white powder by his nostril.

’Whoops,’ he giggled.

’Listen, there’s a doctor in Harley Street. She treats… exhaustion. The station wants you to see her. I’ll come with you.’

’Oh, great big hairy bollocks. What am I? A kid? I don’t need any help.’

’Listen to me, Eamon. You’ve got an enormous talent and right now you’re in danger of pissing it away.’

’I don’t need help, Harry.’

’If you don’t see this doctor, you will eventually lose your show.’

’I’m fine.’

’You will certainly ruin your health.’

’That’s my business.’

’You will probably get in trouble with the police.’

’Fuck ’em.’

’You will definitely put all your hard-earned money right up your nose and straight down the toilet.’

’I can do what I like with it.’

’And you will also shrink your penis.’

’What?’

’You heard me.’

He stared at me for a moment. ’What’s this doctor’s name then?’

His mobile phone began to vibrate. Not ring, just convulse. He picked it up and started talking, even though phones were not allowed in here. It was his ex-girlfriend. It was Mem. He was immediately on the verge of tears, running agonised fingers through his floppy black hair.

’I’m not harassing you… was it twenty messages? Surely not quite that many? Anyway, I just want to see you, my little lemon-flavoured Popsicle… Why? Just to talk to you, to explain… Mem, we can have it all again… I want to be the only man you lap-dance for… please, baby…”

Two businessmen at the next table stared at him with contempt.

’Who’s the comedian with the mobile?’ one said. ’There are supposed to be no phones in here.’

’Duh,’ said the other, impersonating a dumb mobile phone user. Tm on the train…”

Eamon wheeled on the pair of them.

’It didn’t ring, did it?’ he demanded. ’I’ve got it on vibrating alert and no ring, right? So there’s no fucking difference between me talking into this fucking phone and you two dickheads talking to each other about the financial markets or Tiger Woods or whatever floats your pathetic boats, is there?’

Good point, I thought, indicating that we would like our bill. He should incorporate that into the act, too. But Jesus – he was ready to explode.

And as they threatened to punch our lights out, I thought about what Eamon had said about a woman being like the world. If his theory was correct, then that made my wife America. But after a year and a bit of marriage, she still didn’t feel fully explored.

Sometimes I felt I didn’t know her at all.

I don’t know why I started driving by Gina’s place. I knew there was nobody home. The new people weren’t moving in for a while, and even the dreamy au pair had buggered off back to Bavaria. But I found it – I don’t know – soothing.

Even though it was not my house, and it was no longer Pat’s home, and I had no warm memories of the place. Driving past my son’s old place, thinking of how only last week his things were waiting for him up in his room – his clothes in the wardrobe, some of them too small for him now, his bed, his Phantom Menace duvet cover, the pillow that he slept on – somehow made me feel a little less lonely.

So I circled the house like an old lover, filled with longing, worn down by time.

And that’s when I saw Pat’s bike.

It had been left in their front garden. He was always doing that – parking his bike on the little front lawn after returning from the park and then just forgetting it, or trusting that the entire world was as innocent as him.

The only reason nobody had nicked it already was because it was almost completely hidden behind a scrubby bush. I parked my car, climbed over the token garden wall and picked up the bike. I would take care of it until my son came home. Or maybe they would want me to send it over.

’Is she in?’

I looked up. He was a very thin young man with dyed yellow hair. Asian. One of those fashionable young Japanese men that you sometimes see in the artier parts of London, haunting galleries and specialist record shops. This one looked as though he had been crying. I stared at him over the small garden wall.

’Who are you talking about? Do you mean Gina?’

He looked up at the house. ’Kazumi.’

The name rang no bells. ’Wrong house, mate. Try next door. ’

’No. This is the place she’s staying.’ His English was good. ’I’m sure of it.’ He scanned the street, shaking his head. ’I know this is the place. There she is!’

A young Asian woman was slowly coming down the street n a bicycle. She had that glossy, swinging Japanese hair, but ’t seemed just a shade lighter than normal. She stopped in front of Gina’s house and pushed the hair out of her eyes. I saw her face. Pale, serious, slightly older than I had first thought. Not a girl, but a woman. Maybe around the same age as me.

And she was the most attractive woman I had seen for a long time. Since – well, since I first saw my wife.

She looked at the young man. Not pleased to see him. The hair swung back in front of her strikingly special face. She left it there, a veil between her and the world.

’Kazu-chan,’ he said, and I suddenly thought – of course.

Gina’s friend from Japan.

The one who looked at Pat through her camera and really saw him.

Kazumi.

He spoke to her in soft, urgent Japanese, his head slightly bowed, the dyed blond hair masking his grief.

She shook her head, telling him no, wheeling her bike up the garden path. The young man sat on my ex-wife’s garden wall and began to sob, burying his face in his hands.

She shook her head again, this time with a kind of exasperated disbelief, and struggled with a big set of keys to open the front door. She was having trouble finding the right two. Then she finally opened it up and the burglar alarm began to sound its warning.

Just before she closed the front door, she glanced at me for the first time – standing in the middle of the little lawn, holding my son’s abandoned bike, watching her tap in the code to the alarm.

I caught the expression on her face, saw how she was looking at me.

As if I was just another lovesick madman. was

eleven

A postcard from New York.

On the front, a shot of Central Park with the seasons changing. Silvery skyscrapers peek over a thousand trees of rust, green and gold. Fluffy white clouds in a bright-blue sky.

On the back, a message from my son, each letter meticulously printed.

DEAR DADDY

WE WENT TO THIS PARK. THEY GOT DUCK. I LOVE

YOU. LOVE YOUR SON.

PAT xxx

’Drunk goes into a confession booth in Kilcarney,’ Eamon said. ’The priest goes, ”What do you need, my son?” Drunk goes, ”You got any paper on your side, mate?’”

We were in a waiting room in Harley Street. There were deep sofas, an elderly lady at a small reception desk and real-estate brochures on lacquered tables. Money and ill health filled the air. Eamon’s fingernails were chewed down and bloody.

’You’ll be okay,’ I told him.

’School bus in Kilcarney. There’s this old drunk – swallowing his tongue, singing rebel songs, puking up. Completely out of it. The little kids have to help him off. Then one of them says, ”Fuck, now who’s going to drive?”’

’She’s a really good doctor. She has seen models, musicians, everybody.’

’Man walks into a Kilcarney bar. ”Give me a fucking drink.” Bartender goes, ”First perform three tasks. Knock out the bouncer. Pull a loose tooth out of the guard dog. And give the local whore the shag of her life.” Guy knocks out the bouncer with a sweet left hook. Guy goes into the backroom and soon the guard dog starts barking and yelping. Guy walks back into the bar, doing up his flies. ”Right,” he says. ”Where’s the dog with the loose tooth?’”

’Try to relax.’

’This is bollocks. I don’t need any help. Those bastards at the station.’

’Mr Fish?’ the receptionist said. ’Dr Baggio will see you now.’

Eamon was shaking. I put my arm around him as we stood up. And that’s when the room seemed to blur at the edges. That’s when my legs suddenly felt as if there was no strength in them, and as my vision slipped and smeared, my legs went to nothing and I saw the deep, lush Harley Street carpet rushing towards my face.

When I awoke I was on Dr Baggio’s couch and Eamon was sitting by my side, his face creased with concern. Dr Baggio had wrapped something around my arm.

I realised she was taking my blood pressure.

’Did your father suffer from hypertension?’

My dad’s face swam before my eyes. ’What?’

’Your blood pressure is 195 over 100.’

’Fuck me, Harry,’ said Eamon. ’You’re the sick one, not me.’

’Do you understand what that means?’ asked Dr Baggio. ’It’s very serious. The first number is the systolic pressure – the pressure in the arteries when your blood is pumping – and the second number is the diastolic pressure – when the heart is resting, filling with blood before its next contraction. Your blood pressure is dangerously high. You could have a stroke. Did your father have high blood pressure, Mr Silver?’

I shook my head, trying to take it all in.

Ill

’I don’t know,’ I said. ’He didn’t even tell us when he had lung cancer.’

I knocked on Gina’s door, even though I knew she wasn’t home. And I wondered what I was doing here. I knew it was for something that I couldn’t find at home. But I didn’t know what. Not yet.

Kazumi’s almond-eyed face appeared above the safety latch. She pushed back that torrent of swinging black hair. ’Yes?’

’Is Gina around?’

’Gina is gone.’ I was surprised how little accent her English had. Just a soft burr that sounded almost Scottish. ’Gina not here any more.’

’Ah, of course.’ I looked up and down the street, shaking my head, as if suddenly remembering something. Then I looked back at Kazumi and smiled. Tm Harry.’

’Harry? Not – Gina-san’s Harry?’

Gina-san. Honourable, respected Gina. I hadn’t learned a lot of Japanese in five years of marriage to a Nihon-obsessed wife, but I knew this much.

’That’s me.’

For the first time I saw her smile. It was like some magic light coming on in the world.

’I’ve heard about you. Of course. Gina-san’s former – I mean, Pat’s father, yes?’

’The very same.’

’Sakamoto Kazumi,’ she said. Wherever she learned to speak English with a Scottish accent, she was still Japanese enough to give me her family name first. ’Staying here. Until the new people move in. Keeping eye on the place. And very convenient for me. Very lucky.’

’Kazumi? Did you take those pictures of my son?’

She smiled again. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. ’The very same,’ she said. Funny, too.

’I loved them. I mean it. Incredible. You really caught him.’

’No, no. Just taken quickly in the garden.’Japanese modesty,

Despite the Scottish accent and good English. She nodded briefly, emphatically, a gesture that seemed so Japanese to me. ’He’s a beautiful boy,’ she said, and I knew she wasn’t being polite. She meant it. You could see it in those photographs.

This stranger thought my son was beautiful.

’But you must know that Gina-san is in America with her with Richard. And with Pat-kun.’

Pat-kun. The affectionate honorific touched my heart. Dear, sweet, little Pat, she was saying. My first wife had taught me more than I realised.

’I forgot,’ I said. ’Sometimes I forget things.’

That was a lie, of course. But everything else was true, all that stuff about the brilliance of her photographs. And it was also true that she had a way of making me forget things.

Like where I was meant to be, and who I was meant to call, and the fact that I was married.

Kazumi took me in and gave me tea. She didn’t have to do any of that, but she said she felt like she knew me already.

Kazumi had been Gina’s best friend in Japan. They had shared a tiny flat in Tokyo for a year. Gina was planning to return to Japan, to make the move permanent. And then she met me. Kazumi knew all about that. If she also knew about the reasons we didn’t live happily ever after, and she must have done, she was far too polite to mention it.

’Her boys,’ Kazumi said. ’That’s what she always called you and Pat. Her boys.’

Not any more, I thought. But I felt a rush of gratitude that we could sit in Richard and Gina’s house, sipping green tea, and Kazumi could say out loud that once upon a time I had mattered to her friend.

And she told me her story. Not all of it. But enough for me to know that she had been an interior designer in Japan who had always dreamed of being a photographer. Western photography obsessed her. Weber, Newton, Carrier-Bresson, Avedon, Bailey. For as long as she could remember, that was what she wanted to do with her life, to look at the world and record what she saw. And then something happened in Tokyo – she didn’t say what, but I guessed it had something to do with a man – so she caught a plane to Heathrow, left the old life behind.

It turned out that the Scottish accent came from three years at university in Edinburgh when she was in her late teens and early twenties, not long after sharing noodles, an apartment and a life in Tokyo with Gina for a year.

’Always wanted to study in Edinburgh,’ Kazumi said. ’Ever since I was little children size.’ The perfect English had only tiny fault lines in the language, making it sound impossibly charming. ’Very beautiful. Very ancient.’

Her stay there must have overlapped with the early years of my marriage to Gina, and I expressed surprise that we hadn’t met back then.

’Gina-san was very busy in those days. Very busy with her two boys.’

But I knew it was more than that. In the early part of our relationship, Gina and I thought that we were completely self-sufficient. We honestly believed that we didn’t need anyone else. Not even our oldest and dearest friends. We let everyone drift away. It was only when everything fell apart that we saw how wrong we had been.

’Who was that man, Kazumi? The man in the garden? The one who was crying?’

I knew I was pushing it. But I was curious about this beautiful, self-contained woman who could inspire nervous breakdowns on her garden path.

’Ah. Crying man? That was my husband.’ She thought about it. ’Ex-husband.’

Then she was on her feet. She had told me enough. Too much, perhaps.

’You want to see more photo of Pat? Just had contact sheet develop.’

We went up to Gina’s old study. The house was almost empty now. The only things that were here belonged to Kazumi.

She spread a sheaf of eight by tens out on the floor. She was technically brilliant. Composition, clarity, her choices all seemed sublime to my layman’s eyes. The monochrome images of my son goofing around in the garden perfectly captured the fleeting moments of his childhood. And although the photos were all black and white, they were infused with real warmth. I felt again that she liked my son.

’Why did you leave Tokyo?’

Strangely, I want to know more. I want to know why she is so far from home, a story that I suspect has nothing much to do with Henri Cartier-Bresson or Robert Capa.

’I was like Gina.’

’How’s that?’

’Shufu.’

I had picked up scraps of Japanese over the years. But not enough. I was guessing now.

’A… mother?’

’No, no. That’s oka-san. Shufu means literally Mrs Interior.’

’Mrs Interior?’

’Housewife, they say England. Homemaker, they say America. In Japan – shufu. But Gina wanted to be sbufu. No?’

’Yes, I guess. For a while.’

Until she decided she wanted her life back.

’My husband wants me to be shufu. I don’t want it so much!’

She seemed to find it highly amusing. But I didn’t know if it was the very idea of her being a housewife that tickled her funny bone, or if it was the job description of Mrs Interior. Or perhaps she was just covering her embarrassment.

’And it didn’t work out?’

Obviously it didn’t work out, Harry, you bloody idiot. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here with her husband crying in her front garden and other strange men knocking on her door and lying through their teeth.

But she had told me enough for one day.

’Married,’ she said, and I didn’t immediately realise that she was talking about me now.

She was looking at the thick gold ring wrapped around the third finger of my left hand. ’Married again. Married now. To some other lady. Not Gina-san.’

I looked at my wedding ring, as if noticing it for the first time, as if it had been planted there. I hadn’t contemplated removing it before I came to see Kazumi. It hadn’t even occurred to me.

Because I couldn’t get it off these days. Something had happened to that ring. It got stuck.

’Didn’t work out,’ Kazumi said to herself, as if this was a new phrase that she would quite like to take for a test drive. ’It just didn’t work out.’

Gina sent me a photograph.

And I saw that my son had a new smile.

It was gappy and gummy and pulled at my heart. Two teeth were gone. On the top, right in the middle. The missing teeth gave him a ludicrously jaunty air – he looked like a drunken sailor returning from shore leave, or a raffish prize fighter out on the town.

In the picture he was all dressed up, kitted out for the camera, head to toe in official New York Yankees merchandise. Baseball cap, sweats, and what my mum would call an anorak. All dark blue, all carrying that white Yankees logo. Under that anorak, he was wearing a stripy blue-and-white Yankees shirt that was a few sizes too big.

He looked like a little American. I phoned him immediately, not reading the letter from Gina, not caring what else was in the envelope.

Gina picked up but went to get him immediately.

’What happened to your teeth?’ I asked him.

’They failed out.’

He sounded surprisingly calm.

’Did it hurt?’

’No.’

’You’ll get new ones, Pat. You’ll get grown-up teeth to replace the ones you’ve lost.’

’Meat teeth for my milk teeth. I know. Mummy told me.’

Those two front teeth had been wobbling for ages. For some reason, I had assumed that I would be around when they fell out Now they were gone, and they reminded me of all I was missing.

I realised there was a matchbox in the envelope. It said: II Fornaio – 132a Mulberry Street – between Hester and Grand.

’You having a good time in America?’

’New York is very big. Bigger than London, even. And the taxis, right? They’re yellow, and not black at all. But where we live, they got fields. It’s not the city, where we live.’

’You go to this restaurant with Mummy and Richard? You like II Fornaio, darling?’

’They got pizza. Did you look inside?’

Inside the matchbox were two jagged pearls. My son’s missing front teeth.

’Are these for me? Can I keep them?’

’You can sell ’em to the Tooth Fairy.’

’Maybe I’ll just keep them for myself. Maybe I’ll just keep them. How does that sound?’

’That sounds okay.’

’You okay, darling?’

’I’m very busy.’

’I bet you are.’

’Still unpacking.’

’Is there much left to unpack?’

’I don’t know. I’m only seven.’

’That’s right. I forgot. Well, no more of our Sundays for a while.’

’I know. Connecky – connacky -’

’Connecticut.’

’Yes. Connecticut is too far for you to come. On a Sunday.’

’But we can talk all the time on the phone. And I’ll come out to see you. And you can come back here and stay with me during the holidays. Soon. Very soon.’

’But where will I stay?’

Til find you somewhere good. In my house.’

’What about my stuff? Where will all my stuff go?’

’We’ll make sure there’s room for your stuff. Plenty of room.’

’That’s all right then.’

’America’s going to be great. You’ll love it. Where you’re living, there’s lots of space.’

’I can have a dog. Mummy said. We’re going to get a dog as soon as the unpacking is done and we’re not quite so busy.’

’A dog? That’s great. What are you going to call him?’

’I don’t know yet. Because he might be a girl dog. So it’s different.’

’And Pat?’

’What?’

’Don’t forget me, okay? Don’t forget your old dad who loves you so much.’

’I don’t never forget you.’

Then Gina was on the line, wanting to talk. I didn’t want to ask her how it was going. As long as Pat was all right, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t care. But she wanted to tell me all about it.

’We’re staying with Richard’s family in Connecticut. He’s been catching the train into Manhattan every day, looking for a job in the city.’

’Wait a minute. I thought he had a job to go to. I thought it was all arranged.’

’He did, but he quit.’

’He quit already? You’ve only just got there. How could he have quit already?’

’It wasn’t what he expected. He thought he could walk into something better, but the economy’s rough all over. Not many jobs around for someone like Richard. And accommodation is a nightmare. Do you want to commute for three hours every day? Or walk to work and live in a shoebox? That’s the choice.’

’So it’s not what you expected?’

’Overqualified. That’s what they’re calling Richard. How can somebody be overqualified? How can you be too smart for a job?’

’Beats me. I guess that’s the price of genius. But Pat’s okay?’

’I think he loves it, Harry. Richard’s family make a big fuss of him. Treat him – I don’t know. Like one of their own.’

Decent of them, I thought. But I said nothing.

’Richard’s sister has got a little boy a year younger than Pat. They hit it off. Spent a lot of time together. They’re out in Connecticut too. All of his family.’

’But it’s not what you expected?’

’There’s no Promised Land, is there? I am starting to realise that now.’

’So when are you coming home?’

She sighed. ’This is home now, Harry. Richard’s been offered another job, at Bridle-Worthington.’

’What’s that? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

’They’re brokers, Harry. Bridle-Worthington are brokers on Wall Street.’

’I thought he was overqualified.’

’It’s not exactly what he was looking for. A lot less money. But they’ve offered Richard a job. As I say, not the salary he would have liked, but for now -’

’I thought you either commuted for hours or lived in a shoebox. I thought that’s what you said.’

’Nowhere’s perfect. But Connecticut is beautiful. An hour on the train to New York, maybe a little more. We’re looking at schools in Hartford and New Haven. They are a million times better than what he would be in if we were still in London. London is finished.’

’Not for me, Gina. London’s not finished for me. Look, why are you telling me all this?’

’Because I want you to know it’s not about taking Pat away from you, Harry. It’s about getting a better life. For our family.’

’What about me?’

’You’ve got your own family.’

’Not since you stole my son.’

She was silent for a moment. I could hear her seething, across all those thousands of miles.

’What a relief to be away from you, Harry. How great it will be to have you out of my life. That’s what I’m looking forward to most of all. Making you a stranger.’

Then she was gone.

And in one hand I had the dead phone, and in the other, those two priceless little pearls.

twelve

Some nights we put Peggy to bed and one of us would read to her until she was sleeping and then we would watch TV and make love on the sofa and our little family seemed to be thriving.

Some other nights Peggy stayed over at her dad’s place, and things were never as good. Jim Mason had a new girlfriend, and the woman was clearly making every effort to show how wonderful she was – making space in their relationship for Peggy, lavishing her with attention and presents, acting as if it would be like this forever. It was on these nights when Peggy was absent that Cyd always seemed to work late.

Everything took a little longer when Peggy wasn’t around. The launch parties in the West End, the conferences in the City

– maybe it was just a coincidence, but there were no early nights for Cyd when there was no Peggy to come home to. Yes, maybe it was just coincidence. That’s what I thought. Until I started to recognise his car.

I waited by the window until I saw the Porsche 911 come into view. It was always late by now, the early hours, and the familiar 911 came down our street with the menacing grace of a shark moving through shallow water.

The 911 parked. I could see their shadows. I could watch the silhouettes of my wife and Luke Moore as she sat in his Porsche, just talking. That’s all. Just talking.

But by the time I heard her key in the lock I was in bed, lying very still on my side, eyes closed, my breathing even.

My wife tiptoed into our bedroom and began taking off her clothes as quietly as she could.

Pretending to be coming home late from work, while her husband lay there in the darkness, pretending to be asleep.

There was some old man sitting in my father’s chair.

It made me feel like I had come to the wrong place. None of us ever sat in my dad’s chair – not my mum, not Pat, not me. The old armchair by the fireplace was not the best seat in the house – it faced the TV at an awkward angle, and its soft cushions were sunken with the ages – but it was always my dad’s chair, a suburban throne in his pebble-dash palace, and although he had been dead for two years now, it was still my dad’s chair. So who was this old man?

’Howdy, pardner,’ he said to me.

Howdy, pardner?

What was he going on about?

The old man was practically the exact physical opposite of my father. Where my dad was gleaming, chrome-smooth bald, this geezer had a luxuriant head of silvery hair, elaborately brushed back. Where my father was stocky, thickset and muscular, this character was as wasp-waisted as an elderly gigolo. And at home my old man always wore his Marks & Spencer mufti – carpet slippers, baggy gardening trousers, and cardigans in any colour, as long as it was forgettable. A real suburban dad, despite the horrific war wounds that I knew were hidden under his sensible sweaters.

This impostor was dressed like a cowboy.

A fringed shirt. Pointy-toed, stack-heeled boots. Tight, skinny Levi’s with a big buckled belt. You could almost see the bulge of his ageing meat and two veg. Glen Campbell’s granddad.

’Howdy, pardner,’ he repeated, slowly getting up out of my dad’s chair. Taking his time about it. ’Tex is the name. You must be Harry. Mighty pleased to meet you, stranger. Elizabeth has told me all about you.’

Nanci Griffith was singing ’Lone Star State of Mind’. My mum came into the living room carrying a tray of tea and biscuits, humming to herself.

’I see you’ve met Graham, dear,’ she said.

’Graham? I thought -’

’Tex is my line-dancing name,’ he said, without a trace of shame. ’Graham – I don’t know. It just doesn’t sound right when you’re doing the Walkin’ Wazi, does it?’

’Ooh, you should see Graham – I mean Tex – doing the Walkin’ Wazi,’ my mum chuckled, passing around the ginger nuts. ’He really kicks his old legs in the air.’

A line-dancing friend. So that was it. Perfectly innocent. Nothing suspicious. Two sprightly OAPs having a bit of a boogie in the autumn of their years. Completely natural. But I couldn’t help it. I was still stunned by the presence of Tex.

My mother – who had six brothers, who had no daughters or sisters, who had spent her entire life surrounded by men had always been strictly homosexual in her friendships. Every friend she ever had was a woman. Apart from my dad. He was her best friend of all.

’Met your mother when we were doing the Four-Star Boogie,’ he said, as if reading my mind. ’Gave her a few tips. Her and

– Elsie?’

’Ethel,’ my mum said. ’The Four-Star Boogie.’ She tutted at the memory. ’That’s such a tough one. All that turning.’

’Pivoting,’ Tex gently corrected her. ’The Four-Star Boogie is a four-wall line dance,’ he informed me, as if I gave a toss. ’As opposed to something like the Wild, Wild West, which of course, as you probably know, is only a two-wall line dance.’

’You from round these parts, Tex?’

’Southend. Straight down the A127, take a right at the old Fortune of War.’

’Graham was an insurance salesman,’ my mum said. ’Retired now, of course.’

Tex poured the tea. ’One lump or two?’ he asked me. ’I’m sweet enough already.’

My mum guffawed at this as though it was Noël Coward at his pithy best. When she went back into the kitchen for the milk chocolate digestives, I excused myself to Tex and followed her.

’I thought you went line dancing with Auntie Ethel?’

’Ethel’s dropped out. It’s her arthritis, Harry. All that stomping gives her gyp. Poor old thing.’

’What’s John Wayne doing in our front room? What’s he doing in Dad’s chair?’

’He’s all right, old Graham. Don’t worry about him. He’s harmless. He gives me a lift home in his car. He’s a bit full of himself, I grant you. All the old girls have got a soft spot for him.’

’What about you?’

’Me?’ My mum laughed with genuine amusement. ’Don’t worry, Harry, I’m past all that. When I ask a man in for tea and biscuits, that’s exactly what I mean. All he’s being offered is a custard cream.’

’Does Tex know that?’ I thought of the obscene rise in the old gent’s Levi’s. Although my mum was in her seventies, I could see how she might catch the eye of some randy old git. She was still a lovely-looking woman. ’He’s not going to start reaching for his six-gun, is he?’

I said it with a grin, to pretend that I already knew the answer.

But my mum wasn’t smiling now.

’I had a husband,’ she said. ’That’ll do me for one lifetime.’

’Your mother needs to express her sexuality,’ my wife said. ’She’s still a woman.’

’She’s a little old lady! She should be expressing – I don’t know – her knitting.’

We were getting undressed for bed. Something we had done perhaps one thousand times before. It still excited me to see my wife taking off her clothes. The long limbs, casually revealing themselves. I don’t think she felt quite the same way about watching me put on my stripy pyjamas.

’I think it’s great she’s got a male friend, Harry. You know how much she misses your father. You don’t want her to sleep with the light on for the rest of her life, do you?’

’She was with my old man forever. She’s bound to miss him. And it’s right she misses him.’

’Am I supposed to be faithful to you when you’re dead?’

I snorted. Til be happy if you’re faithful to me when I’m alive.’

She froze inside the T-shirt she was pulling over her head. Then her face appeared, her eyes narrowing. ’What does that mean?’

’Nothing.’

’Come on.’

’You just seem a bit too friendly with that guy.’

’Luke?’

’Is that his name?’

’Jesus Christ, Harry. I’m not interested in Luke. Not that way.’

’You said he wants -’

’I don’t care what he wants. Wanting is not the same as getting. He’s smart enough to see what I’m doing with the company. He knows I can help his business. I think he can help mine. I admire him, okay?’

’You admire a sandwich merchant?’

’He’s a brilliant businessman. He’s worked hard for everything he’s got. I know he’s a bit flash. I know you didn’t like what he said about Eamon. I didn’t like it either, okay? But this is strictly business. Do you honestly believe I would think about him in that way? I don’t go around shagging anything that moves, Harry. I’m not a man. I’m not you.’

’So how does it work? You and old Luke? I’m just curious about your relationship.’

’His company has more work than it can handle. If something comes up and they’re fully stretched, he calls me.’

’No – I mean how does it work with you and him? On that other level. Does he know you’re not interested in him that way? Is he cool about that? Or is still hoping to get his hands on your canapés? Don’t tell me, because I know the answer.’

I knew I should have shut up by now but I couldn’t stop myself. I was afraid that I was losing her. Which was kind of ironic, as I was the one who went knocking on Gina’s door when I knew she wasn’t home.

’Shall I tell you what makes me sad, Harry? You think he’s only interested in me for one thing. Maybe – just maybe – he’s interested in me for two or three reasons. Did that ever cross your mind? Why do you find it so hard to believe that someone could like me for what I can do? Not for what I look like? Why is that so hard?’

Because I am still crazy about you, I thought. Because I can’t imagine any man looking at you and not feeling exactly what I feel. But I said nothing.

’I don’t even want to talk to you.’ She turned on her side, angrily killing the light. I turned on my side, reached for the light.

We lay in the darkness for a while and when she spoke there were no tears in her voice, no anger. Just a kind of bewilderment.

’Harry?’

’What?’

’Why do you find it so hard to believe that you’re loved?’

She had me there.

Kazumi had told me she took a photography class in Soho every morning. After a couple of practice runs, I found that if I timed it just right, I could catch her on the short walk from Gina’s home to the tube station. I couldn’t believe that I was doing this thing. But I did it just the same.

I pulled up to the kerb beside her, sounding my horn, the stalled rush-hour traffic howling with protest behind me. I tried to look surprised.

’Kazumi. I thought it was you. Listen, do you want a lift into town? It’s not out of my way or anything.’

She got in, a little reluctantly, not as pleased to see me as I’d hoped she would be. She was struggling with a large cardboard box with ’Ilfbrd photographic paper’ written on the front. She had a couple of cameras with her. But she didn’t look anything like a tourist.

I asked her how she liked London, what techniques she was studying right now, if she missed Japan. I talked too much, babbling mindlessly, my cheeks burning, too excited to see her. Eventually she managed to get a word in.

’Harry,’ she said.

Not Harry-san? Not honourable, respected Harry? I admit I was a little disappointed.

’You’re married, Harry. With a beautiful wife. A wife you love very much.’ It was all true. She stared out at the paralysed, angry traffic, shaking her head. ’Or am I missing something?’

No, I thought. It’s me. It’s me who’s missing something. And suddenly I knew exactly what it was.

The smell of Cajun cooking.

Cyd was in the kitchen experimenting with red beans, rice and what was probably a catfish when I dumped the pile of glossy brochures on her chopping board.

’What’s that?’

I picked one up at random, showed her the palm trees, blue seas and white sand, like a street trader showing off his wares. ’Barbados, darling.’ I began nicking through the brochures. ’Antigua. St Lucia. The Cayman Islands.’

’Are you crazy? We can’t go to the Caribbean. Not now.’

’Then what about the Maldives? The Red Sea? Koh Samui?’

’I’m not going to Thailand, Harry. I have to work.’

I took her hands in mine. ’Run away with me.’

’Don’t touch me. I smell all fishy.’

’I don’t care. You’re the love of my life. I want to take you to some tropical paradise.’

’What about Peggy?’

’Peg comes too. The Indian Ocean. Florida. Anywhere in the world. For a couple of weeks. For a week. She can snorkel. Get a tan. Ride the banana boats. She’ll love it.’

’I can’t take her out of school.’

’Gina took Pat out of school.’

’I’m not Gina. And we can’t go away for two weeks.’

There were other brochures. Skinny ones, with glittering urban landscapes on the cover instead of sun-drenched beaches.

’Then what about a mini-break? Just for a few days? Prague. Venice. Or Paris – Pat loved Paris.’

’I’m too busy at the moment, Harry. Work’s really taking off. Sally and I can hardly handle it. We’re thinking of taking someone else on.’

’Barcelona? Madrid? Stockholm?’

’Sorry.’

I sighed. ’Do you want to see a movie? Maybe we could get something to eat in Chinatown. Sally can babysit.’

’When did you have in mind? Sundays are good for me.’

So my wife and I took out our diaries and, surrounded by her experimental Cajun cooking, we tried to find a window for romance.