This morning I stood in the shower and, as I started shampooing my hair, I suddenly noticed that I wasn’t crying, and, what’s more, I didn’t feel like crying. And it wasn’t the first time either. I don’t think I’ve cried for over a fortnight. I can’t believe I didn’t notice before. Maybe my body’s run out of tears. You know I’m not one to witter on about my feelings, but after I faced the fact that I didn’t love Scott any more and, worse, that I’d managed to hide it from myself for so long, I felt just appalling. Sick with shame. Every morning, I’d get out of bed and feel like a newborn foal, facing the shock of being alive on unsteady legs. Then I’d stand in the shower and cry. Like clockwork. Turn on shower, wait for it to get hot, step in, reach for soap, start crying. It felt allowed somehow because I was already wet, if that makes any sense, as if my tears were only so much water, washed down the drain as if they had never been. It felt safe in the bathroom, with the radio turned up and the shower on so the kids wouldn’t hear me. And I could tell myself that it was OK, that I was just getting it out of my system so I could be strong and calm for the day ahead. I had to hold myself together for Rosie and Nat. Nervous breakdowns are all very well if you’ve got the time and no-one else depending on you, but if you’re a mum, then it’s really not an option, is it? Besides, it’s not as if I was bottling it all up. Our phone bill will be through the roof this quarter. Cassie deserves a medal. But I’m OK. I survived. I’m still here.
Rosie said Scott had her looking in estate agents’ windows on Sunday. I said, “Is he planning to buy a house then?”
She shook her head.
“Dad says it’s too much money. He’s going to rent a flat. Then I can go and stay. I’m going to have my own room and Dad’s going to paint it whatever colour I like and I’m going to have a huge big pinboard to put up all my drawings and photos.”
It made me feel a bit strange. I don’t know why. It’s good that he’s starting to move on, of course, getting himself a bit more organized, with a proper home. The kids’ll be able to stay over some weekends then. That’ll be nice for them and a bit of a break for me which God knows I could do with. Well, Rosie’s obviously keen to go. Nat might be another matter. It just feels a bit odd. Like it means that he’s really not coming back. I know, I know, Cassie would say I’m being a dog in the manger, not wanting him back but not wanting him to be able to get on and make a new life without me either. That’s not true. It’s just it feels so final somehow.
The first few weeks after he left, Scott looked a bit rough, to be honest. Sort of crumpled; his trousers hadn’t been ironed and he was wearing trainers. But after a while he smartened up and now he always looks neat and tidy when he comes to pick up Rosie. It’s nice to know he’s learned how to use an iron after all these years. Makes me wonder why I got stuck with doing it the whole time when clearly he’s more capable than I thought.
I can’t imagine Rosie staying away from home. She goes to stay the night at friends’ houses sometimes, of course, but this would be different. She’d have her own room permanently, a room that I would never see probably, a whole part of her life that would be nothing to do with me. When Mari split up from Gerry, her first husband, she wanted to stop him seeing the kids because—well, because he was a complete waste of space and had been sleeping with one of Mari’s friends for years. Don’t ever let me get like that. I hope I’d never sink so low as to use the kids against him. Not for his sake, but for theirs. I think they’ve got enough on their plates without us two using them as a battleground, though Rosie seems to be taking things in her stride.
I see her now, the way she is on a Sunday, bounding out the front door to meet Scott coming up the path. She’s just so different around him—compared with the way she used to be. I suppose it’s because she gets him all to herself on a Sunday, and she never had that before. Rosie was always shy when she was little. If I bumped into a neighbour in the street and stopped to chat, she’d hide behind my legs and had to be coaxed even to say hello—and she even seemed shy with Scott, as if she didn’t have a right to make any demands on him. Sometimes she’d stand near his chair, watching him, waiting for him to pay her attention, but she’d never just climb up onto his lap the way Nat did when he was little.
I remember once years ago, Rosie was about three, I think, and she and I were meeting Scott and Nat in a café. It was at the seaside and they’d gone to look at the fishing boats or something and Rosie was tired and it was really a bit far for her to walk. So we were in this sweet tearoom place, then suddenly she looked up and said,
“There’s Nat and Nat’s daddy!”
She’d spotted them through the window. It was a funny thing to say, but sort of awful at the same time.
“He’s
your
daddy too, Rosie,” I said.
“No.” Her voice all serious, speaking to me as if I was silly and had made a mistake. “That’s
Nat’s
daddy.”
But she was right in a way. That’s how it seemed. It wasn’t that Scott didn’t love Rosie. He did. It’s just he really didn’t know how to be with her, how to talk to her, listen to her. Whereas with Nat—sorry, but, well, Scott is
such
a kid, you have to admit—it was just as if they were best friends, boys of the same age playing together.
It’s taken him nearly ten years to realize he’s got this wonderful daughter. And now he’s lost his son. I feel sorry for him, really I do. You’d have to know Scott, really know him, to understand how it must be killing him, eating him up inside. He hides it as well as he can, I know what he’s like, but I don’t know how much longer he can stand it.
I want to tell, I want to tell, and my dad says I can tell first. He’s got a new flat and I’m to have my own room. He said he would decorate mine first, before the kitchen or the living-room or anything, but I said he should paint his room first because I’ve got my room at home as well but he hasn’t got anywhere else at all, and then his face went all sad and I wished I never said it.
Mum is giving Dad some things for the flat from home—sheets and pillows and knives and forks and the plates we don’t use any more and a tablecloth that Mum says is too small and those chairs that she doesn’t like. Dad is really pleased and says it’s going to be the best flat ever. Uncle Harry came round with the big van from work to help Dad pick up the things. He’s not really our uncle at all, we just call him that and it’s good because we’ve only got one uncle and he lives millions of miles away in Canada so we never see him. When they came with the van, Nat stayed in his room and wouldn’t come down even though he likes Uncle Harry, but I looked up when I was outside and Nat was looking out the window from behind the curtain. Nat says that now that Dad’s got a flat that means he’s definitely never coming back, but Nat is only saying that because he is in a bad mood because I told him that there’s only two bedrooms and there’s nowhere for him to stay. He said he didn’t care and he bet it was a totally crappy old flat and he didn’t want to go anyhow, but he is just jealous. Dad told me that the very next thing he was going to buy was a sofa-bed so Nat could come and stay too if he liked, but I never told Nat because he was being a pig. And anyway, it’s not the same as having your own room.
When Dad first went away, Mum said it was because they were getting on badly and needed to have some time away from each other. But Nat said he left because he went off with another woman. I asked Nat if that meant Dad was going to have a baby with her and Nat said I was stupid and that people are always doing it, not just when they want a baby, didn’t I know anything? I did know. I was just asking, that’s all. Miss Collins says we should never be afraid to ask if we want to know something. But in any case, when I went to the flat with Dad, there wasn’t anyone else there and I think if Dad had a girlfriend he wouldn’t need a flat in any case because he could sleep over at her house and also he would be better at doing the shopping and I would not have to tell him what to get and which is the right sort of spaghetti and the best tomato ketchup, so I think Nat is wrong, but when I try to tell him, he won’t listen and says I’m just a baby and no wonder I don’t know anything. But I do.
Dad said that when he’s done my room, I can have my friends round. I’m going to have a sleepover with Kira and Josie and maybe Florence and Nicola as well, and we can have a midnight feast with popcorn and chocolate raisins and Hula Hoops. You put them on your fingers like rings, then eat them off one at a time.
Now when Dad comes to pick me up on Sunday, Mum is nice to him and sometimes she smiles and says thank you when he gives her the envelope. Nat says it is money and he told Mum she ought not to take it but should throw it back in Dad’s face. Mum said we couldn’t possibly live on what she earns and Nat was being a silly, ignorant little boy. Then she said she was really sorry and asked him to sit down so she could explain it properly to him, but he said he had to go to swimming practice or he’d be late. Nat has started asking if he can wash the neighbours’ cars for money because he says he is saving up and also he wants to buy talk time for his mobile because it’s hardly ever worked since he had it because he never has any money and Mum says she can’t be paying out for anything that isn’t essential. Nat says that it is essential and that if you haven’t got a mobile then you’re nobody, and I said: “But I haven’t got one” and he said: “Exactly. See what I mean?”
He’s a pig. Maybe I will get one for my birthday. I asked Mum and she said the whole thing is just getting completely out of hand and what was the world coming to when children thought they couldn’t survive without having a mobile phone and I said they’d been banned at school and if teacher sees you with one, she’ll confiscate it till the end of the day and Mum said I’m not surprised, good for her. I asked Dad if I could have one for my birthday and he said we’d have to see, and also I told him that my pocket money has to go up because I’ll be double figures. I’ll be 10. Josie’s 10 already, but Kira won’t be 10 for ages and she is very cross that we’ll both be double figures and she won’t.
Dah-dah
—sound of trumpets, please. One good thing has happened. Yes, to me, Scott, Magnet for All Things Crap. I found a flat, somewhere not too far from home so it’d be easy for the kids to come visit. Renting turned out to be bloody pricey, especially via an agent, they’re total leeches these people, they really are. Fortunately, Harry said he knew somebody who knew somebody who had a cousin etc., etc., and this guy was up for letting me have it dirt cheap for six months on condition that I decorate it and he’d stump up for the paint and wallpaper. And, given that I couldn’t afford anything else anyway, I said yes.
It’s a two-bedroomed one, so I can do up a room for Rosie, however she wants, maybe with a stencil of ponies cantering all the way round, and a purple quilt. That’s her favourite colour, purple. Sorry, mauve. Have to watch the money though. If Gail would pull her finger out and earn a bit more, everything’d be easier. She’s got some front, come to think of it, calling me irresponsible. Look who’s worked his arse off all these years to support us. Don’t suppose there’s any danger of her going full-time at the doctor’s surgery, that’d help out. I hope she’s nicer to the patients than she is to me. Just imagine some crumbly comes limping in and Madam says “You’re two minutes late. Dr Whatsit will feel ever so let down.” For now, we agreed that I’d give her X quid a week—and no, I’m not saying how much but it’s a buggery sight more than that Child Support Agency would have made me fork out so don’t go trying to hang that one over my head. Not that I begrudge it. I’d never see Nat and Rosie go short. Nor would Gail, to be fair.
Once, when Rosie was just a tot, Gail wasn’t working then and my paypacket wasn’t much to write home about, we’d seen this toy trike. A little yellow seat it had, and blue wheels. Well-made, too. So we started saving so’s we could get it for her for Christmas and then my car went and died on me and that had to come first and bang went most of our Christmas money. Then, it’s the week before Christmas and Gail tells me to shut my eyes and she drags me into our garden shed. And I’m thinking “Oh, hello, is this my lucky day?” and I’m starting to feel a bit frisky and reaching out my hands to give her a fondle when she tells me to open my eyes and I do and there it is, the trike. And I’m thrilled to bits—as much as if I’m still a kid myself and it’s for me. It made me feel all funny inside, like a pain almost and I couldn’t even say anything for a bit.
Gail just squeezed my arm and we stood there, as proud as if we’d just delivered a new baby. Turned out she’d taken on doing some bloke up the road’s washing and ironing. That’s what she said. Later I found out she’d sold her gold bracelet, too—the one she wore all the time—to her sister Mari who’d been trying to get it off her for years. Soft as a steamed puddin’ that woman is, when she wants to be. Yeah.
I was sorry to leave Dave and Fiona’s, though. They made me a farewell dinner and booked me to come back and decorate the last two rooms. For real, live money. But now I’ll really be all on my own. I feel like I’ve left home. Course, when I first left home, when I was seventeen, it was different. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I lived in this total dive with my mate Roger and his girlfriend of the time. Now it sounds like I was a bit of a spare prick at a wedding, but it was OK. I’d done casual work before then, but this was when I got my first regular paypacket, so I had money in my pocket and I was away from home, away from
him
—and that was all that mattered.
The flat’s no palace, I’ll grant you, so don’t go thinking I’m having an easy time of it here. It’s definitely on the wrong side of grotty, but it should scrub up well enough, and it’s not as if I’m short of evenings with not a lot to do, you know. At least it’s got a cooker and a fridge. I can’t afford much in the way of furniture yet. Rosie and me looked at futons because they’re cheap and could double up as a settee, but I’m sorry—could they make them a bit more uncomfortable, do you think? What are they made of—granite? I reckon you’d get more kip clinging to the window ledge. I feel like I’m missing something when it comes to futons, like there’s a big futon conspiracy that no-one’s let me in on. I know they’re cheap but what else have they got going for them? They’re all scuttling about down on the floor so you fall over them or stub your toe on the base. And they look like some great wodge of raw pastry when they’re lugged back into a sofa-bed.