Starting Over (23 page)

I could feel the wet grass of my parents’ lawn on my bare feet as I walked out to the swimming pool, the boy padding by my side, holding the leaf net above his head like a flag.

When we approached the water I touched his shoulder and he stopped, looking up at me, waiting. I smiled down at him, thinking that I was going to have to get a fence put up around the pool.

We looked up at the sound of laughter coming from the house. At the garden table, my dad and my daughter were sitting across from each other with a chessboard between them. Over the last year Ruby had decided that the game was good for the old man, and now she leaned back grinning, her hands across her belly while my father stroked his face and pondered his next move.

The boy and I approached the pool, our bare feet leaving puddles on the concrete that skirted it. Alfie stared solemnly at the thin film of leaves that covered the water. Winter was coming on hard now, and I knew that there would be a month of Sundays like today. That gave me a good feeling,
and I knew that the boy felt it too. Of all the things he helped me with, skimming leaves was his favourite job.

We set to work, the boy holding the net out across the water while I stood by his side, adjusting his grip and posture, like an instructor helping a golfer with his swing, sometimes murmuring instructions and encouragement, sometimes getting him to take a step back from the water, but mostly saying nothing, and just letting him get on with it.

He had the hang of it now.

Alfie edged around the pool, carefully depositing small mounds of wet leaves behind him on the concrete. When he had completed one circuit we gathered the leaves in our arms and carried them to the end of the garden. There was a pile of dead wood and fallen leaves back there and I told the boy we would burn it all later, when it was dry. He nodded as if he understood, but I knew he wished we were doing it now. I touched his hair and laughed, and we turned to rejoin the others.

My son was coming out of the house, with his own son in his arms. The baby was crying. He had his first teeth coming through and his parents had been up all night with him. As we got closer, the crying subsided from an unbroken howl to a few breathless sobs, and my mother and Nancy came out of the kitchen, carrying trays. Ruby carefully picked up the chessboard, trying not to disturb the pieces, and moved it to one side. My father was smiling to himself. She hadn’t beaten him yet.

They were laying the table. Something smelled good.

‘Look,’ said the boy. In the grass he had found a long thin stick, charred black at one end. He handed it to me.

‘You know what that is, Alfie?’ I said, examining the piece of wood. He shook his head. ‘That’s from a rocket,’ I said.

His eyes were wide.

‘A real one?’ he said. ‘Not a real one?’

I nodded, giving him back his stick. ‘A real rocket,’ I told him.

I looked up and Lara was there, standing in the doorway, a scarf tied around her head. She looked vaguely South American. But apart from that, she was unchanged.

I glanced down at the child, making sure he wasn’t going to do anything dangerous with the stick, like poke his eye out or something, and when I looked back up she was still there.

Smiling at me. Waiting for me.

‘Ready, steady,’ I said, and Alfie laughed and threw aside his stick from the firework and we began to race each other across the lawn.

As we reached the rest of our family, settling themselves at the table, they all looked up at us. The baby had stopped crying.

‘Look, Dad,’ my son said to me. ‘I made him smile.’

‘A touching novel…full of quiet tenderness and written from the heart’ 

Independent

‘Memorable and poignant – nobody squeezes more genuine emotion from a scene than Tony Parsons’

Spectator

‘His stories show all too well how we muddle along in search of love and fulfilment, and when we fluff it…sometimes that’s just because it’s easier’

Observer

‘Parsons poses some interesting questions about love and life in the modern world, proving once again that he’s a writer with his finger firmly on the pulse’

Glamour

‘Bursting at the seams with romantic dilemmas, sex and second wives, this is another triumph for Parsons’

Heat

‘Tony Parsons is the master of the bittersweet love story’

Red

‘Because he so successfully links personal with public, and people with place in a way he hasn’t quite done before, Parsons has created a much bigger and more compelling book…a major achievement’

Mirror

‘His evocation of modern China – “a medieval country with broadband” – is vivid and unsparing’

The Times

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper
An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8JB

www.harper collins.co.uk

A paperback original 2009

FIRST EDITION

Copyright © Tony Parsons 2009

Tony Parsons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Extract from
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert Pirsig, published by The Bodley Head/Vintage Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-36490-9

Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at
www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com