I told her.
‘I like you because you’re strong but you’re not hard. I like it that you don’t take crap from men, but you still left your country for a man because you thought he was the one for you.’
‘Biggest mistake of my life.’
‘Maybe. But I like it that you’re so romantic from watching all those MGM musicals as a little girl.’
She laughed, shaking her head.
‘You see right through men, but you still want to find a man to share your life with,’ I said.
‘Says who?’
‘And I like the way your entire face lights up when you smile. I like your eyes. I like your legs. I like the way you know how to talk to a four-year-old kid. I like the way you were there when I needed someone. Everyone else just stood and stared. You were kind. And you didn’t have to be kind.’
‘Anything else?’
‘You’re beautiful.’
‘I’m not beautiful at all.’
‘You’re beautiful and brave and I’m jealous of every man who ever went out with you. Now and again I walk in front of the place where you work in the hope of bumping into you.’
‘You miss your wife,’ she said. ‘You really miss her.’
‘That’s true,’ I conceded. ‘But it’s also true that you blow me away.’
‘Boy,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘But you still don’t know me.’
She didn’t say it the way she had said it before. Now she said it gently, kindly, as if it weren’t my fault that I didn’t know her.
And she moved towards me as she said it, looking at me with those eyes for a moment before they closed as she placed her mouth upon mine.
I kissed her back. ‘I know you a little bit,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said, giving me that. ‘You know me a little bit.’
Pat started school.
The uniform he had to wear should have made him look grown up. The grey V-necked sweater, the white shirt and yellow tie should have made him look like a little man. But they didn’t.
The formality of his school clothes only underlined the shocking newness of him. Approaching his fifth birthday, he wasn’t even young yet. He was still brand new. Even though he was dressed more grown-up than me.
As I helped him get ready for his first day at school, I was startled to realise just how much I loved his face. When he was a baby I couldn’t tell if he was really beautiful, or if that was just my parental software kicking in. But now I could see the truth.
With those light blue eyes, his long yellow hair and the way his slow, shy smile could spread right across his impossibly smooth face, he really was a beautiful boy.
And now I had to let my beautiful boy go out into the world. At least until 3.30. For both of us, it felt like a lifetime.
He wasn’t smiling now. At breakfast he was pale and silent in his pastiche of adult’s clothing, struggling to stop his chin trembling and his bottom lip sticking out, while over the Coco Pops I kept up a running commentary about the best days of your life.
The Coco Pops were interrupted by a call from Gina. I knew it must have been difficult for her to phone – the working day was still going strong where she was – but I also knew that she wouldn’t miss Pat’s big day. I watched him talking to his mother, uncomfortable in his shirt and tie, a baby suddenly forced to impersonate a man.
Then it was time to go.
As we drove closer to the school I was seized by a moment of panic. There were children everywhere, swarms of them all in exactly the same clothes as Pat, all heading in the same direction as us. I could lose him in here. I could lose him forever.
We pulled up some way from the school gates. There were cars double-parked and treble-parked everywhere. Tiny girls with Leonardo DiCaprio lunch boxes scrambled out of off-road vehicles the size of Panzer tanks. Bigger boys with Arsenal and Manchester United kitbags climbed out of old bangers. The noise from this three-foot-high tribe was unbelievable.
I took Pat’s clammy hand and we joined the throng. I could see a collection of small, bewildered new kids and their nervous parents milling about in the playground. We were just going through the gates to join them when I noticed the lace on one of Pat’s brand new black leather shoes was undone.
‘Let me get your lace for you, Pat,’ I said, kneeling down to tie it, realising that this was the first day in his life he had ever been out of trainers.
Two bigger boys rolled past, arm in arm. They leered at us. Pat smiled at them shyly.
‘He can’t even do his shoes up,’ one of them snorted.
‘No,’ Pat said, ‘but I can tell the time.’
They collapsed in guffaws of laughter, holding each other up for support, and reeled away repeating what Pat had said with disbelief.
‘But I can tell the time, can’t I?’ Pat said, thinking they doubted his word, his eyes blinking furiously as he seriously considered bursting into tears.
‘You can tell the time brilliantly,’ I said, unable to really believe that I was actually going to turn my son loose among all the cynicism and spite of the lousy modern world. We went into the playground.
A lot of the children starting school had both parents with them. But I wasn’t the only lone parent. I wasn’t even the only man.
There was another solo father, maybe ten years older than me, a shagged out business type accompanying a composed little girl with a rucksack bearing the grinning mugs of some boy band I had never heard of. We exchanged a quick look and then he avoided my eyes, as if what I had might be catching. I suppose his wife could have been at work. I suppose she could have been anywhere.
The kindly headmistress came and led us into the assembly hall. She gave us a brief, breezy pep talk and then the children were all assigned to their individual classrooms.
Pat got Miss Waterhouse, and with a handful of other parents and new kids we were marched off to her class by one of the trusted older children who were acting as guides. Our guide was a boy of around eight years old. Pat stared up at him, dumbstruck with admiration.
In Miss Waterhouse’s class a flock of five-year-olds were sitting cross-legged on the floor, patiently waiting for a story from their teacher, a young woman with the hysterical good humour of a game-show host.
‘Welcome, everyone!’ Miss Waterhouse
