the looks and the brawn; that between them they were a winning team, ‘both on and off the pitch of life’. The story is a long one and not without humour.
Apple pie and anecdotes. His regular safe life. Nick knows he won’t ask his question.
They go back to the television and Arsenal win 3-1. His mother stands, points the remote and the room falls silent.
‘You can’t turn it off now, Dora. We need to hear the summary.’ His father’s voice is high-pitched, like a child’s. ‘Give me the remote.’
‘Nick doesn’t live here now, Harry. We should be enjoying his company. I’m bringing in the coffee and we can play cards for a while. Nick has his own home to go to.’
When his mum leaves the room, Nick picks up the remote, turns on the TV, reduces the volume and places it in his dad’s bony hand, then crouches at the cupboard to find the cards. But his eye catches the framed photographs of him and Patrick in chubby-cheeked school poses, fifteen years apart. They are always there on the pale wooden top, a fixture he rarely notices, but when he does he feels wistful, the whiff of loss still there from when Patrick left home.
Returning with drinks on a tray, his mum tuts at the almost muted TV screen.
‘Tell you what,’ he says quickly, wanting to avoid the inevitable squabble. ‘Instead of playing cards, let’s look at some old photographs. Have you any of Rhyl? Remember when some drunk bloke came into our hotel room one night and wouldn’t accept it wasn’t his room?’
He sits next to his dad on the two-seater sofa and his mum kneels at their feet, sorting through photographs from an old shoebox, each packet carefully labelled in her neat handwriting. She selects one marked ‘Rhyl’ and hands it to him.
‘You were only three, love. Can you really remember the man in the hotel room?’
‘Family lore.’ He smiles, flicking through the snaps. ‘I feel as though I can remember, but the story has been told so many times, who knows? By Patrick, particularly, he likes that one.’ He holds up a photograph. ‘I remember this beach. Playing cricket and rounders. Did we go with the cousins?’
He gazes at the snap. It’s of him and Patrick on a damp sandy beach, standing next to a large sandcastle, the wind blowing their fair hair in their eyes. Then another of them between their parents with the same backdrop of the pale choppy sea. His father’s hair is still brown and his mother looks young and pretty, yet he remembers a whole childhood of people assuming Dora and Harry were his grandparents.
‘Whole childhood? Really? They’re not that old,’ Lisa laughed when he told her. It was probably no more than a handful of times, but each one had hurt because he saw the slapped look on his lovely mum’s face.
His father swaps his glasses and takes the picture. ‘What about when you fell from the landing? You must remember that. Climbing over the bannister when no one was looking—’
‘Oh, don’t, Harry. It makes me feel queasy, even now.’ She puts her hand to her chest. ‘Only three or four. You cracked your poor little head open and it bled terribly. You had to have stitches. It was a miracle it wasn’t any worse.’
More family lore. Nick puts a hand to his hair, his fingers finding the small scar. ‘No, I don’t remember, though Patrick’s version about me trying to be Superman makes me laugh.’ He glances at his mum’s wretched face. ‘How about school days?’ he asks, changing the subject. ‘Do you still have the sports day photographs?’
That makes her smile. ‘As if I’d throw them out, love. It’s a shame Lisa isn’t here to see your skinny legs.’ She selects the top photograph from the wallet labelled ‘St Mark’s’ and passes it to Nick. ‘There we go. You were twelve then. Do you remember, we called you the A Team? You, Daniel Maloney and William Taylor. You won the relays every year.’
‘Hundred, two hundred and four hundred,’ his dad says, taking off his glasses and placing the snap close to his eyes. ‘I could relax for the relay, but the individual races … There’d always be trouble. Sulking and the like when one of you boys had to win. And that was just the fathers!’
His dad tells the story with a fond smile. Nick has heard it many times before, but each time there’s the slightest embellishment. All the fathers would watch their offspring and shout, bets would be laid. Alex Taylor would spend his winnings buying a round at the pub and Jed Maloney would give it to Dan.
He feeds his dad the line: ‘And what about you, Dad?’
‘I invested it wisely.’
It’s what he always says, but today there’s a pathos about him. His father’s working days are over; his status as a respected bank manager long gone.
‘Oh, and here is one of you, Daniel, William and Jennifer O’Donnell. Look at her pretty dimples!’ Dora smiles. ‘We called her the honorary boy. Thick as thieves, the four of you.’
Nick twists his wedding ring, still tight on his finger. ‘And probably still are.’
His mind flits to the blip, surprised his mum hasn’t mentioned it. But then again, despite her small frame and soft face, she’s quite stoical and surprisingly tough. ‘There’s no point crying over spilt milk,’ she always says when things go awry, ‘You can’t change the past, you just have to get on with it.’ When she’d advised him to move on and pretend it hadn’t happened, she’d obviously meant it.
He feels his dad’s interest drift back to the television. His mum rolls her eyes and offers the mints, followed by a selection of photographs of him as a blonde-haired plump toddler.
‘Cute,’ he says. ‘Lisa would like to see these. How about photos of Patrick when he was that age? Did we look similar?’
His mum holds out her hand for support and then stands up slowly. ‘This knee gets stiff if I kneel down too long. Arthritic, I expect.’ She picks up the framed photograph of Patrick wearing his pale blue National Health spectacles and leaning to one side. ‘There’s this and his other school portraits. But we don’t have many others. It was slides in those days. Negatives in little cardboard frames. I don’t know what happened to them. You’d look at them through a projector, wouldn’t you, Harry? Derek had one and we’d go round and have a film night. A shame really. Patrick had beautiful curly white hair.’
His father snorts, but doesn’t turn from the television. ‘Aye, Derek’s film nights. Those were the days.’
Nick eventually leaves feeling soulful. Even his mum who’s so fit seemed to be ageing today. He knows it’s pathetic for a man of thirty-four, but he wants his parents to live forever; severance or not, he fears the trauma of their death. He can’t imagine what it was like for Lisa to lose her mum. Though three years ago now, he feels her grief at the surface whenever mothers are mentioned.
He says goodbye to his parents, stands under the outdoor light and listens to the scrape of the keys and the chain before moving away listlessly. Then he sits in his car for a few moments, thinking. He doesn’t want to go home to Lisa empty-handed so looks at his watch. It’s quarter to ten, not too late, surely, to visit his godparents? And if it is, he’ll make his excuses and leave.
It is too late, for Iris at least. She has already gone for ‘a bath and to bed’ when Nick arrives in their lantern-lit driveway. But at the stained-glass bungalow door, Derek insists Nick comes out of the ‘bloody cold’ and
