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,
