by Rachel Marks
‘Nice to meet you, Mimi. I’m Noah. It’s impossible to shorten. I’d end up being No or Er. Neither is particularly desirable.’
She humours me with a smile, but I’m well aware I’m talking crap. ‘I get the feeling I might be seeing you again, Noah.’
I try to put my arms through the sleeves of my coat, clumsily missing one of the holes, the alcohol impairing my spatial awareness. ‘Only if your luck’s in.’
She laughs, a deep, hearty laugh that mocks me, as I stumble out into the cold, dark night, still not wanting to go back to my flat, but with nowhere else to go. I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone, going to my recent calls and pressing on Kate’s name. I only let it ring for a second before ending the call. As I’m walking, I check my phone every minute or so, just in case I miss it vibrating in my pocket. But she doesn’t call back. She never does any more. For the first couple of months after we split up, she would. Sometimes she’d leave it half an hour or so, but she’d always call back in the end. And then one day she stopped. And that’s when I started to wonder if she was serious this time – if perhaps it really was over for good.
CHAPTER THREE
‘Let them down again and this arrangement’s finished,’ Kate says once the boys are deep enough into my flat that they can’t hear us.
Kate and I are standing at my door, her passing me bag after bag full of stuff she thinks the boys will need. The truth is most of it will stay in the bag, but Kate likes to be super-prepared and I’m not sure she really trusts me to cover the basics on my own. Despite the fact the boys have everything they need here, she still puts in things like toothpaste, pyjamas, a hairbrush (OK, I might not have one of those). Sometimes she even includes pieces of fruit in snack boxes, as if she’s worried the boys will get scurvy from spending a weekend with me.
‘I won’t let them down again. I’m really sorry, Kate.’ I try to secure eye contact, but her eyes flit back and forth, not wanting to connect with me. Her shoulder-length blonde hair is straight and neat, how she always has it these days. If she’s wearing any make-up it’s not obvious, but then she doesn’t need to. Her face seems to have its own inbuilt luminosity and her large blue eyes stand out of their own accord.
‘You’re lucky Jerry had planned us a weekend away or the boys wouldn’t be here.’
‘So I’m just glorified childcare, am I?’ I joke.
‘Seriously? You’re going to play that card? Are you sure? Because I can still change my mind and take them with us.’
‘No, I’m sorry. Thank you for letting me have them.’
I know I messed up. I know I deserve her animosity, but I still hate the sound of my voice, thank you for letting me have them, like I’m borrowing one of her belongings.
‘Don’t be late tomorrow. Six o’clock.’
‘Of course.’
‘Do you need me to write it down somewhere?’
No, I’m not a total idiot.
‘I’ll be there at six o’clock on the dot, I promise.’
‘Right. Good.’ Kate’s face looks like it’s on the verge of softening and I wish that I still had access to that Kate, my Kate, the Kate who held me while I wept until my throat was raw when my mum died. I see glimpses of her occasionally, but it seems to be becoming more and more rare. But then that’s probably because I keep screwing up. ‘Take care of them.’
‘Of course I will. And have a lovely weekend away.’
‘Thanks.’ Kate looks almost embarrassed, her eyes dropping to her shoes, and I get the sense that behind the veneer of anger there’s a whole world of hurt she’s trying to keep at bay.
She turns to leave but I reach for her hand, gently guiding her back to face me. ‘I really am sorry.’
‘I know you are, Noah. That’s the saddest thing about it.’
She gives me a downbeat smile then pulls her hand away and heads back towards Jerry, who is waiting for her in the car.
So far, we’ve had ice cream with Smarties on top for breakfast, two hours destroying monsters on the PlayStation, sweated our way around soft play (where I narrowly avoided a fight with a tween who insisted on running up the slide we were trying to come down) and now it’s Happy Meals at McDonald’s.
‘Mummy said you love Jerry. Is that true?’ I put on my best nonchalant voice, like I couldn’t care less if it was true or not, despite the fact the state of my mental health rests entirely on their answer.
I wish I had the maturity to deal with this whole ‘another man living with my kids roughly eighty-six per cent of the time and me getting only a measly fourteen’ thing, but it’s like I’m Benjamin Button – emotionally I’m getting younger each day.
‘Yeah, he’s really fun. We play Nerf guns and we have to shoot the target. He’s really good. He always gets it in the middle,’ Finn says, chuckling at the memory.
I try to disguise the hurt on my face, but I clearly fail because Gabe says, ‘But he’s not as fun as you, Daddy. We love you more.’
I should feel proud of my eldest son – already, at eight, an accomplished mediator – but I hate that it’s a skill Kate and I have forced him to acquire. And despite the touching sentiment, I find little comfort in Gabe’s words. I don’t want them to love me more. I want them to love me only.
‘Well, of course he’s not as fun as me. I bet he doesn’t let you have ice cream for breakfast and I’m certain he doesn’t have gherkin sunglasses.’
I close my eyes and stick two slices of the circular pickled vegetable to my eyelids. They attach for a moment, then slip down my cheeks, landing with a plop on the table. The boys giggle, but they look a little nervous, like they’re not sure if their dad has officially lost the plot. If it was a date, it’d feel like I was trying too hard.
‘Soft play was good, wasn’t it? We had such a great time, didn’t we, boys?’
Gabriel nods, his mouth full of chicken nugget, but Finn is too engrossed in the plastic Minion from his Happy Meal to grace me with a response, jumping it across the back of the seat.
Scraping the remains of the ketchup out of the sachet with his final chip, Gabe stares over my shoulder and I know a tricky question is looming. I can always tell when one’s coming: there’s a certain look to his eyes, a particular crease of his forehead.
‘Daddy?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do you think Mummy will stay with Jerry forever now? Will they get married and have a baby?’
‘No, of course not. Well, no, I don’t think so.’ I’m suddenly not sure what the right answer is, what he wants me to say. I know what I hope the answer is. I know she’s living with him, but they’re not right for each other. He’s, well, he’s Jerry – dull and strait-laced, whereas Kate is fun and sparky. He’s your typical rebound candidate – safe, secure – but there’s no way he’s enough for Kate for the rest of her life.
‘Do you want Mummy and Jerry to get married?’
Gabriel rips open the plastic bag containing his Minion, turns it over in his hand and then passes it to Finn, who greets it with a gigantic smile. ‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’
‘Have you asked Mummy if she’s going to marry Jerry?’
He nods. ‘She said she doesn’t know. It depends if Jerry asks her.’
Due to the panicky feeling in my stomach, my voice comes out several octaves higher than normal. ‘What does she mean by that? That she’d say yes if he asked her?’
Gabe shrugs in a how-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-know-you’re-the-adult gesture that makes me realize I need to try harder to put on my responsible-parent hat and reassure him.
‘Well, I think it’s a bit soon for all that. But one thing’s for certain, I’ll always be your dad and I’ll always be here for you.’
Listening to myself, I still can’t believe I’m having to say things like this. The divorce only came through a couple of months ago, the handwritten brown envelope unceremonious in its arrival on the doormat. I used the paperwork as a beer mat, purposely, finding a comforting satisfaction in the
appearance of the circular stain cutting through our signatures. I thought that maybe making it official would bring some closure, help me to move on, but it just made me feel even more intensely that my life was over.
I try to gain eye contact with my eldest son but he seems to be focused on something beyond me.
‘Can we have a McFlurry, Daddy?’ Finn blurts out, bashing his two Minions against each other in an epic battle.
‘Yeah, yeah, please, Daddy,’ Gabe joins in, suddenly distracted from his previous thoughts, a tag-teamed attempt to tap into my immense absent-parent guilt.
‘Why not?’
Finn throws his arms around my neck, knocking me off balance. ‘Thanks, Daddy. I love you.’
Weekend Dad strikes again.
*
On Sunday, a slight dent in my Super Dad performance: we have a visit from the cousins. Finn doesn’t mind, but Gabriel’s reached an age where he’s much less willing to accommodate Little Miss Perfect and her equally flawless younger sister. I’m totally with him. Unfortunately, they’re miniature replicas of their mother – definitely not something the world needs, and my brother’s fault for procreating with The Worst Woman in History. OK, there are worse women in the whole of history, like Rose West or Myra Hindley, but she’s definitely up there. Nothing good was ever going to come out of my brother and Claudia having sex. But I gave him his fair share of warnings. I tried my best to get him to explore his options before committing, suggesting nights out with a few of the women from work, little things like that, but he remained irritatingly loyal and Miss Claudia Lechlade became Mrs Claudia Carlton, destined to ruin every future family gathering.
‘Do you think maybe they should be seeing someone about their anger? The school nurse or something?’ The disgust slips from Claudia’s eyes, down her sharp nose and lands on Gabriel and Finn, who are engaged in a particularly violent altercation about a certain Lego figure.
‘They’re boys. You wouldn’t get it.’ I glance over at Lucy and Rosie, carefully colouring fairies and princesses in the books Claudia brought with her, never venturing outside the lines, passing each other the colours with a genteel grace I have never witnessed between my sons.
‘They’re boys, Noah. Not alien creatures. I understand brothers play-fight a bit, but look at them.’
It doesn’t look good, I’ll admit. Gabe now has a handful of Finn’s blond curly hair grasped tightly between his fingers and Finn is kicking him in the stomach with a force likely to rupture internal organs.
‘Come on, boys. Break it up.’ I pull Gabriel off his brother, a clump of Finn’s hair travelling with him, accompanied by piercing screams from my younger son.
I deposit Gabriel on the sofa next to his cousins (they cower, holding on to each other and moving as far away as possible, as if I’ve just thrown an unexploded bomb on to the leather beside them) and pick up Finn in my arms. He clings on to me like a limpet, rests his head on my shoulder and channels his screams directly into my earhole. Gabe crosses his arms, clearly feeling unfairly wronged.
‘We used to fight like that, didn’t we, Ben?’ I say, punching my brother playfully on the arm, hoping to encourage some kind of sibling loyalty but knowing that, inevitably, he will disappoint.
‘Well, we’d have a bit of a ruckus, yeah, but not quite like that.’ I sometimes wonder exactly which day Ben lost his ability to think for himself. Was it the day he mistakenly took brainwashing for love, or was it a more gradual process, slowly squashed out of him by the force of Claudia’s thumb?
‘Perhaps my fists to the head were so powerful you’ve just forgotten.’ I laugh.
Ben allows himself a half-smile and Claudia looks over at us with a cross-teacher frown.
‘Well, I’m going to go and make everyone a drink. The girls are thirsty.’ She says it in a way that implies I’m negatively affecting her children’s health, like they’re dehydrated puppies wilting in the boot of a car on a swelteringly hot day. ‘Do you want anything, Noah? Something that doesn’t require fermentation, perhaps?’
‘Oh, no thanks, Claudia. I can only stomach yeast-based drinks. I’m on a reverse gluten-free diet.’
Claudia gives me a look that could curdle milk. ‘Come on, you lot. Let’s go into the kitchen and see if we can find something to eat and drink amongst the microwave meals for one.’
She lifts my supposedly starving child from my arms and the other children follow her into the kitchen in a line like she’s the Pied Piper.
I jab Ben with my elbow. ‘Jokes aside, want me to grab you a beer?’
He looks at his watch. ‘Better not.’
I laugh. ‘Alcoholic beverages must not be consumed before seven thirteen p.m. precisely.’
‘Fuck off, Noah.’ It’s more weary than aggressive, Ben lowering himself on to the sofa and kicking off his Timberland boots.
‘I’m going to grab one for me. I’ll be back.’
I stalk into the kitchen and open the fridge, Claudia’s eyes like a CCTV camera catching an illicit steal, then take the beer back into the lounge and sit on the sofa next to my brother.
‘So, how’s the exciting world of computer analysis?’
‘Surprisingly interesting and well paid. How’s wiping the bums of four-year-olds? Still changing the world one child at a time?’
‘Of course.’ I tilt my beer towards Ben.
There was a time when Ben and I were inseparable. Two years his junior, I’d follow him around like an infatuated groupie. Everything he did, I wanted to do better. Everything he had, I wanted it too. I’d always end up sleeping in his bed and when I’d lie in, he’d lie opposite me, his face so close it was touching, willing me to wake up so we could start the day’s adventures – building dens, re-enacting Power Rangers episodes, creating elaborate traps for Mum and Dad involving large balls of string.
At secondary school, we inhabited different circles. He was sciencey. I attempted to adopt an artistic persona although I wasn’t very good at art. Whilst he was solving algebra equations, I was writing poems about love and loss. But, although we skirted around each other at school, at home we were still close. As things with Mum got worse, and Dad didn’t seem to be around all that much, Ben distanced himself from the family a bit, staying at friends’ a lot. But when he was there, we’d spend a lot of time in each other’s rooms chatting and beating the crap out of each other on the console. We were always each other’s safety net.
When we both left home for university, him first, choosing the studious Exeter, and me, two years later, on a mission to embrace my inner socialist in Manchester, months would pass when we wouldn’t see each other, but we spent a lot of time on Facebook Messenger. He was still the person I would choose to confide in. Then when Mum died, we made this silent pact to meet up once a week, without fail. Neither of us ever missed it (except for the summer holiday after Kate left when I only surfaced from my bedroom to eat, shit and get more alcohol). But lately, the excuses have started popping up, on his side not mine – mismatched schedules with Claudia, a persistent cold – and we tend to only catch up when we get the kids together.
‘And how are things with my favourite sister-in-law?’
Ben shrugs. ‘It’s a marriage, Noah. Ups and downs. We’re currently in an “ up ”, so it’s good. The girls are going through a nice stage. We’re enjoying our time as a family. They’ve just learnt to use their bikes without stabilizers so we’re spending a lot of time cycling in the Forest of Dean. Not quite as rock and roll as your life, I know.’
I raise my eyebrows in a what-can-I-say gesture, whilst wondering how walking around with a permanent hangover and a barely functioning heart is very rock and roll.
‘So are you seeing anyone yet? For more than a night, I mean.’
I take a large gulp of my beer and shake my head, then start rolling off a very well-practised spiel. ‘I’m not sure why I ever thought having a relationship was a good idea. I mean, no offence, but it’s just not worth the hassle. I get sex on tap
and no one telling me what to do. If I want to have a beer for breakfast, I can. If I want to have a weekend away to Ayia Napa, all I have to do is throw a few clothes in a case and go.’
Ben nods slowly. ‘I guess you did miss out on all that, getting together with Kate so young. So have you had any weekends away to Ayia Napa, then?’
‘Well, no, not yet. I was talking hypothetically. I mean all my options are open. I’m as free as a bird and it feels amazing.’
Ben looks reassured by my answer and I realize I must be getting good at playing the part if even my own brother can’t see that I’m lying.
‘Good. I’m happy for you, bro. I was worried about you for a while back there.’
He’s referring to a number of events that occurred in the first year after Kate left. In fact, there are too many to list, but key highlights include turning up at Ben’s house at four a.m. in only my boxers because I’d fallen asleep on a park bench and someone had thought it hilarious to remove my clothes and run off with them, and a frantic phone call from Kate begging him to come and get me when I’d turned up at Jerry’s house when they first moved in together and drunkenly threatened him with a knife (it was a plastic picnic knife, I was clearly never going to hurt him with it. I was just making a point – what point I’m still not quite sure).
‘No need to worry about me. It’s you with the old ball and chain I worry about. Can’t be good for your blood pressure.’
‘Married men live longer, don’t they? We’ve got to have some perks, I guess, what with all the entrapment and constrictions.’ Ben smiles. ‘And how’s Kate? Still with Jerry?’
‘Yeah, I’m not sure she’s that happy with him, you know, but I guess it’s easy to become dependent on the security of it all, now that they’re living together and everything,’ I say, not sure who I’m trying to fool, myself or Ben.
‘I guess so. And the boys? They’re doing OK?’
‘Yes, despite Claudia’s fears for their humanity, they’re doing great. They miss me, of course, but that’s to be expected.’
