My throat dries. “Never say yes to you training on a Sunday afternoon?”
They both nod, and it smacks me right in the gut. I could retch my fucking French fries all over the fucking table.
“That’s what you want, is it? You want to go training?”
Thomas shrugs, but Matthew is still too young to understand etiquette. He nods so innocently, and I really do think I’m going to vomit up my fucking dinner.
“We won’t go,” Thomas says. “We see you on a Sunday afternoon.”
But they want to. I can see it all over them.
I wrap up my burger and clear my throat. “If you want to go training with Terry on a Sunday afternoon, you should go.”
Their eyes widen.
“But that’s your day…” Thomas tells me, like I’m not perfectly fucking aware of that.
Forcing a smile is so fucking hard. “We’ll make other time,” I say, even though I know it’s probably a fucking lie. “Maybe Saturdays, or holidays. Maybe even weeknights when the evenings get longer again.”
Matthew punches the air. He hollers out a YES that gets the family to our right turning their heads, and I know it’s signed and sealed already.
“What about you?” Thomas asks, and I have to pretend I’m choking on a gherkin.
“I’ll be around,” I say. “I’m your dad, right?”
They nod.
That’s right, I’m their fucking dad. Even if they have a new one now. Even if Terry steals my Sundays, and takes them out of the school I chose for them, and gives them another cool sibling to add to their dinner table.
Even if it doesn’t fucking feel like I’m their dad.
Even if it never feels like it again.
I still am.
I still am their fucking dad.
“Drink up,” I say. “We’ll take Brutus for a walk.”
They drink up.
My fingers are shaking as I pick up my uneaten burger for the dog. My throat is scratchy as I dump the empty wrappers in the bin on the way out.
I park up at the meadow a couple of streets down from Claire’s, and Brutus piles out happily, wagging his tail as Thomas clips on his leash.
We walk in silence, lapping that meadow three times before I can bring myself to speak.
“Tell me about school,” I say. “What do you want to do?”
Thomas looks up at me, and I keep my expression as neutral as I can.
“You can tell me,” I say.
So he does.
My boy tells me how he hates the school I picked for him. How he hates the other kids, and thinks the teachers are stuck up and boring.
He tells me how he feels sick to his stomach every time he has to go there.
How the other boys call him a common little freak because he likes football now and not rugby.
He tells me how they call him a little gay boy because he doesn’t scrum like he used to.
I’m sure there’s no blood left in my face as I land a hand on his shoulder and ask him why the hell he didn’t tell me this before.
And now it’s Thomas who has the trembling lip, wiping tears away on the back of his sleeve before they have chance to spill.
“Because… because I didn’t want…”
“Didn’t want what?”
It breaks my heart when his face crumples, and in some deep part of me I’m relieved to find I still have one.
“I didn’t want you to be ashamed of me.”
And now Matthew is crying too. My two boys stand and cry in front of me and I feel nothing but a cunt.
It’s so easy to pull them into my arms, so easy to breathe into their hair so they don’t see I’m right on the fucking edge myself.
“I’ll never be ashamed of you,” I tell them. “Not ever. No matter what. Do you understand me?”
I have to pull away long enough to check their faces.
“Boys, do you understand me?”
They nod.
I can’t believe I’m saying this. I can’t believe I have to say this.
Most of all I can’t believe Claire is going to get her fucking way, but that doesn’t matter now.
Only the boys matter.
“I’ll let the school know in the morning,” I say. “You can switch over next term.”
I have to pull over into a layby off the A3 to vomit on the way home.
Melissa
Dean and I have finished up half a bottle of wine before I’m brave enough to broach the subject.
He shifts in his seat as I turn to face him, knowing full well I’m about to rope him into something shady.
“No,” he says, just like that. “Whatever it is, no.”
“You don’t even…”
He shakes his head. “It involves Henley, right? Some crazy plan? Another crazy plan?”
“Well, maybe… but it’s not…”