You're the One That I Want(5)

Obviously, we didn’t know any of that information when it first happened, we just heard bits of gossip from my nan and aunts as time went by. They weren’t meant to tell us, of course, but it slipped out occasionally. Little nuggets of information that I managed to piece together.

You know, he didn’t even leave a note to inform us that he’d left. We only knew because most of his stuff had disappeared. He’d done it when I was at school and Mum was at work. What a coward of a man.

When Mum collected me from school that afternoon I asked if Robert could come over for dinner (Maddy was busy doing something, I can’t remember what), and not knowing the void that was waiting for us at home, she happily said yes, as usual. Robert was always welcome.

We knew that something was wrong as soon as we walked through the front door. It felt colder, or as though something was missing. The same feeling that might be aroused if you were to come home and find you’d been burgled. It was unsettling and different.

Mum sighed. That was her reaction to the whole thing, to sigh as if she knew it was coming. Knew that the waste of space she called a husband would desert us in such a loveless manner after thirteen years of marriage.

‘Boys, do you want to play out in the garden while I put dinner on?’ she asked, managing to keep her voice strong and steady.

‘Should I get changed out of my school stuff?’ I asked. I was never allowed to play in my uniform, usually my t-shirt was in the wash as soon as I’d taken it off – Mum ran a tight ship.

‘No, you’re all right, love.’

She wanted to stop me from going upstairs in case Dad’s getaway was apparent – wardrobes left open with no clothes in, empty hangers splayed across the room carelessly as he made his quick escape. She’d wanted to save me from that hurt, that embarrassment.

I knew, of course. They always say kids have a sixth sense about those sorts of things, and I certainly did.

I nodded and shuffled outside with Robert. Silently, we went down to the bottom of the garden, away from the house, and climbed up into my treehouse. Dad had assembled it as a present on my previous birthday, the last one he was ever around for. It was a four-foot-by-four-foot square of timber, completed with a flat roof and small window looking back at our home – Mum had offered to put curtains in it at one point, but I thought that would take away the boy-ness of it all. Hanging from the roof, through a hole in its base and to the ground below, was a thick, knotted blue rope – perfect for me to scramble in and out of my new den. Dad had told me I was big enough at nine years old to have my own bit of space – although Mum was always fretting about my safety, unable to cope with her little boy being capable of climbing up and down freely with confidence.

While we sat up there on that bleak afternoon, I turned and looked at Robert. I noticed that he was anxiously pulling his bottom lip through his teeth and it dawned on me that he knew too.

‘I think my dad’s gone,’ I said quietly. It felt odd to say it out loud. Hearing the words come from my mouth forced me to see the truth of the matter, allowing the sadness to creep in and grip firmly around my heart. I felt so … disappointed.

‘Yeah …’ Robert said, looking at me with concern.

We sat in silence for a while, side by side, looking up at my family home. Until that moment it had always been a place of safety, but it quickly and violently became a place of uncertainty. Of course, we’d all heard about parents getting divorced; I wasn’t the first one in my year it had happened to. One girl in our class hadn’t even met her dad, he’d buggered off before she was born, so, yes, we knew about it, and we feared it. Every time there was a squabble at the kitchen table or a disagreement in the car about bad directions, we’d feel the worry tiptoe in. For me, in that moment, the nightmare had turned into a reality. Millions of questions floated around my brain as I wondered why he’d left, if I’d done something wrong to upset him, if we’d have to move house and leave Peaswood, if I’d ever see him again and whether he still loved me.

I thought about that morning with my dad, the last time I ever saw him, and searched it for clues – a task I repeated over the years whenever he made an unwelcome appearance in my thoughts. I wondered whether he had done anything to suggest he was anxious about the big decision he was about to make, whether he showed me any more affection than normal or if he seemed sorry to leave me. As far as I could tell there was nothing. No looks or strange utterings to decipher. Just the normal morning routine – breakfast while he read the newspaper, then off he went to work.