‘You ok?’ Linda asks early one morning. ‘Crazy dark circles under your eyes.’
‘Can’t sleep.’ I push myself to sitting, arranging the lumpy pillow behind my back.
‘Is it my snoring? Maybe you should ask to be moved, or I could?’
Funny how Linda’s snoring has become a strange nocturnal companion, a welcome distraction from my own chasing, circling thoughts.
‘Fuck, no. Don’t think I could do this without you.’
Linda responds so well to any kind of compliment that I can see how easy it must be for Mark to manipulate her. Her cheeks flush and a broad smile reveals her yellow teeth and wide gaps between them. It’s endearing in a way that a toddler’s gummy mouth is. A longing so powerful to hold my boy floods me and I close my eyes to stop the tears.
‘What’s going on?’
I lie back on the pillow, spent. There’s the crack, directly above my head. It doesn’t seem to be offering any out, any portal to another world.
‘Tommy,’ I manage. ‘I’m going to see my little boy on Sunday. It’s been so long I’m scared he won’t recognise me, that he’ll make strange. Scared of hearing him talk about Herbie. I’ve no idea what’s happened to Herbie.’
‘You’ve never spoken about him before.’ Her voice is shaky and small. ‘He another boy?’
‘Our dog.’
‘Fuck’s sake, you had me worried there for a moment.’
I’m not even going to bother trying to explain how much like a second son, or big brother to Tommy, he is.
Linda rolls on to her back and the two of us lie there, staring at the dirty smudges and a bad paint job at the corners of the ceiling, before she says quietly, ‘I had a little girl taken away from me.’
‘Jesus… Linda…’
She holds her hand up to silence me.
‘How old was she?’
‘Three. Never told anyone that before,’ she says, before she gets up to go into the bathroom and turns on the shower, the sound of the water running almost, but not quite, loud enough to drown out the sound of her choking back sobs.
20
My stomach’s loud and cranky, like my thoughts, and my ankles are chafed in my shitty Converse. I’ve been circling the grounds for the past two hours, having skipped rosary, and lunch. He won’t come. He wouldn’t even bother calling. Why expect anything else? One of the nuggets I’ve taken from the meetings is this idea of lowering expectations – life rarely gives you what you want, and anyway, lemonade is for pussies. A leaf falls from the sky and lands on me. Wake up, dummy! I take it and put it in my pocket. And then I see them.
My voice rips out of me, any attempt at presenting a respectable front gone. ‘Tommy!’ – wild and desperate. All heads turn in my direction as I crash past my father, pushing Lara – what’s she doing here? – aside to get to my boy. I lift him high in the air, expecting to hear squeals of excitement.
‘Spinnies?’ I say, catching him under the arms.
‘Careful with the boy.’ My father’s voice slaps me.
Tommy’s face is scrunched up, eyes squeezed shut, and not in the ecstatic way I remember. I place him gently on the ground and stoop to kiss his forehead. He flinches. Lara is staring at me.
‘Come, now. It’s all a bit much for the lad. Why don’t we get a nice Fanta or sweeties in the shop over here?’
What the hell does she know about what’s too much for my son? How does my father allow this blatant intrusion?
‘Dad.’ I look directly at him. ‘I’d like some time alone with Tommy.’
‘Son? Lara and I will be just over here.’ He points to the shop. ‘Tell your mummy when you’ve had enough, ok?’
This false posturing antagonises every jangling nerve ending, wires dangerously crossed, likely to flip that switch. I rest my eyes on Tommy’s form, so small and angular, constrained in his skin, as if he’s holding something inside that’s too big, as if his bones might crack from the weight of carrying it. I drink him in, smelling his sweet marmalade scent, disguised with somebody else’s brand of washing powder. He’s so quiet, not the lively little man I remember. Are my memories of him filtered through the lens of the red-rimmed, melancholic boozer’s eyes?
He nods at his grandad, sombre little fellow, then looks off into the distance.
‘Not too long, now. Don’t want to tire the boy out.’
My mouth fills with every obscenity I’ve ever uttered and some I’ve never given shape to before, but some functioning part of my brain intercedes before the explosion. I have to force down all that hot, bubbling bile.