‘France, you mean. France is not as far as you think, darling.’
‘It is, though. You’re wrong. France is as far as I think. Maybe even further.’
‘No, it’s not. France – well, Paris – is just three hours in the train from London.’ ‘What train?’
‘A special train. A very fast train that runs from London to Paris. The Eurostar. It does the journey in just three hours. It goes through a tunnel under the sea.’
My son pulled a doubtful face. ‘Under the sea?’
‘That’s right.’
‘No, I don’t think so. Bernie Cooper went to French in the summer.’ Bernie Cooper – always addressed by his full name – was Pat’s best friend. The first best friend of his life. The best friend he would remember forever. Pat always quoted Bernie with all the fervour of a Red Guard citing the thoughts of Chairman Mao at the height of the Cultural Revolution. ‘Bernie Cooper went to the seaside in French. France. They got a Jumbo. So you can’t get a train to France. Bernie Cooper said.’
‘Bernie and his family must have gone to the south of France. Paris is a lot closer. I promise you, darling. You can get there from London in three hours. We’ll go there one day. You and me. Paris is a beautiful city.’
‘When will we go?’
‘When you’re a big boy.’
He looked at me shrewdly. ‘But I’m a big boy now.’
And I thought to myself – that’s right. You’re a big boy now. That baby I held in my arms has gone and I will never get him back.
I glanced at my watch. It was still early. They were still serving McBreakfasts in here.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let me help you with your coat. We’re going. Don’t forget your football and your mittens.’
He looked out the window at the rain-lashed streets of north London.
‘Are we going to the park?’
‘We’re going to Paris.’
We could make it. I had worked it out. You don’t think I would just rush off to Paris with him, do you? No, we could do it. Not comfortably, but just about. Three hours to Paris on Eurostar, an afternoon wandering around the sights, and then – whoosh – back home for bedtime. Pat’s bedtime not mine.
Nobody would know we had gone to Paris – that is, his mother would not know – until we were safely back in London. All we needed were our passports.
Luck was with us. At my place, Cyd and Peggy were not around. At Pat’s place, the only sign of life was Uli, the dreamy German au pair. So I didn’t have to explain to my wife why I needed my passport for a kickabout on Primrose Hill and I didn’t have to explain to my ex-wife why I needed Pat’s passport to play Sega Rally in Funland.
It was a quick run down to Waterloo and soon Pat had his face pressed against the glass as the Eurostar pulled out of the station, his breath making mist on the glass.
He looked at me slyly.
‘We’re having an adventure, aren’t we? This is an adventure, isn’t it?’
‘A big adventure.’
‘What a laugh,’ smiled my son.
Three little words, and I will never forget them. And when he said those three little words, it was worth it. Whatever happened next, it was all worth it. Paris for the day. Just the two of us.
What a laugh.
My son lived in one of those new kind of families. What do they call them?
A blended family.
As though people can be endlessly mixed and matched. Ground up and seamless. A blended family. Just like coffee beans. But it’s not so easy with men and women and children.
They only lived a mile or so away from us, but there were things about their life together that were forever hidden from me.
I could guess at what happened between Gina and our son – I could see her still, washing his hair, reading him Where the Wild Things Are, placing a bowl of green pasta before him, hugging him so fiercely that you couldn’t tell where she ended and where he began.
But I had no real idea what went on between Richard and Pat, this man in his middle thirties who I didn’t know at all, and this seven-year-old child whose skin, whose voice, whose face were more familiar to me than my own.
Did Richard kiss my son good night? I didn’t ask. Because I really didn’t know what would hurt me more. The warmth, the closeness, the caring that a good-night kiss would indicate. Or the cold distance implicit in the absence of a kiss.
Richard was not a bad guy. Even I could see that. My ex-wife wouldn’t be married to him if he was any kind of child-hater. I knew, even in my bleakest moments, that there were worse step-parents than Richard. Not that anyone says step-parent any more. Too loaded with meaning.
Pat and I had both learned to call Richard a partner –as though he were involved in an exciting business venture with the mother of my son, or possibly a game of bridge.
The thing that drove me nuts about Richard, that had me raising my voice on the phone to my ex-wife – something I would really have preferred to avoid – was that Richard just didn’t seem to understand that my son was one in a million, ten million, a billion.
Richard thought Pat needed improving. And my son didn’t need improving. He was special already.
Richard wanted my son to love Harry Potter, wooden toys and tofu. Or was it lentils? But my son loved Star Wars, plastic light sabres and pizza. My son stubbornly remained true to the cause of mindless violence and carbohydrates with extra cheese.
At first Richard was happy to play along, back in the days when he was still trying to gain entry into Gina’s pants. Before he was finally granted a multiple-entry visa into those pants, before he married my ex-wife, my son’s mum, Richard used to love pretending to be Han Solo to my son’s Luke Skywalker. Loved it. Or at least acted like he did.
And quite frankly my son would warm to Saddam Hussein if he pretended to be Han Solo for five minutes.
Now Richard was no longer trying, or he was trying in a different way. He didn’t want to be my son’s friend any more. He wanted to be more like a parent. Improving my boy.
As though improving someone is any kind of substitute for loving them.
You make all those promises to your spouse and then one day you get some lawyer to prove that they no longer mean a thing. Gina was part of my past now. But you don’t get divorced from your children. And you can never break free of your vows to them.
That’s what Paris was all about.
I was trying to keep my unspoken promises to my son. To still matter to him. To always matter. I was trying to convince him, or perhaps myself, that nothing fundamental had changed between us. Because I missed my boy.
When he was not there, that’s when I really knew how much I loved him. Loved him so much that it physically hurt, loved him so much that I was afraid some nameless harm would come to him, and afraid that he was going to forget me, that I would drift to the very edge of his life, and my love and the missing would all count for nothing.
I was terrified that I might turn up for one of my access visits and he wouldn’t be able to quite place me. Ridiculous? Maybe. But we spent most of the week apart. Most of the weekends, too, even with our legally approved trysts. I was never there to tuck him in, to read him a story, to dry his eyes when he cried, to calm his fears, to just be the man who came home to him at night. The way my old man was there for me.
Can you be a proper dad in days like these? Can you be a real father to your child if you are never around?