He wanted to leave it, because the clock on the dash gave him eight minutes to get Bear to school and wasting one of those minutes complaining about her diet meant wasting them all. When the bell rang at 8.45 he’d be looking at a clear week and a half until he got her back. But Nadia had complained enough times about having to deal with what she called ‘the BMI situation’ on her own. It wasn’t fair on her for him to just ignore it.
He shook his head. ‘I did offer you a proper breakfast. I thought you loved scrambled eggs.’
‘Not since I was like three. I hate it.’ He could only see the top of her head now, but he was pretty sure she was holding back tears. ‘You never have any decent food in your stupid flat. I’m always hungry at school after I have to stay at yours.’
‘OK, well. I’ll stock up next time.’ The lights changed and he turned back to the road. ‘Just have to make healthy choices, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘All you’re saying is I’m fat and no one likes me.’ She stared angrily out of the window, nicking at the raw skin around her thumbnail with her teeth.
‘That’s absolutely not true.’ Nice one, Superdad. One guess what she’d remember about the visit with him now. In the mirror he saw her lean her head on the glass, and they finished the journey in silence. Could they bunk off for an hour? Take her to the park, make things okay between them so they’d part on good terms? No. Obviously not. Nadia would find out, for a start, and his approval rating was already on the floor. Things had eroded badly enough between them lately without him adding truancy to the list.
Only three minutes late, he swung into a space miraculously close to the school entrance. He got out and went round to open Bear’s child-locked door.
‘My tummy hurts,’ she whined.
‘OK. Well, let’s get some fresh air and see how you feel in a minute.’
‘But I’ve got a headache.’ Her voice was quieter. He followed her gaze out across the playground to where two boys, older, were in direct line of sight. They turned away as soon as he made eye contact. Bear sighed and looked at her feet.
He leaned across her to undo her seatbelt. ‘Friends of yours?’
‘No! Get off, Ben,’ she snapped, twisting away.
He made sure the sudden sag in his chest didn’t make it to his face.
‘It’s Dad,’ he told her, pulling her bag and reading folder out from the back seat. This Ben thing was new this visit. No way did she call Nadia by her first name. He hadn’t even heard her shorten it from Mummy yet. He wasn’t having it. ‘You call me Dad.’
‘Whatever.’ She squeezed past him and stumped off towards the gate. Catching her up, he reached for her shoulder but let his hand drop before it touched her. Best not push it.
‘Tell you what. If you don’t give me a cuddle, I’ll cave your head in with a fire extinguisher.’ A bit too hopeful, the way it came out, but she let him draw level. He coughed, dropped his voice a bit. ‘Gouge your eyes out with a soup spoon. I will. I’ve done it before. In Helmand.’
Which won him a very small smile. ‘You haven’t been to Helmand.’
‘Flipping have.’
‘And you’ve used that one before, too.’
‘Right, right. Sloppy.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets, thinking. ‘In that case I’ll just have to grate your nose off.’
‘Yeah? How?’
‘Cheese grater. Like I did in Operation Desert Knickers.’
A single sniff of a laugh, and she glanced at him. The shape of her eyes so almost-Caucasian, hardly a sniff of Korean about her. Like even his genes were being diluted, rinsed out of her life.
But her sideways smile was all his. She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll boil you alive and peel your skin off and sell it to the shoe shop so they can make shoes out of you.’
The realization that she’d planned that, rehearsed it, glowed like a coal in his belly.
‘Nice.’ He gave her a serious look and slow-nodded. ‘What’s the score? Seventeen-twelve?’
‘You wish,’ she said, appeased now. ‘Nineteen-twelve.’ She cheerfully swung her bag at him, obliviously but narrowly missing his bollocks.
Bear started to skip but stopped when she got to the gate. She was scanning the yard for those boys.
Mae crouched. ‘If there’s anything you need me to deal with—’
She shot him a serious look. ‘No. There’s nothing. There isn’t.’
‘Because if—’
‘Please, Dad.’
Mae shrugged, straightened up, committing those two lads to memory: bags, hair, sneery little faces. The last of the latecomers ran past them, ushered in by her classroom assistant (Mr Walls, 29, newly qualified last year, single, previously a gardener, caution for shoplifting aged 13). Mae bent to fix the mismatch of toggles on her coat, and she let him.
‘Thanks for hanging out with me, Bear.’ He squeezed her shoulders. ‘See you next week.’
She ducked him and was gone, off down the path, trying to press into a group of girls he half-recognized. Flicking a hand up briefly as a backwards goodbye. He flexed his fingers a few times in his pockets and headed back to the car.
It didn’t get to him. Saying goodbye and not even getting a hug: it was no big deal. He dealt with assaults and suicides and RTAs, no problem, all the time. Cat C murders, child abuse, DV, the lot. All the fucking time. So, his little girl forgot to give him a hug before a whole nine days away from him, even though five minutes ago she was three years old, falling asleep in his arms as he read The Gruffalo for the eighteenth time? Christ! Take more than that to make him cry.
From the driver’s seat he watched Bear disappear into the building.
Music. He reached round to dig a CD out from the pocket behind his seat, and his fingers closed on a disk in a square plastic wallet. She must have left it there by mistake. He brought it out: Lady Gaga for Bear! on the disk in sharpie, and then under the hole,
(not really, it’s Daddy’s very best CLEAN hip-hop mixtape).
And it was clean, too: he’d checked and double-checked each track, and there wasn’t a single swear. It had taken some doing.
He tucked it into the glovebox, then tried again and found Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle under a fine layer of fried potato crumbs. It was scratched to shit but last time had played fine up to ‘Who Am I (What’s My Name)?’, which would be long enough to get him to the nick. His speakers were almost as creaky as his brakes, but they were loud, and loud meant a clear head.
Ignition, arm round the headrest to reverse. And off.
All business.
| Charles Cox Psychotherapy Ltd. | |
|---|---|
| Clinical audio recording transcript | |
| Patient name: | Eleanor Power |
| Session date: | 14 August 2006 |
CC: OK, I think that’s recording … Good. Right, before we begin can we just confirm this because we’ve got a slightly unusual situation here. You have asked for your friend Jodie – our mutual friend, should I say – to be here during