Nick stared at his friend, who looked like he might cry, and he didn’t know what to do.
‘What would you learn at university, Nick?’ Alex eased the moment with his question.
Nick shrugged. He hadn’t thought that far ahead.
‘He’d do ballet, like Jen’s teacher, wouldn’t you, Shirley?’
Nick laughed – they all did.
And just like that, Eric wiped at his eyes and was back in the room.
THREE
‘Can you say it again, Olly?’
Wearing his hi-vis orange vest over his company polo shirt, Nick stood in the middle of the yard, surrounded by pallets of sealed, taped boxes waiting to be loaded on to the trucks. He shoved his finger into his free ear to try to dampen the noise coming from the packing floor and beyond. The whir and beep of forklift trucks, the drone of the packing machine, the ringing of bells and timers, the rumble of the conveyor belt and the chitter-chatter of the workforce, interspersed with their raucous laughter, made it hard for him to hear what his son was saying.
‘Olly, say that again? I didn’t quite hear you!’ He walked briskly to the wire perimeter fence and faced the white metal wall of the warehouse opposite, an ugly structure Aubrey Siddley had put up in the 1990s, blocking the once beautiful sight of the wide sweep of the moors that had been his father’s view when he was a packer at Siddley’s.
‘I said I want to come home! I hate it here, Dad. I don’t want to go to university. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t like it! I’m not staying here. I don’t want to do it. You said to just call you if I wanted to come home, and so I am.’
‘Okay, okay, son. Just take a deep breath.’ Nick closed his eyes and placed his hand on his brow, trying to think of the right thing to say, the right thing to do. It wasn’t as if it was a call from nursery to say his son had a slight temperature and Kerry could pack up at the café early and go fetch him home; this was grown-up stuff. Nick had read with a sense of alarm articles on teenage kids at university committing suicide. Peter, the counsellor at the hospice, had warned him that depression was not uncommon among families, especially youngsters, who had to deal with losing a parent, and even more so if the loss was preceded by a prolonged illness, often with the full effects being felt after the parent had passed away. All these thoughts now raced around his head. And they scared him.
‘What’s happened? You sounded happy the last time we spoke.’
‘I don’t know! Nothing’s happened, nothing I want to talk about over the phone. I just don’t want to be here, Dad, I really don’t. I want to come home!’
He was aware of the swell of panic in his son’s voice, matched by a hike in his own heart rate. He heard Kerry’s words in his head: Actually, Nick, this might be grown-up stuff, but it really is just as straightforward as a call from nursery – whether three or eighteen, you need to pack up and go fetch him home . . .
He took stock and mentally planned the conversation he would have to have with Julian Siddley, explaining why he needed to abandon his shift and hotfoot it down to Birmingham, whilst also wondering if he had enough fuel to make the trip.
‘Just calm down, Olly. Take deep breaths. It’s okay. I’m on my way. I’ll be with you in a few hours, as quick as I can, and we can talk it through—’
‘I don’t need to talk it through, Dad! I just want to come home. I’m not staying here. Please just come and get me, or I can jump on a coach and we can come back and pick up my stuff later?’
‘No, don’t do that.’ Nick knew he had made a promise and also figured that if his son was quitting it’d be better to make one trip and shove all of his belongings into the back of the car. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just sit tight, okay?’
‘Okay. Thank you, Dad.’
Oliver sounded a little calmer now, and so young. To hear the faint echoes of distress and then the relief in his tone made Nick’s heart flex.
‘I’m on my way. And if you need to talk before I get there, send a text and I’ll pull over and call you straight back. Don’t do anything stupid.’
‘What do you mean, don’t do anything stupid? Like what?’
Like take tablets . . . cut your wrists . . . jump off a building . . . I don’t know!
‘Like panic. Don’t panic. Just sit tight and I’ll be there soon.’
‘Okay. Thanks, Dad.’ There it was again, that little voice that pulled at Nick’s heartstrings.
He knocked on his boss’s open door and walked in.
‘Everything all right, Nick?’ Julian looked away from the computer screen and sat back in the red leather captain’s chair that had been part of the office for as long as Nick could remember, present when he visited his dad at the factory as a boy aged ten and had stood in front of Mr Aubrey Siddley.
‘Nick!’ The man had smiled. ‘The rogue explorer of Drayton Moor! Seen any pumas lately?’
He and his dad had laughed before Mr Siddley gave him a sticky handful of mint imperials from a large glass jar which sat on the wonky green filing cabinet behind his desk. Nick had shoved them in his trouser pocket and was disappointed to retrieve them when he got home and find them moist, fluff-coated and only good as bin fodder.
‘Yes, everything’s fine.’ Nick held Julian’s gaze, disliking the fact that he stood in front of the desk while Julian sat; his stance implied he held his boss in a regard his sentiments did not echo. ‘Well, I should say, nothing to worry about workwise, but I just had a call from my Oliver—’
‘At Birmingham, isn’t he? How’s he getting on? Business Studies, isn’t it?’
Nick picked up the slightest note of derision in the man’s voice, but that might have been his imagination, knowing he could be a little oversensitive when it came to Julian Siddley.
‘Yes, that’s right, and I thought he was getting on great.’ This was life in Burstonbridge, life at Siddley’s, where everyone had half an interest in everyone else’s life. It was often a comfort, but sometimes the lack of privacy left him feeling like he wanted to scream.
He remembered when Kerry got her first set of test results from the GP, insisting she didn’t want him to take time off to come with her.
What difference does it make whether I’m there with you or Diane? It won’t change what’s said. Don’t be daft, Nick – go to work, don’t worry and I’ll see you when you get home . . .
Kerry had left the doctor’s appointment with her arm looped through her sister’s and only two hours later, as he walked out of the factory gates to make his way home, he was aware of the tight-lipped, sincere nods of awareness from his colleagues and the slow blink and smile of the woman closing up the bread shop . . . News travelled fast here, faster than he could get home to hear it first-hand.
‘Oh dear, it sounds like there is a but.’ His boss comically took a deep breath through gritted teeth and it irritated Nick more than it should.
‘Yes, well, he has just called and’ – he paused, not wanting to admit to his boss that Oliver might be about to abandon the course of which Nick had felt so proud – ‘he’s having a bit of a wobble and wants me to go down. I wouldn’t ask ordinarily, but what with it only being a short time since we lost his mum, I feel I should go down and check things out, bring him home if need be.’