The boys shouted ridiculously and raucously, as if volume were a big weapon in the war of words. Nick shook his head. Their verbal jousting might be funny but it wasn’t helping him figure out how they could get bikes. He sighed again.
Life was not fair.
ONE
‘So, are you going to come with me, Oliver?’ Nick hated the hesitancy to his tone, torn between wanting to keep the question casual and not alarm the boy, but at the same time feeling the pressing need to leave, knowing this was it. The sole reason for his return home was to try to encourage his son, give him the opportunity to be part of this. Thinking ahead and trying, as he had over the last few months, to eliminate any future regrets. Not only was this easier said than done, but he was now wasting precious time. He hovered in the bedroom doorway, certain Oliver had heard the question despite the dire electronic music that blared from the laptop. This was the second time he had asked in as many seconds. The fact he felt the need to repeat it suggested he was hoping for a different response the second time around.
Oliver shook his head, his expression neutral but his jaw tense, gripped as ever by whatever game now flashed on the screen, the bright colours, pings, beeps and whistles, the modern-day equivalent to a pinball machine, the mastery of which was always infinitely more urgent than anything Nick might have to say.
Even today.
‘I know you’re saying no, it’s just that . . .’ he began, not knowing how to finish.
His son looked up briefly from the laptop balanced on his bony knees which held him captive and to which he returned his gaze, almost daring his dad to speak again.
‘The thing is, Olly,’ Nick tried again, and again the words ran out. The roof of his mouth was dry and his tongue stuck there. He had never fully understood the phrase ‘paddling like a duck beneath the water’, but in that moment he did. He looked calm, his voice was level and yet inside he was screaming.
‘I’m not going. I don’t want to.’
‘But they said—’
‘I’m not going, Dad! That’s it.’ Oliver’s tone was a little more forceful now.
Nick took a deep breath and tried to recall the words Peter, the counsellor, had said during their last chat.
‘Try to remember that there is no right or wrong way to behave . . . Don’t force or coerce, because that’s the road to conflict and neither of you need that on top of everything else . . . Remember that she is not only your wife, she’s Olly’s mum too. Tread gently. Leave doors open, encourage, listen and try to understand that this is everyone’s personal journey and everyone takes a different route. Be ready to prop him up when he most needs it, and if it’s at a time when you most need propping up, that’s when it can seem hardest . . .’
‘Okay.’ He nodded, tapping his wedding ring on the door frame. ‘Okay, son. But if you change your mind, I’ll be leaving in a few minutes.’
‘I won’t change my mind.’ Oliver worked his fingers on the keys at double speed and bit his bottom lip.
Nick left the bedroom door ajar and, having neglected to do so that morning in a mad rush to leave the house, he cleaned his teeth quickly in the sparse green-tiled bathroom at the top of the stairs. He popped his blue toothbrush in the pot next to his wife’s lilac one and splashed his face with cold water, patting it dry on the hand towel that felt a little stiff to the touch and had a vague smell of mould about it. Laundry, yet another task, an aspect of ordinary life that had fallen by the wayside in the shadow of the tidal wave from which he was running. Although with his energy levels sapped, it would be fair to say it was now more of a crawl than a run. He balled the towel and threw it into the plastic laundry basket which lived in the corner by the sink.
He took his time, though aware of the urgency, opening the kitchen window, inviting a breeze into the stuffy room where the sun beat against the misty window for the best part of the day. He put the milk back in the fridge and located his car keys, giving the boy a chance to change his mind.
Hoping . . .
He carried a weird sensation, empty with a hollow thump to his gut, which felt a lot like hunger, and yet he was simultaneously wired, full, as if on high alert.
With one last opportunity looming, his eye on the clock and his heart racing, he ran back up the stairs and walked purposefully into Oliver’s room. His son had slipped down on the pillows and pulled the duvet cover up to his chin. The sight of him curled up like this reminded Nick so much of when his boy was five, six, seven – hiding from the monsters that might lurk under the bed – and his heart tore a little. The actual quilt had been discarded in a heap on the bedroom floor – no need of the fibre-filled warmth on this balmy summer evening – and yet he felt an unwelcome chill to his limbs.
‘Olly.’
Oliver stayed silent.
‘Olly, this is the last chance—’
‘I know. Just go! Go then! I’ve already said!’ he shouted, and Nick knew this newly ignited row was more than either of them could cope with.
‘Okay, son. Okay.’
He ran back down the stairs, his pace urgent now, and out of the door, to sit in the driver’s seat, letting the engine run and rubbing and flexing his hands, as if this might remove their tremor. He revved the accelerator with a desperate desire to see Oliver launch himself from the front door at the last minute and jump in beside him, like he might do if this were a movie, when with the clock ticking and the risk of getting trapped or left behind was at its highest, the hero would buckle up, safe. Enabling the audience to breathe a huge sigh of relief . . .
He didn’t.
It was as if he heard the clock on the dashboard tick as the big hand jumped forward. Nick reversed at speed down the steep slope of the narrow driveway and travelled the route towards Thirsk that was now so familiar he often arrived at either end of the journey with little memory of driving it.
He thought he would feel more, but his numbness, an emotional anaesthesia of sorts, was not wholly unwelcome. It had been an odd day. A day he had tried to predict many times in the preceding months, attempting to play it out in his mind, imagine what it might be like, but to no avail. He had been with Kerry since he was sixteen years of age and yet this was the last day – the last day for her and the last day for them. It was surreal. In his ponderings there was higher drama, background tension and a swell of emotion that he figured would carry him along in its wake, but so far everything, up until this point, had felt rather ordinary. A little flat even and, for that, disappointing. He had been into work for an hour that morning, sorted his shift pattern for the next month, explained to Mr Siddley, Julian Siddley, that his routine might be in turmoil for a while as things had taken a sudden but not unexpected turn.
‘It’s my wife . . .’
And then he went to sit with her. Like he did every day after work, before work if she’d had a particularly bad night, and all day at weekends.
Beverly and the rest of the girls in the back office had been tearful and sweet and wanted to hug him or squeeze his arm knowingly, which only made him feel uncomfortable. It was such an odd thing to do to a colleague who you were only on nodding terms with across the canteen, when the conversation was usually of the jovial or jokey variety, but he knew they meant well. The small market town of Burstonbridge on the North York Moors was a bump of a settlement with one main road that ran right through it. There were no tall buildings, no districts, no high-street-branded stores, and everyone who stayed past school age worked either in farming, the small businesses that supported the farms or at Siddley’s.