it all for a while.
I had forgotten that she wanted her life back.
That’s what she had been doing after moving into her father’s flat – making a few international calls, reviving some old contacts, seeing if she still had an option on all the things she had given up for me.
I knew her well enough to realise that she was dead serious about this job. But I still couldn’t quite believe it.
‘You’re really going to take a job in Japan, Gina?’
‘I should have done it years ago.’
‘For how long? Forever?’
‘The contract is for a year. After that, well, we’ll see.’
‘What about Pat?’
‘Well, Pat comes with me. Obviously.’
‘Pat goes with you? To Tokyo?’
‘Of course. I’m not going to leave him here, am I?’
‘But you can’t just uproot him,’ I said, trying to keep the note of hysteria out of my voice. ‘Where are you going to live?’
‘The bank will sort that out.’
‘What’s he going to eat?’
‘The same things he eats here. Nobody’s going to make him have miso soup for breakfast. You can get Coco Pops in Japan. You don’t have to worry about us, Harry.’
‘I am worried. This is serious, Gina. Who’s going to look after him when you’re working? What about all his stuff?’
‘His stuff?’
‘His bike, his toys, his videos. All his stuff.’
‘We’ll ship it over. How hard can it be to crate up a four-year-old’s possessions?’
‘What about his grandparents? You going to crate them up and ship them out? What about his friends at the nursery? What about me?’
‘You can’t stand the thought of me having a life without you, can you? You really can’t stand it.’
‘It’s not that. If this is really what you want, then I hope it works out for you. And I know that you can do it. But Pat’s life is here.’
‘Pat’s life is with me,’ she said, a touch of steel in her voice. Yet I could tell that I was getting through to her.
‘Leave him with me,’ I said. Pleaded, really. ‘Just until you get settled, okay? A few weeks, a couple of months, whatever it takes. Just until you’re on top of the job and you’ve found somewhere to live. Let him stay with me until then.’
She watched me carefully, as if I were making sense but still couldn’t be trusted.
‘I’m not trying to take him away from you, Gina. I know I could never do that. But I can’t stand the thought of him being looked after by some stranger in some little flat while you’re at the office trying to make a go of your new job. And I know you can’t stand it either.’
She watched our boy slowly clamber to the top of the climbing frame. He carefully turned so that he could grin at us.
‘I have to take this chance,’ she said. ‘I have to know if I can do it. It’s now or not at all.’
‘I understand.’
‘I’d call him every day, of course. And send for him as soon as I can. Maybe you can bring him out.’
‘That sounds good.’
‘I love Pat. I love my son.’
‘I know you do.’
‘You really think you can look after him by yourself for a while, do you?’
‘I can manage it. I can.’ We looked at each other for a long time. ‘Just until you’re settled.’
We took Pat home and put him to bed. Happy and tired, he was soon asleep, lost in dreams that he wouldn’t remember in the morning.
Gina chewed her bottom lip.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll take good care of him.’
‘Just until I’m settled.’
‘Just until you’re settled.’
‘I’ll be back for him,’ Gina said, more to herself than to me.
And eventually, she did come back for him. But things were a bit different by then.
By the time Gina came back for Pat there wouldn’t be yesterday’s pants on the coffee table and Mister Milano pizza boxes on the floor. By the time she came back for our boy, I would be something like a real parent, too.
That’s where Gina got it wrong. She thought that she could change but that I would always remain the same.
The way my parents dealt with Gina going away, they tried to turn Pat’s life into a party.
Overnight their non-negotiable ‘one Coke a day’ rule was abolished. Suddenly when Pat and I turned up at their house there were gifts waiting for him, such as a special edition Return of the Jedi (‘New Scenes, New Sounds, New Special Effects’). More and more they wanted him to stay over with them, no doubt hoping to replace my gloomy face and moody silences with their canned laughter, laughter so strained that it made me feel like weeping.
And now one of them always wanted to accompany us to the gates of Pat’s nursery school. It was a long drive for them – reaching us took at least an hour going anti-clockwise around the M25 in the rush hour – but they were willing to do it day after day.
‘As a special treat,’ my dad said, groaning as he folded his old legs into my low-slung car.
I knew what they were doing and I loved them for it. They were trying to stop their grandson from crying. Because they were afraid that if he started crying, then he would never stop.
But Pat’s life wasn’t a party with his mother gone. And no amount of Star Wars merchandise or good intentions could make it a party.
‘What are you doing today then, Pat?’ my father said, his grandson perched on his lap in the MGF’s passenger seat. ‘Making some more Plasticine worms? Learning about Postman Pat and his black-and-white cat? That’ll be good!’
Pat didn’t reply. He stared at the congealed early-morning traffic, his face pale and beautiful, and no amount of jolly banter from my old man could draw him out. He only spoke when we were at the gates of the Canonbury Cubs nursery.
‘Don’t want to go,’ he muttered. ‘Want to stay home.’
‘But you can’t stay home, baby,’ I said, about to use the great parental cop-out and tell him that Daddy had to go to work. But of course Daddy didn’t have a job any more. Daddy could stay in bed all day and still not be late for work.
One of the teachers came to collect him, looking at me meaningfully as she gently took his hand. It wasn’t the first time that Pat had been reluctant to leave me. In the week since Gina had been gone, he didn’t like to let me out of his sight.
With my dad promising him unimaginable fun and games at the end of the day, we watched Pat go, holding on to the teacher’s hand, his blue eyes swimming in tears, his bottom lip starting to twitch.
He would probably make it to the little classroom without cracking. They might even get his coat off. But by the time the Plasticine worms were unveiled he would lose it, inconsolable, sobbing his heart out while the other kids stared at him or impassively went about their four-year-old business. We wouldn’t have to look at any of that.
‘I remember when you were that age,’ my dad said as we walked back to the car. ‘I took you to the park in the week between Christmas and the New Year. Bloody freezing, it was. You had your little sledge with you. I had to