brilliantly,’ I said, unable to really believe that I was actually going to turn my son loose among all the cynicism and spite of the lousy modern world. We went into the playground.
A lot of the children starting school had both parents with them. But I wasn’t the only lone parent. I wasn’t even the only man.
There was another solo father, maybe ten years older than me, a shagged out business type accompanying a composed little girl with a rucksack bearing the grinning mugs of some boy band I had never heard of. We exchanged a quick look and then he avoided my eyes, as if what I had might be catching. I suppose his wife could have been at work. I suppose she could have been anywhere.
The kindly headmistress came and led us into the assembly hall. She gave us a brief, breezy pep talk and then the children were all assigned to their individual classrooms.
Pat got Miss Waterhouse, and with a handful of other parents and new kids we were marched off to her class by one of the trusted older children who were acting as guides. Our guide was a boy of around eight years old. Pat stared up at him, dumbstruck with admiration.
In Miss Waterhouse’s class a flock of five-year-olds were sitting cross-legged on the floor, patiently waiting for a story from their teacher, a young woman with the hysterical good humour of a game-show host.
‘Welcome, everyone!’ Miss Waterhouse said. ‘You’re just in time for our morning story. But first it’s time for everyone to say goodbye to their mummy.’ She beamed at me. ‘And daddy.’
It was time to leave him. Although there had been a few emotional goodbyes before he dropped out of nursery school, this time felt a bit different. This time it felt as though I were being left.
He was starting school, and by the time he left school he would be a man and I would be middle-aged. Those long days of watching Star Wars videos at home while life went on somewhere else were over. Those days had seemed empty and frustrating at the time, but I missed them already. My baby was joining the world.
Miss Waterhouse asked for volunteers to look after the new boys and girls. A forest of hands shot up, and the teacher chose the chaperones. Suddenly a solemn, exceptionally pretty little girl was standing next to us.
‘I’m Peggy,’ she told Pat. ‘And I’m going to take care of you.’
The little girl took his hand and led him into the classroom.
He didn’t even notice me leaving.
I can remember sleeping on the back seat of my father’s car. We were driving away from the city, coming back from nights out – the yearly visit to the London Palladium to see a pantomime, the weekly visits to see my grandmother – and I would watch the yellow lamps of East End streets and Essex A-roads blurring high above my dreaming head.
I would stretch out on the back seat of my dad’s car – ‘You don’t have to sleep, just rest your eyes,’ my mother would tell me – and soon I would be rocked off to sleep by the motion of the car and the murmur of my parents’ voices.
The next thing I knew I would be in my father’s arms, the car up our drive, the engine still running as he lifted me from the back seat, swaddled in the tartan blanket that he kept in the car for our trips to the seaside and relatives and the London Palladium.
These days it takes next to nothing to wake me. A drunk staggering home, a car door slammed, a false alarm miles away – they are all enough to snap me out of sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling for hours. But when I was a child sleeping on the back seat of my dad’s car, nothing could wake me up. I hardly stirred from my dreams when we arrived home and I was carried up the stairs to bed wrapped up in that tartan blanket and my father’s arms.
I wanted Pat to have memories like that. I wanted Pat to feel as secure as that. But with Gina gone and our old VW estate sold to pay the mortgage, these days Pat was by my side in the passenger seat of the MGF, struggling and fighting against sleep even when we were coming back from my parents and there was an hour’s worth of empty motorway ahead of us.
I wanted my son to have car rides like the car rides I had known as a child. But we were travelling light.
Cyd called towards the end of the long morning.
‘How did it go?’ she asked me.
She sounded genuinely anxious. That made me like her even more.
‘It was a bit fraught,’ I said. ‘The chin wobbled when it was time to say goodbye. There were a few tears in the eyes. But that was me, of course. Pat was absolutely fine.’
She laughed, and in my mind’s eye I could see her smile lighting up the place where she worked, making it somewhere special.
‘I can make you laugh,’ I said.
‘Yes, but now I’ve got to get to work,’ she said. ‘Because you can’t pay my bills.’
That was true enough. I couldn’t even pay my own bills.
* * *
My father came with me to meet Pat at the end of his first day at school.
‘A special treat,’ my dad said, parking his Toyota right outside the school gates. He didn’t say if it was a special treat for Pat or a special treat for me.
As the children came swarming out of the gates at 3.30, I saw that there was never a possibility of losing him in the crowd. Even among hundreds of children dressed more or less the same, you can still spot your own child a mile off.
He was with Peggy, the little girl who was going to take care of him. She stared up at me with eyes that seemed strangely familiar.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ I asked him, afraid that he was going to threaten to hold his breath if he ever had to go back.
‘Guess what?’ Pat said. ‘The teachers have all got the same first name. They’re all called Miss.’
My old man picked him up and kissed him. I wondered how long it would be before Pat would start squirming under our kisses. Then he kissed my dad on the face – one of those hard, fierce kisses he had learned from Gina – and I saw that we still had a while.
‘We’ve got your bike in the back of Granddad’s car,’ my dad said. ‘We can go to the park on the way home.’
‘Can Peggy come?’ Pat asked.
I looked down at the solemn-eyed child.
‘Of course she can,’ I said. ‘But we have to ask Peggy’s mummy or daddy first.’
‘My mum’s at work,’ Peggy told me. ‘So’s my dad.’
‘Then who meets you?’
‘Bianca,’ she said. ‘My babysitter. Although I’m not a baby any more.’
Peggy looked around her, gazing up at the herd of adults meeting children until she saw the face she was looking for.
A girl in her late teens was pushing through the crowds, sucking on a cigarette and searching for her charge.
‘That’s Bianca,’ Peggy pointed.
‘Come on, Peggy,’ the girl said, offering her hand. ‘Let’s go.’
Pat and Peggy stared at each other.
‘We’re off to the park for an hour or so,’ I told Bianca. ‘Peggy’s welcome to come with us. And you too, of course.’
The babysitter curtly shook her head.
‘We’ve got to go,’ she said.
‘See you tomorrow then,’ Peggy told Pat.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Peggy smiled at him as Bianca dragged her off through the thinning crowd.
‘I’ll see her tomorrow,’ Pat said. ‘At my school.’
There was dirt on his