said the policeman.
‘It was OK,’ said Max. ‘I mean, it wasn’t nice, but it was OK. Have you seen a dead body before?’
‘No,’ said the policeman, ‘only pictures.’
‘Isn’t it your job?’
‘We all have slightly different jobs,’ he said.
‘How long have you been a policeman?’
‘Couple of years,’ he said.
I had been wondering whether to send Max upstairs to his bedroom, or to ask whether I could drop Max at school and then come back. Of course, Max could have walked to school by himself, but I wanted to walk by my son’s side, to see him safely there, to make sure he was OK after the questions from the police.
The policeman didn’t need to speak to me. He had other children he had to speak to. Formal interviews.
‘Dark stuff,’ he said, and a troubled look clouded his features.
‘What dark stuff?’ said Max.
The policeman checked himself again. He stood up, put the forms in his briefcase, and handed me a card, told me his colleagues would be in touch to speak to me.
‘What dark stuff?’ said Max again.
‘Not all parents love their children the way your dad loves you, Max.’
As we left the house Max slipped his fingers through mine. Little Max, my only-begotten son. He hardly ever held my hand these days.
‘Dad,’ said Max, ‘Dad, Ravion Stamp had to go to the police station, and they filmed it and everything. And his dad wasn’t allowed to be there.’
‘That isn’t going to happen to you,’ I said.
‘But what if they arrest you?’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘But Ravion’s dad …’
Jason Stamp had violently assaulted his son. Ravion had testified by video link. I wasn’t sure how much Max knew about the case.
‘That won’t happen to us, Max. I promise you.’
‘But how could that man know that you love me?’ he said.
‘He could see it.’
‘How?’
‘OK, he was just guessing.’
‘You are so annoying, Dad,’ he said. But he leaned in to me and wrapped his arms around me for a moment. My beautiful, clever son. My only-begotten. Whose first word was cat and whose seventh was fuck; whose forty-fourth word was a close approximation of motherfucker.
Forget the swearing, though. We fed Max, we clothed him, we sang him to sleep at night. We set clear boundaries, and applied rules as fairly as we could. Our house was full of love. We are the classic good-enough parents.
Millicent and Max would bath together; I would hear their shrieks of laughter from halfway down the street. Listen to that: that’s the sound of my little tribe. Listen to that and tell me it’s not real.
Yes, we swore in front of Max, and yes, we smoked behind his back. That doesn’t matter. What matters is this – my wife, my son, the water and the laughter.
My little tribe.
Max let me hold his hand until we neared the school, then slipped his fingers from mine, walked beside me. On the final approach, he half-ran, putting ground between himself and me, anxious not to be seen arriving with a parent.
Millicent rang. I cradled the phone to my ear. Screams and shouts of morning break, six hundred London children giving voice.
‘I was worried.’
‘Hey. Sorry.’ Her voice was strained.
‘Where are you?’
‘On my way. You at the school?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wait for me?’
‘I’d hoped to speak to him before they go in again.’
‘You’ve forgotten his name again, haven’t you?’ Her voice softened.
‘I know. Bad Dad.’
‘So, you going to wait for me, Bad Dad?’
‘OK. All right.’
I saw Max in a dissolute huddle of boys, all oversized shirts and falling-down trousers. I caught his eye and pointed to the school building. ‘See you in there,’ I mouthed. He nodded and turned away.
Millicent arrived five minutes after the school bell. She was pale, the contours of her face shifted by lack of sleep. She reached up and kissed me.
Even in heels, Millicent was short. When we’d first met, it had made me want to protect her. Now I hardly noticed. I held her, grateful that she was there. She held me just as tightly. Then she ended the embrace by tapping me on the back.
‘Where’ve you been?’ I said.
‘Out. Thinking. Sorry.’
It’s been like this since we lost Sarah. Millicent’s reaction – her ultimate reaction, after she had fallen apart – was to do the opposite of falling apart. She reconstructed herself. She became supercompetent. Make your play, she writes, then move on. Play and move on.
The classroom looked like a post-war public information film, but with more black and brown faces. Didactic posters covered the walls. The children sat in orderly rows, working in twos from textbooks. Three rows back sat Max with his friend Tarek. He looked up when we entered, but didn’t acknowledge us.
Mr Sharpe too looked like a man from another age. Dark-skinned, and with close-cropped hair, dressed in a faultlessly pressed suit: like a black country schoolmaster from a time when no country schoolmaster was black. His hair was brilliantine slick, his moustache pencil thin, his hands delicate and agile.
‘May we speak with you?’ Millicent said. ‘We’re Max’s parents. We wanted to explain the reason for his lateness.’
‘Of course.’
‘In private.’ She turned towards the corridor.
‘Actually, that isn’t really appropriate.’ He gestured towards the class. I looked around, and found Tarek and Max looking directly at me. Tarek whispered something to Max; they looked at the teacher and at us, and laughed.
‘Unless, of course, you can wait until lunch break. Twelve fifteen. Here.’
‘We’d like Max to be present.’
Mr Sharpe nodded, waved us from the room and closed the door behind us.
‘Uh huh,’ said Millicent. ‘That sure went well.’
We bought bad coffee from a bad café, drank it from bad Styrofoam cups on a low wall on the baddest of Crappy’s bad streets. I lit a cigarette, and we shared it like the bad boy and bad girl we weren’t and never would be.
Millicent inhaled deeply, holding back some of the smoke inside her mouth, catching it as it started to wisp upwards, then sucking it hungrily down into her primed lungs. Two hits in one draw: proper film noir smoking. Even after thirteen years of marriage it suggested something unknowable, some glamorous secret that I was never quite party to.
‘What is it, Alex?’
‘You. Smoking in the sun. Hello.’
That same image – Millicent, backlight and smoke. It repeats