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I frown. Who is this ‘you’ she’s talking about? Surely, it’s not me. Could it be Flynn? No, of course not. The most she ever complains about is the state of his room and his lackadaisical attitude towards homework. So who else could she mean?
I continue to read:
No effort made re us as a couple …
Christ, so it is me! I glance around, half-expecting her to be standing there in the doorway with her arms folded and a bemused look on her face. It’s just a joke, Nate! Can’t you take a joke? Of course she’s not there. I can’t even start to wonder where she is right now. On a walk, probably, although that would be weird at this time in the morning – and doubly weird that she hasn’t taken the dogs with her. She probably just needed to clear her head, I decide. Maybe she had a restless night.
Okay, so this is far from ideal, this list of my apparent shortcomings – but perhaps there’s a positive side to it. At least now I can start to understand why she’s been unhappy lately, and what made her start seeing that Rachel woman in the first place. If it’s about me making more of an effort – well, that’s something I can easily put right.
Trying to ignore the tight ball of anxiety that’s growing inside me, I read on:
You leave too much to me.
You belittle my job and show no interest in it.
No spontaneity in our lives …
Well, this seems a pretty spontaneous gesture, this summary of my crapness, but perhaps she’s been planning to write it for weeks?
Your bloody record collection …
What the hell!? Okay, I have a lot, probably something like a thousand or more, I don’t know – I haven’t counted them since about 1992 – with a definite bias towards Bruce Springsteen, his influencers and contemporaries. However, they are neatly stored in alphabetical order. Is that it? Is she sick of being married to ‘the kind of man who alphabetises his albums’ (as I once heard her remark to her friend Michelle in a somewhat scathing tone, followed by gales of derisive laughter)? No – it can’t be that. No one could object to a superb collection housed on custom-built shelves …
Your terrible attempts at DIY …
… If I say so myself, I’m pretty handy with my Black and Decker Combi cordless drill!
… and your blank refusal to get the professionals in.
Yes, to save us a fortune!
Handing me a wodge of tenners to buy my own Christmas present …
… I had no idea she was mad about that. I’d just assumed it was the most practical solution, given that I’d apparently ballsed it up on her last birthday with what she termed ‘that terrible skirt’ (i.e., the leopard print one I’d thought she’d look wonderful in).
Woolly boundaries re Flynn …
Ah, so now we’re getting to the nub of things: my ineffectiveness as a father. Clearly, I am a disaster as a human being—
‘Dad.’
I mean, what kind of boundaries is she talking about?
‘DAD!’
My head flicks round. ‘Flynn! Hi.’ I scrunch the note in my fist, like a teenager caught in class with an obscene drawing of his naked French teacher.
‘What’s that?’ Flynn peers at me through uncombed, wavy light brown hair. He is wearing the baggy grey T-shirt and black tracksuit bottoms he insists on for bed (proper PJs having long been deemed unacceptable).
‘What’s what?’ I ask in a weirdly high voice.
‘That thing there.’
‘Oh, just a bit of scrap paper …’ I sense myself sweating and tighten my grip.
‘Can I see it?’ His gaze seems to bore into my skull.
‘No!’ I shout, cheeks blazing.
‘All right! God, Dad …’ He blows out air and shakes his head in bafflement.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter. ‘Sorry, Flynn. I’m just a bit, um …’ I tail off as he opens the fridge.
‘Something smells bad in here,’ he observes, taking out the orange juice carton and swigging from it.
I clear my throat, deciding I must dispose of Sinead’s note while our son’s back is turned, which probably gives me about three seconds. My immediate options appear to be a) eat it or b) conceal it. I opt for stuffing it into my pyjama pocket.
‘Dad, I said something smells.’ He bangs the fridge door shut and glowers at me, as if I might be the source.
‘I think it’s Scout,’ I say quickly. ‘If that’s the smell you mean, it’s been happening more often since we bought the liver-flavoured food. I think we should go back to chicken …’
Flynn nods, and for a brief moment I think, well, I can’t be a complete disaster as, somehow, I have managed to resume an air of relative normality despite Sinead’s note and apparent disappearance.
‘Where’s Mum?’ he asks, pulling the lid off the cookie jar and grabbing a fistful of biscuits.
‘Er …’ I look around, as if it has only just occurred to me to ponder her whereabouts. ‘She must’ve popped out.’
‘Popped out? Popped out where?’
‘Er, to the shop, probably. Maybe for bread.’
Flynn eyes me suspiciously. I have always been a terribly unconvincing liar. ‘So, is she taking me to school?’
‘Erm, I’m not sure, but don’t worry. If she’s not back in time, I’ll do it.’
He frowns. ‘Aren’t you going to work?’
‘It doesn’t matter if I’m a bit late,’ I fib. In fact, I’m due to start at 8.30 a.m., and my timekeeping is normally impeccable – because no one wants to be kept waiting for their driving test. That’s my job. I am a driving examiner, possibly one of the most derided professions on earth, which requires me to be on high alert for the minor and major faults of the general public. Right now, my alleged faults are causing a curious bulge in the breast pocket of my pyjamas.
‘I’ll just get the bus,’ Flynn remarks, posting an entire Oreo into his mouth.
‘No, no, I’ll drive you.’
He munches his substandard breakfast, his attention caught by my lumpy pocket. I clamp a hand over it. ‘Dad … are you … all right?’
‘Of course I am. Why?’
‘Have you got, like, a pain or something?’
‘No …’
‘It’s just, you’re clutching at your heart like that …’
I whip my hand away. ‘I’m fine. Absolutely fine. Anyway, we’d better get ready,’ I add briskly, establishing a firm boundary right there, ‘or we’re going to be late. You have a shower first …’
‘Yeah, okay, Dad,’ Flynn says carefully, addressing me now as if I am a confused and vulnerable adult he’s found wandering about in his nightwear.
With Sinead missing, and her bizarre note stuffed in my pocket, it feels like a pretty accurate description right now.
Chapter Two (#u58af7183-7e41-5591-ac3d-4787cad13e88)
The trouble with being left a note like that is that you need time to figure out what the hell’s going on. Ideally, you also want access to the person who wrote it to see if they really meant it, or just lost their mind temporarily.
I mean, my record collection! Is it Springsteen that’s tipped her over the edge? One too many playings of Born to Run? I need to know as a matter of urgency, but it seems that Sinead’s phone is turned off.
The other trouble with this whole list business is that real life must continue, which means putting on a great show of everything being normal. It’s 7.46 on a bleary Thursday morning, and our son must still go to school, even if he does have a selfish incompetent father, and I need to go to work – plus, obviously, track down my wife.
While Flynn showers, I try to keep calm and not overreact, and only call her mobile eleven times.
Hi, you’ve reached Sinead. Please leave your number and I’ll call you right back …
Such a warm, cheery voice, husky with a soft Yorkshire lilt; the voice of a woman who has always embraced life, who has reams of friends – from childhood and her art school days, and even more through being Flynn’s mum. Everyone knows her as being supremely capable, great fun, delightful company and, of course, a fantastic mother. We’d have had more babies – a whole gang – if we’d managed to conceive after having Flynn, but it only happened once. Sinead miscarried at ten weeks, when Flynn was three, and after that it just didn’t happen at all. We’re not really into ‘signs’, the two of us, but we consoled ourselves that this was probably nature’s way of urging us to count our blessings and focus fully on our son. So we didn’t go down the IVF route. Our friend Abby did, and she reckons the stress and disappointment killed off her marriage. Plus, with Flynn’s condition, Sinead and I spent enough time in clinics and hospitals as it was.
I hear Flynn emerging from the bathroom. Once he’s back in his room, I dive in, turn on the shower and take another look at the list, as apparently I hadn’t quite got to the end.
You treat me like an idiot (i.e., always texting to remind me not to leave things on trains)
Don’t make me feel special
Keep referring to Rachel as ‘your shrink’ (i.e., making a joke of it and so belittling the issue)
Constant untidiness
Mouse issue (traps!!!)
YOUR MOTHER!
Refusal to pick up Scout’s poos in garden!!!
The exclamation marks are coming thick and fast now, pinging into my face like air rifle pellets.
‘Dad?’ Flynn raps on the bathroom door.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s ten past eight. I can just get the bus if it’s easier?’
‘No, it’s okay.’
‘Why are you insisting on driving me? I don’t get it …’
Because it’s imperative that you go to school under the impression that everything is normal, as indeed it will be by the time you come home this afternoon, because I fully intend to sort everything out.
‘I’m nearly ready, okay?’ I shout back. Through the door, I hear him muttering about my weirdness – the word ‘mental’ is clearly audible – then wandering back to his bedroom and firmly closing the door.
I drop the note on the floor, pull off my pyjamas and kick them, rebelliously, into the corner by the bin. In the shower I use Sinead’s posh Penhaligon’s ‘Juniper Sling’ shower gel rather than the cheap blue stuff – another devil-may-care gesture – and mentally run through as many of her complaints as I can remember whilst sluicing myself down.
The big ones – about being an uncaring, selfish arsehole – all swirl into one terrible, heady mess, and I find myself fixating instead on the more tangible matter of Scout’s poos. Okay, maybe I have missed the odd tiny deposit in our garden, down in the long grass by the shed. Or at least, they have been missed (clearly, and without my knowledge, this has become my responsibility). This matter can be easily rectified. From now on I will never again let Scout – or, specifically, Scout’s arse – out of my sight.
With a wave of petulance, I dry off briskly and check my phone in case Sinead called while I was showering. Nothing. I’m tempted to phone around her closest friends, but I don’t want to alarm anyone and, anyway, what would I say? ‘Hello, it’s Nate. Sinead seems to have gone missing’? No need for any of that.
It also occurs to me now that, because she’s gone AWOL, I’ll have to walk Scout and Bella before Flynn and I can set off. Sinead usually takes Scout around the block first thing, before driving Flynn to school, then she parks back by our house and walks to the gift shop a few streets away, where she works. On top of all that, she also pops home at lunchtime to let Scout into our back garden (naturally, she never fails to pick up his poos). Oh, God, the colossal amount of stuff she does! No wonder she’s hacked off. All this perpetual nipping back and forth, plus taking care of most of the shopping, cooking, laundry and homework supervision – and that’s just for starters. But then, she’s never complained about anything specifically before now … At least, I don’t think she has (admittedly, I find it hard to keep up with everything sometimes). Instead of harbouring all of these resentments, couldn’t she just have let me know?
In our bedroom now I pull on my white shirt and smart dark grey trousers: pretty standard driving examiners’ attire. I also text Liv, the manager at one of the three test centres I work from: Sorry Liv, running slightly late, bit of a family situation, be in asap. It sounds terrible to say this, but all three managers – and Liv in particular – are aware of the situation with Flynn, and are extremely understanding whenever something unexpected happens.
Suddenly remembering that Sinead’s thorough character assassination of me is still lying on our bathroom floor, I rush to retrieve it, shove it into my trouser pocket and call out to Flynn: ‘Just taking the dogs out. Make sure you’re ready for when I get back, okay?’
His bedroom door flies open. ‘I am ready.’ Indeed, he is kitted out in the faded sweatshirt and skinny black jeans he manages to pass off as school uniform. ‘It’s you who’s making us late,’ he adds, not incorrectly. ‘Where’s Mum?’
‘I told you, she must’ve nipped out …’ To escape his suspicious gaze, I head downstairs, and search the entire ground floor for my specs, eventually spotting them by the kettle, where I found the note. Jamming them onto my face, I summon my canine charges with a stern command – no woolly boundaries there! – and step out into our well-tended terraced street.
The sky is a clear pale blue and streaked with gauzy clouds, the air cool on this bright May morning. We live on the edge of Hesslevale, a thriving and popular West Yorkshire town nestling in a lush green valley. There are numerous charming restaurants, pubs and a cinema, and the former textile mills now house artists’ studios and craft workshops. We are lucky to live here … aren’t we? At least, I always believed we were pretty happy and sorted, and that my wife thought so too.
I peer hopefully up and down our street, willing an only slightly miffed (or perhaps even contrite) Sinead to be walking towards me. There’s just Howard from next door, striding out in baggy chinos and a faded peach rugby top with Monty, their enormous labradoodle, who has a tendency to try and hump everything in sight, hence my family’s nickname for him: Mounty. While he splatters Betty Ratcliffe’s wheelie bin in a seemingly never-ending arc of pee, Howard catches my eye and waves.
Clearly, he expects us to catch up with them for a circuit around the block. He and his wife Katrina are terribly cheery and gung-ho, and we often chat over the fence that divides our adjoining back gardens. I shouldn’t moan about having friendly neighbours. However, thankfully, there’s no time for neighbourly chit-chat now, not when there’s school and work to get to, not to mention about eighty-five personality defects for me to address. I raise a hand in greeting, noticing with relief that Sinead’s silver Skoda is parked on the corner – suggesting that she hasn’t gone far – and start walking briskly in the opposite direction to where Howard is waiting. Unfriendly, perhaps, but preferable to keeping up the everything-is-normal facade.
The dogs and I trudge on. As Bella stops to pee, I glance down at Scout. He keeps looking up at me, intently, as if he knows. ‘How can she stand being married to me if I’m so awful?’ I ask him, consumed by a wave of self-pity. Scout just hunches his back in that familiar way, and squats to do his business. I’ve snatched a bag from my pocket and bagged up his deposit before it’s barely hit the ground.
As we recommence our walk, I try Sinead’s number again. Still voicemail. Where are you? I text her. What’s going on? Right now, I don’t know what else to say. I just need to get home and cajole Flynn into having a proper breakfast (i.e., not just Oreos), but then, should we really be policing these things now? Of course, if Sinead had been there, he’d have had a bowl of cornflakes, some granary toast, fresh fruit salad and his orange juice in a glass and not just slugged straight from the carton.
In a driving test, you are allowed up to fifteen faults (what we call ‘minors’). One serious fault – a ‘major’ – and you’ll fail. I’d consider the woolly boundaries thing – in fact, most of the points on her list – to be minors, but who am I to know? The main thing, I decide as the dogs and I troop back to the house, is not to panic. Sinead probably just needs some space, in order to think things over, so I won’t call her again until her break. On the rare occasions I’ve popped into the gift shop where she works – Tawny Owl, or whatever it’s called – it’s been serene and peaceful, so hopefully she’ll be in a better mood by lunchtime. In the meantime, I’ll drive Flynn to school – he doesn’t need to know anything about this – and then onwards to work.
Once I’m there, I’ll act normal and be the conscientious examiner I am paid to be, just as I have for the past decade, after a couple of years of working as a driving instructor, when it had become apparent that my playing in bands, and teaching kids to play guitar, just wasn’t bringing in enough regular cash. That was okay; I’d given music a decent shot and prolonged my adolescence more than most people manage to get away with. Flynn was just four, and I was thirty-one, and it was high time I grew up. It had always made sense for Sinead to be at home full-time to give Flynn the time and attention he needed.
Plus, I’d enjoyed driving various bands around over the years. I’d loved the banter and camaraderie and, yes, even the farty vans and interminable all-night journeys punctuated with bleary service-station stops. Gallons of bad coffee and oily sausages and eggs: it had all been huge fun, but I was ready for a change, and Sinead had often commented about what a courteous, unruffleable driver I was (looking back, could that now be perceived as a fault? Would she have preferred a screaming maniac with scant respect for The Highway Code?).
It was her encouragement that had prompted me to sign up for driving examiner training. ‘You’d be perfect for it,’ she’d insisted. ‘You’re so polite, so well behaved and law-abiding.’
Is that what’s wrong, a vital point she omitted from her list – the fact that I’m a tedious bore, lacking the nerve to break speed limits or negotiate a junction without indicating at the appropriate time? Would I seem more desirable – sexier, I suppose – if I drastically reduced my mirror usage and constantly lambasted other road users with the horn?
I pause at the privet hedge a few doors down from our house. While Scout and Bella are tinkling in tandem, I pull that wretched note out of my pocket. I read it all again, every damn word, feeling sicker at every line. As I shove it back into my pocket, I reach for my phone for the umpteenth time. But there’s no reply to my text; no ‘Sorry, I just went a bit mad there but don’t worry – I’ll be back home very soon.’
Out of habit, I tap my email icon. As the messages roll in, I spot one from her, sent less than an hour ago at 7.40 a.m:
Nate, I assume you’ve found my note by now. At least, I hope it’s you who found it and not Flynn. I’m sorry if it’s shocking but I had to tell you how I felt. I didn’t know what else to do. It’s just got so bad and you’re not hearing me. I have tried to talk to you but you won’t listen. I’ll be in touch soon, and of course I’ll spend time with Flynn and talk things through with him. It’s important that he understands that none of this is his fault.
I know we’ll be okay eventually. We’ll still be Flynn’s parents together and do the job as well as we possibly can, just as we have always done. He knows we love him and that’s never going to change. In time, I’m sure the three of us can work out the practical issues. I know it might seem alarming right now, but when you look at Flynn’s friends, it’s hardly unusual to have divorced parents—
