When Frank met Carly in the bar he was working in, it was like the world suddenly turned brighter. She dazzledhim. She was gorgeous, for one thing, with those intense green eyes, long, tumbling light brown hair and a sensuous mouth.
My God, he loved her. He still does. And he loves their children – he’s never wavered on that, even through the difficult teenage years, which Eddie doesn’t seem to have grown out of, even now. How he tried their patience and shredded their nerves with his under-age drinking and dope smoking and then party drugs – dilated pupils and tremors at breakfast.
Throughout it all, Carly was – is – an amazing mum and their children are brilliant. The girls anyway, although privately he thinks Bella was a bit rash, rushing off to London, and he wishes she was closer. Of course, Eddie has consumed the lion’s share of Carly’s attentions. Frank believes that he too could be brilliant, and have an amazing life, if only he could get himself together. But since the Paris holiday Frank has felt as if things have spiralled out of control.
There’s the pregnancy, obviously. And there was that terrible lunch in that stuffy Edinburgh club. And he and Carly bickering so much lately. No wonder really, living with their depressed son and his belligerent granddad.
Frank hasn’t known what to do or say in his own home. So he took the mature and sensible step of hiding away from everything in the shed. What could he do to make things better?
He’d started a project out there, working away through all those bitterly cold nights, with the smelly fan heater whirring. But it was a stupid project, more for himself than to benefit anyone else. Because was it really any good,what he was making? Eventually, with confidence waning, he’d given up on it, hiding away the various components before anyone saw it.
Frank isn’t in the shed now. A week has passed since he stormed out of Kilmory Cottage and found himself at Dev’s garage, all locked up for the night. Frank knows he’s made some bad decisions in the past, with the ice cream shop and the pastéis de nata bakery and finally the food truck. Thank God for Carly and her steady job at the library. Landing a job here at the garage, with his good mate, had been one of Frank’s better moves, and he loves the work.
The night he left home, Frank unlocked the garage’s side door and came in and made a cup of tea. He thought he’d bed down there for the night, in the little office area in a corner of the main garage space. Dev is the only one who uses it, perched on the grubby swivel chair while on the phone.
Frank sat on the chair, swivelling, wondering if he could sleep on it. And he tried, closing his eyes momentarily, even nodding forward in sheer exhaustion. But the chair wouldn’t stop moving, even when his body was still. And it was cold in there; colder than outside, bizarrely. Frank had his jacket on, but he needed another insulating layer – like Eddie’s hooded robe. That would’ve done, but in a fit of frustration he’d set the thing alight in the garden. And then he’d walked out on his family because he couldn’t handle them anymore.
Frank got up and wondered what to do. Yes, there were friends he could go to – Dev, for instance. But he couldn’t face just showing up, and having to explain that he’d lostit over an eighty-five-year-old man and his son who he loves with every cell of his being.
What kind of example has Frank set him? What kind of role model has he been? A shit one! He jeopardised their futures with his crazy business ventures and has tortured himself for it. For a few years it felt like things were settled, and he’d dared to hope that Eddie would get his act together and he and Carly could enjoy more freedom to do their own thing. Even to have a proper conversation without Eddie listening in. That would’ve been nice! Then the pregnancy happened and somehow, Frank felt that this, too, was his fault. The bad example he’d set, with his fecklessness.
All those years ago Carly had gone on at him to do ‘The Talk’. The ‘birds and the bees’ as British people say in their coy and confusing way. But it’s not just the British who are buttoned up about sex. Frank’s parents – much loved and missed – were devout Catholics, never entirely happy that he and Carly hadn’t married, although they didn’t say as much. And Frank’s father would no more have walked naked around their farmhouse than discussed the facts of life with Frank or his brothers.
Frank simply hadn’t known how to open up the conversation. And the more Carly had urged him to do it, the more he’d been determined to duck out of the responsibility and leave it to her.
And now look what’s happened. It could all have been avoided if Frank had stood up to his responsibilities and been a proper dad!
Away from home that first night, seeped in shame, Frank had hunted around in the various cupboards in thegarage. Finally he located a sleeping bag with a rusting zip. It was musty and lightly daubed with engine oil. But it would have to do. And there was a very flat, faded cushion that a local black-and-white stray cat, who the garage team had named Badger, wandered in to doze on sometimes. Frank locked up the garage again and carried his bedding round to the scrubby waste ground round the back, where his old food truck has been parked for the past couple of years, slowly decaying. Clapped out and redundant, like Frank felt now.
Would things have been different if Frank had managed to get Eddie to focus on something? Like football, for instance? Frank adores football; FC Porto is his team. He’d tried to enthuse his son, even training as a coach with the Sandybanks junior team. But Eddie had roamed around on the fringes, more interested in watching a ladybird crawling on a leaf than anything that was happening on the pitch.
Feeling a sharp pang of regret and of missing his family, Frank had opened up the van. Inhaling the cold metallic air, he’d dumped the grotty sleeping bag and Badger’s cushion on the floor where he’d once stood, frying steaks and serving customers through the hatch at the sole festival he’d taken it to.
A keen fan of rock music, Frank had tried to enthuse Eddie in that direction too. But the guitar he bought him went the way of the FC Porto strip and the football boots: dumped in the corner of his son’s bedroom, before migrating eventually to the loft.
Frank climbed into the driver’s seat, fumbled for the ignition key on the unwieldy bunch and jabbed it in. Aftera few false starts the engine puttered into life. Luckily, he’d been running it from time to time, just to turn it over. Now he adjusted the settings and a meagre heat started to permeate the truck. There was a dim light, which he could use sparingly so as not to run down the battery. Frank knew there were a couple of battery-operated lamps, too, in the garage.
Frank let the engine run for a while, his gaze skimming the crumbly brick walls at the backs of various businesses some distance away. A sign painters, a tyre fitters and a theatre, a remnant from Sandybanks’ heyday as a holiday destination, long shut down. No one would bother or even notice him here, he decided. So, when the chill had lifted, Frank turned off the engine and crawled into the sleeping bag, resting his head on the not especially fragrant cushion as he tried to go to sleep.
Since that first night he’s had one brief conversation with Carly. He didn’t want her to worry. The next night he texted her, and he’s done so every night since then. But he won’t tell her where he is, no matter how much she pleads with him or how frustrated she becomes. And now Frank has been living here for a week, and no one knows he’s doing this – not even Dev. Because by the time his friend and the other lads arrive for work in the morning, Frank is already working, wearing the spare overalls that are always hanging around in the garage. Sunday was easier as the garage is closed then, and Frank was alone.
‘You’re doing long hours, Frank,’ Dev remarked this evening.
‘Yeah. Just feel like it at the moment,’ he replied, not meeting his friend’s eye.
‘Is everything all right with you, mate?’ Dev peered down at him in concern.
‘Yeah, all good.’ Frank was crouched on the ground, about to change the spark plugs in a twenty-year-old tractor.
When he glanced round, Dev was still looking intently at him. ‘Forgotten you have a home to go to?’
Frank forced a laugh. ‘No. ’Course not.’
‘It’s just you’re always here, mate! Fancy a pint?’
‘Uh, not tonight. Maybe another time.’ He couldn’t face Dev gently probing him about what was going on at home.
Dev shuffled a bit, as if reluctant to leave his friend alone, but unsure of what to say. ‘See you in the morning, then? And don’t stay too late. Carly’s going to be worried about you!’
