‘They want to be like everyone else,’ I say. ‘We talk aboutJean-Luc, maybe not a lot, it’s a long time ago now, so I try and keep his memory alive and say things like,your dad would be so proud of you, Luke. I mean he never asks anymore, which is odd. He used to wonder if he was like his dad but he literally never does these days.’
‘No, Raffie doesn’t do that either,’ says Shazz, ‘although he’s nothing like that bastard.’
‘One day he’ll hear you, you know,’ I say to her. ‘You just can’t call him that.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she said. ‘I just get so angry, the fact that he just left, couldn’t cope with it. Why can men father children if they are not going to go through with it properly? It’s about more than just producing sperm, it’s about being there, being a parent. Evolution got it all wrong.’
‘Well,’ I say, shrugging, ‘Jean-Luc wanted to be a parent and he never got his chance, so I guess life doesn’t work out the way we want it to, evolution or not.’
The school has always been pretty good when it came to looking after the kids who were insingle-parent households. But there were still parents’ evenings and teachers would forget and say things like,Oh, maybe ask your dad about that. The first time that had happened, the first time it had actually penetrated Luke’s brain that he didn’t have a dad, he’d been six years old, and when I picked him up from school he was crying.
‘Mr McManus said I have to ask Dad something, but I can’t and Raffie can’t and we don’t understand, and you have to make Mr McManus understand.’
Mr McManus was the boys’ teacher at the time and he wasn’t long out of teacher training college.
We’d got through that and when Lori had told us about the Family Tree project, we hoped we’d be ready and now it was here.
I tried discussing it with him in advance.
‘Honey, I think the Family Tree project is coming up soon. We must get photos of the puppies for it,’ I said brightly. ‘Sausage and Doughnut will look beautiful. And maybe one of your dad? We can look through the box of photos together.’
I had photos ofJean-Luc in the house but somehow, they’d become part of the place rather than objects that stood out anymore. I’m not sure how that happened – maybe I was trying to protect Luke by not highlighting what he didn’t have.
Luke didn’t tell me the day they were given the project to start at home, but I knew. Shazz texts me that afternoon, when Luke had stomped upstairs to his room.
They got it, she says.Raffie is miserable and is sulking in his room. I didn’t know what was wrong and he said, he’s not going to school tomorrow, he’s not doing his homework. I thought what the heck? Then I remembered,family-bloody-tree.
I think of Luke’s pale little face as he sat in the back of the car coming home from school earlier, because he still isn’t quite tall enough to sit in the front yet.
I go upstairs and he’s sitting on his bed, not doing anything, not looking at a book or messing around, just sitting there.
‘Mum,’ he says, his little face serious, ‘is my dad dead or did he just go? I know Raffie’s dad is gone. But you have just been saying that, haven’t you? Dad’s not dead. All that stuff about how he’d have been proud of me doing stuff, you’re making that up. He just ran away like Raffie’s dad, didn’t he?’ I think my heart is going to shatter into a million shards. All these years I thought I was being a good mother, and I was holding it together and instead, I’ve ruined everything. I didn’t want Luke to feel he was missing out by not having a father, so I tried to be Mum and Dad. And I’d mistakenly let his father figure drift into the background, because I didn’t want Luke to know he’d lost so much. My son is ten and he thinks his father is a waster who ran away and left us, lefthim.
‘Darling,’ I stammer, ‘I...’ It’s like the words are stuck in my throat; I don’t know what to say. ‘He’s dead, your dad is dead, he died. I never showed you the piece from the newspaper but it was an accident. You have to believe me. Ask Granny.’
I sit down on the bed beside him, and then I slide onto the floor because I’m not sure what to say. I don’t feel like the calm mother anymore. I feel like someone who has failed utterly. I turn around so that I’m facing him and I say, ‘Luke, your dad and I were so in love and I was pregnant and none of this is a lie. A driver who had been drinking smashed into his car and he was gone.’
His little face stares at me, those eyes so likeJean-Luc’s, and I think of all the things I have done wrong. Like nails shattering down out of the sky, piercing every part of me.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Luke.’
Luke stares at me and I start to cry. I always swore I wouldn’t cry in front of Luke, not letting him have to be my protector. He was a child and blast it all to hell, he would be allowed to be a child, not have to comfort his grieving mother.
He wouldn’t have to be the man of the house, I could be both the mother and the father.
Or I thought I could.
He’s staring at me, his face white.
‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’ I say, shocked.
He shrugs, doesn’t say anything. I can see the shimmer of a film of tears on his eyes. I get back up on the bed to try and get close to him, but he moves further away. ‘Please let me hold you, let me hug you, please darling,’ I say, begging.
‘I just want a dad, like everyone else. Raffie wants a dad and he’s got Zep now. I don’t have anyone. Even the ones who live with their mums, they still see their dads at weekends, but I don’t. What did we do wrong?’
‘Nothing! We did nothing wrong. He died. Oh Luke, please believe me! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘Will we look at his photographs?’
‘I don’t want photographs,’ he says angrily.
