Page 27 of The Woman Who Said Yes

15

SAM

Sam is always glad to hear from Andie, but this morning’s call has given him an extra jolt of pleasure. For one thing, there’s the business of that address she’d spotted, scribbled in Dom’s notebook, which they have already messaged each other about. He knows he’ll feel better when they can try and figure it out face to face. However, that isn’t the main reason for his mood uplift today. It’s the fact that the shattered pike frame has made him feel useful and needed again.

These days, that’s rare. Sure, he is pretty good at his job and his customers are invariably happy with his work. The artist whose linocuts he framed recently went as far as to send him a DM, not via the shop’s Instagram that Farrah set up, but to his personal account:

Exhibition great success and in no small part thanks to you! It really is hugely appreciated. Thank you, Lucy x.

Sam replied:

You’re welcome

However, away from the shop he tends to feel the very opposite of useful, as Theo goes to great lengths to demonstrate that he doesn’t need him for anything at all. Like now, with breakfast finished, as he bounds to the sink in a manner that seems to say: See? I’m an adult. I do my own stuff so you’ve nothing to complain about. It’s a recent development, this ‘I’ll do my dishes, you do yours’ regime that Theo has instigated. Not that it used to be a fantastic sudsy Fairy Liquid party before. But to Sam, this small shift seems significant. It’s as if, to Theo, the idea of his plate and mug sloshing around with his dad’s plate and mug makes him want to vomit into a bucket.

Sam can understand why his son might not want to share a hot tub with him. His suggestion of a weekend away together in the country, doing a spot of fishing and staying in a log cabin with an outdoor jacuzzi, was met with a curt, ‘No thanks.’ However, Sam had only been trying to think of ways to bond with his son (that’s how it’s termed now. It used to be just called ‘doing stuff together’).

Perhaps Theo is still mentally damaged from the time the three of them – his mother had still been around then – had holidayed in Brittany. One day, stuck for something to do in the dreadful weather, they’d gone to an indoor pool. Unaware that baggy swimming shorts were forbidden in French pools (‘Shorts de bain interdits!’), Sam had resorted to buying a pair of snugly fitting and startlingly brief trunks from the pool shop. By the time he emerged from the changing rooms, his son and partner were already in the water.

Theo had stared, horror-struck, as if Sam had appeared in a mankini. ‘Dad!’

‘Oh, Sam.’ Bibi frowned. ‘Are you sure about those?’

No, Sam wasn’t remotely sure! But he wasn’t the French Health Authority or whoever it was that made up the rules. And what about the dozens of other men in the pool, all clad in similarly minuscule swimwear? They didn’t seem to be causing offence. Their wives and girlfriends weren’t glaring at them in an ‘Oh my God, you look like a pervert’ kind of way. But then, they were French, exuding that particular kind of undefinable confidence, and Sam was an ordinary bloke from the outer fringes of north London wearing embarrassing budgie smugglers that were already chafing him around the groin, whose wife was rapidly falling out of love with him.

‘It’s all they had,’ he said feebly, aware of Theo and his mother banding together in a show of mutual horror and disgust.

Maybe that’s where it had all started to go wrong, Sam muses now, as Theo yanks out the plug with such force that washing-up water splatters his T-shirt. Certainly, his son had seemed withdrawn after that holiday, and a few weeks later, Bibi was on a flight to Bangkok. Sam wasn’t blaming the skimpy trunks for everything, but in his deranged state he couldn’t help thinking: what if he’d broken the French swimming pool rules? If he’d plunged right in in his faded but still perfectly serviceable, non relationship-wrecking swimming shorts that almost went down to his knees? What would have happened then? Would a lifeguard have blown sharply on a whistle and ordered him out of the pool? Theo would have been proud of him then, Sam reckons. His dad standing up to authority without fear!

Sam was keenly aware of the shock waves reverberating around Theo’s school once Bibi had left. The gossip vine was throbbing with the news; he could sense it every time he ventured near the school gate. ‘How could a mother abandon her child?’ He overheard those very words being uttered by a heavily pregnant woman clutching a toddler’s hand. ‘I could never walk out on my family!’ Even worse were those pained looks and heads tipped in sympathy: ‘How are things, Sam?’ Or spotting a parent swerving to avoid him, beetling off in the opposite direction as if they’d been alerted that their car was on fire.

Thank God for Andie and Eva, whose focus was firmly on how they could help. And surprisingly, Sam’s outrage soon morphed into what it was that he needed to do, now that it was just him and Theo. There was no point, he realised, in pursuing Bibi for financial support for their son when she was barely scraping a living through casual work in Thailand. Instead, he decided to focus his energies on what was right there in front of him, rather than on the woman who was 6,000 miles away and already flooding her feed with pictures of white sand beaches and exotic flowers. Theo’s well-being and school life and aversion to vegetables and the fact that he never cleaned behind his ears properly – that was quite enough to be getting on with.

Of course all of that was a very long time ago. The swimming briefs are long gone (with some satisfaction, Sam had used them to clean out the greasy barbecue at their holiday apartment and then thrown them away). Bibi is still in Thailand, in what she calls a ‘tree-house’ but which sits at ground level, from what Sam has been able to see from the pictures Theo has shown him (Sam has long stopped following her on social media). There’s a boyfriend, apparently, who built the place himself. Sam knows this too from the occasional snippets Theo has shared, after he and his mother have facetimed. But their calls have lessened in frequency and Sam suspects that nowadays, Theo regards them as a chore.

‘I’m off to the shop,’ he calls out now.

Theo’s bedroom door opens and he stands there, looking quizzical. ‘But it’s Sunday.’

‘Yeah, I know. Andie’s broken this framed fish thing,’ he starts to explain. ‘This antique…’ At the word ‘antique’, Sam detects Theo’s eyes glazing over and he adds quickly, ‘If you’re around later, d’you want a Deliveroo?’

Theo nods. ‘Yeah, okay.’

‘Great.’ Sam smiles and leaves the flat. It’s a cool spring morning and the dense grey clouds have parted to expose a patch of brilliant blue, and sunshine is cutting through. When Bibi left, he’d thought about leaving Finsbury Park in order to get away from all of ‘their’ places: the little fish restaurant she loved, the scruffy old-man pub they’d always had an affection for, and the park where they’d always walked Pip. But when it came to it, he wasn’t sure that a change of location would actually help. And in fact, the familiar streets and cafés, and even the grimiest of shops, were oddly comforting in their familiarity. Plus, Theo’s school was here, and most of his friends. Friends he still sees now and again, although he’s been somewhat evasive about who he’s been hanging out with lately.

Sam’s shop, too, is only a short drive from home, and often – as is the case today – he prefers to walk. It’s not in a particularly salubrious neighbourhood. Not an area of ‘lifestyle’ stores or specialist coffee shops. Rather, it’s a nothing zone, where most of the small businesses are closed on Sundays, and the only reason Sam set up shop here is because the rents were just about affordable.

He lets himself in, grateful that Farrah insisted on a workshop clear-up yesterday. The shop area in front is always reasonably ordered but it’s usually a different matter in the room behind it. Despite being a careful and methodical worker, Sam is less adept at storing materials where they’re supposed to be, and one of the many skills of his sole employee is to stop things from tipping into chaos.

‘Where would you be without me?’ Farrah is prone to asking, and he tries not to think about the day when his bright and sparky right-hand woman announces that she’s moving on.

Sam clicks on the workshop lights and looks up some info on his phone about the restoration of box-framed antique taxidermy. Without the shop phone ringing and a steady flow of customers coming in, the place has a more peaceful vibe. While he waits, Sam could make a start on one of the jobs that came in on Friday. There’s a vintage comic to be framed, plus several watercolour landscapes and a child’s exuberant drawing of a lion (Theo’s sketches were only ever Blu-Tacked to the fridge). But then his phone dings, and it’s Andie, saying she’s running early for a change. She had insisted that she didn’t need him to drive over to Hackney to pick her up. That it was no problem to transport Gideon by bus.

He gets up from his stool at the workbench and goes to fill the kettle in the tiny kitchen area tucked away in a corner. Andie will be here any minute, and with that thought – of not only being useful, but able to help someone he cares deeply about – Sam has acquired a definite spring in his step.

16

ANDIE