I put the brakes on my anger.
‘After my ex-wife left, my daughter didn’t get a birthday card from her mother. That’s how busy she was. That’s how cruel she was. My ex-wife wasn’t frozen out. She opted out of her family. And Scout and I carried on.’
As always in our home, there was a scattering of toys and playthings on the floor that belonged to my daughter and our dog. A Konk toy. An old Angry Princess doll. And an extra-small-sized boxing glove.
Ms Vine stared at it, as if in disbelief, and then picked it up.
‘Scout’s,’ I said.
‘Boxing?’
I smiled.
‘My daughter enjoys banging the pads.’
For a moment she was speechless.
‘You don’t think it encourages violence?’
‘I think it encourages my daughter to believe she can stand up for herself in this rotten world. I want her to be a confident little girl. I want her to be a strong young woman. I want her to be ready for whatever life throws at her.’
‘So she punches things?’
‘Hard and often,’ I said, rising to the bait.
She was writing this down.
Don’t lose your rag.
‘There have been – let’s see – nine afternoons when you were late to pick up your daughter from school, Mr Wolfe?’
‘Who’s counting?’
She gave me a smile as thin as her little green file.
‘The school was very understanding,’ I said. ‘They’ve been great—’
‘This is not about how understanding the school are, Mr Wolfe. It’s about the welfare of your daughter! It’s about how capable you are of facing up to your responsibilities as a parent. I am trying to ascertain if your job is compatible with Scout’s best interests.’
‘It’s not a job. It’s a calling. And it’s not nine to five. It’s twenty-four seven.’
I did not know how to explain it to her. There was so much that I found hard to explain.
‘Did you ever see photos of 9/11?’ I asked her.
She looked at me as if I was speaking some unknown language.
‘One of the most famous 9/11 photographs is of an NYFD fireman called Mike Kehoe when he was running into one of the towers as everyone inside was trying to get out,’ I said. ‘Everyone thought Mike Kehoe must have died in there when those towers came down. Because so many of his colleagues died that day. Three hundred and forty-three NYFD firemen. Sixty police and eight paramedics. But Mike Kehoe made it out.’
She was resisting the urge to sigh.
‘What’s your point, Mr Wolfe?’
‘My point is that the world is divided into the people who run away from life-threatening trouble and the people whose job it is to run towards it. That was Mike Kehoe’s job – to run towards trouble. And I like to think that I’m like Mike. At least, I aspire to be a man like Mike Kehoe. And you need people like us. Because if someone is kicking down your front door in the middle of the night, then you will pick up the phone and call for one of us – the people who run towards trouble – to come and put ourselves, without thinking, without asking questions, between you and whoever is kicking down your front door. But – and this is my point – it’s hard to schedule the trouble, so sometimes people like me are late for the school pick-up. And sometimes we never make it home at all.’
She was unimpressed.
She looked at me as if that was all just a pile of – what would she call it? – patriarchal macho bullshit.
She glanced at her watch as if I was wasting her precious time.
‘And what happens to your daughter if you never make it home?’
‘I hope that she will be proud of me.’
She raised her unplucked eyebrows.
‘So what happens next?’ I said.
Scout would be home soon. And I wanted to be alone by then.
‘It’s the court’s job to decide what will happen to your child,’ Ms Vine said. ‘The judge will listen to everyone involved in the case before she or he comes to her or his decision.’
‘But you don’t know Scout,’ I said. ‘None of you know her.’
She slammed the little green file shut as if that was an irrelevance.
‘Well, I think that’s it,’ she said, standing up.
‘Not quite,’ I said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Ms Vine,’ I said. ‘Please – I don’t want any of this for my daughter.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I don’t want Scout to be interviewed by you – or anyone like you. Please don’t be offended. It’s nothing personal. I know you are just doing your job. And I understand your job is to stick up for the child. But please – please, Ms Vine – I don’t want Scout’s happiness poked and probed and pushed around. I don’t want her life in a courtroom. I don’t want her questioned.’
She barked with laughter.
‘Why on earth not?’
Because we – my beautiful ex-wife and I – have already stolen too much of her innocence, I thought.
Because Scout has already paid too high a price for the mistakes that two adults have made.
Because it would hurt and confuse and upset her.
But I didn’t say any of that.
‘Because I love her,’ I said.
We were on the way to the door. I could hear Stan scratching to get out of Scout’s bedroom. He knew there were bare legs walking about in the loft. He wanted to get at them. He wanted to get his head up that hippy skirt. He wanted a good sniff.
‘I don’t have the contact details for your legal representative, Mr Wolfe.’
‘I don’t have one,’ I said.
‘Get one,’ she said.
Scout was exhausted when she came back from the long afternoon with her friend Mia.
It was more than a passing fancy. Rowing was her thing that summer. Rowing on the Thames. Rowing on the Serpentine. And it was exhausting.
Stan and I waited by her bed as Scout wearily brushed her teeth, got into her pyjamas and crawled under her duvet.
Her eyes were closing before I opened the book of poems at random.
‘On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair
I am tempted to skip. You’re a fool! I don’t care.
The head does its best but the heart is the boss –
I admit it before I am halfway across.’
I closed the book and kissed the top of her head.
‘Sleep now, Scout,’ I told her.
But she was already sleeping.
My phone vibrated as Stan and I padded from Scout’s bedroom. It was a message from an unknown number.
I will make you crawl
I flew to the window as if I would see him waiting for me in the street.
And there he was.
He was long and lean, fit and hard inside athletic gear. If you didn’t see him coming it would be over before it began. And even if you saw him coming, he looked like he would hit you with maybe more than you could handle. He was wearing running shoes. At his feet there was a kitbag that could contain anything. A hoodie was pulled up, shielding his face. He was loitering at the start of the Grand Avenue, the great central passageway through Smithfield meat market.
And he was looking up at our loft.
I stared at Scout’s bedroom door.
All my instincts were to stay here with her.
But I knew that would never make us safe.
Settle it now.
I put down food and water for Stan and triple-locked the front door behind me as I quietly let myself out. And I thought of that social worker.
You’re not my daughter’s protector, I thought.
Because I am.
I could not leave by the front door on Charterhouse Street without him seeing me so I went up to the roof. The view caught my breath and held it. The meat market was getting ready for the night. There was a wash of moonlight on Wren’s great white cathedral, the old high-rise towers of the Barbican and the newer, far taller towers of glass and steel that soared everywhere across the city.