‘Keith?’
‘Where are you? You sound like you’re at a Grand Prix race.’
‘I’m by the Westway, and looking for Laurie. He wasn’t at home when I got back.’
He turns off the kettle and moves into the living room where the reception on his mobile is a little clearer.
‘You mean you don’t know where he is?’
‘He and his friends like to go to this skateboard park. I’m walking up towards it.’
‘A skateboard park? At this time of night?’
‘Maybe you’ll believe me now.’
‘I can get a minicab and be there in five minutes.’
He reaches for his jacket and pushes one arm into a sleeve. He switches the phone from one hand to the next and then wriggles the other arm into the jacket.
‘Jesus, it’s all right.’ He can hear the relief in Annabelle’s voice. ‘I can see him.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Nothing. He’s just with some kids on mountain bikes. Laurie’s sitting on a park bench.’
‘Just sitting by the Westway at this time of night?’ He slumps down on the sofa and waits for Annabelle to say something.
‘He’s seen me.’
‘Look, I can still get a minicab and meet you there. Or back at the house.’
‘Let’s just leave it for tonight. He seems okay.’
‘Okay? He’s totally out of order.’
‘He’s walking towards me.’
‘Let me talk to him.’
‘Look, I’m going now, Keith. You can talk to him when you come over tomorrow. But I mean it. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.’
The line goes dead, but he continues to hold the mobile to his ear. As long as he holds this pose there is still some communication between himself and Annabelle and their son. He just has to hold the pose.
III
HE STANDS BY the gate to the school and studies the scruffy parade of boys trooping out with bags slung casually over one shoulder, ties flapping over the other, shoelaces undone, and hair uncombed. There is no point in his getting too judgmental for, although he would like to imagine otherwise, some part of him knows that he almost certainly looked just as unkempt when he was a sixth-former. And then he sees Laurie, loping across the playground by himself, the same pair of expensive oversized headphones jammed on to his head, and his body gently bobbing to the beat of the music. He knows that his son has seen him, but it is not until Laurie is only a few feet away that he reaches up and literally pulls the headphones down to his neck, and then he gives his father that upward nod that begins with his chin.
‘All right, Dad?’
He pats his son on the shoulder, then squeezes. ‘I’m fine, son. Just fine.’
He waits on the pavement outside the Cineplex for Laurie to emerge from the toilets. While they were watching the film it grew dark, and a little chilly, but for some reason the streetlights now seem unnaturally bright. He blinks hard, realising that he is having some difficulty adjusting his vision to the glare of the night, and he wonders if the many hours that he has recently spent at the computer screen have affected his eyes. He turns up the collar on his leather jacket and thinks that it might be best if they simply make a dash for Pizza Express. He had toyed with the idea of taking Laurie to a Greek or French restaurant, somewhere semi-formal so that at least the two of them might have somewhere quiet to talk, but a part of him knows that Laurie will regard any restaurant with cloth napkins and two forks as a pretentious dump. As he waits with the cluster of nervous smokers, he suspects that a longer walk to a proper restaurant would also irritate Laurie, whose patience seemed to be wearing thin for much of the second half of the Will Smith film. Not that there had been much choice, for it was either this, a cartoon featuring talking penguins, or an Italian art movie that looked a little bit too risqué, as he wasn’t ready to start watching bedroom scenes with his son. Predictably, the Will Smith film had been little more than a special-effect-laden action feature, with the obligatory light-skinned romance, and he sympathised with Laurie when he noticed him take out his mobile phone and furtively begin texting. As he glances at his watch, he imagines that his son is most likely in the toilets engaged in exactly the same type of clandestine communication.
Pizza Express turns out to be a good choice. Laurie asks for some extra breadsticks while he waits for his ‘special’ pizza, and he seems happy that his father is letting him drink a small bottle of Italian beer. ‘Thanks, Dad.’ He slops it quickly into the glass tumbler.
‘Does your mother let you drink beer? Or maybe wine. You know, with a meal.’
‘Are you losing it? She’d have a fit if she thought I was out boozing with you.’
‘Well you’re not exactly boozing, are you? Just a bottle of beer.’
‘But it’s more than she’s gonna let me have.’
‘Well, maybe she has her reasons for it.’ He looks at Laurie, who shrugs his shoulders and takes another gulp of his beer. ‘You know, she told me about you getting wasted last Christmas with your mates.’ Laurie lowers his eyes and swirls the beer in the glass. ‘Listen, it’s all well and good drinking too much, but the real problem isn’t the headache, or the puking, it’s the lines you cross because your judgement is off.’ Laurie looks up at him and he can see frustration in his son’s eyes. ‘The point is, it’s the things you do and say when you’ve been drinking that usually come back to haunt you, because they’re not always things that you mean. Am I making sense?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Listen, what’s done is done, but all I want to say is don’t disrespect your mother by coming in drunk, all right. She was pretty upset about what happened last Christmas.’
‘Is that the end of my lesson, then?’
‘You think this is a joke?’
His son stares at him, and then slowly, almost imperceptibly, he shakes his head.
‘No, I don’t think it’s a joke.’
‘Keep control, son. Keep it together. There are enough people out there trying to knock you out of your stride. Trust me, you don’t need to be helping them.’
Both pizzas seem too large for the plates. He understands that ‘value for money’ is supposed to be the special feature of Pizza Express although, to him, it looks like small plates are their real speciality. He watches as his son eats quickly, tearing at the pizza with his hands rather than cutting it neatly into slices, and he realises that there are some things that he cannot talk to Laurie about. It is probably too late.
‘So you have no idea of what you would like for a present after your exams?’
‘You mean after passing my exams, ’cause you’re not giving me anything if I fail them, right?’