I wanted to see Pat. I wanted to hold my son in my arms and tell him that everything we had both tried so hard to believe was all true. thirty-six Usually I stayed inside the house, well back from the window, watching from behind the blinds as the silver Audi snaked down the street, looking for a scrap of parking space. But today I came out when I saw them coming - the now familiar car with the familiar configuration inside.
Pat's blond head in the back seat, looking down at some new trinket he had been given. Gina in the passenger seat, turning to talk to him. And in the driving seat, this unimaginable Richard, the semi-separated man, cool and confident at the wheel, as if ferrying Gina and Pat around town in his Audi were the natural order of things.
I had never spoken to him. I had never even seen him get out of his car when they delivered Pat back to me. He was dark, beefy and wore glasses - a suit that worked out. Good-looking in a Clark Kent kind of way. There was a tiny parking space just in front of the house, and I watched him expertly reverse the Audi into it, the bastard.
Usually Gina knocked on the door, said hello to me and quickly kissed Pat goodbye. The handover was done with minimum civility, which was about as much as either of us could muster. Still, we were trying. Not for our sakes, but for the sake of our child. But today I was waiting at the front gate for them. She didn't seem surprised. 'Hello, Harry.' 'Hi.' 'Look what I've got!' Pat said, brandishing his new toy - some scowling plastic spaceman with an unfeasibly large laser gun - as he brushed past me into the house.
'Sorry about your dad,' Gina said, staying on the other side of the gate. 'Thanks.'
Tm really sorry. He was the most gentle man I ever met.' 'He was mad about you.' T was mad about him, too.' 'Thanks for Pat's toy.' 'Richard bought it for him in Hamley's.' 'Good old Richard.' She shot me a look. 'I'd better be going,' she said. 'I thought you didn't like Pat playing with guns.'
She shook her head and gave a little laugh, one of those laughs that's meant to indicate that it wasn't funny at all. 'If you really want to know, I believe that there's enough violence in this world without encouraging children to think that guns are a form of light entertainment. Okay? But he wanted the gun.' 'I'm not going to give him up, Gina.' 'That's for the lawyers to decide. And we're not supposed -'
'I've changed my life to look after my son. I took a part-time job. I learned to organise things in the house, stuff that I never even had to think about before. Feeding him, clothing him, getting him to bed. Answering his questions, being there for him when he was sad or frightened.' 'All the things I did more or less alone for years.'
'That's my point exactly. I taught myself how to care for our child - the way you cared for him. And then you come back and tell me that's all over.'
'You've done a good job over the last few months, Harry. But what do you want? A medal?'
'I don't need a medal. I haven't done anything more than I should have done. I know it's nothing special. But you expect too much of me, Gina. I learned how to be a real father to Pat - I had to, okay? Now you want me just to act as though it never happened. And I can't do it. How can I do it? Tell me how I can do it.'
'Is there a problem?' Richard said, emerging from the Audi. So he did have legs after all. 'Get back in the car, Richard,' Gina said. 'Yeah, get back in the car, Richard,' I said. He got back in the car, blinking behind his glasses.
'You have to decide what you really want, Gina. All of you.' 'What are you talking about?'
'I'm all for men taking responsibility for their children. I'm all for men doing their bit in bringing up their kids. But you can't have it both ways. You can't expect us to take part in the parenting and then just step aside when you want us to, as if we were just like our dads, as if it was all really women's work. Remember that the next time you see your solicitor.' 'And you remember something, Harry.' 'What's that?' 'I love him, too.' Pat was on the floor of his room, tipping a box full of toys on to the floor.
'You have a good time, darling? A good time with Mummy and Richard?'
I sounded ridiculously upbeat, like a game-show host when the really big prize is up for grabs, but I was determined to make Pat feel okay about these new arrangements. I didn't want him to feel that he was betraying me every time he went out to have a good time with his mother and her boyfriend. But I didn't want him to have too good a time either.
'It was all right,' he said. 'Richard and Mummy had a little bit of a row.' Wonderful news. 'Why was that, darling?'
'I got some Magnum on the seat of his stupid car. He thought I shouldn't eat Magnum in the car.' 'But you like Richard?' 'He's all right.'
I felt a pang of sympathy for this man I had never met. Not much of a pang. Just a little one. But a pang all the same. The role he had chosen felt like an impossible part to play. If he tried to be a father to Pat, then he would surely fail. And if he decided to be just a friend, then that would be a kind of failure, too. But at least Richard had a choice.
Who asked Pat if he wanted to be eating a Magnum in the back of that silver Audi? Cyd was working in one of those designer Asian restaurants that were starting to appear all over town, one of those places that sells Thai fishcakes, Japanese soba noodles and cold Vietnamese spring rolls as if they all come from the same place, as if that entire continent had been turned into one big kitchen for the West. It was bright and white, full of polished wood and gleaming chrome, like an art gallery or a dentist's surgery.
From the street I watched Cyd placing two steaming plates of what looked like Malaysian king prawn curry in front of a pair of young women who smiled their thanks at her.
Like every other waitress in there, she was wearing a starched white apron, black trousers and a white shirt. Her hair was cut shorter than I had ever seen it - it was almost boyish now, she had gone from an F. Scott Fitzgerald bob to a Beatle cut in just one trip to the hairdresser's. I knew it meant something important when a woman chopped off her hair, but I couldn't remember what.
She headed towards the back of the place, saying something to the young black guy behind the bar that made him laugh, and disappeared into the kitchen. I took a seat near the front of the restaurant, waiting for her to appear again.
It was after three, and the place was almost empty. Apart from me and the two young women eating their spicy prawns, the only other customers were a table of three well-lunched businessmen, empty bottles of Asahi Super Dry strewn in front of them. A young waitress placed a menu on my table just as Cyd banged back out of the kitchen doors.
At head height and balanced on the palm of her hand, she was carrying a tray holding three bottles of Japanese beer. She unloaded them in front of the drunken suits, not noticing me, ignoring their red-faced leers, not really aware of any of us. 'When do you get off?' one of them asked.
'Don't you mean how?' she said, turning away as they erupted with laughter, and seeing me at last. She slowly came over to my table. 'What would you like?' 'How about spending the rest of our lives together?' 'That's off. How about some noodles?' 'Okay. Have you got the thick kind?'
'Udon? Sure. We do udon noodles in broth with prawns, fish, shitake mushrooms and all that good stuff.'
'Actually, I'm not that hungry. But this is a coincidence, isn't it? Running into each other like this.'
'It certainly is, Harry. How did you know I was working here?' 'I didn't. This is the forty-second place I've tried over the last few days.' 'You really are crazy.' 'Crazy for you.' 'Just crazy. How's your dad?' 'The funeral's tomorrow.' 'God, I'm sorry. Is Pat all right?' I took a breath.