Man and boy

Nigel shuffled some papers on his desk, almost embarrassed on my behalf. 'I'm not sure that's really relevant here, is it?' he said.

***

I watched them from the window. Gina emerged from the Audi's passenger seat and let Pat out of the back door -he had told me that Richard had fitted a child lock - and then, crouching on the pavement so that they were the same height, she wrapped her arms around him, burying his blond head against her neck, grasping her last few seconds with him before she gave him back to me.

Gina lingered by the car door - we couldn't talk any more, but she would wait until she saw me before she got in - and as I watched Pat run up the little path to our door, his eyes shining, I knew that he deserved to be loved as much as any child in this world is loved. Later, he was playing on the floor of his room with his toys. 'Pat?' 'Yes?'

'You know Mummy and I don't get on very well right now?' 'You don't talk to each other.' 'That's because we're having an argument at the moment.'

He silently smacked Luke Skywalker against the side of the Millennium Falcon. I sat down on the floor next to him. He kept smacking Luke.

'We both love you very much. You know that, don't you?' He didn't speak. 'Pat?' 'I guess.'

'And we both want you to live with us. Where would you prefer to live? With me?' 'Yeah.' 'Or with Mummy?' 'Yeah.'

'It can't be both of us. You understand that, don't you? It can't be both. Not any more.' He came to my arms and I cuddled him. 'It's difficult, isn't it, darling?' 'It's difficult.'

'But that's what the argument is about. I want you to stay here. And Mummy wants you to stay with her. Her and Richard.' 'Yeah, but what about my stuff?' 'What?'

'All my stuff. All my stuff is here. What if I went over there to live - what about my stuff?'

'That wouldn't be a problem, darling. We could move your things. You don't have to worry about that. The important thing is where you live. And I want you to stay here.' He looked up at me. They were Gina's eyes. 'Why?'

'Because it's the right thing for you,' I said, and even as the words were forming, I wondered if that were really true.

I had changed over the last six months, my months of bringing up Pat alone. The show with Eamon was just a way to pay the mortgage, not the way to prove my worth to myself and everyone else. Work was no longer the centre of my universe. The centre of my universe was my boy.

When I felt pride or fear or wonder or anything that reminded me that I was alive, it wasn't because of anything that happened at the studio, it was because Pat had learned to tie his laces or because he had been bullied at school or because he said something or did something which just stunned me with love, something that reminded me that my son was the most beautiful boy in the world. If he went away then I would feel that I had lost everything. 'I just want what's best for you,' I said, wondering for the first time if I really wanted what was best for him, or what was best for myself. 'Your dad and I saw her at the Palladium when she was eighteen years old,' my mother said. 'They called her the Girl from Tiger Bay.' Her blue eyes became wide with excitement - why had I never noticed how blue they were in the past? In the gloaming of the Albert Hall, my mother's eyes shone like something in the window of Tiffany.

Although they had always spent most of their evenings at home, my parents always took in a show every six months or so - Tony Bennett at the Royal Festival Hall, a revival of Oklahoma! or Guys and Dolls in the West End - and so now I was taking my mother to a show at the Albert Hall. Her personal all-time favourite - the girl from Tiger Bay. 'Shirley Bassey!' my mother said.

I had been dragged to a few Shirley Bassey shows before I was old enough to protest. But when I was growing up, her audience hadn't been anywhere near as mixed as the crowd that confronted us inside the Albert Hall.

Impossibly handsome young men with little Uzbek caps and plucked eyebrows looked for their seats along with stolid elderly couples from the Home Counties, the men country-club formal in blazers, the women with that peculiarly frozen Maggie Thatcher hair-do that my mother's generation sport on a night out.

T never realised that old Shirley was so big with the gay crowd,' I said. T guess it makes sense - the boys love that combination of showbiz glitz and personal tragedy. She's our Judy Garland.'

'The gay crowd?' my mum said, bewildered. 'What gay crowd?' I gestured at the young men in Versace and Prada who stood out so obviously against the wool and polyester of the suburban set. 'All around you, Mum.'

As if on cue, the boy next to my mother - a male model type who was simply too good-looking to be heterosexual - stood up and squealed with excitement as the orchestra struck up the opening chords to 'Diamonds are Forever'. 'We love you, Shirley! You're fabulous!'

'Well, he's not gay,' my mum whispered in my ear, totally serious.

I laughed and put my arm around her, kissing her on the cheek. She leaned forward excitedly as Shirley Bassey appeared at the top of the stage stairs - her evening dress sparkling with what looked like fairy lights, her hands tossed extravagantly in the air. 'How do you do it, Mum?' 'How do I do what?'

'How do you manage to carry on after losing Dad? I mean, you were with him all your life. I can't imagine what it must be like to try to fill a gap that big.' .'Well, you don't get over it, of course. You can never get over it. I miss him. I'm lonely. Sometimes I'm frightened. And I still have to sleep with the light on.'

She looked at me. Shirley Bassey was prowling the front of the stage to thunderous applause and showers of bouquets. Yes, she was definitely our Judy Garland.

'But you have to learn to let go,' my mother said. 'That's part of it, isn't it?' 'Part of what?'

'Part of what it means to love someone. To really love someone. If you love someone then you don't just see them as an extension of yourself. You don't just love them for what's in it for you.' My mother turned back to the stage. In the darkness of the Albert Hall I could see that her blue eyes were shining with tears. 'Love means knowing when to let go,' she told me. thirty-nine 'You're crazy,' Nigel Batty said. 'You're going to voluntarily give up your child? You're going to just hand him over to your ex-wife when we could fucking beat her? She's going to love this - you know that, don't you?'

'I'm not doing this for her,' I said. 'I'm doing it for him.'

'You know how many men would love to be in your position? You know how many men I see in this office - grown men fucking weeping, Harry - who would give everything they've got to keep their children? Who would give their right nuts? And you're just walking away from him.'

'No, I'm not walking away from him. I'm not giving up. But I know how much he loves to be with Gina, although he tries not to show it because he thinks it will hurt me or be a betrayal or something. And either they make some kind of connection again, or she's going to become someone he just sees at weekends. I can see it happening already.' 'Whose fault is that?'

T know you're disappointed, Nigel. But I'm just thinking of my boy.'

'You think she thought of him when she walked out? You think she thought of him when she was in the cab to Heathrow?'

'I don't know. I just think that a child needs two parents. Even a kid whose parents are divorced. Especially a kid whose parents are divorced. I'm doing what I can to make that happen.'

'What about the guy she lives with? This Richard? You don't know anything about him. You're happy to turn your son over to him?'

'I'm not turning Pat over to anyone. He's my son and he will always be my son. I'm his father and I will always be his father. But I have to assume that Gina hasn't got completely lousy taste in men.'