Late at night we go to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant on Brewer Street. You sit at a long round bar, small plates of sushi trundle past your eyes and you help yourself to whatever takes your fancy. It turns out to be the place where Gen works and he comes over to say hello. For some reason he doesn’t seem surprised to see Yumi with me.
Then Gen goes back to work and Yumi tells me that Japanese people do not usually like these kinds of places because the fish is not as fresh as when it’s made to order. But it tastes pretty good to me, and we demolish a pile of different-colored plates bearing two pieces of tuna, salmon, eel, egg or prawn.
Back at her flat we make love-slowly, sleepily, relaxed with each other now-and when we wake up around noon the next day, we take a walk to the very top of Primrose Hill where it’s one of those shining winter days and we can see the whole of London spread out before us.
“So beautiful,” Yumi says.
“Yes,” I say, looking at her face. “So beautiful.”
Monday morning, after my mother has gone off to dish up the burgers, beans and tacos at Nelson Mandela High, my father comes to the house.
I am sort of glad to see him. I miss him. Just miss having him around. Miss the way it used to be. But I can see that his timing is an act of supreme cowardice and that makes me despise him. I sit on the stairs as he fills a couple of suitcases. Files, books, clothes. Videos, documents, stacks of CDs.
Taking them, leaving us.
The CD on top of a pile waiting to be packed is called Dancing in the Street-43 Motown Dance Classics, a window to a world of youth and optimism and perfect grooves that seems out of place and out of time.
“So how’s the new book coming along?” I ask him. “Getting it done, are you?”
He doesn’t look at me, just carries on trying to close a Samsonite that is far too full. He’s going to struggle to get that into the SLK’s boot. I don’t offer to help him.
“The book will be fine.”
“Good stuff.”
“You think this is easy for me. But it’s not. I miss my home. You can’t imagine how much I miss it.”
“What about us?”
“What do you think? Of course I miss you. Both of you.”
“What I don’t understand is how you explain it to yourself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Leaving, I mean. You inflict all this pain on Mum, and I don’t understand how you live with it. You must justify it to yourself. But I don’t know how.”
“Lena’s a special girl. Hardly a girl. A special young woman.”
“But what if she’s not, Dad? What if she’s just another girl who happens to be really pretty? Does that mean you got it wrong? That all of this was a mistake? Will it still be worth it?”
“She’s far more than a pretty face. Do you really think that I would turn my world upside down for a pretty face?”
“Absolutely.”
“Anyway,” he says, getting the Samsonite to shut at last. “It was a relief to finally get it out in the open.”
“Your nasty little knob?”
“My relationship with Lena. I was sick of sneaking around. It couldn’t have gone on like that forever.”
“So Lena is-what?-your mistress?”
“God. No. Lena is certainly not my mistress.”
“But you must give her money? You slip her a few quid, don’t you?”
“Well, yes. Not that it’s got anything to do with you.”
“For exclusive rights.”
“That’s not the reason.”
“You slip her money for exclusive rights. If that’s not a mistress, then what is? And you see her when you can, right?”
“Not anymore.” He looks at me for the first time with a bit of defiance. “Now I see her all the time. When I want.”
My old man has nearly finished packing. There are lots more of his possessions here. Wardrobes full of suits. A study full of books. Enough sports equipment to stock a small gym. But this is just a quick raid to grab the bare essentials. Today is not the final reckoning. Right now he just wants clean underwear and his Diana Ross compilations.
“How did it work?” I ask him. “How did you get away with it? You must have lied through your teeth. You must have been pretending to do one thing when what you were really doing was Lena.”
“Would you like to watch your mouth?”
“Didn’t that make you feel a bit grubby? Lying like that?”
“I didn’t enjoy it.”
“But you didn’t hate it so much that you stopped doing it.”
“I guess not.”
“And she never knew. Mum, I mean. Never even suspected. Ignorance is certainly bliss, isn’t it? Or at least it’s very underrated.”
“I really must go.”
“Mum trusted you, you bastard. That’s why you got away with it for so long. Not because you’re clever. Because she trusted you. Because she’s kind and good. And you probably think that you’re a decent guy, don’t you? Is Mum just supposed to crawl away and die now? Is that what she’s supposed to do?”
“Christ! You’re making more of a fuss than her.”
He tries to leave. I step in front of him.
“Look, I’m not a kid, okay?”
“Then stop acting like one.”
“I can understand how you would want to go to bed with Lena. I can even understand how you might want to do it more than once.”
“Thank you so much for your understanding.”
“What I don’t understand is how you could be so cruel.”
“I’m not trying to be cruel. I’m just trying to get on with my life. Didn’t you ever feel like that, Alfie? Like just getting on with your life?” He shakes his head. “No. Probably not.”
And there’s something else that I don’t understand. What happens to all the old photographs? All the old photographs in their albums and the shoe boxes and drawers-where do they go now?
My father is not going to take them with him. He’s not going to sit around in his rented love nest looking at all the old photographs with Lena. She doesn’t want to see pictures of me and my mum and my dad at the seaside, in the garden of the house where I grew up, grinning in our party hats at all those lost Christmases.
Lena’s not interested in all that stuff. And neither is my father. Not anymore. He doesn’t want reminders of his old life. He wants to get on with his new life.
And the old photographs are not much good to my mother. She doesn’t want to see them anymore. That’s what I resent most. My father’s actions haven’t just contaminated the present. They have reached back across the years, making our happiness seem misplaced, our innocence seem foolish, all that was good seem second-rate.
Our party hats at Christmas, our smiling faces in the back garden, looking happy and proud in our best clothes at some cousin’s wedding-how wrong it all seems now. The old photographs are all ruined.
My father hasn’t just messed up the present. He has messed up the past.
I buy her some flowers on the way to work. Nothing too flashy. I don’t want to overdo it. Just a bunch of yellow tulips for when we get a moment.
But it’s strange. Yumi doesn’t act differently. That is, she is just the same as she always was-making jokes and cheeky comments in her Advanced Beginners class, but always working hard, getting the job done, being a good, conscientious student. Same as always. As if nothing has happened. As if the world hasn’t been changed. At lunchtime she picks up her books to leave.
“Can we talk?” I ask her, producing the tulips from under my desk.