Little Big Man

by Katy Regan

  My eyes nearly popped out of my head then. Did he already know that I was looking for my dad?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Juliet

  It’s my day off. Zac is at Connor’s birthday party all afternoon – he was singing in the bath this morning, overjoyed to be one of only four people invited – and so I decide to go for a walk in People’s Park. I say that like it happens all the time, when in actual fact it never has. I’ve never seen the point of ‘going for a walk’. If you’re walking to somewhere – a mate’s house, the Chinese, the bus stop – then that’s different, but just a walk for walking’s sake? I’ve always thought that was a waste of time, a luxury; but I’m beginning to think that’s just been a cover-up for my lazy-arse ways. I’m starting to get real with myself about this stuff and that’s got to be progress.

  I asked Laura recently, in fact, how she managed to lose all that weight years ago, expecting her to say, Basic self-control, Juliet. You should try it sometime. But she didn’t. She said, ‘Being aware. You can’t change anything unless you’re aware of what you’re doing now, and what you want to change.’ It was a revelation and it stuck, which is saying something because another thing I’ve learnt about myself recently is that not much does stick. I. Just. Don’t. Learn. So I’ve stuck it to my fridge: BE AWARE. I may still choose to open said fridge and hack into a block of Cheddar with my bare teeth but at least I’ll have chosen to, rather than the cheese choosing me, which is basically how it’s felt between me and food all these years.

  I’m trying to be aware of being more active too. Zac’s doing really well. I’m so proud of him. He’s definitely lost weight but it’s not just that; it’s that he seems so much happier. It’s like he’s got purpose suddenly. Whatever it is, my Get Zac Happy campaign might just be working and I want to support him by setting an example, but the truth is, I think I find it harder than him. I’ll be virtuous for a couple of days then start worrying about everything – where were all these facts I was telling him leading us and what the hell had I started?! – and then fall spectacularly off the wagon.

  Right now, though, I stroll on through the park. It’s a gorgeous spring day, the sky that powder blue that it only seems to be in early spring, and everything smells good and fresh. Things are going better for Zac; I feel tentatively at the beginning of an ‘up’ curve, and yet, I also feel a sickly mix of something like déjà vu and foreboding because all spring days like this remind me of is the same time of year eleven years ago. Only then, I could truly enjoy it, having no idea how my life was about to derail.

  I take the route around the lake, trying to feel again what it was like to be full of nothing but hope for the future. At this time – late March of that year (2005) – I was seven months pregnant, fat and joyful as a daffodil trumpet; madly in love and impatient to meet our son. I loved being pregnant, never more than when I was heavily so, and my flabby middle, normally a major obstacle to all things fashion, had swanned into this glorious, drum-tight beach ball that I could not stop looking at and that I showed off in the tightest Lycra at every opportunity. It was the first and last time in my life that I was proud of my body (and that I could go anywhere near tight Lycra for that matter) and I was in love with my new primal shape. I also loved the fact that when I walked down the street, I felt people were admiring, not judging me. And, I’d think wryly, I’ve never been heavier! I’ve never eaten as much Edam in my life! Liam always told me I was beautiful before I was pregnant but I never believed him, always told him to shut up. But now, sometimes, I’d be standing just brushing my teeth or filling the kettle and I’d catch him looking at me with those ridiculous blue eyes, fist at his mouth as if stopping something, in case it overflowed …

  ‘What?’ I’d say coyly, knowing full well what, because he’d said it before, but also because, for the first time in my life, I felt it to be true.

  ‘You’re beautiful, that’s what,’ he’d say.

  I didn’t know who was more excited about the baby – me, or Liam. He wanted everything new for him. Hand-me-downs were turned down graciously, although in all honesty, we could have done with them, but I knew, even though he never said it, that Liam needed to prove that he could provide for his family. Most of all, I knew he wanted to prove (mostly to my mother) that he was nothing like his own father, which is why I’m so floored that things have turned out the way they have.

  I know exactly what he was wearing that night, 11 June 2005, because I remember thinking how sexy he looked. ‘You won’t want him anywhere near you when you’re breastfeeding,’ women seemed to delight in telling me, but I must have been the exception to the rule, because although my body was battered from the birth, I could not get enough of him. My favourite thing to do was to study Liam’s face, then Zac’s, and count the similarities. I found new ones every day: the eyes, of course, but also the lips, the tiny earlobes, even right down to the strange X-shaped crease at the back of their necks. Looking at Zac was like discovering Liam afresh; falling for him all over again. I must have suspected my happy little world was about to be smashed to smithereens, however, because I can remember every last moment before Liam went out that evening in microscopic detail, almost as if I knew I’d better slow it right down so that it could be committed to memory: I had it once, true happiness. It was real. It happened to me.

  So anyway, there we stood, that night, before he went out, in the front porch of the little two-up two-down we were renting, door open, the floral scent of early summer wafting in. He was wearing his black jeans and a red tartan shirt, with the top button undone, revealing just a small triangle of chest hair. Being so dark, he was always self-conscious of his hairiness, tried to cover it up, but I’ve always gone for manly men, I suppose, and I loved it, especially the way it smelt when I laid my face against it. And we’d stood there, me doing just that, Zac asleep over my shoulder, blissfully unaware this would be the last time he’d be in the presence of his father.

  It must have been about seven-thirty, but it was still warm and sunny outside and I remember the way the shape of us then, our brand-new family, fell in elongated shadows against the beige carpet in the hallway. Outside, seagulls cried their mournful cry as if they knew something we didn’t. Kids shouted. Skateboards rumbled up and down.

  ‘Now, go and have a laugh,’ I said, stepping back from him and sweeping his black hair to the side, the way I fancied him the most. ‘Have some fun; you deserve it.’ I didn’t have to say and don’t get too drunk because I knew – at least I thought I did – that he wouldn’t. If anything, he’d be doing my head in, calling every fifteen minutes to check on us, then coming home at half past nine …

  He reached out and stroked Zac’s head. ‘Sure you don’t mind? I feel a bit guilty going out.’

  ‘Why? Don’t!’ I said, and I meant it. ‘Your nipples aren’t attached to a baby 24/7. I’d make a run for it, if I were you.’ And he rolled his eyes at my attempt at a joke. ‘Just don’t let my brother go silly, will you? Because he thinks he can take his beer, but he can’t unfortunately. Look after him, won’t you?’ It seems darkly ironic to me now – if that isn’t the understatement of the century – that it was my brother getting too drunk I was worried about, not Liam. If I had any concerns about Liam, it was that he wouldn’t let his hair down; I felt like he’d been cooped up for months now and needed a break.

  The plan was that Liam would go over to my parents’ house, collect Jamie and then Dad would give them both a lift to the pub. To our amazement, not to mention pride, Dad hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol for five months at this point, so was leaving the baby-head-wetting rituals to my brother and Liam. Mum – who was on a night shift at the care home – had instructed him to make them some stomach-lining pasta beforehand.

  ‘I won’t be late, all right?’ Liam said, kissing first Zac on the forehead and then me on mine, laying his own forehead against it for a moment, so that our lips were nearly touching. What he said next will stay with me forever. ‘I’m really ha
ppy, Jules.’

  It slipped out, probably taking him by surprise as much as me, because he wasn’t one for big emotional declarations, and I kissed him hard on his smiling mouth then, because I knew – or thought I did – how much he meant it. I thought it was a beautiful surprise to him that this was true, and that it had taken a baby, the ultimate commitment, to make that happen. Proof that he may have been Vaughan Jones’s son genetically, but that was where the similarities ended.

  But since everything happened, I’ve questioned that like I’ve questioned everything else; asked myself if when he said those words, he was not being genuine but trying to convince himself, having second thoughts about me, us, all of it, and that was why he went out and did what he did.

  Zac was oddly unsettled that night and I’d just got him off to sleep and was drifting off myself when I was woken up by my mobile ringing – Liam’s name flashing up. I picked up. ‘Liam, seriously … For God’s sake.’ I was irritated he’d called at such an inopportune time; little did I know I was about to have far bigger things to be mad about. I couldn’t make out a word he was saying. He was sobbing, hyperventilating, and I bolted out of bed, shouting at him to tell me what had happened, which woke up Zac so that all three of us were screaming. He was obviously still drunk because he was slurring his words, making little sense, and all I could hear between sobs was Jamie, fight, hospital, my fault.

  I was rifling in drawers for something to wear – all I wanted was to be with Jamie at this point – and Zac, who would have to come with me because there was no one else to look after him, was screaming blue murder in his Moses basket.

  ‘How bad is he?’ I was saying. ‘He is going to be all right, though, isn’t he?’ But Liam wasn’t talking, only sobbing, and the sobs stretched and stretched and then, he said, or rather rambled, ‘There was a fight. I started it, Jules. I just saw red. I threw this punch … I never meant to. I was so pissed, Juliet. Shit. Shit. I was so drunk.’

  My neck went cold then, I remember that.

  ‘Do Mum and Dad know?’ I asked then, and, when he said they were there already, I said, ‘Tell them I’m coming.’ As I said it, I suddenly felt this icy screen descend – almost like a reflex – between the two of us.

  Liam was still talking but I hung up. That was it as far as I was concerned. I didn’t want to hear anymore from him. I didn’t want to see him either – not then.

  I bumped into him, though, as I was rushing through the doors of A&E, Zac strapped to my chest.

  ‘Juliet.’ He took hold of my shoulders, trying to make me stop. He was crying and breathing heavily, right in my face. ‘Please can I talk to you?’ He reeked of booze and already didn’t look like the same person to me. ‘Please, please …’ But I couldn’t, didn’t even want to, look at him then.

  ‘I can’t, Liam,’ I said, trying to push him to one side so that I could get past. ‘Move, I’ve got to see my brother.’

  I walked away, down the long, overheated hospital corridors that seemed to be closing in on me, unaware, as yet, of the horrors I would find: my little brother, so unrecognizable because of all the tubes. I was only aware it was him because of my parents being there. Dad was sitting with his head in his hands – a pose he seems to have retained for the last ten years – my mother unable to look at me. She was mad with me – by association – I could tell, and I can’t say I blame her. Sometimes I wonder if she’s ever stopped being mad.

  I didn’t see Liam again after that. I only spoke to him, very briefly, early that next morning, after Jamie had died. His number flashed up and, not thinking straight, I picked up. He was silent at first, then he said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I love you and Zac so much. I know you don’t want to talk or see me now, but can we talk? When you’re ready?’ I hung up. It wasn’t even hate I felt so much as a sensation of being repelled, physically, by him; the opposite of the magnetism that had happened when we’d first kissed outside The Fiddler. The mooring rope had severed, and I was floating away. When those first few awful weeks were over and I found out the details of the fight, I began to see it all for the tragic, awful accident that it was. But right at that moment, on the phone, all I knew was that my brother was dead, my distraught parents held him accountable and so there was no way I could have anything to do with him.

  I’ve brought a flask of coffee and some miserable carrot batons, and so I lay my cardigan down under a tree and sit down. There’s a children’s play area opposite – or an adventure trail, I guess you’d call it – a big improvement on the rotting roundabout on our estate, anyway, and I wonder why on earth I didn’t bring Zac here more often when he was little, when it was free and practically on our doorstep.

  There are about six or so kids swinging from various tyres and wires on there; four out of that six (I know because I’ve counted) with their dads. I always notice dads. I’ve got a fetish for them like I imagine women who can’t have kids, and long for them, must have about pregnant women. I like to punish myself by watching them with their children, how they chat and listen to them; how they’re just there, pushing their kid on a boring swing, doing boring things, because they want to; because they love them. Because that’s what being a dad is.

  I munch noisily on my carrots from my people-watching hideout, the leaves fluttering above me. One minute, all is calm and there are two little girls on the see-saw; the next, there’s only one, with the other one face down on the floor. There’s a big wail, followed – you know it’s coming – by another, even bigger wail, and I stand up, like I always do when I hear a child crying like that, because my instinct is to go to them, but I don’t have to, because her dad has already scooped her up in his arms and is holding her to his chest, comforting her. ‘It’s all right,’ I can hear him say over her wails. ‘Come on, sweetheart, you’re all right …’ The way he’s rubbing her back, swaying her gently in his arms to soothe her; the way he’s talking to the other concerned parents who’ve come to see if she’s all right; it’s so tender and natural that it brings tears to my eyes, and I don’t know who I’m more upset for: the little girl, me, Zac or even Liam.

  The dad carries his daughter over to a bench to sit her down and inspect her injuries, which don’t look more serious than grazed knees. He’s wiry – not my type at all – but I watch him, wondering not for the first time, could I have a relationship with a man based on how good a father he is, rather than how ‘right’ he is for me? Does there really have to be the bloody fireworks? Last week I found something in Zac’s room that I really wish I hadn’t. I was dusting in there (that’ll teach me) and I pulled out his toy box full of legless, headless plastic figures that he hasn’t played with for years when I found, slipped behind it, a blue ring-binder with a white sheet of paper Sellotaped to the front. TOP TRUMPS FOR DADS it said, written in Zac’s squidgy 3-D writing. ZAC AND TEAGAN’S SECRET GAME!! Obviously, there’s nothing like the word ‘secret’ to shoot your willpower dead, so I opened the file. There were several A4 sheets of paper, each headed with a different man’s name. KARL (Jacob Wilmore’s dad), PHIL (Sam Bale’s dad), MR SINGH (Ravi’s dad and Costcutter boss) … Along the top of each page were different qualities – Fun. Kind. Funny. Rich – then a score for each one.

  That was it for me; I’d seen enough to confirm my fears. All these years I’ve convinced myself we’re all right, just the two of us, that Zac doesn’t feel he’s missing out not having a dad, but I’ve just been fooling myself. He badly wants a dad. What’s more, he’s obsessed with them – a dad fetishist, just like me. My son needs a father – isn’t that more important than me needing The One? I don’t have to have someone I can fall in love with, I just need someone who can love my son. I did the ‘soulmate’/passion thing with Liam, after all, and look where that got me. Maybe it’s time to put my child before myself.

  I finally finish the carrot batons – this is the thing about raw vegetables, I find, they take so long to eat – and stand up to go but someone, just coming into my side vision, half
catches my attention.

  That someone ruffles my hair: ‘Hello, Jules.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ It’s Jason. I nearly have a heart attack.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ He’s out of breath and sweating, obviously mid-run. He looks sort of manly and vital, eyes shiny, face flushed.

  ‘Oh,’ I say lamely, ‘I was just having a nice spring walk, actually. Getting some exercise, you know …’

  ‘I approve. Hey, how did the big beach run go?’

  ‘Oh, I was like a gazelle, naturally.’

  Jason surveys me, annoyingly amused.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, just your face,’ he says, chuckling to himself. ‘When you’re talking about anything to do with exercise … you have a specific face.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Talking of exercise. Have you thought anymore about what I said about coming to the sessions with Zac, or just on your own if you want? I think it would be really motivating for him, to know you were on board.’

  I have been thinking about it. I’ve thought about it a lot over the past week. I’ve thought about what Zac has put up with these last few years: a depressed, overeating, perennially skint mother; one who loves him with every cell in her body, but that doesn’t change those facts. This was something I could do for him, for us, that would cost me nothing. And it would be with Jason – who I kind of miss, actually.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I have been thinking about it, and I’ve decided I would love to. ’Bout time I got off my fat arse and did some exercise, eh?’

  And he laughs again. I wonder why momentarily, and then the penny drops.

  ‘The face,’ we say, in unison this time. ‘The exercise face.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mick

  I want to go back now, to the moment Liam Jones first walked into our lives. I remember it like it was yesterday, which is a miracle in itself, since I remember so little about day-to-day life around that time, living as I was in a permanent boozy cloud. But I do remember that night with razor-sharp clarity: the doors of the TC’s working men’s club opening with a creak audible to all eight or nine of us sitting there at the bar in a pool of evening sun, and Vaughan Jones’s lad Liam walking in, hand in hand with my daughter. I could almost hear Lynda’s hackles as they went up.