by Katy Regan
‘So how were the Easter holidays, Zac?’ asked Brenda when we’d put Guess Who? away and were messing around in the sand. (I like making trenches, then putting the plastic soldiers on either side, ready for a battle.)
‘Good.’
‘Did you do anything fun?’
‘Me and my mum went to Skeggy on the bus. Teagan was meant to come but she couldn’t because she had an asthma attack and had to go to hospital.’
‘Oh dear, I am sorry to hear that. I know you and Teagan are best friends, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, but it’s all right, because she’s better now. It just meant we couldn’t do as much of our Find Dad mission as we wanted.’
Just like that, it happened. I didn’t mean to tell Brenda I was looking for my dad – it just came out. Once it had, I wasn’t that bothered, though. The fact that my mum was helping us now made it not feel like a big secret anymore. It was definitely not a big secret anyway, because as well as my mum knowing – and now Brenda – there was also Jason. I’d told him while we were eating the Grimsby Fish Legend (it’s the latest sandwich I’ve invented for him: tuna, anchovies, gherkins and eggs) after we’d finished playing football last week. Out of the blue, he’d brought up how I’d sounded cagey when he’d asked me what I was going to do in the Easter holidays. (He must have been feeling suspicious about it!) Normally people are cagey when they’ve done something, but looking for my dad didn’t feel like a naughty thing anymore (except where Nan and Grandad were concerned, but I just don’t talk about it anymore in front of them) so I told him. I wanted to anyway, because him and Mum are spending more time together – it’s looking more likely that they’re going to become boyfriend and girlfriend again, and it’s going to end in tears when we find my dad, so I thought it would be good if I could kind of warn him a bit. I thought he’d be mad at me, but he wasn’t, he just carried on munching the Fish Legend, then he said, ‘Well, I’m proud of you, mate, because that’s a massive thing to do and you are leading it.’
I didn’t know what he really felt about it. You couldn’t tell because he was hiding it.
Like Jason, Brenda already knew that my dad did a runner. I told her when I first started going to see her back in November, after the Halloween where Mum got done by the police in Morrisons and I was getting upset all the time at school. Now, though, she was asking what the Find Dad mission was. She said I didn’t have to tell her, but I wanted to. I like talking about it. I didn’t tell her everything (like my mum saying she loved my dad – because that’s top secret) but this is what I told her:
• I wanted to know who my dad was and what he was like so we were looking for him (and that’s what the FDMC was about).
• My mum knew and was helping us.
• We had meetings and a proper file and I already knew loads of facts about him and that he was nice, because Barrel told me down the docks.
‘Wow, Zac, I can see you’re really excited about it,’ said Brenda. ‘That’s quite big news.’ She was quiet for a second and then, ‘What’s that you’re doing in the sand?’ she said. Brenda’s funny. She always asks me loads of questions about what I’m doing in the sand, when all I’m doing is messing about.
‘I’m just preparing them for battle.’
‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Well, it’s a very good idea to prepare for things, Zac. That’s very wise. And have you thought about how you might prepare for looking for your dad? What your strategy might be?’
I was concentrating on preparing my army.
‘Because it’s a very brave thing you’ve set out to do and, of course, there’s every chance you’ll find him, but you might not too – or he may not want to be found. Shall we have a chat about the different things that could happen?’
I said I didn’t mind, I just wanted something to happen.
You could tell Brenda was worried about me, just like Teagan and Mum are worried about me. They’re worried what it will be like if my Find Dad mission goes wrong. I know it’s ’cause everyone cares about my feelings, but it’s not that helpful thinking bad stuff ’s going to happen all the time.
We’d only been back at school a week after the Easter holidays, but it felt miles longer. Teagan was better now. She had to stay in hospital for four days. They gave her some medicine that made her asthma better but her face fat. She said she didn’t care, though, because it was too thin anyway. It wasn’t nice visiting her in the hospital, even though it was nice to see her. She was in a weird bed and kept having to put an oxygen mask on to help her get enough breath in her lungs when she got too tired. Her dad was meant to come too the night I was visiting – Teagan kept looking at the door in case he turned up. She really wanted him to come, you could tell, but it got right to the end of visiting time and he hadn’t. I asked her if she was all right, and she said she was. I was glad I’d brought her the shell to cheer her up, though.
‘Why do you think I chose this one?’ I said, when I gave it to her.
‘Dunno, but I like it! Is it because it’s thin and spiky like me?’
‘You’re not spiky,’ I said, because she’s not, she’s nice and kind. ‘No, I chose it because it looks like a rocket and what do you think is your favourite saying?’
She laughed then. ‘You need a rocket up yer bum.’
I felt loads better then, because she was smiling. She was back to normal.
I haven’t even told Mum this, but I felt a bit guilty when Teagan had her asthma attack. I worried it was because we’d been down the docks when it was rainy and cold which can be really bad for you if you’ve got asthma. She’d also forgotten her puffer that day and neither of those things would have happened if she wasn’t helping me to look for my dad. When Teagan was all better and back at school, I told her I’d been thinking this, but she just pulled a face. She even looked a bit mad with me. ‘Me having an asthma attack has got nothing to do with you,’ she said. We were in the dinner queue so we just had to keep moving as we talked. ‘You feel bad about everything, you do. I’ve just got stupid asthma – it’s nobody’s fault. Except maybe the council’s.’ I haven’t told her I sent the photo of myself without her on Skegness Beach with an angry letter to the Housing Department. Only Mum knows.
I gave Teagan the chance to pull out of the mission but she didn’t want to; she said her life would be dead boring again if she wasn’t doing it.
‘Yeah, but we might not find him,’ I said while we were eating our dinner, thinking of what Brenda had said. (I don’t have chips anymore and neither does Teagan.) ‘What will we do then?’
‘We will find him,’ said Teagan.
‘I thought you said we might not, though. I thought you said I should prepare myself.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve decided thinking that is rubbish and it’s more fun to think it will work out. If it does go wrong, then it will be rubbish anyway so there’s no point feeling rubbish while we don’t even know what’s going to happen.’
I thought it was good she said that – especially when her own dad didn’t even come to the hospital. If Teagan’s dad didn’t want to know, then who says mine will? Maybe Teagan was right, that night after we’d called up Finder Genie and I’d walked her back to her block and she’d warned me that my dad might not want to know either. I didn’t want to have that thought, though, so I tried to think of something nice; something that would squash it and make it go away.
One of the good things about having Mum helping us find my dad was that we didn’t have to wait till a special, secret FDMC meeting anymore. We could just ask Mum questions whenever we liked, and it didn’t matter if the questions made her suspicious, because she knew what we were doing anyway.
On the Saturday after our first week back at school, Teagan came to Sandwich King with me while I made Jason’s special sandwich for that day’s session. Mum came too, as usual, and Raymond let us in. You could tell Teagan was properly better, because she was being stupid, like she normally is, trying on the plastic hats that Mum and Aunty Laura hav
e to wear to make the sandwiches, then running outside in the street. It was a good job it was so early and nobody was in town yet – we were all laughing our heads off.
‘She’s a wee firecracker, isn’t she?’ Raymond said. Raymond is Scottish so he says ‘wee’ when he means little; it’s nothing to do with going for a wee. He thought she was mad but he liked her too, you could tell. Teagan liked him back. We decided he came sixth in our Top Trumps for Dads. If he was younger, he’d come higher, but he might not live long enough to be the perfect dad. Teagan was asking him loads of personal questions like whether he was married (he is) and if he had any children (he’s got four). Then she asked him how much money he earned (Mum said that was a step too far), because we’ve decided that when we’re older, if Teagan doesn’t make it as a gymnast, we could open a cafe like Sandwich King and Teagan could be like Raymond. She could drive the van and be the delivery woman and we could unpack everything together and chat while we do it, every day.
After I’d made the sandwich (the Roast Dinner: pork with apple sauce and grated carrot and sweetcorn – it sounds bad, but it’s really nice), me and Teagan asked Mum if we could ask her some more questions.
‘About your dad, I’m guessing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Go on then.’ Mum sat down with a cup of tea at the table at the window of the cafe and so we sat down with her. ‘Hit me with it, Private Detectives Hutchinson and O’Brien.’
Teagan got out our notebook and found a clean page. It was a very important question, after all. We hadn’t had a chance to ask it in Skegness, so we were asking it now.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Juliet
It was the most obvious question in the world: What were you doing the last time you saw him? So why had I given no thought whatsoever to what I would say? How could I have not seen that one coming? Lying was horrible but God, I was good at it. Who knew I was such a natural storyteller? I was wasted making sandwiches; I should be writing books.
The story went like this:
I was seven and a half months pregnant and I’d been to town, getting a few bits for you. I loved buying baby stuff. I was so excited. I’d been in Superdrug that day, stocking up on talc and baby wipes and nappies, blissfully unaware that back at home, your father was packing his bags.
Teagan bored holes into me with her dark, serious eyes, twiddling her pen, like some Rottweiler journalist. ‘Yeah, but that wasn’t the last time you actually saw him, was it? Not if you were in town and he was packing. The last time you actually saw him must have been before you went into town,’ she said. ‘So …’ She paused, almost as if she was doing it for effect; I half imagined myself in a police interview room. ‘What happened the last time you actually saw him?’
And so in desperation I squeezed out another inspired story where I was still seven and a half months pregnant, but in this one, the night before I went to town to buy baby stuff, Liam and I had gone for a lovely walk along Cleethorpes Beach – beautiful sunset (the Devil’s in the detail after all) – then we’d got up the next day – nothing out of the ordinary – and he’d gone off to work around eight and later I’d gone into town, and that was it. Literally never heard from him again.
‘How come you never mentioned the last walk you had on Cleethorpes Beach when we went running on Cleethorpes Beach, then? That is quite an important fact.’
Teagan again. The staff at Thornby Academy who had written her off were going to get the shock of their lives when she turned up as an interviewer on Newsnight.
‘Yeah, and also, I thought he was a fisherman,’ Zac joined in. ‘So why was he not on a trip? Or was it the first day of a new one? Did you not go and wave him off, like you did for Grandad? That’s a bit tight, Mum.’
Come to think of it, I’d have had an easier time on Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman.
‘Well, you see, he was doing decorating at that point,’ I lied, digging a deeper and deeper hole. ‘When he was between fishing jobs, he used to do decorating and odd jobs around town.’
‘Write that down,’ Zac said and Teagan dutifully snapped the top off a new colour pen. ‘Because that could be his job in the town where he lives now.’
There were more questions: what was Liam wearing that last time you saw him (I did point out I hoped he would have changed since then); what kind of mood was he in; did he say he had plans for the day?
‘Where do you get this stuff?’ I asked, amazed.
‘The Internet,’ Teagan said casually. ‘We just looked up Things to ask when looking for a missing person, didn’t we, Zac?’
‘Yep,’ Zac said, leaning back, clicking his pen on and off. Who was this ten-year-old before me? When had my son got so … confident? Then came the killer question. I’d have been proud of him, had it not been me who had to answer it. ‘What was the last thing you said to each other?’
I knew I shouldn’t but, perhaps like my penchant for nicking things, once it entered my head, I somehow couldn’t resist. I wanted – too much – to see Zac’s face light up. And light up it did. ‘We said we loved each other,’ I replied. ‘We gave each other a kiss and said we loved each other.’
‘I’m definitely writing that down!’ said Teagan excitedly.
I was so convincing, I almost believed it myself.
It must have been quite the day for making progress with the mission because after the interrogation at the cafe, Zac came up with one of his brainwaves: ‘I know, Mum, we could try and find Dad’s relatives! They’d know where he was. Did he have any brothers and sisters? If we could find out where they lived, we could go and see them.’
I’m amazed, actually, that he hasn’t asked me this before. Being an only child, Zac is always looking for ways to make his family bigger: ‘Does Aunty Kath and Uncle Brian’s dog, Branston, count as a family member?’ ‘There’s a boy called Charlie Hutchinson who’s just joined in reception – could he be my long-lost cousin?’ So you can imagine his joy when I told him, in answer to his question, about Liam’s half-sister, Kelly – the result of Liam’s mum’s relationship with another man before she went for bad-boy Vaughan.
‘So I’ve got a half-aunty?’ He was delighted.
‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘Does she live in Grimsby? We could go and see her!’
‘No, no, Zac,’ I said, my stomach turning over. ‘She doesn’t live in Grimsby.’
I did know where she lived, though. I just wasn’t telling him that – yet.
It’s the Monday evening after Zac’s Saturday interrogation at Sandwich King and I call up Jase to see if he’ll meet me for an exercise session down the playing fields. I feel awful for barefaced lying to my son. It’s a good job Zac is old enough now, on the cusp of eleven, to be left on his own while I go for a jog, because I’m finding it hard to look him in the eye. Perhaps the only good thing is that rather than doing what I used to do in the face of emotional turmoil (crack out the cheese on toast), I’ve started, gradually, to admit that exercise is more helpful. Also, I now have extra motivation. In the unlikely event that we do find Liam, I don’t want him to think, She’s let herself go. I want him to see that we’ve coped – more than that, that we’ve thrived – without him. I want to look better than I looked when we were together. And I’m getting there – that is one good thing about all this. It’s not like the pounds are dropping off but I can see the difference. I’ve toned up. I feel better.
When I spot Jason, a tall figure in an Adidas tracksuit, the three white stripes shiny in the setting sun as he stretches against a tree, I’m glad I called him. There’s just something soothing about the sight of him and I’m transported back to the days when we’d sit watching The Apprentice, his arm around me on the sofa. It was never perfect, certainly not very romantic, but compared to how I feel now, the ground felt solid beneath my feet. And I’d be lying if I said I don’t occasionally (quite often) think of us getting back together again, how it could be so much easier than all this. I’d have a boyfriend, Zac wo
uld have a father figure, and maybe he wouldn’t feel the need, then, to find his dad – with all the risks that involves.
I wave at Jason and he waves back. ‘Come on, Hutch,’ he shouts. ‘Get a wriggle on. I haven’t got all day, you know.’ Hutch is a new thing. I kind of like it and I kind of don’t. A bit like ‘mate’. No, I definitely hate ‘mate’.
‘I’m coming,’ I shout back. ‘Calm down. We haven’t started the running bit yet, you know.’
I’ve chosen a gorgeous evening for a run. It’s been raining – April showers in full swing – but the sky is clearing now and the sinking sun is backlighting the clouds, making them look like molten lava and colouring the grass the most vivid green.
Jason takes me through a few lunges and stretches, but then rather than the pre-session flirty chat I realize I was hoping for, he’s eager to get jogging straight away. I get the feeling he isn’t joking, that he doesn’t have all night; that he’s doing this more as a favour than because he really wanted to see me. The idea irks me somewhat.
We set off around the field, Jason zig-zagging along the middle now and again to make it longer.
‘How was your week?’ he asks.
‘Great.’
‘How’s Zac and his finding dad mission?’
‘Oh, fine.’ I’m not sure how Jason feels about it so I don’t get into it. ‘All good. You know Teagan was in hospital, though?’ I say, changing the subject.
‘Yeah, he told me. Is she OK?’
‘She is now, but it was serious – they had to call an ambulance in the night.’
‘Oh God. You should ask her to come along to some of these sessions – exercise is great for asthma and controlling symptoms.’
‘Good idea,’ I say, thinking not a cat in hell’s chance is she coming to these too. It’s going to turn into a class, not a private lesson, if we aren’t careful and I like it as it is – just the three of us. (Well, ideally, the two of us.)