Little Big Love

by Katy Regan

  But now I was alive again. I felt like a new man. I had so much to look forward to. First and foremost, my beautiful grandson. I glance at him now, completely absorbed in Zoo Babies, his mouth hanging open—still seeming to me, with his chubbiness and his wide eyes, and his heartbreaking trust in me, like a baby himself. He has brought me untold joy.

  And I can still pinpoint the exact moment, the second, I fell head over heels in love with him. He was four days old and it was just me, Jules, and Zac in the house. Juliet needed a nap, so I said I’d watch him. He woke up from his sleep unsettled—probably wondering where his mum had disappeared to—and so I took him outside, into our backyard, and I stood with him, his warm little body lolloped over my shoulder. I can still, if I try, remember exactly how that felt, the weight of him. Anyway, I just talked to him—told him my stories of being at sea; the fifty-foot waves, and the times we were so close to going overboard we thought we saw Jesus’s face in the sea spray. Eventually he fell asleep again, his head flopped right back, his mouth open, like it is now. And I looked down at him then, the newborn soft top of his head pulsing with brand-new life, his eyes moving beneath his lids, and I felt nothing but pure, exhilarating love, and I thought, I don’t ever want to go to sea again, or drink again. I don’t want to risk anything that could take me away from him. I’d made mistakes as a father, but I was going to make sure I was the best grandad I could possibly be. That was probably the best moment of my life. But then came that night Jamie died and all the lights went out, and it felt like I’d just woken up to life, only to lose it all again.

  12

  Zac

  Fact: Seventy percent of the earth’s surface is covered with water.

  “Right, you lot!” Aunty Laura was standing in the middle of Cleethorpes Beach wearing shiny leggings and a ninja headband, swinging her arms like an orangutan; it was making us all giggle. “We need to warm up first. If you don’t warm up before you run, or do any exercise for that matter, you’re asking for trouble, all right, people?” Me, Mum, and Teagan nodded. We all had our hands shielding our eyes, because the sun was sneaking up over the sea, lighting Aunty Laura from behind, like she was an angel. “So I want all three of you to copy me. As you bend your knees—and I want really good, deep bends—swing your arms like this, got it?” (Except she was acting more like a sergeant major. Mum said it felt like we were in the army.)

  “One … two … You can do a deeper bend than that, Juliet, come on.”

  Aunty Laura was like a professional. When she bent her legs, her bum nearly touched the sand. I was trying to do it like her, but my arms kept getting stuck at the top and I couldn’t get my legs to bend at the same time; they just wanted to do their own thing. It was really, really funny.

  “Er … If we could concentrate, Zac?” Aunty Laura was shouting, but her voice still sounded quiet, because it had been swallowed up by the beach. Cleethorpes Beach is massive and magnificent—you’d be mad to go abroad when you’ve got this on your doorstep—and the sand is perfect for making sandcastles. You don’t even have to go and get water from the sea all the time to make it stick and all your turrets stand up. It’s just like that naturally.

  Mum was on my right and Teagan on my left (I was monkey in the middle) and we couldn’t let ourselves look at each other, in case we started laughing. Teagan’s arms were going way faster than mine, though; I could see them going crazy out of the corner of my eye. “Er … Anyone else feel stupid?” she said suddenly and her voice sounded small too. She was still wearing her red flower in her hair. It was shaking in the wind and I was worried she might lose it, that it would float up into the air and land in the dazzling sea, never to be seen again.

  “Just concentrate, please, Teagan,” said Aunty Laura. “I don’t want anyone pulling a muscle today, just because you were too busy messing around to warm up properly.”

  *

  • • •

  A LADY WALKING her dog had stopped behind Aunty Laura. She was just standing there, staring—she wasn’t even pretending not to—while her dog did a poo on a bit of seaweed. I didn’t blame her, because we must have looked quite silly, but Aunty Laura’s face was deadly serious (and she had no idea a dog was doing a poo behind her). It was making keeping our giggles in a lot, lot harder.

  “Arms right the way round, please!”

  “What if I take off?” said Teagan.

  “Speak for yourself,” said Mum. “There’s fat chance of these thighs taking off anywhere anytime soon.”

  That was it then—we all just cracked up. Aunty Laura went strict again and Mum did a salute behind her back. Then we were all laughing—Aunty Laura couldn’t help joining in this time. She said we were all a nightmare—especially my mum.

  “Still the class clown, I see, Juliet Hutchinson,” she said. “Still the bloody class clown.”

  *

  • • •

  IT WAS SATURDAY morning. The weather was sunny but cold, which is normally my favorite weather of all time—but we were all there on Cleethorpes Beach to go running. (At least it wasn’t boiling. That would have been much worse.) There were still a million things I would have rather been doing on a Saturday morning than going running, though. Here are my top three:

  Watching Saturday Kitchen. My favorite bit is when they do food heaven and food hell. At the moment, my heaven would be cheesy mashed potato and my hell would be mushy peas from the fish and chip shop. I can’t believe anyone would actually like mushy peas. They smell like farts even when you just open the tub.

  Watching footie.

  Looking up facts in my Factblaster book.

  Eating my own earwax on toast.

  The last one’s a joke. It’s just to show how much I hate running. I’m here partly because it was Aunty Laura and Mum’s idea and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, but mainly I’m here because of mine and Mum’s pact …

  “Zac,” Teagan hissed at me after we’d finished the warm-up. I was already tired and we hadn’t even started the run yet. “Come over here, I want a word with you.”

  I went over. Teagan wasn’t sweating one bit. You wouldn’t have ever known she’d even done exercise apart from the fact that she was having a go on her puffer. Teagan’s got asthma; she’s been off school in Year 6 because of it, so now she has to take her puffer a lot more regularly—just to be on the safe side. “Now, I know it was quite funny doing that.” She was talking quietly so as Mum and Aunty Laura couldn’t hear. Not that they would have been able to because the seagulls were so loud; it’s like they know for definite the beach is theirs and they can talk as loud as they want. “But I really think we need to concentrate now, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I said, like I really meant it (because I did). “Yeah. Definitely.”

  “I don’t want you to waste any energy on getting the giggles,” she said, putting her hair high on top of her head in a ponytail (she can do it dead fast, it’s very impressive). “And I don’t want you to use all your energy up in the first five minutes.”

  “I won’t, honest.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m going to pace myself.”

  “And I’m going to spur you on,” said Teagan, putting the puffer in her zipper. She was so determined, you could tell. “I’ll be there when you’re finding it hard, like a cheerleader. Because remember, we can’t miss this opportunity. Your mum might not offer again.”

  She was right. I couldn’t mess this up. Mum had promised that for every five minutes that I ran, she’d tell me a fact about my dad. It was an unmissable opportunity. It meant that if I ran for half an hour then she would have to tell me six facts—if I ran for an hour, that would be twelve—and who knows, one of them might be the vital clue. It might be the breakthrough in our investigation. That was why Teagan had come too, so she could spur me on and remind me how many facts I could get, if I could just keep going. How it could be the one fact that would lead me to my dad.

  *

  • • •


  AT FIRST, WHEN Mum told me she didn’t love my dad anymore, I was gutted; I even cried. It felt like the whole of this mission to find him had been a waste of time: all the information we’d put in our folder, all our meetings. It felt like there was no point in anything. There didn’t even seem like there was a point in my dad coming to my birthday party if my mum didn’t love him—it would just be awkward.

  I know that when I wrote the letter on New Year’s Eve, I still thought Mum hated his guts, and I didn’t care then. I just wanted him to come and help us. It was a bit like how, if you were drowning, you wouldn’t say, “No, sorry, you can’t save my life because my mum thinks you’re a shithead.” You wouldn’t be able to be fussy. But then, Mum said what she said on the night of the Date from Hell and it changed everything. I can’t really describe it, except that every morning I woke up after that, I felt excited, and the excited feeling was stronger than any other feeling I had; stronger than being scared or worried, and even stronger than the Call of the Stomach when it gets really, really powerful. It had got bigger than all those feelings, and taken them over. So now it had been taken away, those old bad feelings had come back—but worse than before—and I didn’t want to do anything, not even see Teagan.

  But then, after about four days, it was mad, but I had an epiphany. An epiphany is when you have a big realization. It’s also when you have to take your Christmas tree down. You can’t believe that one word can mean something so exciting and something so disappointing all at the same time.

  My epiphany came when I did something really simple—I wrote down all the facts I still had and realized none of them had actually changed. I even had some extra ones.

  Fact: Even though Mum said she doesn’t love Dad anymore, she did love him once, so definitely could again.

  Fact: What I wrote in my letter is still true: okay, my dad did abandon us, but how can he know he doesn’t want to be my dad if he’s never met me? And how could he and my mum stay in love if they never saw each other?

  Fact: It is up to me to reunite them—because who else is going to do it?

  Fact: Mum has always told me my dad never wanted to know—but it isn’t like she did either, is it? Not really. She’s never gone looking for him or given him a second chance.

  I rang Teagan up and said to meet me down the bars, so I could show her all the facts. She was glad I’d had an epiphany. We even said we’d missed each other because we’d never gone as long as four days without seeing each other before.

  She sat on the lowest bar with our file and read my list. Suddenly she did a big dramatic gasp.

  “Number four!” she said, jabbing the paper with her finger. “That’s so true and exactly what my mum did too—or what she didn’t do, more like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that when my dad left us to go and live with Gayle, my mum was so sad and so mad, but she didn’t try and persuade him to come back, did she? Or give him a chance to explain. She didn’t do anything, except go to bed. It was so weird.”

  I shrugged, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to be horrible about Teagan’s mum.

  “Basically, I just think adults give in,” she said, putting her hair behind her ears. “They give up too soon because they just don’t have the energy. It’s why they need us sometimes, to put a rocket up their bums.”

  I laughed. “What’re you on about, ‘a rocket up your bum’?”

  “My dad used to say that to my sister,” said Teagan. “It just meant that she needed to try much harder.”

  The way she looked away when she said that, she missed her dad, you could tell.

  Basically, Grandad always says to me that you can’t give up at the first hurdle and I’d realized that this was all this was—a hurdle, a blip. “It’s all right, all major investigations have a blip,” said Teagan, as we walked home that day in the sunshine. “Why do you think programs like Silent Witness are so long? It’s because they need time to find the murderer. They never find him on day one, do they?”

  She was right, but I was still confused. “But we’re not looking for a murderer,” I said. “We’re looking for my dad.”

  *

  • • •

  AUNTY LAURA LINED us all up, ready for our run. The beach curved ahead of us, like it was a giant arm giving us a big hug, and I tried to imagine that, that the spirit of the beach was giving me a cuddle to say, You can do this, Zac! It’s gonna be fine. At the same time, I was trying not to look too far into the distance, because that can fry your mind. The beach is ginormous, basically, and this one covers loads of terrains: it’s got dunes and grassy bits and rocky bits and it goes far farther than Cleethorpes; it goes right round England, possibly the world, and if I’d started to think like that, my belly would have turned inside out, because no way was I going to be able to take on the mighty beach—this was going to hurt!

  “How long are we going to be running for, then?” said Mum. She was nervous; I could tell by the way her voice had gone grumpy and she was pulling her T-shirt down, even though it didn’t need it because it was nearly down to her knees anyway.

  “Don’t worry, we’re going to take it nice and easy,” said Aunty Laura, setting off (she’d tricked us into starting when we weren’t expecting it; it was very sneaky). “Just start off walking if you want, and build up to a jog if you feel you can manage it, okay?”

  I looked over at Teagan. There was no way I was starting off walking. I had to run as long as possible to get my facts. So I started straightaway (well, jogging; it definitely wasn’t walking) and for the first-ever run of my life (not counting the running you have to do in PE), I didn’t even think it was that bad, and anyway, I was putting how much I hated running out of my head and just concentrating on keeping going, keeping looking at the pointy tip of the sand hug in front of us. Yesterday, Teagan gave me a pep talk down the Find Dad mission HQ, and it was helping me focus. Teagan is brilliant at pep talks. If she doesn’t make it as a gymnast, I reckon she should be a professional pep-talker. This was how hers went:

  Teagan: “Think about those people in the jungle in I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. Do you think they like drinking whale wee or eating mashed-up bull’s penis?”

  Me: “No.”

  Teagan: “No, they don’t. They’re just doing it because they want to win the stars, so that they and the other people in their team can have a three-course banquet instead of gruel.”

  It was the same for me and my run, except I was doing it for facts not stars, and it didn’t matter how much I hated running, because I was doing it for Mum and Dad (and myself and Teagan)—and finding my dad was way more important than getting a fancy three-course dinner. If I had to choose between a year’s supply of three-course dinners or just one day with my dad, I swear to God, I’d choose my dad.

  My legs were hurting quite soon, so to distract myself, I looked out at the sea. The sun had laid sparkles all over it—if you looked at them, they flickered like the sparklers you get on Bonfire Night. Normally the sea fries my mind, though, the same as the beach, because you can’t see where it starts and where it ends—it’s probably the definition of infinity. Seventy-one percent of the world is water, after all, and almost all of that is the oceans. You’d think we’d all be swimming and paddling, having to wear our wellies all the time, but we’re not. It’s crazy.

  Mum’s arm was suddenly around me. “Well done, Zacster!” she said, as she overtook me (it’s okay, her legs are longer than mine). “You’re doing great, I’m already proud of you.” Teagan was up front with Aunty Laura for now, but I didn’t mind, I didn’t need a cheerleader at the moment, and she was going so fast! With her ponytail swishing behind her and her pale skinny arms and legs, she looked like the spirit of the beach.

  We were still on the pebbly bit, so it wasn’t too hard, but my shorts were all scrunched up near my privates and rubbing like mad. I wished I was wearing shiny leggings like Aunty Laura—they lo
oked a lot more comfy.

  “How long have we been running for?” I said, just as the ground started to go up, so that it got harder. Mum looked at her watch and kept back a bit so that she was next to me. “Three minutes, but it feels a lot longer, doesn’t it?”

  I smiled, but I didn’t speak again. I couldn’t believe it had only been three minutes either, but was saving all my breath for keeping going. You’ve got to keep your mouth shut when you’re trying to survive in the desert. It’s one of the main tips.

  Aunty Laura turned around. “All right, you two?”

  “No, I’m bloody not!” shouted Mum.

  “Come on, Jules. You can do this!”

  “Yeah, come on, you can definitely do this!” shouted Teagan, so loud that she beat the seagulls. “Zac, are you all right?”

  I nodded, but I still didn’t talk. Teagan can afford to waste energy shouting because she’s got so much, but I can’t. I have to be careful.

  The thing with running, I was finding out, is that it’s not the same hardness all the way through like table tennis, or even football; it gets harder depending on what you’re running on. Like I said, the stony bit was okay, but then you go uphill or, worse, up a hilly, sandy bit like we were on now, and doosh! It’s like changing gear on your bike because it suddenly gets miles harder. My feet didn’t spring off the sand; they didn’t even go on top. My feet sank into the sand and I wondered if this was what it was like trying to walk on the moon and that was why astronauts have to be so fit before they can go into space.

  “God, this is a killer.” Mum was panting like a dog, but she was keeping going; I felt proud of her. I wanted badly to stop, or just walk for a bit, but I was no way going to do that if she was trying so hard, never mind getting my facts.