Got You Back

by Fallon, Jane

  He slogged up Chalk Farm Road towards Belsize Park, puffing a bit from the effort of walking uphill. He felt at home once he got up here where the streets were greener and getting mugged was an altogether more remote prospect. These days, he was finding it hard to remember why he had always hated it so much. It seemed positively like an oasis of calm compared to the Travel Motel's surroundings. He arrived outside the gates of the little school with five minutes to spare and stood there, feeling self-conscious in among the young mums and even younger au pairs. Just a few weeks ago he would have seen this as a great opportunity, a hunting ground where he would have used the fact that he cared enough for his son to come and pick him up from school as a flirting tool. Now he couldn't have been less interested. There was only one woman he wanted to impress.

  Finn's face lit up when he saw James waiting for him, and then he must have remembered that his friends were around because he rearranged his expression into something he thought was more moody, and therefore more grown-up, and said, ‘What are you doing here?’

  James laughed and, resisting ruffling his son's hair, patted him on the back instead. ‘I gave Cassie the afternoon off,’ he said. ‘I thought we could give David's cage a good clean-out.’

  And then Finn said something that made James's heart stop: ‘Does Mum want you to meet Michael too?’

  Michael. So that was his name. James thought for a moment that he was going to throw up the instant noodles he had eaten for lunch into the hedge. He mentally flicked through everyone he knew, friends, fathers of Finn's classmates, people Stephanie had ever mentioned working with. He couldn't come up with a Michael. He breathed deeply. ‘Who's Michael?’

  Finn, oblivious to the reaction he had invoked in his father, said blithely, ‘He's Mum's new boyfriend. He's coming round this evening so I can meet him.’

  ‘Right. What time?’ James was trying, and failing, to sound casual.

  ‘Don't know,’ Finn said, bored of this topic now. ‘When Mum gets home probably.’

  Oh, God. Having given Cassie the day off, James knew that he would have to stay with Finn until Stephanie got home. On the other hand this was just what he had been wanting — to know who Stephanie was seeing, to work out who the competition was. ‘How soon after Mum gets home, do you think?’ he asked. ‘Will he travel home with her? Do they work near each other? What does he do?’

  ‘Why are you asking so many questions?’ Finn said grumpily. ‘Don't you like Mum having a boyfriend?’

  ‘Not much, no,’ James said miserably, and then wished he hadn't.

  ‘Mum said you've got a girlfriend.’

  ‘I haven't. I did have but I definitely haven't any more. It was a very bad thing to do.’

  ‘Having a girlfriend is a bad thing to do?’ Finn asked, and James couldn't tell whether he was being serious or not.

  ‘When you already have a wife it is.’ ‘Well, obviously,’ Finn said, rolling his eyes. ‘Everyone knows that.’

  42

  Since she had picked up James's message telling her that he was on his way to collect Finn from school, Stephanie had frantically been trying to call him back. Not today. She was always happy for Finn to see his father, just not this afternoon. It had taken her a few sleepless nights to decide that Michael was worthy of an introduction to her son. And then a few more anxious days before she could bring herself to suggest it to both Michael and Finn. A couple of weeks into her new relationship, she had started to mention Michael's name casually around the house. She had had no idea whether this was the right way to let your child know you had a new partner without traumatizing them for ever, but she didn't really know how else to do it, and to have sat Finn down and made a big announcement would have made way too big a deal out of something that was still a casual affair.

  Finn had been remarkably laid-back about the whole thing which made her worry that he hadn't quite understood what her relationship with Michael was, so one day, when she was cooking him his favourite fish fingers and beans, she had said, in as blasé a way as she could manage, ‘You know Michael is sort of like my boyfriend?’

  Finn had merely rolled his eyes and had said, ‘You're too old to have a boyfriend,’ which hadn't made her feel any better.

  Then, two days later, he had said to her out of nowhere, ‘Arun's mum's got a boyfriend.’

  She'd waited to see if he added anything else and, when he didn't, the only thing she could come up with was, ‘Oh? Has she?’

  ‘Like you,’ he'd said, and then he'd gone off to play with Sebastian and that had been that.

  Michael had been a slightly harder prospect. Not because she thought he wouldn't be interested in Finn — he always asked about him and he hadn't yet yawned when she was in the middle of a story about some cute thing or other that Finn had done and which she knew, deep down, could only be fascinating to a parent — but because asking him if he wanted to meet her son was like asking him if his intentions were serious. It felt only one step away from asking him if he wanted to settle down.

  In the end, though, it had been him who had suggested it. They were at the opening of a gallery in Shoreditch, once again surrounded by the self-appointed beautiful people who lived in the surrounding area. In truth, Stephanie was getting quite worn out with the amount of culture she had been asked to ingest lately. They had been to exhibitions and concerts and installations, all of which seemed to happen within a half-mile radius of Hoxton Square and all of which seemed to attract the same thirty-five people.

  Stephanie had never been comfortable with the whole Hoxton thing. It all felt a bit late-1990s and a little too self-consciously cool. Michael's friends were mostly artists or musicians, although she suspected that half of them actually had day jobs in accounts departments and the other half were squandering their wealthy families’ money. They had a way of making her feel inadequate without, she was sure, meaning to, with their obscure references and their shabby couldn't-care-less chic, which, she knew, took them hours to perfect. She always felt overdressed, and overstyled and altogether too… conventional. Without fail, they were nice to her and made an effort to include her, but sometimes she yearned to have a conversation about something down-to-earth, like what was on the TV or a film she'd seen that didn't have subtitles.

  Anyway, two of those friends had brought their children to the exhibition, a boy of six and a girl of eight. Both were precocious in the extreme and were pontificating with their parents about the meaning behind the paintings in a way that made Stephanie want to slap them. Or maybe it was the parents she had wanted to slap, she couldn't be sure. Michael had mentioned that Stephanie had a son and, somewhere in the ensuing conversation, had said he was looking forward to meeting Finn and, what was more, that it was one of his greatest regrets that he had never had children of his own. Pia, his wife, had, of course, never wanted them. Of course, the friends had said knowingly, leaving Stephanie none the wiser.

  Later she had asked him what he had meant, and he had said that Pia was a model and that her foremost preoccupation had always been preserving her figure. Now Stephanie felt inadequate in two additional ways. First, his wife had been a model, a woman picked out from the crowd because of her physical perfection, which was never something that was going to make any normal woman feel great, and second, implicit in what he had said there had been the suggestion — admittedly Pia's suggestion, not Michael's — that childbirth disfigures a woman's body. She had just about managed to stop herself from sharing her paranoia with Michael, knowing that nothing was less attractive than exposing your neediness for reassurance that you were attractive, and she had steered the conversation round to the pleasure and satisfaction that came with having a child and how that made any amount of physical sacrifice worth it. She had felt a bit sorry for Michael by the time she'd finished because she'd got rather carried away and it wasn't his fault that his wife hadn't wanted to have a baby. It had suddenly seemed like the natural thing to do to ask Michael if he would like to come over and spend s
ome time with Finn, and he had agreed readily.

  The plan was that Michael would meet her at her office at the end of the day and they would travel home together. Michael and Finn could spend some bonding time together while Stephanie cooked dinner and then Finn, who would be on his best behaviour, would go to bed without moaning and leave them to enjoy each other's company. Now James's voicemail had changed all that.

  Stephanie had left him four messages by the time Michael arrived to pick her up. He had obviously turned his phone off, probably precisely to avoid getting a call from her telling him to drop Finn off at Arun's or round at Cassie's. The house phone was going unanswered, which made her think they had stopped by the park on the way home. She had also tried Cassie, of course. She was loath to drag her back from her unexpected afternoon off but she thought that if she explained exactly what the situation was and promised her another free day instead, she would be sure to understand. Unfortunately she, too, seemed to have anticipated such a call and was unreachable. Now Stephanie had to decide whether to tell Michael that there was a change of plan and let Finn down, or whether she should bite the bullet and introduce her boyfriend to her ex-husband along with her son. In the end she told Michael exactly what was going on and he made the decision for her: they were all adults, Stephanie and James were separated, where was the harm in them all being in the same room together?

  By the time their cab was turning into Belsize Avenue Stephanie felt sick. She couldn't imagine how James was going to react to the fact that she was about to turn up with a man in tow, but she was sure he wasn't going to take it lightly. A part of her felt like it would do him good to see that she'd moved on — and that she could attract another man, and a good-looking, successful one at that — but mostly she just wanted this to be a positive experience for Finn.

  Before she'd even managed to turn the key in the lock the door swung open and there was James, big smile plastered on his face and his hand outstretched for Michael to shake. Finn must have told him what was happening, she thought gratefully.

  ‘You must be Michael,’ James said, pumping Michael's arm up and down manfully. ‘Pleased to meet you. Hi, Steph, did you get my message?’

  ‘Yes,’ she managed to say hesitantly. ‘I've been trying to ring you.’

  James stepped back into the house to let them in. He didn't look as though he was about to leave any time soon.

  ‘Finn's in the kitchen, Michael,’ he was saying. ‘He's been dying to meet you.’

  ‘Right,’ Michael said, following him through the house.

  God, James was unbelievable. He was acting like he still owned the place, which of course he partly did, but anyway. Michael looked back at her questioningly, and she pulled a face that she hoped said, ‘I have no idea what to do.’

  Finn was sitting expectantly at the kitchen table. James waved his hand at him, as if he was a prize exhibit. ‘Finn, this is Michael. Michael, this is Finn.’

  ‘Hi, Finn,’ Michael said, and held out his hand. Finn, who had never shaken hands with anyone before, stared at him suspiciously and left his hand hanging in mid-air. His face, Stephanie thought, looked as if it had been scrubbed to within an inch of its life. As did James's, come to think of it.

  ‘Shake hands with Michael,’ James said, and Finn took Michael's hand limply. He had been eating a Marmite and cheese sandwich when they'd come in and Stephanie noticed that Michael surreptitiously (or so he thought) wiped his hand on the leg of his combat trousers after Finn let go of it. Michael, she knew, wasn't very experienced with children and she felt sorry for him, trying to find a way into conversation with her son. It would be so much easier if James would fuck off and leave them to it, but she knew what he was like: he was going to ruin it for all of them, sitting in the kitchen, monopolizing Finn's company, making little digs at Michael and showing off about how marvellous and successful he was, although she wasn't entirely sure how true that last one was any more.

  In fact, she wasn't at all sure how James was surviving at the moment. She made a mental note that she must sit down with him and discuss finances; it was just that she couldn't face being on her own with him any more than was necessary, and they could hardly have that kind of a conversation in front of Finn. Anyway, he'd be showing off about something because that was what he did. So, if it wasn't work it would be his prowess on the golf course or maybe his ability to fool two women into loving him at the same time.

  Her train of thought stopped abruptly as she noticed that James had stood up from the table where he had been sitting opposite Finn and Michael. ‘Well,’ he said jovially, ‘I'd better go and leave you to get acquainted.’

  He held out his hand and subjected Michael to another pumping. It was like being at a Masons’ meeting, Stephanie thought, and she nearly laughed. All they needed were the rubber gloves and the feather dusters. Or was it pinnies?

  ‘Nice to meet you, Michael,’ James was saying again. ‘I'm sure it won't be the last time. Finn, behave yourself. Steph, see you soon. I'll let myself out.’

  And he was gone. Just like that.

  ‘I thought you said he was difficult,’ Michael said later, when they were enjoying a glass of wine on the sofa after Finn had gone to bed.

  ‘He is. I don't know what came over him.’

  In the end the whole thing had been a great success.

  Michael, no animal lover, had watched as Finn put David into the closed part of his hutch for the night and had managed to look interested. They had bonded a bit over football, although some of what Michael had said about Leeds United's need for a new left-winger had gone over Finn's head and he'd started to yawn a little.

  Finn, no doubt led by the mood his father had seemed to be in, had been in ‘good Finn’ mode, had been polite and hadn't talked incessantly or with his mouth full of carrots. He had dutifully gone off to bed at eight thirty, saying, ‘Nice to meet you,’ exactly as James had done, and had remained there ever since.

  Stephanie snuggled up to Michael. As evenings went on which you introduced your new boyfriend to your son while your soon-to-be-ex-husband looked on, it had gone pretty well.

  43

  There was something cathartic about wielding a sledgehammer, something manly, James thought, although he felt as if he was in danger of suffering a cardiac arrest at any moment. The walls of the extension were proving to be far more solid than he had imagined. Just his luck that he must have employed the services of the only local builder to have scruples about building structures made to last. The sledgehammer was barely making a dent and already he was sweating enough for four men.

  James had arrived in Lower Shippingham late the previous night and had slept in the flat above the surgery. He had left Stephanie's house (as he now thought of it) in a bit of an emotional turmoil. He had felt sick about the fact that Michael was such a textbook good-looking bloke, that he was so painstakingly trendy — something which James had never been interested in being and, indeed, wouldn't have known where to start if he had been, but it seemed like a quality Stephanie, with her love of fashion, might find attractive — and that he had a job that not only sounded impressive but also cool. He wasn't sure how he could compete with a man like that, someone so fundamentally different from himself. He realized that, deep down, once he had been able to acknowledge to himself that Stephanie might indeed have hooked up with another man, he had comforted himself with the thought that that man might be fat or short or both, and maybe work in accounting or as a data systems analyst. Maybe have halitosis — although for all he knew Michael might have a breath problem: he hadn't got close enough to find out. Somehow he didn't look the type, though. The fact that Michael was artistic was the blow that had hurt him the most. James didn't have an artistic bone in his body.

  On the other hand, he had felt elated that he had handled himself so well — Steph had definitely been impressed. He knew she would be feeling grateful to him for being so… what? Adult?… about it all, that she would be thinking how much he had
moved on. His instincts had all been telling him to stay, not to leave the two of them together, that to do so would be giving up. But his rational head, the one he valued the most, had insisted that he do the grown-up thing.

  If he was ever going to win Stephanie back — and that was feeling like a distinctly remote prospect these days — he had to let her see for herself that Michael wasn't the man for her. This meant, of course, that he had to take the not-inconsiderable risk that she might in fact come to realize that Michael actually was the man for her, but it was a risk he had to take. And as he had closed the front door behind him and had fought off the urge to spend the night hiding in the bushes and watching them through the windows, he had felt unbelievably proud of himself. All he could do now was behave well, do the right thing and hope that one day she would take him back. Everything else was out of his hands.

  Buoyed up with this feeling, he had decided he had to take the bull by the horns and sort out his life. He had got straight on a train to Lincoln. On the way he had remembered Jack Shirley, a lad whose cat he had once revived after it had fallen out of a tree. Jack had scooped the cat up and had run to the surgery, a gibbering wreck. Once the cat had recovered, Jack had admitted tearfully that, as an impoverished student, he couldn't afford to pay the bill. He had offered to work off the debt somehow but James, who had been touched by the boy's affection for his pet, had refused the offer. Jack, overcome with gratitude, had insisted that James take his number in case he thought of anything he could do at a later date, and James had immediately forgotten all about it. Now Jack was only too happy to be here helping out and had roped in his brother, Sean, who was staying with him for a few days too. James, who had been quoted two thousand pounds by a firm of builders, was delighted.