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The squeal of brakes put an end to any further sarcastic replies. “This is us, Isaac. The end of the line.Versailles de shithole.”
CHAPTER 6
EZRA
Like a wide-eyed, bewildered tourist, Isaac dragged behind me as I marched along the pavements. I was running late, something I vowed never to do on this daily errand.
Poverty wasn’t only about being hungry, naked, or homeless. For sure, that was the poverty our dad toured in Africa with camera crews, visiting their villages, eating their food, getting clickbait. But if he’d ever bothered to travel beyond the end of the District Line, another sort of poverty, made up of a thousand petty and humiliating hardships, lay everywhere you looked. And in some ways, was as difficult to fix. I didn’t have the answers for the drawn faces of the old or the pinched ones of the young, for the dulled eyes, for the sluggish walkers with nowhere to go. I only knew it was wrong that so many had so little and so few had so much. And I needed Isaac with his mansion flat in Chiswick, his sparkling water, and his mid-range electric Golf, to appreciate that. He said he wanted to spend some of his inheritance doing good—well, here wouldn’t be a bad place to start.
With a bare minute to spare, I halted outside a shabby redbrick school, positioning myself slightly apart from the handful of equally shabby parents already assembled.
“There used to be a playing field here.” I pointed to the carpark of the discounted furniture warehouse next door. “Until the council sold it off.”
Isaac studied the potholed expanse of tarmac where a couple of men unloaded flatpacks from the back of a beaten-up van, cursing under the weight. “Um… why have we stopped? Is this where you wanted to bring me?”
“Sort of. I wanted to show you the reason I answered David Trethowan’s messages.”
“What? You need a new velour sofa?”
I grinned. “Nah, but even if I did, I wouldn’t get it from there. It’s well suspect; most of that stuff has fallen off the back of a lorry.”
A muted bell jangled, and within seconds, a dribble of children emerged from the school gate, quickly swelling into a steady flow. As a familiar dark head bobbed around, searching for me, my smile grew of its own accord, and my heart stretched several sizes bigger. Did I have any regrets for a single, reckless, drunken moment in time I barely remembered the following morning, let alone a decade later? Not a single fucking one.
“Daddy! I got nine out of ten in my science test, and Mrs Rigby said that if I did as well next week, then I’d go up a set!”
“Wow! Not bad, superstar! I knew you had it in you.”
Thrusting his red plastic Ant-man lunchbox into one of my hands and his PE kit bag into the other, Jonty swung on my arm, giving it a brief squeeze. A nine-year-old equivalent of a welcome kiss and cuddle, which was never going to happen in front of his school mates. For that, I’d have to wait until much later, snuggled up in bed together, reading silly stories we were both too old for. Hoisting the bag onto my shoulder beside my guitarcase, I settled for the next best thing: running my hand through his unruly hair, hoping to pass it off as one of those parent-tidying-up-their-child things and absolutely not one hundred percent unconditional love, combined with a pressing need to touch him.
“Because I did so well, can we go to the swings? Faizan’s going.”
“Okay. For ten minutes, yeah.”
Beaming, he scampered off. Both of us knew ten minutes would stretch to twenty.
I became very aware of Isaac hovering behind. Jonty had scarcely given him a cursory glance before running on ahead to catch up his friend. “I’m going to the swings,” I explained unnecessarily. “Feel free to come.”
I wanted Isaac to follow. To show Jonty off to the only member of my family who might care. I wanted to point out my son’s every single perfect feature, from the burgeoning strength in his fragile bones, crammed with inexhaustible pockets of energy, to every scab, bruise, and freckle making up his flawless skin. Call me biased, but there were places inside me I didn’t know existed until this boy. I needed to rhapsodize about him to someone prepared to listen because, up until now, I’d never had that opportunity.
But Isaac seemed rooted to the spot, his face washed blank with confusion.
“With Jonty?” I supplied. “My son?”
“Jonty,” was all he said. Even hearing him repeat my boy’s name in his clear and solemn way had me desperate for him to say it again. But Jonty had already turned the corner onto busy Radland Road, with Faizan and his mother. If one single thing set my teeth on edge, that set my heart pounding fit to burst against my ribcage, it was someone I loved walking perilously close to a stream of heavy traffic.
I strode off, with Isaac hurrying to catch up.
“I thought you were… I thought… are you married?”
“Fuck, no. A cute idea, though. Carly—Jonty’s mum—is many, many excellent things, but my wife ain’t one of them.”
“But he’s yours, right? I mean, he looks like you.”
He was the spit of me, an undeniable pleasure. “I bloody hope so. Unless I’ve got an identical twin out there.” Since I'd caught up with my boy, I slowed my pace.
“So you’re a dad,” stated Isaac with a little laugh. “And I had no idea.”
“Yeah, I am.”
