Our House(78)

At parents’ evening, for which Bram and I both cleared our diaries, neither Leo’s nor Harry’s teachers reported any evidence of the kind of anxiety or disruptive behaviour often noticed when a child’s parents have recently separated.

‘Whatever you’re doing at home, carry on doing it,’ Harry’s teacher Mrs Carver said. ‘He’s a real bright spark.’

Buoyed, Bram and I arranged to go to the end-of-term Christmas carol concert together.


Bram, Word document

Even as I plotted to steal their future from them, I prioritized the boys. For the first time in their lives, I attended every last school event of the festive season, even Harry’s drop-in Christmas decorations session, from which every parent departed for his day’s meetings with glitter in his ears. Work was no longer relevant – I’d be gone soon – and wherever possible I delegated or cancelled or passed the buck. Three times in December I called in sick or left early unwell (not entirely dishonest, since nausea was never far away).

‘I think there’s something wrong with me,’ I told Neil (again, not entirely dishonest). ‘It’s maybe some sort of virus.’

‘So long as that’s really what it is and you’re not just taking the piss,’ he said, which was his equivalent of a first warning. The situation was not helped by my decision to skip work Christmas drinks in favour of the boys’ carol concert in the last week of term.

‘Quitter,’ Neil said, which we both knew was how Keith Richards baited Ronnie Woods when he checked himself into rehab.

If only addiction were my greatest problem, I thought, woefully. The effects of rock ’n’ roll excess.

The carol concert almost undid me. ‘It Came Upon the Midnight Clear’ was Fi’s favourite and, by chance, the children sang it as their finale, their sweet, hopeful little voices almost too much to bear. It was the closest I came to breaking down in public.

‘Absolutely gorgeous,’ Fi said, as the classes filed down the aisle afterwards. ‘Were you filming that, Bram?’

‘Just the last song,’ I said. ‘It was allowed, wasn’t it? All the other dads were doing it.’

‘Yes, I think so. Anyway, I’m not a security guard.’

There was a message there, I thought, or at least chose to think. She was saying she’d finished threatening war and now she wanted a return to the peace process.

We waited for the pew to clear before we shuffled out. To my right, there was a fresco showing the trial of some martyr or other and in all my years as the son of a god-fearing mother, I had never felt such a sense of connection in a church as I did then.

‘In the spirit of goodwill to all men,’ I said to Fi, ‘can I ask you a favour?’ Only a man who no longer has anything to lose makes a wish that he has never been less likely to be granted. ‘It’s the last one I’ll ever ask you,’ I added.

She rolled her eyes. ‘There’s no need to overdo it, Bram, you’re not terminally ill. What is it?’

‘Could I have the boys for Christmas? It would . . . it would mean a lot to me.’

Because it might be the last time. It will be the last time. This time next year, I’ll be on trial like our friend the saint, or in prison or living in a hole in the ground like a terrorist. I hadn’t decided on my current course of action then – that presented itself later in a near-holy moment of revelation – but presumed I would want to carry on living, however pitifully.

Fi didn’t reply at first. I could see her natural response surge through her, about to explode into opposition, my crimes past and present on the tip of her tongue, but then she swallowed it, remembered her renewed commitment to the cause. Maybe it was also the sight of all those other parents with their symmetrical still-married smiles and cashmere-scarf-wrapped togetherness, but suddenly she was saying something wholly unexpected.

‘Look, why don’t we both have them? At the house, like every other Christmas they’ve known?’

‘What?’ I felt myself flush. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes. They’d love us all to be together. It’s on a weekend, so why don’t we both just stay in the house for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? On Boxing Day, I was hoping to take them to my parents, so perhaps you could visit your mum with them during the day on Christmas Eve? Does that sound fair?’

Euphoria gushed through me. ‘Yes, more than fair. Thank you.’ The only thing better than spending my last Christmas with my sons was to spend it with my wife and my sons.

‘Let’s walk to Kirsty and Matt’s together,’ she said. ‘You know they’re doing drinks now?’

Another almighty concession; it was understood that as the injured party in our split – as the woman – she had first refusal on neighbourhood social invitations.

‘Harry forgot the words to “We Three Kings”,’ Leo said, when the two of them were released to us by their teachers. ‘It was so obvious.’

‘Not to us,’ Fi said. ‘We could really hear your voices, couldn’t we, Dad?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said, helping Harry with his gloves. The end of his left thumb stuck through a tear and I kept that hand in mine, covering the hole.

‘I didn’t forget the words,’ he grumbled, as we headed into the street, and I waited with disproportionate dread for him to snatch away his hand. But he didn’t, he kept it in mine the whole way.