We Own the Sky(58)

Nev

PS  Jack’s  probably  a  bit  young  for  Minecraft  but  Josh  is  really  into  it  at the  moment.  He’s  just  built  this  castle  and  said  he  wanted  to  send  it  to Jack  to  cheer  him  up.  (I  told  him  Jack  was  poorly.)  I’m  sending  you  a screenshot. Hope it comes through okay and Jack likes it.

I clicked on the Minecraft screenshot, an 8-bit block with turrets and a

flagpole and a sign that said Jack’s Castle. Looking at that castle made me cry, but not because I was thinking about Jack. It reminded me of when I started programming, writing little scripts on the old laptop my dad picked up from a garage sale.

I looked at the castle again. I could imagine Jack playing Minecraft when he was older, constructing houses, planting trees, climbing mountains that led to new worlds. Sometimes, I let myself daydream like that. The things I would do with Jack, when he was older, better. Saturday afternoons in the cinema, Jack in little jeans, trainers with wheels, carrying a vat of popcorn bigger than his head.

Oh, the things we would do together. Season tickets at West Ham. Dim sum

on a Saturday morning on Gerrard Street. All those summer holidays, sitting at the bar together, as I teased him about all the pretty girls.

They weren’t just fantasies. They were the things I had done with my own

dad. The times he would come and watch me play football, and no matter the score, we would go afterward to The Crown for Coke and potato chips. The family TV nights, with fish ’n’ chips on our laps:  Dallas on Wednesdays, Minder on Thursdays. Memories were like cartilage: stubborn, tough to break.

A few months after Mom died, I was looking for a book in the Romford

house. I thought I remembered seeing it downstairs, packed away in the

sideboard in the living room. It was dusty inside, something that would have horrified my mother. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but under some old trinkets, cookie tins full of buttons, I found some exercise books inside a plastic bag.

I pulled out the first one, and there were pages and pages of Dad’s small, neat handwriting. I hesitated, not wanting to read something private, but then a sentence leaped out at me: “Cottee on fire. Goddard dire.” I started to leaf through all the books, smiling as I realized what they were: Dad’s match reports of every West Ham game he had ever been to.

Each entry was pristine, as if Dad had drafted them first on a rough piece of

paper. They were short, but he wrote beautifully.

Jennings was stellar tonight. Paddon, on the other hand, was useless, like a trapped wasp, barely touched the ball.

Tommy  Taylor  up  like  a  salmon;  down,  however,  like  a  diving  bell.

Absolutely brilliant, though. Even got the West Stand on their feet.

I read on, into the late 1980s, the games I had been to with Dad. Beating Chelsea at home 5-3 after we’d been 3-2 down. Our glorious promotion in 1993.

As I read on, I noticed that some of the entries had gold stars attached. Gold stars like you’d get in school. At first I thought it was the games we had won, but I knew we hadn’t beaten Villa in 1995 because I was there. And then I realized what Dad had done. He had put a gold star for every game we ever went to together.

Was it really so much to ask for Jack to have the same? There had to be a way, there just had to be. Because if you dream it, it means it’s true, my dad always said.

If you dream it, it means it’s true.

  *

I was lying on our bed upstairs and could hear Lola, her voice warbling up the stairs. I went down to the kitchen, and she was sitting with Anna on the bar stools drinking coffee.

“Hello, Rob,” she said, “how are you?”

“Okay, thanks,” I said, and she gave me her look of concern. A raised

eyebrow, a gentle bite of her lip, that said, I know, I know.

“Lola is just showing me this Make-A-Wish foundation,” Anna said, pointing to some brochures open on the table. “They do surprises and trips for kids who are ill.”

“Right,” I said, filling up the kettle. “I’ve heard of them.”

Even though my back was turned, I knew Anna and Lola were looking at each other, gauging my mood.

“I wrote to them,” Lola said, “and they sent me these.” She was holding out another brochure.

“Look, there’s this one,” Lola said, flicking through the pages. “A day with Spider-Man,” she said, as if she were talking to a child. “Jack would get to wear a costume and then meet the real Spider-Man, and then they all go into some kind of special playroom and bring in all the characters, the Green Goblin, The Flash, Aquaman.”

“Right,” I said.

“I think Jack would like that, don’t you, Rob?” Anna said.

“They were very nice and accepted my application right away, and we can

basically choose anything we want,” Lola added. “Do you want to take a look?”

She pushed the brochure into my hands. On the front page, there was a child wearing a fireman’s helmet. Underneath I could see that his head was bald and white, like a baby bird’s. I flicked through the brochure, waiting for the kettle to boil.