Seeing Other People (33 page)

Penny nodded and put her arm around Rosie. ‘I know it’s a shock, sweetie, but your dad and I have done a lot of talking and we both agree it’s for the best.’

Rosie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘How can moving away from all my friends be for the best? I don’t want to go. I want to stay here. I don’t understand why everything has to change just because you and Dad don’t love each other any more. It’s not fair you’re making us move. It’s not fair and I’m not going!’

While Rosie sobbed in her mother’s arms Jack questioned me. ‘Am I going to a new school too?’

‘It’s a really lovely place. Mum will show you lots of pictures of it when you get home.’

‘And will we get a new house?’

‘It won’t be ours, it actually belongs to Scott, but you will be living in it and Scott will be living somewhere else.’

Jack thought for a moment. ‘And will you still take us to school sometimes?’

I shook my head in despair. Jack wasn’t getting any of this at all. ‘Sweetheart, I’m going to be staying in London so it’s too far for me to be able to take you to school and I’m afraid you won’t be able to stay over with me during the week any more. But you’ll still see me some weekends and on holidays like Easter or half term. I’ll come up to Harrogate and bring you back down to London with me and we’ll get to spend the whole holiday together doing fun stuff.’

Jack shook his head making it clear that he thought this was officially a bad idea. ‘If I can’t see you when I want then I don’t want to move away, Daddy, and that’s my final word on the matter.’

Under any other circumstances I would’ve found great amusement in Jack repeating such an adult phrase with the gravest of intonations but today it simply served to grieve me in the most painful way possible. Yet again my kids’ lives were being turned upside down against their will and all I could do was wonder if they wouldn’t be better off without me after all.

33

As much as we hoped that the kids might warm to the idea of moving they completely failed to do so but resistance was futile. With so many preparations to make and so little time to get them done it was impossible not to get swept along by the momentum. The children’s school was given notice of the move, a removal lorry booked, appointments made with letting agents and a farewell party for Rosie and Jack’s friends planned. Penny took the kids up to Harrogate to look at their new home and let them spend a day with their new classmates, new uniforms were purchased and old ones given away to friends. At the time I wondered how we would ever get everything done by the moving date but as the days passed by the list of things that needed doing got considerably shorter until the Friday of the actual move I found myself standing in my former home – now devoid of all its furnishings – with one last job to do: take my family on a two-hundred-mile trip to their new home in Harrogate.

It was a little after six o’clock in the evening as the removal men who had spent all afternoon unloading furniture and boxes into Scott’s Edwardian terrace waved goodbye to the kids, climbed into their lorry and pulled away leaving us alone for the first time that day.

As Penny closed the door behind her, Rosie and Jack asked if they could make a start on sorting out their rooms and without waiting for an answer they raced upstairs.

‘You want to be careful,’ I warned Penny. ‘If you leave it up to them you’ll be lucky to end up with the boxroom.’

‘Thankfully the bedroom issue has long been settled,’ said Penny. ‘After some tortured debate they’ve both agreed that I might be allowed the largest one on the grounds that one of them will inevitably want to share it with me at some point.’ Penny surveyed the boxes lying in the hallway which the removal men hadn’t known where to put. ‘I never want to do this again. I never knew we had this much stuff.’

I chose not to read anything into her use of the word ‘we’ as she’d likely said it more out of habit than anything more significant. ‘It looks worse than it is, but knowing you, you’ll have everything in its place by morning.’

Penny cast a glance in my direction, that if I hadn’t been so unsure of myself I would have interpreted as tenderness. ‘It’s been so good of you to help like this. I don’t know what we would have done without you. Will you stay and eat with us before you head back to London? I’m thinking some kind of takeaway – fish and chips maybe? – that is unless you want to spend the next couple of hours searching for saucepans?’

I laughed. It was good that we could still joke with each other even though we both knew what today represented. ‘Fish and chips will do me fine. You start unpacking and I’ll see if I can’t sniff some out.’

Penny headed to the kitchen to search for plates while I took fish and chip orders from the kids. Heading out of the house I closed the door behind me just as a silver Audi pulled up in front.

‘Joe, good to see you,’ said Scott, getting out of the car. He stretched out his hand and I had no choice but to shake it when all I really wanted to do was slap it away. I’d hoped that he might have had the good grace to stay out of sight at least until I had gone. After all, he had won, hadn’t he? He’d not only got the girl, but the family that came with her. All I’d wanted was to see my family safely into their new home and allow myself to indulge in the fantasy that Penny’s life with Scott was little more than a bad dream.

‘How was the journey up?’

‘Fine, nothing to report.’

‘And everyone’s settled in?’

‘You can go and have a look if you like.’

‘Actually, I’m sort of glad I’ve managed to catch you without Penny being around. I just wanted to say that while obviously I’m overjoyed at having Penny and the children here I appreciate how hard it must be for you and . . . well, I want you to know that you won’t have to worry. I’ll look out for them.’

I wasn’t sure if Scott was being sincere or whether he was trying to get a rise out of me. Regardless, it felt as though he had just spat in my face and called me a loser.

I drew a deep breath. I needed this day to go well not just for my family but for myself too, and if that meant being nice to Penny’s boyfriend rather than swinging a punch in his direction then nice was exactly what I would be.

‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘That’s good to hear.’

Scott was long gone by the time I returned with the food, and so we ate and drank in peace until I looked around at the kids – who were clearly shattered – and announced that it was time for me to go.

‘Can’t you at least stay until the morning?’ asked Jack.

‘I’d love to but I can’t. I’ll be up to see you soon though and when I do you’ll have to remember every last thing you’ve been up to because I’ll want to hear all about it.’

Jack flung his arms around me and hugged me tightly and even Rosie joined in, aware of the fact that this would be the last time for some weeks that we would be able to say goodnight in person.

Rosie stood on tiptoe and whispered, ‘I love you, Dad,’ into my ear. I couldn’t remember the last time she had said this to me without being prompted. I closed my eyes and held them both tight and told them that I loved them more than the world.

Penny walked me to the car. ‘Thanks for today, Joe, really. I don’t know what we would have done without you. Today could’ve been horrible but your being here and the way you’ve reassured the kids . . . well, it’s made all the difference and I know it hasn’t been easy for you, so thanks.’

I held her close and as I let go I saw that she had tears in her eyes. ‘In case you’re having any last-minute doubts,’ I said, wiping away a stray tear with my thumb, ‘this is the right thing to do. It’ll take a while but the kids are going to be happy here, I know it, and maybe one day we’ll look back and wonder why we ever thought otherwise.’

It was late by the time I arrived home to an empty house that seemed all the more empty for the knowledge that the two little sparks of life that I’d so often shared it with wouldn’t be in it for a long time to come. I poured a Scotch, and then another, and then another and then reaching across to the coffee table I flicked open the lid of my laptop to reveal the video file open on the frozen image of a four-year-old Rosie, the chubby features of her toddler years not yet fully formed into the face that I knew so well. She was holding her newborn brother, a lurching, gurgling, bundle of life in her arms, for the very first time. ‘This is your baby brother, Jack,’ I had told Rosie, handing him to her as she positioned herself on the bed ready to receive him, ‘and he’s already told me that he loves you more than you will ever know.’ I pressed the play button and the image sprang to life with the added dimensions of movement and sound. The lightness of my daughter’s laughter and the sheer look of bliss on her face as Jack gurgled were a wonder to behold. What I wouldn’t have given to be able to step inside that frame and hold them right now. What I wouldn’t have given to be able to tell them to their faces how much they were loved and adored.

In retrospect it was a wonder how we ever thought this arrangement would work in practice. My nightly calls to the kids, which were supposed to be the highlight of my day, turned out to be the complete opposite. My calls would leave Jack so distraught that after a week Penny asked me to stop calling to allow both him and Rosie to settle in.

As much as I had found these conversations with the kids emotionally draining and as much as I could see exactly what Penny was getting at, I still found it impossible not to be angered by her suggestion. Was she trying to push me out of their lives altogether? Wasn’t it enough that I was hundreds of miles away from them?

‘You want me not to talk to the kids because I remind them of home? If the tables were turned what would you say to that?’

‘I’d tell you that they were my kids,’ said Penny, emotion working its way into her voice, ‘I’d tell you that the only thing keeping me going was the thought of speaking to them at night and catching up with their lives. I’d tell you that I’d already made enough sacrifices to last a lifetime and that this was one sacrifice too far. But then again if the tables really were turned and it was you who had to console the kids every time they spoke to me on the phone then I’m pretty sure you’d be asking me to do the same. This is a horrible situation for all of us, Joe. There aren’t any winners here, not a single one.’

And that was how we left it. But then a week into the new regime while I was in Hamley’s on Regent Street with Stewart looking for presents for the kids to celebrate my first visit to them at the weekend Penny called me and the moment I heard her voice I knew that something was wrong.

‘It’s the kids,’ she said. ‘They’ve gone.’

‘What do you mean gone? Gone where?’

Penny was choking back her tears so hard she could barely breathe. ‘I think they’ve run away.’

My stomach turned over in panic. This was my worst nightmare.

‘Just tell me what happened,’ I said, trying to remain calm.

‘I went to pick them up as usual from school,’ began Penny, ‘and they weren’t there so I went to the school office and they said that they hadn’t been expecting them as they had a note from me on file saying they would be absent. They even showed it to me. Rosie must have typed it on the computer and signed it herself. I’ve tried calling Rosie’s mobile but it just goes straight to voicemail. I rushed home to see if they were there and that’s when I found the note. It was on her bed, waiting for me. She says that she and Jack have gone home – that has to mean they’re on their way to London doesn’t it? She’s taken her birthday money from the jar above her bed and Jack’s money’s gone too. I’m out of my mind with worry. Please, please, tell me that they’ve at least tried to contact you.’

‘I haven’t spoken to them since you asked me not to last week,’ I replied, raking over the last conversation I’d had with them, searching for clues. ‘What have the police said?’

‘I haven’t rung them yet. I just wanted to check that they weren’t with you first.’ She started to cry. ‘This is all my fault,’ she sobbed. ‘If anything happens to them I’ll never forgive myself.’

‘Listen, this is no time for blame. We’re going to find them and they’re going to be all right, but what you need to do right now is end this call and speak to the police. Don’t let them fob you off, Penny. Tell them they need to find our kids and when you’ve done that call me back and let me know what they’ve said.’

I shoved my phone in my pocket and started dodging through the crowds in an effort to get back to Stewart. I felt sick. My kids were either in or on their way to London without anyone to look after them. I couldn’t bear to think what might happen to them if they got lost or took a wrong turning let alone if they met the wrong people on their way. Why had I ever agreed to let them go so far away? Why had I ever thought it might be a good idea? If this was anyone’s fault it was mine. None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for me. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t been so self-centred. I had to find them, I had to know that they were all right, and when I got them back I’d never let them go again.

The speed of my approach made Stewart look up.

‘Everything OK, mate?’

‘It’s my kids,’ I said quickly. ‘Penny went to collect them from school and they weren’t there. She thinks they’ve run away to London. She’s talking to the police about them right now.’

‘And you think they’re heading to your place?’