Man and Boy

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘If she wants my life, she can have it. All of it. Including you. Especially you, Harry. Because it’s all a lie.’

‘Please, Gina. It was a mistake. A terrible mistake, okay?’ I scrambled for words. ‘It didn’t mean a thing,’ I told her.

She started laughing and crying at the same time. ‘Don’t you understand that makes it worse?’ she said. ‘Don’t you understand anything at all?’

Then she really started to sob, her shoulders all hunched up and shaking, not even trying to wipe away tears that seemed to start somewhere deep inside her chest. I wanted to put my arms around her. But I didn’t dare touch her.

‘You’re just like my father,’ she said, and I knew it was the worst thing in the world she could ever say. ‘Just like him.’

‘Please, Gina,’ I said. ‘Please.’

She shook her head, as if she could no longer understand me, as if I had stopped making any kind of sense.

‘What, Harry? Please? What? You’re like a fucking parrot. Please what?’

‘Please,’ I said, parrot-like. ‘Please don’t stop loving me.’

‘But you must have known,’ she said, slamming shut the suitcase, most of her clothes still unpacked and scattered all over our bed. The other bag was already full. She was almost ready to leave. She was nearly there now. ‘You must have known that this is the one thing I could never forgive,’ she said. ‘You must have known that I can’t love a man who doesn’t love me – and only me. And if you didn’t know that, Harry, then you don’t know me at all.’

I once read somewhere that, in any relationship, the one who cares the least is the one with all the power.

Gina had all the power now. Because she didn’t care at all any more.

I followed her as she dragged her suitcase and bag out into the hall and across to Pat’s bedroom. He was carefully placing Star Wars figures into a little Postman Pat backpack. He smiled up at us.

‘Look what I’m doing,’ he said.

‘Are you ready, Pat?’ Gina asked.

‘Nearly,’ he said.

‘Then let’s go,’ she said, wiping away the tears with her sleeve.

‘Okay,’ Pat said. ‘Guess what?’ He was looking at me now, his beautiful face illuminated by a smile. ‘We’re going on a holiday.’

I let them get as far as the door and then I realised that I couldn’t stand losing them. I just couldn’t stand it. I grabbed the handle of Gina’s bag.

‘Where are you going? Just tell me where you’re going.’

She tugged at the bag, but I refused to let go. So she just left me holding it as she opened the front door and stepped across the threshold.

I followed them out into the street, still holding Gina’s bag, and watched her strap Pat into his child seat. He had sensed that something was very wrong. He wasn’t smiling any more. Suddenly I realised that he was my last chance.

‘What about Pat?’ I said. ‘Aren’t you going to think about him?’

‘Did you?’ she said. ‘Did you think about him, Harry?’

She heaved her suitcase into the back of the estate, not bothering to get the other bag back from me. She let me keep it.

‘Where will you stay?’

‘Goodbye, Harry.’

And then she left me. Pat’s face was small and anxious in the back seat. Gina stared straight ahead, her eyes hard and shining. She already looked like someone else. Someone I didn’t know. She turned on the ignition.

I watched the car until it had turned the bend in the street where we lived, and only then was I aware of the curtains that were twitching with curiosity. The neighbours were watching us. With a sinking feeling, I realised that’s the kind of couple we had become.

I carried Gina’s bag back into the house, where the phone was ringing. It was Marty.

‘Can you believe what these fuckers are saying about me in the papers?’ he said. ‘Look at this one – ban mad mann from our telly. And this one – A MANN OF FEW WORDS – ALL OF THEM ****ING OBSCENE. What the fuck are they implying? These people want my job, Harry. My mum is really upset. What are we going to do?’

‘Marty,’ I said. ‘Gina’s left me.’

‘She’s left you? You mean she’s walked out?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What about the kid?’

‘She’s taken Pat with her.’

‘Has she got someone else?’

‘Nothing like that. It was me. I did something stupid.’

Marty chuckled in my ear. ‘Harry, you dirty dog. Anyone I know?’

‘I’m frightened, Marty. I think she might be gone for good.’

‘Don’t worry, Harry. The most she can get is half of everything you own.’

He was wrong there. Gina had already walked out with everything I had ever wanted. She had got the lot.

eight (#ulink_157c1496-7cd1-5019-bad7-70cef07379d8)

Barry Twist worked for the station. Over the past year, I had been to dinner at his home, and he had come to dinner at mine. But, the way our world worked, we weren’t exactly friends. I couldn’t tell him about Gina. It felt like I knew a lot of people like that.

Barry had been the first of the television people to take Marty and me out to lunch when we were doing the radio show. He had thought the show would work on television and, more than anyone, he had been responsible for putting us there. Barry had smiled all the way through that first lunch, smiled as though it was an honour to be on the same planet as Marty and me. But he wasn’t smiling now.

‘You’re not a couple of kids dicking about on the radio any more,’ he said. ‘These are big boys’ rules.’ His conversation was full of stuff like ‘big boys’ rules’, as though working in television was a lot like running an undercover SAS unit in South Armagh. ‘We had nine hundred phone calls complaining about the fucking language.’

I wasn’t going to roll over and die just because he was our commissioning editor.

‘Spontaneous TV, Barry, that’s what you pay him for. On this kind of show it’s not what the guests say that makes news. It’s what they do.’

‘We don’t pay him to assault the guests.’ Barry indicated the papers on his desk with a thin little smile. I picked up a fistful of them.