Seeing Other People (20 page)

Determined to give Weekend Bear Oscar the best twenty-four hours of his life, I ditched my plans to spend the day at home in the hope of encouraging the kids to treat it as their own and instead took them into the centre of London without much of a plan at all. We started off at the National Portrait Gallery because at the very least I reasoned it would be educational but after ten minutes of staring at paintings of – according to Rosie – ‘fat men with beards’ it became clear that I’d made the wrong choice when Jack started crying saying that the museum lights were hurting his eyes. In the end I took a quick snap of Jack and the Weekend Bear standing in front of a portrait of King Charles II, making a hasty retreat before we could be apprehended by the tiny but irate security guard heading our way.

Teatime was ruined when the cooker broke down in the middle of baking a pizza; bathtime by virtue of the fact that neither of them would get into the tub because they said it was too dirty – it
was
a bit grimy-looking although I’d scrubbed it half a dozen times to no avail – but bedtime was the biggest disaster of all. Having taken an hour to coax them into bed they were both up and out again within a few minutes because independently they both claimed to have heard strange noises in their rooms. This went on – me checking their rooms for ghosts and them refusing to be comforted – for a good two hours after which I sat down on Rosie’s bed and admitted defeat.

‘You want to go back to Mum’s, don’t you?’

They both nodded and without another word on the matter, we started packing.

To her credit, Penny couldn’t have been more gracious. Refusing to gloat as I stood on her doorstep in my pyjama bottoms, she reminded me of how it had taken three attempts before the kids would even countenance staying over at her mum and Tony’s without us, but as much as I tried to take solace in this fact I just couldn’t find any. As far as I was concerned it was fine for them to find Penny’s mum’s place weird because it was never meant to be their home, but I’d tried my best to make a home from home for them and it just hadn’t been enough. If my attempt at throwing a sleepover for my kids had proved anything, it was that I’d failed at the first hurdle of the newly single parent: make a home for your kids that they actually want to be in.

The real killer however came a few days later while I was babysitting the kids at the house because Penny had a conference to attend. With the kids in bed and nothing on telly I’d idly flicked through a pile of the kids’ school work on the table and come across Jack’s entry in Oscar the bear’s Weekend Bear’s diary. Under the picture I’d taken of Jack and Oscar in the National Portrait Gallery Jack had written: ‘Oscar enjoyed his weekend with me and we did lots of fun things. He did find my dad’s house a little bit scary but he loved being with my daddy very, very much.’

20

Van Halen put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s a novice mistake, buddy, and an easy one to make at that. Things don’t go right the first time you have your kids over and you convince yourself that you’ve messed up for good. First time I had my Harley and Suzuki overnight they bawled their eyes out for three solid hours because they missed their mum and then when I took them home they bawled for another three hours because they missed me.’

Stewart nodded. ‘At least yours came though, Van. When Chris who used to work with me had his kids over for the first time they took one look at the outside of his crappy little flat in Croydon and said, “Cheers Dad, but maybe we should just stick to Saturdays at Nando’s.’’’

‘The thing you’ve got to remember,’ said Paul, fingering the open packet of crisps in front of him and shoving a couple in his mouth mid-sentence, ‘is that it’s always going to be weird for the parent who moves out. Whoever stays in the family home gets to define normal because normal is what the kids know. If you’re the one who leaves then not only have the kids got to handle the separation but now they’ve got to cope with a new normal which inevitably means them getting used to being somewhere with you that’s nowhere near as nice as the place you left.’

I looked around the table at my drinking companions, still barely able to believe that we had anything in common. On my left was chubby Stewart, now for some reason sporting a faint blond moustache; across the table was Paul, who for reasons known only to himself had turned up at the pub wearing a fisherman’s cap; and on my right, larger than life and bald with it, was Van, wearing a leather biker jacket and a vest top emblazoned with the legend: Coke is the real thing. Sitting in the midst of this motley crew in a designer suit, fresh from covering a charity book launch at 10 Downing Street, was me. From an onlooker’s point of view we couldn’t have been more mismatched and yet from the moment I’d finished telling the guys the story of my weekend I knew that I had done the right thing in accepting an invitation to join them for one of their regular nights out. It felt good being with a bunch of guys who understood my situation. It made me feel that perhaps I wasn’t quite so alone in the world after all.

‘The thing is,’ continued Van, warming to the topic, ‘in the early days you feel like you have to try really hard with your kids to keep things the same – I know I did with my boys – but the truth is you just can’t because you’re in a completely different situation. Before you and your wife split up, how many times were you in sole charge of the kids for more than a day? I bet it wasn’t many.’

He was wrong. I was sure of it. Just to be on the safe side however I counted them up. There was the time when Rosie was still a baby and Penny went on her friend Nikki’s hen weekend up in Edinburgh; then there was the time when Rosie was a toddler and Penny had a conference to attend for work; then there was the time just after Jack was born when Penny had had to have her appendix out; then there was the time a few weeks after Jack’s first birthday when Penny went to Brighton for the weekend for a reunion with her old university friends and ended up coming home early because she missed the kids too much; and then finally there was the time after that when Penny’s cousin split up with her boyfriend and invited Penny to join her for a weekend in Paris that she had already booked and paid for. Hard as it was to believe, Van was right: the number of occasions I’d had my kids for over twenty-four hours in the course of their lives before the split was five.

‘I don’t get it. How could I have been a father for a decade and only ever had my kids overnight on my own five times?’

Paul shrugged. ‘It’s just the way it is. Once you have kids neither of you goes away all that much if you can really help it and when you do it’s usually work making the demands meaning you have no choice in the matter so one of you gets left holding the baby, which in my case was me.’

‘So what do I do? I want my kids to want to stay with me but I can’t afford to move anywhere else.’

‘You need to sort your place out,’ said Van. ‘I’m free Friday night if you want some help getting it straight.’

‘And I’ve got a tonne of paint that might be a better choice for kids’ rooms than brilliant white,’ offered Stewart.

‘This is beginning to sound like a party,’ said Paul, grinning. ‘You can definitely count me in.’

True to their word the guys turned up at mine on Friday night armed with paintbrushes, toolboxes and all manner of DIY equipment to help sort out the house. They divided up tasks between themselves with some on painting and others building flat-pack furniture while I seemed to do very little other than get in the way to the extent that an hour in they sent me out with a list of errands – at the top of which was beer and a rogan josh (x 4) – just to get rid of me. The whole evening was like a scene from a barn-raising only instead of being in Amish country we were in my two-bed terrace in Lewisham and by the time we called it a night in the early hours of Saturday morning my former hovel resembled the sort of place that an actual real live woman might have approved of, and if she didn’t I was almost definitely sure that her children would. The once barely furnished living room now looked like somewhere the kids would want to hang out in: it had a TV (on loan from Paul), a PlayStation (an old version, on loan from Stewart) and even a couple of framed arty-looking black and white pictures on the wall (thanks to Paul again). And the rest of the house couldn’t have looked better either. Rosie’s room now had lilac walls – her favourite colour – a wardrobe and a desk; my room (which would double up as Jack’s bedroom when he stayed over) also had a fully assembled wardrobe, a chest of drawers and was painted a cheery shade of sky blue. While there wasn’t a great deal I could do about the bathroom (‘the whole thing needs gutting,’ was Stewart’s opinion) I did have a fully functioning cooker thanks to Van’s efforts.

What the guys had done for me was amazing and I was in their debt. I felt quite moved and wanted to explain just how grateful I was for this true act of friendship but my overly effusive thanks were dismissed by Van with typical aplomb: ‘Mate, if I hadn’t been here helping you I’d have been out on the lash celebrating my bassist’s forty-third birthday. The way I see it you’ve saved me about fifty quid and stopped me waking up tomorrow with the mother of all hangovers, so let’s just say we’re even.’

I waited until my midweek visit with the kids to pop the question about staying over at mine again. We had the radio on for a bit of background noise and they were tucking into the jacket potatoes and beans I’d rustled up and Rosie had just finished telling me a long and involved story about why it was annoying that Rebecca Crossly had made it into the netball team when she hadn’t when I finally came out with what was on my mind.

‘What do you think of giving it another go at mine this weekend? I’ve had a real tidy up and me and some . . . well, friends have done a brilliant job on the place. You’ll love it.’

Jack chewed thoughtfully on the mouthful of potato he was working on. ‘Would we get to sleep here in our own beds at night-time?’

‘Well, not really, son. I was thinking that it would be like before. Rosie would sleep in her room and you’d sleep in my room, and I’d sleep downstairs on the sofa.’

Jack speared a solitary bean on his fork and contemplated it like he was studying a diamond through a magnifying glass. ‘Well in that case I think I’d rather stay at home if that’s OK with you, Daddy. I still really want to see you on Saturday but I don’t think I’d like to stay over.’

I looked at Rosie, who was helping herself to seconds of coleslaw. If I could talk her round to wanting to go then Jack would easily fall into line for fear of missing out on a good time.

‘And what about you, sweetie? You’d like to sleep over at mine wouldn’t you? I tell you what, we could stay up a bit later than normal and I’ll order in pizza.’

She wrinkled her nose like my offer was about as appealing as a week-old fish that had been left lying out in the sun. ‘It sounds really great what you’ve done to your place, Dad – and I like the idea of the pizza – but do we have to stay over? Couldn’t we just come for the day, eat pizza and then come back here?’

‘Of course you can. You guys can do whatever you like. The important thing is that we get to spend proper time together.’

Rosie gave me a kiss on the cheek as a thank-you and Jack chomped down on his bean with gusto and let out a victorious, ‘Yes! Pizza at Dad’s house on Saturday!’ like he’d just scored in a cup final while I tried my best to look pleased with the result. There really was no point in forcing them to do anything they didn’t want to do. After all, being with me wasn’t meant to be a punishment but although I tried to put a brave face on it, the fact they didn’t want to stay over hurt like a punch in the face. My kids loved me, but not enough to want to rough it at mine for one night every two weeks.

At the house that evening as I tucked away the brand-new bedding I’d bought for the kids back in the wardrobe Penny phoned to talk to me.

‘Rosie and Jack said you’ve invited them to stay over again.’

My heart sank. It wasn’t enough that my kids had rejected me for a second time, now she was about to have a go at me for inviting them without clearing it with her first.

‘Listen, before you say anything . . . they don’t want to come, OK? They’re not interested in staying over.’

‘And you’re just going to leave it at that?’

‘Well I thought—’

‘You thought what, Joe? That it’s OK for our kids to dictate to us because you think they’ve had it a bit hard of late? They never told us what to do when we were together and I’m not about to let them start just because we’re apart. It’s the thin edge of the wedge, Joe. We feel guilty about what’s happened and so we let them walk all over us because we want them to like us. Well it’s tough luck for them because we’re their parents. They don’t have to like us but they do have to do what they’re told. Pick them up first thing Saturday morning and I’ll have them and their bags ready for you.’

Whether it was something Penny had said or the makeover the Divorced Dad’s Club had given the place, the kids seemed to really enjoy their second visit to my house. Rosie loved her room so much that she spent the weekend texting pictures of it to Carly and Jack thought that Stewart’s old PlayStation was better than anything he’d ever seen. But the best thing about our weekend together, the thing that made me think that perhaps there was hope for us all, was seeing how quickly they felt at ease in the house, padding around in their socks, flopping on sofas, and generally treating the place like it was their own private hotel.