Losing You Read Free

eyes were Rick’s eyes, but sad. His mane of tangled matt-black hair had green streaks in it. His fingernails were painted black and he had a swirling tattoo on his right forearm. He always appeared unwashed, hung-over, drugged-up and ferociously glum, though when he smiled, he looked sweet and lost, younger than his seventeen years. I knew from Rick that he was a problem-child, an all-out Goth on a small island that regarded him with suspicion or hilarity; a loner; a bright lad who felt he didn’t belong. I also knew that he and his parents, Karen particularly, could hardly manage to get through a minute together without arguing. But I’d always got on with him. He liked talking to me about funny little number problems he’d come across in books – after all, I am an ex-accountant who is now masquerading as a maths teacher – and about God (or the lack of any God). And he liked being around me in case Charlie walked through the door. Mothers notice these things.
    Karen looked at her watch. ‘Do you know what time it is?’ she said.
    ‘No,’ said Eamonn.
    ‘It’s gone half past ten,’ she said.
    ‘Low tide’s in ten minutes,’ Eamonn said, as if it was the most logical response. He wrinkled his face in distaste. ‘We’re surrounded by putrid-smelling mud.’
    ‘I thought you might have got up and gone out.’
    ‘How do you know I didn’t?’
    ‘That’ll be the day,’ said Rick, from somewhere inside my engine.
    ‘Hello, Eamonn,’ I said brightly, trying to forestall another argument.
    ‘Happy birthday.’ He gave an abrupt half-bow; his trench coat opened slightly and I could see he was naked beneath it.
    ‘Everyone really does know.’ I laughed. Flip-flops, I thought. Remember flip-flops and the camera-charger.
    ‘Charlie told me,’ he said.
    ‘Have you seen her recently?’ I began, but then my mobile sang in my pocket, an irritating jangle that Jackson must have programmed without me realizing, and I turned away from the car. He was already in mid-sentence by the time I brought the phone to my ear, and it took me a few seconds to separate out the stream of sounds into recognizable words. It was as if I had tuned in to a radio programme that was already half-way through.
    ‘… and if I’d known, fuck it, that you’d turn out to be the kind of mother who’d take my children away from me at Christmas and not only take them away but flyoff with a man who hardly knows them to the other side of…’
    ‘Rory, Rory, hold on…’ I walked a few steps down the driveway.
    ‘Just because I went off the rails a bit, does that mean I’ve forfeited the right to see them and they’re growing up so quickly my little children only of course they’re not so little any more and now there’s this Christian and soon they’ll stop thinking of me as their father that’s what you want isn’t it only you always used to say – ’
    ‘What’s up?’ I hated the way my voice took on a calming, gentle tone, as if I was murmuring nonsense to a scared horse, all the while wanting to slide a bridle over its head. I knew what his face was like when he was ranting, screwed up in wretched anger, an unnerving replica of Charlie when she was upset. I knew there were tears in his eyes and that he’d been drinking. ‘You’ve known for weeks we were going away. You said it was fine. We discussed it.’
    ‘At least you could have let me see them before they go,’ he said.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Just for a bit, to say happy Christmas.’
    ‘That’s not possible,’ I said. I heard a crunching on the gravel behind me and turned to find Karen making exaggerated semaphores with her arms and mouthing incomprehensible words at me. Behind her, my car’s engine coughed and hacked and rasped, then stuttered into life. I held up a finger, signifying I’d only be a few seconds. I felt like a terrible hypocrite. I was having a suppressed row with Rory while making a pathetic attempt to suggest to the eagerly