‘No. Thank you. I’m going to sit out here and wait for the other parents to leave.’
Behind what I hoped was my cool exterior, I began plotting gruesome murder.
‘Amy, are you sure you’re okay?’
‘Yes.’ I rotated myself around and jerked down the corridor towards the reception desk. I had approximately fifteen minutes to get a grip and decide how the hell I was going to handle this without upsetting Joey or breaking the law.
Fourteen minutes and thirty seconds later, my plan consisted of don’t upset Joey and don’t break the law.
Every gracious thought I had been trying to summon up in order to allow that man to meet my son had evaporated in a cloud of steam tooting out my ears.
I waited on a plastic chair while the other parents and the lifeguard strolled past. Some of the faster club members began to filter out of the changing room door on the other side of the reception desk. Was Sean going to hide in there until the leisure centre staff locked everything up? Did he really think that—
Apparently not.
Sean Mansfield scurried into the centre foyer and straight past me, head down, cap pulled low, as if I wasn’t even there.
‘Take one step out through those doors and you will never meet your son.’
Well, that did the trick. He froze for a few seconds, then swung slowly around as I sucked in a long, careful breath, trying to calm my heart from its frenzied scrabbling.
I dug deep for the few remaining scraps of courage that would help me meet his gaze, head up, jaw set, shoulders squared.
‘Amy.’
‘You’ve been stalking Joey. For weeks.’
He pulled up the side of his mouth. The familiarity of his ‘I’m sorry but, hey, I’m charming, so you can’t help but forgive me’ expression was like being punched in the stomach with a thousand memories. ‘I’m not sure it’s technically stalking if it’s your own child.’
‘I’m not sure he’s technically your child if you abandon him before he was born and wait thirteen years before bothering to try and contact him.’
‘I thought about him. And you. Every single day.’
‘No. You didn’t.’
‘I regretted what happened—’
‘What you chose to do.’
‘…from the moment I left. I realised that however tough being a father would be, it couldn’t be as hard as knowing my child was growing up without me.’
I laughed, then. At least, it started out as a laugh and twisted into a sort of enraged snarl.
‘You thought about your child every day? I thought about him every second. Loved him and cared for him. Found a way to provide for him after you left us with nothing. I was there, with him, doing whatever it took to be a mother and a father to my son. That you could even suggest that sparing him the odd thought is somehow harder than putting in everything I had, than making everything I did be for him, just confirms that you have no idea what it is to be a parent, that you have no right to call him your child. If your biggest concern was that he didn’t know you, rather than whether he had a roof over his head, or food to eat, let alone was happy or safe or healthy, then you are no father.’
I vaguely registered a collective gasp from the parents and children gathered, enthralled, in the foyer.
‘I did worry about that,’ Sean mumbled, his eyes pleading. ‘But I didn’t know where you were. I was young, and broke.’
I wasn’t the only one who let out a loud snort.
‘I knew I’d messed up, badly. And I kept thinking that I needed to sort myself out, get a decent job, some money saved, show you I’d grown up, that I deserved to be allowed back into his life…’
‘Back in?’
‘I was young, Amy. I was an idiot. I’ve told you that in the emails, apologised. But, like I said, I’m here now to put it right.’
‘Why now? You’ve been running a successful business for six years.’
