I wanted to be there for every second that Joey and Sean spent together. To observe, analyse, intervene as necessary. The prickle that skimmed down my arms when he’d quirked the side of his mouth up made it clear that it would have to be long-distance surveillance wherever possible.
37
Stop Being a Loser Programme
Day Eighty-Five
By the hundredth time I’d heard, ‘Dad said…’ I knew I needn’t worry about keeping up to speed with their relationship. I did my best to brush off the pain that everything Sean said was new, and exciting, and utterly brilliant and obviously right. Joey deserved to enjoy this. And the only time I let him see me cry was when he leaked a few tears of his own, at breakfast the next morning.
‘I called him, “Dad,”’ Joey told me, his voice hoarse, while round eyes made him appear a little boy again. ‘It was weird. But then, not. Do you think it’s weird? He looked weird when I said it. Oh, farts. Do you think it freaked him out? Should I have waited until he asked me to call him that?’ He paused, sniffed. ‘I just. I can’t believe he’s here. I can’t believe I have a dad. I wanted to see what it felt like to say it. And now I’ve probably ruined everything. He’ll be like, “Dude, we only just met, enough with the pressure!” What if he doesn’t like me, I’m not what he expected, and now he’s totally panicking because he doesn’t want to be my dad?’
I placed a hand each side of his face, smudging away the tears with my thumbs. ‘He left his whole life behind to come and hear you say that, Joey. If he looked weird, it’s because you just made his dream come true. In all those years he’s been imagining what you’re like, it couldn’t have come close to how wonderful you are. He told me at the pool that you’re incredible.’
That had the reverse effect than I’d intended, as Joey cried even harder.
‘And trust me, I know when he’s telling the truth or not. He loves you already, Joey. How could he not love you?’
We clung on to each other until we decided we’d cried enough for one morning, and I accepted again that no rich, cool, exciting, long-lost parent offering a myriad of adventures could ever come close to replacing thirteen years of tears dried, breakfasts shared, a million tiny moments that create a life lived together.
But, honestly, the whole thing left me exhausted. There was so much to process. I swapped my run for the duvet that day. I felt too weighed down with the memories, the questions about where Sean had been and what him turning up here would mean. A thousand ‘what-ifs’… what if I’d tried harder when we were together, coped better, been less demanding – would he have stayed? What if I’d laughed off those stupid girls in the supermarket, instead of allowing their thoughtless cruelty to crush me? What if I’d got help earlier, been to counselling, stopped allowing Cee-Cee to empower my decisions to retreat from life? What if I’d been stronger, braver, wiser? Better? I’d been this way for so long. What if I couldn’t be strong, brave, or wise enough now?
I stayed in bed most of the next day. And the next. And before I realised it, the rest of the week. Sean turning up had coincided with the echo of my younger self emerging in a jawline, cheekbones – most of all the spark in my eyes: hopeful, determined, a gleam of confidence. It terrified me. I felt haunted. Did I regret what happened, the woman I’d been? Sean had asked me, as if regret meant I wished my son had never existed. I hadn’t regretted it since the moment I knew he was there. Did I regrethowit happened, and what happened after that? Like a slap in the face each time I caught my changing reflection in a mirror, or a darkened window. And the hurt and the shame were too much to bear.
So as December slipped past, I stopped running.
Ate biscuits.
Worked at my desk in ratty leggings and a giant hoodie.
Hung Christmas decorations, ordered food and presents for Joey and Cee-Cee online.
And I used every spare ounce of energy pretending that the Stop Being a Loser Programme was just on a break.
38
Stop Being a Loser Programme
Day One Hundred (Day Fifteen Since Quitting)
They waited two whole weeks.
‘Enough wallowin’, Ames.’ Mel told me, in no uncertain terms. ‘Time to get yer armour back on.’
After fobbing off their texts and phone calls with excuses about a massive work contract, a bad cold, general Christmas busyness, of course Mel and Dani had turned up at the house, barrelling their way in before I could say, ‘I’m actually about to go out.’
‘I’m actually about to go out,’ I mumbled, as they each dumped a shopping bag on the kitchen table.
‘We get that Joey’s father turning up is a significant life event to have to cope with,’ Dani said, looking me up and down. ‘But your strategy of completely letting yourself go, retreating back into your cave and shunning your best friends clearly isn’t working. We’re staging an intervention.’
Best friends?
‘Nathan told us.’ Mel, her hair red and white striped plaits like a candy cane, pulled a ginormous watermelon out of a bag, whipped a knife off the rack on the wall and began hacking away. ‘We knew Joey would’ve filled ’im in so we harassed and terrorised ’im until ’e were worn down.’
‘He refused to give up any details, though. Despite my superior court-honed interrogation skills. So…’ Dani jerked the top off a bottle of fresh orange juice, while giving me a steely glare. ‘You can fill us in while we prepare you a self-respect-restoring, excuse-eliminating, return-to-real-life-with-the-support-and-solidaritory-of-your-friends-enabling brunch.’
An hour and a half, two mimosas and a healthy yet humungous pile of food later, we were all filled up and filled in. Mel and Dani, on Sean and Joey’s chicken Thursdays, how Sean had cheered Joey on at a regional gala I hadn’t even bothered trying to attend, how the memories were bombarding me like slow-moving shrapnel from a bomb detonated over a decade ago, how I had lost the courage to keep going with the Programme and regressed to the crappy coping mechanisms that had been consistently failing me for years. And I had been filled in on Bronwyn’s newest new boyfriend (although details were scarce, making Dani suspicious that he might be one of the Outlaws crew), Selena’s new hairstyle (bigger than her whole head in every direction, à la 2010 Katie Price, according to Mel) and the real reason they’d come round that morning.
‘I don’t think I should go,’ I told them, once they’d confessed.
