Morgan sat at the kitchen table, in pyjamas, unaware she was shivering. The heating had gone off hours ago. When she’d gone up to bed, the door of his room had been left ajar. Olly must have slipped out after their argument.And breathe, she told herself. He’d only been missing a matter of hours. Yet it was three in the morning and this was unprecedented behaviour.
She’d just picked up her phone to ring the police when the front door clicked. Morgan jumped up and ran into the hallway, heady relief making her stumble at the sight of the sticky up, chestnut hair she herself had had at his age, and at the lean frame that was so like his grandfather’s.
‘Why haven’t you picked up my calls? Where were you?’
‘Out,’ he replied, with a deadpan face.
‘Olly…’ Her voice broke. ‘It’s freezing outside.’
‘I was at a friend’s house, okay?’ he muttered. ‘Vikram’s coming over after physics tomorrow. Don’t say anything embarrassing.’
Arms open, she moved towards him but he stepped away.
‘You can’t go off like that, love, not answering your phone. Let’s talk about it.’
‘What’s the point, Mum, when you won’t even give me his name?’
Still this. ‘Like I said, you’re better off without your dad in your life. I don’t know what I ever saw in him. Anyway, he left Dailsworth before you were born and could be anywhere in the world by now.’
‘You never even told him you were pregnant.’
‘I was sixteen. I didn’t know myself until it was too late to find him. I did try but he’d already moved away.’ She reached out and touched Olly’s arm.
He shook her off. ‘It’s taken me so long to… understand and… come to terms with who I am, to feel that sense of calm and relief.’ The words came out of his mouth with a tremble. ‘But there’s still this, the final piece of the puzzle. To know myself completely, I need to know my dad. It’sshit, you refusing to tell me, still treating me like a child.’
‘Don’t speak to me like that, young man.’
Olly kicked of his muddy boots. ‘Yes, I’ll officially be a man in February when I turn eighteen, yet you won’t even trust me with the smallest detail about him. Have you ever thought about how your silence affects me? Like my sense of shame because you hate the person who made the other half of me, as if there must be something wrong with me too?’
‘There isnothingwrong with you, don’t ever think that. I just…’
‘It’s a shame I’ve carried my whole life, with teachers and friends asking about my father, it looking as if I’m worthless for having a dad who didn’t want to stick around.’ His voice faltered. ‘When I was little, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t have one like my best friends did. I’d pretend mine was an astronaut. I’d say he was away, busy discovering new planets. I almost believed it myself. Yet in bed at night, I’d ask myself, what if hedidknow about me, after all? What if Mum’s lying, and I was really rejected, a son who wasn’t good enough for his own father?’ He threw his hands in the air. ‘I’m sick of all these questions flying around my head and I intend to get answers, one way or another.’ He shouted the last sentence.
A lump rose in Morgan’s throat. If she told Olly his dad’s name, that would be the beginning, not the end. There’d be more and more questions, she’d have to relive that terrible time, and then there was the matter of protecting her son. Who knew what sort of person his cruel, conniving father had turned into?
Olly had demanded to know, two years ago, in a much more determined way than he ever had before. A girl in his year had got pregnant. She was sixteen, like Morgan had been. It brought it all back and she’d wondered if Olly heard her sobbing in her bedroom, after their argument, as he hadn’t mentioned the subject of his father again, so forcefully, until now.
‘Keep your voice down, Olly, you’ll wake the neighbours.’
‘I don’t care,’ he hollered.
‘You’re practically a grown up now, act like it,’ she snapped.
‘Why won’t you tell me then?’ he said and glared. ‘I’ve a right to know and if you don’t tell me, I’ll be able to do what I want to find out, as soon as my next birthday is here.’
She opened her mouth and closed it again.
‘Do you know what it’s been like to have been born on Valentine’s Day?’ he said. ‘It’s as if the universe is laughing at me every year, what with my parents’ romance being over before I was even born.’
Her eyes pricked. Yes, she’d always felt that and had always hoped that her son hadn’t. Olly stormed upstairs, leaving her standing in the hallway, feeling numb.
‘Olly’s back, that’s the main thing,’ she whispered to herself as she walked into the kitchen and slumped into one of the wooden slat back chairs. Since her son had come out to her about his sexuality, she’d hoped they’d become closer again. On Bonfire Night, when he’d got back from a night with his friends, he’d blurted it out and the two of them had sat on the sofa until dawn, talking in a way they hadn’t for ages, about love and boys and his fears and hopes for the future. But instead, the opposite had happened and now Olly hardly spoke to her. His bedroom door slammed and a framed photo toppled over on the scratched Welsh dresser, onto herBest Employee of the Monthcertificate. She’d often received them and had lost count of the times management had asked her to become a supervisor. It would mean more pay, more responsibility – but less time to dedicate to Olly.
Morgan picked up the photo of the two of them on a beach. He was six. They’d made a stick man in the sand, out of washed-up driftwood, and as if it were an Olympic torch, he proudly held an ice cream with a chocolate flake in the top. She ran her thumb over his little face.
Had that boy felt rejected, despite the love she’d smothered him with? A sunny June day came to mind, when he’d been in primary school. Every year, the teachers organised a Father’s Day event. Olly’s grandfather, Morgan’s dad, couldn’t get the day off work, so his great granddad, in his late sixties, went in instead. When they got home, Olly was very quiet. He opened up to Morgan later – he did in those days. Everyone else’s dad had played in the football match, but what with his bad hip, Olly’s great granddad couldn’t. Oh, they had fun crafting, but Olly had wanted to play football. It hadn’t helped when one of the boys teased that he’d done a girls’ activity.
Morgan switched off the lights and trudged upstairs. She pulled open the bottom drawer by the side of her bed, rummaging before she took out a sheaf of homemade cards, with misshapen flowers and hearts drawn on the front, with phrases such asbest friend Mummyandlove you more than Teddy. When he wasn’t slamming doors, Olly was a reliable, caring lad who visited his grandparents and helped with the washing up. He mowed the small lawn out the back without being asked and never forgot his mum’s birthday.
