The Complete Man and Boy Trilogy: Man and Boy, Man and Wife, Men From the Boys

Pat flew into her arms and she held him so tight that he disappeared inside the folds of her light summer coat, all of him gone, apart from the top of his head and a tuft of hair that was exactly the same shade of blond as his mother’s. Their faces were so close that you couldn’t see where Gina ended and Pat began.

I watched them feeling something better than happy. I was sort of glowing inside, believing that my world had been restored. And then she looked at me – not cold, not angry, just from a great distance, as though she was still somewhere far away and always would be – and my spirits sank.

She hadn’t come back for me.

She had come back for Pat.

‘You all right?’ I asked her.

‘Bit tired,’ she said. ‘It’s a long flight. And you get back the same day that you leave. So the day never seems to end.’

‘You should have told us you were coming. We would have met you at the airport.’

‘That’s okay,’ she said, holding Pat out to inspect him.

And I could see that she had come back because she thought I couldn’t do it. She thought I wasn’t up to looking after our child alone while she was away. She thought that I wasn’t a real parent, not the way that she was a real parent.

Still holding Pat, her eyes took in the squalid ravages of the living room, a room which seemed to confirm that even her own lousy father was a better prospect than me.

There were toys everywhere. A video of The Lion King playing unwatched on the television. Two takeaway pizza boxes – one large, one small – from Mister Milano squatting on the floor. And Pat’s pants from yesterday sitting on the coffee table like a soiled doily.

‘Goodness, look at your dirty hair,’ Gina said brightly. ‘Shall we give it a good old wash?’

‘Okay!’ Pat said, as if it were an invitation to Disneyland.

They went off to the bathroom and I made a start on clearing up the room, listening to the sound of running water mixing with their laughter.

‘I’ve been offered a job,’ she told me in the park. ‘It’s a big job. As a translator for an American bank. Well, more of an interpreter, really. My written Japanese is too rusty for translating documents. But my spoken Japanese is more than good enough for interpreting. I would be sitting in on meetings, liaising with clients, all that. The girl who’s been doing the job – she’s really nice, a Japanese-American, I met her – is leaving to have a baby. The job’s mine if I want it. But they need to know now.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘This job’s in Tokyo?’

She looked away from Pat’s careful negotiation of the lower reaches of the climbing frame.

‘Of course it’s in Tokyo,’ she said sharply. Her eyes returned to our boy. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing out there?’

To be honest, I thought she was having a break. Seeing a few old Japanese and expatriate friends from her year out, shooting about on the bullet train, taking in a few temples in Kyoto, just getting away from it all for a while.

I had forgotten that she wanted her life back.

That’s what she had been doing after moving into her father’s flat – making a few international calls, reviving some old contacts, seeing if she still had an option on all the things she had given up for me.

I knew her well enough to realise that she was dead serious about this job. But I still couldn’t quite believe it.

‘You’re really going to take a job in Japan, Gina?’

‘I should have done it years ago.’

‘For how long? Forever?’

‘The contract is for a year. After that, well, we’ll see.’

‘What about Pat?’

‘Well, Pat comes with me. Obviously.’

‘Pat goes with you? To Tokyo?’

‘Of course. I’m not going to leave him here, am I?’

‘But you can’t just uproot him,’ I said, trying to keep the note of hysteria out of my voice. ‘Where are you going to live?’

‘The bank will sort that out.’

‘What’s he going to eat?’

‘The same things he eats here. Nobody’s going to make him have miso soup for breakfast. You can get Coco Pops in Japan. You don’t have to worry about us, Harry.’

‘I am worried. This is serious, Gina. Who’s going to look after him when you’re working? What about all his stuff?’

‘His stuff?’

‘His bike, his toys, his videos. All his stuff.’

‘We’ll ship it over. How hard can it be to crate up a four-year-old’s possessions?’

‘What about his grandparents? You going to crate them up and ship them out? What about his friends at the nursery? What about me?’

‘You can’t stand the thought of me having a life without you, can you? You really can’t stand it.’

‘It’s not that. If this is really what you want, then I hope it works out for you. And I know that you can do it. But Pat’s life is here.’

‘Pat’s life is with me,’ she said, a touch of steel in her voice. Yet I could tell that I was getting through to her.

‘Leave him with me,’ I said. Pleaded, really. ‘Just until you get settled, okay? A few weeks, a couple of months, whatever it takes. Just until you’re on top of the job and you’ve found somewhere to live. Let him stay with me until then.’

She watched me carefully, as if I were making sense but still couldn’t be trusted.

‘I’m not trying to take him away from you, Gina. I know I could never do that. But I can’t stand the thought of him being looked after by some stranger in some little flat while you’re at the office trying to make a go of your new job. And I know you can’t stand it either.’

She watched our boy slowly clamber to the top of the climbing frame. He carefully turned so that he could grin at us.

‘I have to take this chance,’ she said. ‘I have to know if I can do it. It’s now or not at all.’

‘I understand.’

‘I’d call him every day, of course. And send for him as soon as I can. Maybe you can bring him out.’

‘That sounds good.’