Starting Over

And all I could do was wait.

Rufus was a smart kid but he was raw. That was his problem. Not his recklessness, or his stupidity, but his youth. I trusted him but I didn’t trust the world. You need a bit of luck at that age, I thought, and I waited at the window, and still he did not come home.

My son at seventeen. Most nights he went out in a clapped-out old Beetle bought with his own money from a summer job. We didn’t know where he went. We didn’t have a clue. You lose them after a certain age and they never come back. They start out as a part of you, indistinguishable from yourself for years and years, and they end up as people that you hardly recognise. I could see it coming.

My son and I were not quite strangers yet – I could still glimpse the same father and son who went to the park on a bike that had stabilisers. But it was a big thing between us, this not knowing, this unknown other life, the Grand Canyon of ignorance, and it felt like it was growing bigger every time he went out the front door.

And when midnight came and went I suddenly knew that I would never see him again. I knew it with a total certainty that choked my throat and tightened my chest. And I knew exactly how it would be when I told his mother and sister, and I could see the look on the faces of his grandparents, and I could imagine his dumbstruck friends and schoolmates, attending their first funeral, far too young to be wearing all that black. And I knew exactly what it would be like. It would be like the end of the world.

Then I heard his car coming up the drive.

There were lights in the window, the engine dying, a door slamming – boys do not have a light touch at seventeen – and suddenly there he was, towering above me, eye contact not easy, and as always I was both relieved and uneasy at his physical presence. Glad to have him back in one piece, yet baffled by this oversized man-child.

Who was he? Where did he come from? What was his connection to the little boy with the blond Beatle-cut? On tiptoes – and I am six foot nothing – I kissed him on the fuzzy cheek he shaved once a week, and when he gave me a sort of half-hearted sideways squeeze in response, I felt the sharp bones of my only son.

We had always kissed each other, but for a while now there had been self-consciousness and shyness in our embrace. Somehow I knew that Rufus would prefer it if the ritual, long since drained of all real meaning, would stop. But stopping it would feel like we were making too big a thing of it. So we continued with our manly kisses, even though they made both of us uncomfortable.

I felt him pull away.

‘So,’ I said, as lightly as I could manage, ‘what have you been up to?’

‘Just driving around,’ he said in his deep, booming voice – that big man’s voice coming out of my little boy! – and I felt myself flinch at the voice, at the words, at the blatant and obvious lie.

Whatever my son did at night, I knew it was not just driving around.

‘Okay,’ I said evenly, and I reached for the AlcoHawk Pro that was waiting on the coffee table.

It was a rectangular piece of plastic, gun-metal grey, about the size of one of those palm-held devices that the world and its brother seem to spend their entire lives staring into these days, when they could be looking at each other, or the stars. There was a stubby mouthpiece on one side, about the size of the cigarette butt that I had booted into the rose bushes.

‘I didn’t drink anything,’ Rufus said in his defensive baritone, although I could smell the contents of a small brewery on him.

‘Good,’ I said flatly. ‘Then it will be clear.’

I pressed the power switch and on the AlcoHawk Pro’s circular screen the red digits quickly counted down from 200 to zero. Then I handed it to Rufus. He took a breath, and blew into the mouthpiece until there was a sharp beep. He gave it back to me and we waited, saying nothing, not looking at each other, just the ambient noise of the city between us. Then there was a series of little beeps and the reading was displayed.

Three zeroes, it said; 000 – like the winning line on a fruit machine. Strange, I thought. I knew I smelled booze. I shook the AlcoHawk Pro and looked at it again. But it still said 000, and that meant there was no alcohol in the bloodstream of my son. At least he was telling me the truth about one thing in his life.

I showed the reading to Rufus and when he nodded politely, I felt like hugging him. It was such a gracious gesture, that polite little nod. There was a real sweetness about my boy, even now, a sweetness that had everything to do with his mother and nothing to do with me. I felt like hugging the kid. But I didn’t hug him. And the moment passed.

We said goodnight without risking any more embraces, and as I climbed the stairs I could hear him clumping noisily around the kitchen, foraging for food. My wife was sleeping. But when I slid into my side of the bed, I felt her stir.

‘Is he back?’ she murmured, her voice foggy with sleep, her face pointing away from me.

‘He’s back,’ I said. I listened to her breathing for a bit. That was enough for her. The fact that he was back. That was all Lara cared about.

‘But where does he go?’ I said, all despairing.

She exhaled in the darkness, a sound that was half-yawn, half-sigh. ‘He’s a good boy, George,’ she said, already sliding back into sleep. ‘And he’s fine. And he’s home. And he’s safe. Does it matter where he goes?’ Then she thought of something and half sat up. ‘You didn’t breathalyse him again, did you?’

‘I just wonder where he goes,’ I said.

I turned on to my side and we lay there, back to back, the position of animals who had found their home a long time ago. I felt Lara’s small feet on the back of my calves, the swell of her buttocks, the angle of a shoulder blade under brushed cotton pyjamas.

‘And I just don’t want him to get hurt,’ I said, very quietly, although she was sleeping by then.

I had a feeling that I would not sleep much tonight. But then I felt Lara’s body making itself comfortable against mine, and I knew that sleep would eventually come if I didn’t think about it too much.

And I knew that there was something more that I wanted for our son, something more than good sense and safety first, and cool heads to prevail, and the bit of the luck you need at seventeen, and perhaps less lies once in a while, just for a change.

And it was this – what every parent wants for the gawky teenage boy who they suddenly see accelerating towards the grown-up world without a crash helmet or a safety belt, imagining that everything is completely under control.

The silent prayer of the terrified parent.

I wanted to stop the clock.

We rarely saw Rufus at breakfast. In the morning he was an almost mythical figure, elusive yet lumbering, his enormous form sometimes glimpsed banging out the door, rucksack stuffed with books slung over one shoulder like the Yeti of Year 13, or whatever they call the sixth form these days.

The kitchen was full of clues that he had already come and gone. His chair pushed roughly back. A lone Coco Pop on the floor. The cereal bowl dumped in the sink for someone else to wash up.

I felt a ripple of irritation. I knew what this was about. He just wanted to avoid my porridge.

I made one meal a day for my family, and it was breakfast – tasty, nutritious Scott’s Porage Oats. I figured a healthy start balanced out the unhealthy remainder of my day – the cigarettes I secretly puffed, the junk food I noshed at work, the spikes of blood pressure. Every morning I built a barrier against early death. A wall of porridge. But my son never stuck around for it.

Lara appeared as I was drying his bowl. ‘He makes me so angry,’ I said.

She kissed my cheek and patted my ribs. ‘Everything makes you angry, darling.’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘Ruby!’ No response. She took the bowl from me and put it away, shaking her head. ‘She’ll be late again. Go and get her, will you?’

I checked that the porridge was simmering nicely and went back upstairs. The door to our daughter’s room was open. She was sitting at her computer, in her school uniform, pulling her hair back and knotting it in a ponytail. I smiled at the seriousness of the expression on what was a fifteen-year-old version of her mother’s perfect face.

It wasn’t true that everything made me angry.

My daughter never made me angry.

I could hardly look at her without smiling.

And it had always been that way.

Apocalyptic images moved across her computer screen. Factories belching industrial filth. Dead fish floating in polluted rivers. Highways jammed with unmoving cars.

‘Anyone in here like porridge?’ I said, knocking on the open door.

‘Just let me…’ Her voice trailed away as she stared at ice caps melting, the earth’s crust boiling, the sky ripped asunder by plague and pestilence. ‘I just have to see…’

‘Ruby,’ I said, ‘don’t worry about all that stuff. It’s not the end of the world.’

She looked at me and grimaced. ‘That’s not funny, Daddy.’

But it made me laugh.