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

‘But – guess what? They don’t have to be taken out. My stitches.’

‘No?’

‘No, they just fade away,’ Pat said, looking to me for confirmation.

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘They dissolve. They’re the new kind of stitches, aren’t they?’

‘The new kind,’ Pat nodded, turning his attention back to Princess Leia dressed as a scantily-clad concubine in the court of Jabba the Hutt.

‘That’s some outfit she’s got on,’ Cyd said.

‘Yes, it is,’ agreed Pat. ‘She’s a slave girl.’

‘Goodness.’

They watched Princess Leia squirming on the end of her chain for a few moments.

‘Well, I’m going to leave you to get better,’ Cyd said.

‘Okay.’

‘Cyd brought you some dinner,’ I said. ‘Green spaghetti. What do you say?’

‘Thank you.’ He gave her his most charming, David Niven-like smile.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said.

I walked her to the door and I realised that something inside me felt like it was singing. I didn’t want her to go.

‘Thanks for coming round,’ I said. ‘It’s made my day.’

She turned and looked at me with those wide-set brown eyes.

‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘This is the best thing that’s happened to me all day. Definitely.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘What don’t you understand?’

‘Why do you like me? You don’t even know me.’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘Yes.’

So I told her.

‘I like you because you’re strong but you’re not hard. I like it that you don’t take crap from men, but you still left your country for a man because you thought he was the one for you.’

‘Biggest mistake of my life.’

‘Maybe. But I like it that you’re so romantic from watching all those MGM musicals as a little girl.’

She laughed, shaking her head.

‘You see right through men, but you still want to find a man to share your life with,’ I said.

‘Says who?’

‘And I like the way your entire face lights up when you smile. I like your eyes. I like your legs. I like the way you know how to talk to a four-year-old kid. I like the way you were there when I needed someone. Everyone else just stood and stared. You were kind. And you didn’t have to be kind.’

‘Anything else?’

‘You’re beautiful.’

‘I’m not beautiful at all.’

‘You’re beautiful and brave and I’m jealous of every man who ever went out with you. Now and again I walk in front of the place where you work in the hope of bumping into you.’

‘You miss your wife,’ she said. ‘You really miss her.’

‘That’s true,’ I conceded. ‘But it’s also true that you blow me away.’

‘Boy,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘But you still don’t know me.’

She didn’t say it the way she had said it before. Now she said it gently, kindly, as if it weren’t my fault that I didn’t know her.

And she moved towards me as she said it, looking at me with those eyes for a moment before they closed as she placed her mouth upon mine.

I kissed her back. ‘I know you a little bit,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said, giving me that. ‘You know me a little bit.’

Part Two: The Ding-Dong Man (#ulink_e7d8a9b2-4ed7-5a4c-aec2-29506c8a3838)

Nineteen (#ulink_ddc94c15-79e9-5bf8-9d56-0637a528df49)

Pat started school.

The uniform he had to wear should have made him look grown up. The grey V-necked sweater, the white shirt and yellow tie should have made him look like a little man. But they didn’t.

The formality of his school clothes only underlined the shocking newness of him. Approaching his fifth birthday, he wasn’t even young yet. He was still brand new. Even though he was dressed more grown-up than me.

As I helped him get ready for his first day at school, I was startled to realise just how much I loved his face. When he was a baby I couldn’t tell if he was really beautiful, or if that was just my parental software kicking in. But now I could see the truth.

With those light blue eyes, his long yellow hair and the way his slow, shy smile could spread right across his impossibly smooth face, he really was a beautiful boy.

And now I had to let my beautiful boy go out into the world. At least until 3.30. For both of us, it felt like a lifetime.