the day I had brought Jason to the off-licence to show the boy to him. His certainty had been absolute. Unwavering.
Now I realised what it was about this that surprised me the most. Not Jason’s mistake. His credulity had been stretched so often and for so long it had left him half blind. Very young children can change greatly in just a few years. Of course it was plausible for this boy to no longer resemble his three-year-old self.
No, what surprised me was Jason’s inability to even consider this loss of connection between a father and son as a possibility. It seemed that, in his grief and fear he had needed a certain idea of parenthood to cling onto. An idea that, even in his darkest days, could serve to reassure him he was still a dad. This idea had been a necessary part of his survival these five years, and he had held onto it at all costs. To doubt his ability to recognise his own child was not an admission he was ever able to make. It would have undermined the one thing that was keeping him going, the thing that let him face every day.
I sat there for hours, watching the child sleep.
When I reached for my phone, the sun was coming up, the birds chirruping outside.
I dialled and, after ringing a few times, it went through to voicemail. Determined to talk to him in person, I kept trying. Redialling, over and over until, eventually, he answered.
‘Please don’t hang up,’ I said as fast as I could.
‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘Where are you?’
‘I was out of order yesterday. I made a mistake. But I’m going to put it all right.’ I paused. It felt like I was dangling from a precipice. ‘What I’m about to say is going to come as a bit of a shock and so you need to listen to me very carefully. OK?’
There was a pause and, for a moment, I thought he’d gone but then I heard him cough.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘but make it quick. I don’t have time for any more of your bullshit.’
I cleared my throat and took a breath, trying to formulate a sentence from the words jumbling around my head.
When I was done, I gave him Carla’s address.
‘Get here soon,’ I urged, ‘we’ll be waiting for you.’
Epilogue
I held my hands under the tap, cooling my skin for the pastry. The temperature outside was below freezing and soon the water ran so icy that my fingers burned with the cold. I forced myself to wait until they were numb and then I pulled away.
As soon as the blood began to return, hot and needling, to my fingertips, I set about flattening the shortcrust mixture with a rolling pin. Once it was the right thickness, I got a cutter and pressed it down into the soft, floured dough. I lifted the cutter back up and it brought the circle of dough with it. I let the shape fall into my hand and placed it in one of the dipped spaces in the baking tray, ready to be filled with mincemeat.
Baking mince pies from scratch hadn’t been strictly necessary (I had two shop-bought boxes in the cupboard), but I’d wanted to give the boys some time alone together and this had seemed like the perfect excuse. He’d spent the morning at Vicky’s house before coming over to see Jason and, although things between them were still difficult, they were definitely making progress.
I put the last of the lids on the mince pies and popped the tray in the oven. The small TV I kept on the side was showing The Snowman and so I settled on one of the breakfast-bar stools and sat back to watch the final ten minutes. It had just reached the point where the snowman and the boy were holding hands, flying across the fields together. As I hummed along to Aled Jones, the pies filling the house with their sweet spicy smell, I patted my stomach and smiled. I’d done a pregnancy test a few days ago and it had been positive. I’d decided to hold onto the news until tomorrow, Christmas Day.
Though I had yet to find a new job, the build up to Christmas had been busy. Jason had taken on a short welding contract and, as a consequence, he’d spent the past month trying to juggle Barney stuff with the rigour of twelve-hour shifts, six days a week. He hadn’t been terribly