If I Were You

Chapter 26 Flynn

Ten Years Ago

I found out later Eddie had put it on Facebook. That was how strangers found out about it. It was meant to have been a low key party, just the touring cricket team, the night before we were flying to Barbados. But then unfamiliar people started wandering in through the open door, and trashed the place. Wine and beer stains, ruined sofa cushions, smashed vases, photo frames and finally, Dad’s urn.

It’s at that point that someone says gross and someone talks about their granny and after that they leave. Jay gets rid of them. I’ve never seen him get so angry at Eddie. He almost punches him on the nose.

Mum gets back late. She steps inside, stops short and takes it all in. Almost every carpet or surface is stained or ruined. She doesn’t get angry or make me clean up. She doesn’t rail about thoughtless teenagers. She doesn’t look at me. She wordlessly packs a small bag and leaves for the Gloucestershire house, messaging Pauletta to work extra hours to fix it the next day.

I stay up through the night. I clean everywhere, I get through bin bag after bin bag, I sweep up broken crockery, I hoover. Always my eyes move to the ash. I can’t clean in there.

I stay and scrub every corner as the day dawns, as Pauletta arrives and tries to make me eat. I scrub and clean until my train to Heathrow. Pauletta pats me on the back as I go.

‘You good boy.’

I don’t cry, don’t reach out to envelop her in a hug. Those feelings no longer come. I do what I always do. I poke my tongue out and pretend to be a dog. ‘Good boy.’

Dad’s urn.

Pauletta smiles sadly at me and that makes me feel worse, so I turn and leave.

I get the train to Heathrow and meet the other cricketers at the airport. Jay is there, his mum kissing him on the cheek, his dad rolled in in his wheelchair, his hands trembling as Jay leans down to shake his hand goodbye.

‘How did your mum react?’ Jay asks, pushing his glasses up with one finger.

I think back to Mum’s blank face as she took in the devastation.

‘She was cool about it,’ I say, seeing the familiar expression of Jay relaxing. ‘Do you think we’re going to get smashed around the pitch this week?’

Jay smiles easily, ‘I am! You, not so much.’

I laugh in response, relieved as ever that my diversion has worked yet again. I swallow down the desire to tell Jay everything. That even destroying our house didn’t move my mother to any kind of reaction. That I don’t know what to do to get her to care. For a second the urge is so strong that my stomach twists in pain.

‘You OK, mate?’ Jay notices.

‘Hungover,’ I say quickly.

Jay slaps me on the back.

So easy.

Everyone is waving, the boys a mixture of embarrassed awkwardness and pleasure. I see Eddie’s mum in a cashmere coat blowing him a kiss. And I get a yearning for a face in the small crowd to focus on me, to have someone hold me close and tell me they’ll miss me, they love me, that they want me to message the moment we land.

I stare down at my phone, scroll to my mum’s name.

There is nothing. Something freezes over in my chest as the letters blur.

The tour goes well. I’m awarded Player of the Tour and the lads remember my birthday. We drink beers and Jay throws up behind the hotel. Eddie gets off with half of a touring netball team from an all-girls’ school. Eddie’s a bit pissed at me; the coach has hinted I’m going to be made captain in our last year.

Every solitary moment though, in the shower or in the room when the others have gone down for a meal, I can’t help thinking back to Mum’s face when she walked into the house, took in the ransacked house. What did she feel? Surely, she’d felt something. I know how I’d felt when I saw the mess, debris and worse, so much worse, the urn. I broke something sacred; I feel so broken inside. Surely, she wanted to scream, to hurl abuse at me, do something. Or am I truly that small, that invisible? I torture myself with these questions in every quiet moment. My anxiety returns, feeling acid in my stomach, chewing on my inside cheek until the pain makes my eyes water.

Everyone’s picked up from the airport and I hurry past them quickly, following the signs to the underground.

Jay looks at me thoughtfully. His mum is telling him to come along.

‘You want a lift, mate?’

For a worried second I think he sees right through me.

‘Mum’s just messaged me from the drop point; she’s waiting in the car.’ I wave my phone and quickly move away.

Jay keeps his eyes on me. Does he know? He’s never said anything over the years, but sometimes he gets that look. Like he’s going to say something serious. I get into a lift to the drop point and, as it descends the two flights, the emotion that builds in me seems unable to be contained in the small steel space. I want him to ask. I want someone to work it out. I can’t keep this in any more. I can’t do it.

Blinking, I stumble out of the lift, my vision tunnelling, my breaths quicker. I have to sit on a concrete bollard just outside, watch people wheeling suitcases, shouldering bags, calling to loved ones, slow my thrumming chest. So many units, families, frustration, love. An airport shuttle bus approaches. If I stepped into its path, how many days would it take my mum to notice I hadn’t returned?

The travel home makes me feel bone tired. I let myself into the London house, restored by Pauletta so you’d never know what had happened. Glossed over like everything in this family.

Mum is in the kitchen and, when I appear with my cricket bag over my shoulder, my suitcase behind, she looks surprised. I realize she didn’t know when I was coming back.

And that fact makes everything I’ve been feeling in the last few days, since the party, over the last few years, come spilling out in an ugly, messy, snot-filled roar. I step towards her, arms out, pleading with her to listen.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the party. About Dad’s, Dad’s ashes.’

She flinches then the mask is replaced, and that strange blankness descends. ‘Stop this. Pauletta tidied.’

‘You should be angry. You should shout at me. Why won’t you shout at me?’

She starts to look around her as I approach. A strange moment, all gangly six foot two of me, my mother no longer a woman I stare up at. I still want her to hold me, to bundle me into her arms, to love me.

I cry, years of tears that have been stoppered up inside me. Her eyes widen in alarm.

‘Don’t, Flynn. You’re tired. Go up, sleep.’

‘I don’t want to sleep. I need us to talk. I need you.’

I will her to break down too. Where is the woman of my memory? The one who bundled me into her lap when I was small, who whispered love into my hair? She died when Dad died. It’s like I’m not here either. I need her to see me now, to remember that she loved me. Fiercely. That she shouted at Rory’s mum when Rory hit me, when she ran with me into the hospital with my fractured arm, when she held me next to Dad’s bed as I said goodbye. I need that woman, that mother.

‘Don’t, Flynn. Stop this. Don’t. You’re being spoilt and awful. The world doesn’t revolve around you and your feelings. I’ve given you everything. You are lucky. Your father would be embarrassed.’

That stops my tears. Stops her words. I can’t breathe in the silence that follows. Would he have been embarrassed of me?

‘I can’t remember him. I make up stories about him. I can’t remember Dad,’ I admit, my face wet.

‘Of course you can,’ she says, her mouth twisting. ‘How dare you.’

I shake my head, ‘I can’t. It’s just a nothing. A man from a photo, a mix of clothes. I can’t remember him, Mum.’

‘Stop this.’ She is finally angry. ‘For fuck’s sake – be a man.’

Despite me telling Eddie and Jay stories of him whenever they talk about their dads. Their families. They think I’m lucky – no curfew, no overbearing parents and a dad who I’ve made out to be a legend. All the stories fabricated by me, all I have is a blurred image, old photos and a feeling that I was loved. The rest is a strange blank where memories used to be.

Be a man.

She leaves me there in the kitchen panting, tears soaking the collar of my top. She leaves me in there, my chest wide open as I sink to my knees, entirely spent.

Be a man.

I hear the front door shut as she leaves the house.

Be a man.

From that moment to now we haven’t spoken about anything real.