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Thomas looks fucking mortified.
“Well?” I prompt. “Is football cool now? Cooler than rugby?”
Thomas shrugs. “They’re both good. But we support Portsmouth now, like Terry. It’s his team. He got us shirts.”
I feel the tick at my temples. The sour taste of rejection.
“I see,” I say, and pull the tickets back to my side of the table.
“Sorry, Dad,” Thomas says, and he is sorry. I wish he wasn’t. I wish he’d look me straight in the eye and admit he thinks rugby fucking stinks now and he’d much rather eat shitty burgers with Terry than me.
“Sorry, Dad,” Matthew says.
I choke down my disappointment. “Some other time, then. When the games don’t clash.”
They nod. Matthew slurps the remnants of his shake. Thomas folds his napkin into little triangles.
It’s really fucking awkward, all of it. This shitty place. This shitty weekend arrangement. This shitty situation with their cool new dad.
“Are you angry?” Thomas asks, and it makes me smile. Direct. I like that.
“Disappointed,” I tell him. “Not angry.”
I have no intention of forcing their priorities into an order I approve of, that’s not in my make-up.
The boys gather up their burger boxes and put their coats back on, and I guess we’re done here. Allotted time counting down to zero.
“Let’s go and give Brutus his burger,” I say.Once the new football thing is out in the open, the boys can’t get enough of it. I hear all about it on the drive back – the Portsmouth team, their cruddy uniform, their goal-scoring history.
I try to care, but all I feel is the unholy rage in my stomach. The desire to tell Terry exactly what I think of his ill-considered loyalty test.
And I do tell him, just as soon as I’ve stepped over their twee little threshold and Claire’s sent the boys to their rooms.
“Classy move,” I comment, “booking up a football match on my day with the boys.”
He acts the innocent, all flustered as he tells me he didn’t know I had plans, thought one weekend wouldn’t matter.
“Every weekend matters,” I assure him.
“I’ll give you the money,” he blusters, “for the tickets.”
Like I want his fucking money.
He’s living in the house I pay for, driving the fucking car I pay for, standing on the fucking carpet my money paid to have fitted, and he has the fucking audacity to offer me a refund on the day he’s stolen from me.
Cunt!
Claire clears her throat and puts a hand on his arm. She’s nervous and it’s not about the fucking game.
“We need to talk,” she tells me. “Terry and I, we, um, have plans…”
“I can see that.” I raise an eyebrow. “I imagine the new addition was planned too.”
“The boys wanted a younger brother or sister. Tyler, too.”
Tyler. Terry’s drop-out teenage son has the perfect name for his flunky personality.
“I’m glad they’re getting what they want.”
“They want us to be a proper family,” Claire says, and it pangs. A proper family. One without me in it. “They’re close to Tyler now, and Thomas, well, he wants to be like his cool older stepbrother, wants to go to a regular school like he does, so we thought… next term… we thought we’d move the boys into Grange High. It’s close, and the results are good…”
I’m shaking my head before she’s even finished, my brows heavy and my jaw gritted.
“The answer’s fucking no. The boys stay in Oxton, end of discussion.”
Her cheeks flush pink, her veneer slipping away in a heartbeat. “It’s not end of discussion, Alexander. They live with me. It’s my call.”
“No,” I tell her. “It isn’t.”
She sighs. “They want to be normal kids, Alex. They want to hang out with regular people, not with the stuck-up little toffs at private school.”
“Fantastic. They can cast aside their future employability for the sake of fitting in with the regular kids. I’m sure they’ll be very happy to end up working in that shitty burger joint they insist on dragging me to.”
Her eyes are on fire. “Alexander.”
I haven’t missed that condescending fucking tone. As though she’s some permanently aggrieved little fishwife, and I’m the big bad cunt of an ex-husband.
Although maybe that bit’s true.
“They’re not going to state school,” I tell her, “and that’s the fucking end of it. If you wish to send your offspring through a second-rate education system, you be my guest, but my boys are not going to a shitty fucking state school.”
Terry shakes his head, and I shoot him a glare that tells him to keep his fucking mouth shut. “I’ve already booked them into Grange High,” she tells me. “They’ve been on an official induction visit. I’ve already cancelled their places at Oxton.”
“Then you’ll have to un-fucking-cancel them, won’t you?”
“No,” she says. “I won’t.”
I smile a horrible smile. “I could take you to court. Enforce my terms. I could move you into a grotty little terrace somewhere, see how you really enjoy slumming it with the regular folk.”
