Page 55 of Beautiful Losers

‘I did.’

‘Look, I didn’t mean it. I know I was a dick when I first arrived. I was stressed out about my own stuff, but that’s no excuse.’

‘Oh relax. I’m messing with you. I’m hardly the child whisperer myself. And Aricanbe a strange kid sometimes. But he’s my strange kid.’

‘Children are weird, aren’t they? Max had a phobia about toilets when he was younger. He took shits in the garden until he was six.’

‘You know Ari’s teacher was worried about him not getting death? I think he gets it a little too much now. His classmate told him a story about a robot that killed Jesus in a murderous rampage, but Ari knew it wasn’t true, because “Everyone knows that the Jews killed Jesus”.’

‘Max said his penis is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.’

‘Ari has a used band-aid collection.’

We look at each other and start laughing. It feels good, sitting here with Jack, drinking cold beer in the warm sun. I never dared contemplate what my dream birthday might look like, though I imagine it wouldn’t be too far off this moment.

‘Can I ask you something?’ says Jack, tentatively. ‘Your dad. Why did you cut him off? I’ve read all the articles. He doesn’t come across as the most sympathetic of figures. I suppose – well, he wasn’t alone in creating the mess, was he? There were a lot of people responsible for the Irish bust.’

I take a deep breath and keep my eyes fixed on the horizon.

‘When my mum left, the woman who’d beencleaning for us, Joan, she more or less raised me. Dad was never around, so Joan and her husband Tommy were like family. Dad convinced Tommy to invest his life savings in one of his off-plan developments. Tommy wanted to buy a small place by the sea. The plan was for him and Joan to move there when he retired, but Dad was persuasive. After the crash, they lost everything. They had to remortgage their house. Tommy tried looking for work, but kept getting told he was too old.

‘One day, Joan comes back from bridge club. She hears a noise coming from the garage, the sound of a running car, so she goes to check it out. She finds a sports sock stuffed in the exhaust pipe of their Toyota, and Tommy unconscious in the driver’s seat.’

‘Jesus,’ says Jack, turning to face me. ‘That’s awful. I’m so sorry.’

‘I felt so guilty, you know? Like my family was responsible. If Mum hadn’t walked out, Joan would have retired years ago. If Dad hadn’t pushed Tommy into giving him his money, he’d still be alive. Afterwards, I tried to talk to Dad about it. I asked him if he felt in any way culpable. I wasn’t trying to blame him. I just thought he might have a normal human reaction to what had happened. It hadn’t even occurred to him to feel bad. “Did I stick that sock into his exhaust pipe?” That’s what he said to me. Then he turns up at the funeral with his trophy wife, acting like the big man, oblivious to the pain his being there was causing. I couldn’t look at him. That was the day I decided I wouldn’t take a penny from him again. I wanted nothing to do with the mess he’d created.’

‘I get that,’ says Jack quietly.

‘That’s not the worst of it,’ I continue. ‘When Ileft the church after seeing Dad, I didn’t go back in. I didn’t go to the cemetery or to Joan’s house afterwards. I didn’t see her at all, didn’t tell her how sorry I was. I wasn’t sure how she’d react, whether or not she’d want to see me. I kept telling myself I’d go and visit her when everything had died down, give her a bit of space. But the days kept passing, and then too many days had passed and I knew I’d missed my chance to put things right.

‘I blame my dad for what happened with Tommy and Joan, and my failed career. I blame my mother and Cillian for leaving. But the truth is, I’m the one I’m angry at. For doing nothing. For allowing other people to dictate the course of my life. It’s harder to acknowledge that though, isn’t it? That you had agency all along. You were just too afraid to use it.’

I puff out my cheeks. I haven’t said that out loud before. Even to Yiv. Jack rests his hand on the grass beside me, his fingers inches from mine.

‘You know this isn’t the first time I’ve been to the area?’ he says. ‘I came to the Tarn with my parents when I was twelve. It was my first trip abroad. We stayed in Cordes for a while then spent a few days in Saint-Antonin, camping by the river. My dad taught me how to fish, we went kayaking. It was the happiest time of my life.’

I remember the photograph I found in Jack’s room. Jack and his dad in front of a tent, a picture of domestic bliss.

‘That’s where I went the other day. To the spot where we camped. To be honest, that’s why I’m here, full stop. When I was approached about doing this travel series, I told the producers I wanted to feature this neck of the woods, because it was relatively unknown in the UK, would give viewers something they hadn’t seen before. Truth is, I just wanted to feel close to my old man.’

Jack picks up a twig from the ground and skims it over the earth.

‘My dad, he worked in manufacturing. Spent half his life commuting to and from an industrial estate. Nature was important to him. He used to say everything worth knowing about life can be learnt by observing the natural world.’

He pushes the twig into the soil.

‘I was home from uni one weekend when Dad dropped his mug of tea. Mum joked he was getting clumsy in midlife as she cleared up the shards of ceramic. She said it was the second time that month. When he started struggling climbing the stairs, she made him go to the doctor. He said she was worrying over nothing. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease two months later.

‘It was a shock, how quickly he deteriorated. Dad was never much of a talker. But he had this calm, reassuring presence. You’d notice when he wasn’t in the room. Mum had to take on extra shifts at the nursing home to make up for the loss of income. I tried to come back as often as I could to help her and my sister. Dad didn’t want me there. He was old-fashioned like that. Was too proud for his son to take him to the loo. It was just me and him in the house one day when he soiled himself. He didn’t say anything and I was too embarrassed to broach the subject, so we just sat there, watching Crystal Palace play Man City on the TV, both pretending we couldn’t smell the stench.

‘I let him push me away for the eighteen months he had left because it was easier. I didn’t want to see my dad likethat. This great man in my life reduced to drinking through a straw and having people talk at him like he was a child.

‘When he died, I’d just lost my column atThe Record. My editor told me I was “too pragmatic”. They wanted a polemicist, someone the public would either love, or love to hate. That’s when I started the podcast. The idea was to have robust yet respectful conversations with guests from across the political spectrum. But no one is interested in respectful conversations anymore and I found the ratings soared every time there was friction. The more I shouted down guests, being the one to point the finger, the less time I had to sit with myself, reflect on my own shortcomings. I suppose what I’m saying is, I know a thing or two about guilt.’

He pushes the twig so hard, it snaps in two.

‘Are you going to get back together with your wife?’ The words come tumbling out of my mouth before I can stop them.

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