NINETEEN

      If I hadn’t had the row with Mercy and my mum,

      If Mum hadn’t decided to confront me about it being mainly my fault nobody was getting on with their life since Dad left, apparently,

      If I hadn’t been roped, harshly, into helping get rid of all trace of him in the house,

      If I hadn’t been hunched in the attic, inhaling grey dust and getting splinters and being forced to hand box after precious box of my dad’s books and files and papers down the ladder to my steely-mouthed, hard-hearted mother, I would never have found the box marked VIOLET PARK.

      I am not kidding.

      I tried to stand up, really fast, without thinking, and hit my head on a beam.

      I nearly put my foot through the ceiling.

      Mum was going, “What? What?” but there was no way I was telling her.

      I yelled down the stairs something about getting a splinter and I must have sworn because she went, “Lucas! Jed’s ears are burning” so I said, “Sorry for being a wankster” and Jed tee-heed and Mum laughed with a snort.

      I shook the box and something slid from end to end and clattered like plastic, but Mum didn’t hear it because she was pig-laughing.

      The box was an old shoebox and it was done up with Sellotape. My hands were shaking and I was trying to pick at it with my too-short fingernails and the Sellotape was old and worn and almost-nothing thin and really stuck down and I was sweating and the dust and the sweat were running down my forehead and into my eyes and I was swearing, really quietly, in whispers, to myself.

      The Sellotape took some of the box away with it when it came off.

      I lifted the lid and there was a tape in there. That was it. One tiny tape in a box, marked 1.

      I put it in my pocket.

      I shoved the box into a corner under a horrible dusty old rug.

      Then I passed Mum a load more precious junk that was and wasn’t ours to get rid of.

      Once we had all Dad’s stuff piled up, for a while we just sat there staring at it. Jed was going through a box of photos, just flicking really, hardly looking, but sort of wanting to be involved. Mercy had gone out because she said she would put money on there being tears and yelling and she wanted nothing to do with it. I said I thought tears and yelling were her best subjects and she gave me the finger before she slammed the front door.

      It was exhausting just looking at it.

      It wasn’t just paper in the boxes from the attic. It was clothes and records and cuff links and jewellery and brushes and sunglasses and a guitar and an ashtray I’d made out of clay when I was about seven.

      I looked at it and I thought, It’s all that’s left of him.

      Then I thought of him in some other place, with new records and clothes and photos and kids who made ashtrays, and I thought that he was still the same poor excuse for a man, however much shopping he’d done, the bastard.

      I suppose you could call it me steeling myself.

      I said we should give the records to Bob, and Mum looked doubtful and said would he even want them, and I said there was no way a collection like that was going to the dump, so she said OK, but it had to happen today.

      Mum said not to take too long. She just wanted to load up the car and get rid, but I needed to check and make a mental note of everything that was going. Every time I made a case for keeping something she got a bit more short-tempered.

      I found a camera.

      I found a black fountain pen with a gold nib and a mother-of-pearl handle.

      I found the tiny tape recorder I needed to play the tiny Violet Park tape.

      I was allowed to keep some more of his clothes (two suits, five shirts, some boots and a fisherman’s jumper).

      I found his watch in a jacket pocket. I picked it up and rubbed the face of it with my thumb, and I was stunned to see it because Dad pretty much never took it off, and whenever I thought about where he might be, I always pictured him wearing it. It made me go cold. He wouldn’t go anywhere on purpose without that watch. I suddenly thought, Dad’s dead. He didn’t leave us, and we’re rubbishing his good name and chucking his stuff out. I wound the watch up and put it on and pulled my sleeve down over it. I didn’t even tell Mum because I didn’t want to see her face thinking the same.

      I said, “Pansy will never forgive us for this.”

      She didn’t even look up.

      I know now that Mum didn’t mean it, the whole heart of stone, let’s get this over with act. I think she had to choose between hard as nails and mush-like jelly. Mush-like jelly doesn’t do when you’re clearing out your disappeared beloved’s junk with your wreck of a son. So, hard as nails it was.

      And maybe I should have thanked her for it, but I kept thinking there was a third option she’d not considered – the give-up option, the spare us both by putting it all back and forgetting about it option. The carry-on-hoping option.

      I tried to bring it up a few times. I said, “Are you sure about this?” and “We don’t have to” but Mum just glared like I was confirming her worst fears about me and carried on chucking stuff in bin liners.

      I was angry with her when we got to the dump. I was so angry.

      I couldn’t believe she was going through with it, to be honest. She stood outside with her head through the driver’s side window begging me to help her, and I stared straight ahead and didn’t look at her because I was scared I might spit in her face. There was a pigeon straight ahead, hopping and dipping about in all the junk, and I watched it and thought it was going to be picking through my dad’s private possessions in a minute, and I called her a cold bitter selfish loser bitch and I wouldn’t get out of the car. I made her cry.

      In the end, the blokes in the office came out and gave her a hand. They must have felt sorry for her. They thought I was a complete idiot, guaranteed.

      What did I care? I felt like somebody had died.