Page 12 of Maybe (Mis-shapes #1)

EZRA

Like a wide-eyed, bewildered tourist, Isaac dragged behind me as I marched along the pavements. I was running late, something I vowed never to do on this daily errand.

Poverty wasn’t only about being hungry, naked, or homeless.

For sure, that was the poverty our dad toured in Africa with camera crews, visiting their villages, eating their food, getting clickbait.

But if he’d ever bothered to travel beyond the end of the District Line, another sort of poverty, made up of a thousand petty and humiliating hardships, lay everywhere you looked.

And in some ways, was as difficult to fix.

I didn’t have the answers for the drawn faces of the old or the pinched ones of the young, for the dulled eyes, for the sluggish walkers with nowhere to go.

I only knew it was wrong that so many had so little and so few had so much.

And I needed Isaac with his mansion flat in Chiswick, his sparkling water, and his mid-range electric Golf, to appreciate that.

He said he wanted to spend some of his inheritance doing good—well, here wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

With a bare minute to spare, I halted outside a shabby redbrick school, positioning myself slightly apart from the handful of equally shabby parents already assembled.

“There used to be a playing field here.” I pointed to the carpark of the discounted furniture warehouse next door. “Until the council sold it off.”

Isaac studied the potholed expanse of tarmac where a couple of men unloaded flatpacks from the back of a beaten-up van, cursing under the weight. “Um… why have we stopped? Is this where you wanted to bring me?”

“Sort of. I wanted to show you the reason I answered David Trethowan’s messages.”

“What? You need a new velour sofa?”

I grinned. “Nah, but even if I did, I wouldn’t get it from there. It’s well suspect; most of that stuff has fallen off the back of a lorry.”

A muted bell jangled, and within seconds, a dribble of children emerged from the school gate, quickly swelling into a steady flow.

As a familiar dark head bobbed around, searching for me, my smile grew of its own accord, and my heart stretched several sizes bigger.

Did I have any regrets for a single, reckless, drunken moment in time I barely remembered the following morning, let alone a decade later? Not a single fucking one.

“Daddy! I got nine out of ten in my science test, and Mrs Rigby said that if I did as well next week, then I’d go up a set!”

“Wow! Not bad, superstar! I knew you had it in you.”

Thrusting his red plastic Ant-man lunchbox into one of my hands and his PE kit bag into the other, Jonty swung on my arm, giving it a brief squeeze.

A nine-year-old equivalent of a welcome kiss and cuddle, which was never going to happen in front of his school mates.

For that, I’d have to wait until much later, snuggled up in bed together, reading silly stories we were both too old for.

Hoisting the bag onto my shoulder beside my guitar case, I settled for the next best thing: running my hand through his unruly hair, hoping to pass it off as one of those parent-tidying-up-their-child things and absolutely not one hundred percent unconditional love, combined with a pressing need to touch him.

“Because I did so well, can we go to the swings? Faizan’s going.”

“Okay. For ten minutes, yeah.”

Beaming, he scampered off. Both of us knew ten minutes would stretch to twenty.

I became very aware of Isaac hovering behind. Jonty had scarcely given him a cursory glance before running on ahead to catch up his friend. “I’m going to the swings,” I explained unnecessarily. “Feel free to come.”

I wanted Isaac to follow. To show Jonty off to the only member of my family who might care.

I wanted to point out my son’s every single perfect feature, from the burgeoning strength in his fragile bones, crammed with inexhaustible pockets of energy, to every scab, bruise, and freckle making up his flawless skin.

Call me biased, but there were places inside me I didn’t know existed until this boy.

I needed to rhapsodize about him to someone prepared to listen because, up until now, I’d never had that opportunity.

But Isaac seemed rooted to the spot, his face washed blank with confusion.

“With Jonty?” I supplied. “My son?”

“Jonty,” was all he said. Even hearing him repeat my boy’s name in his clear and solemn way had me desperate for him to say it again.

But Jonty had already turned the corner onto busy Radland Road, with Faizan and his mother.

If one single thing set my teeth on edge, that set my heart pounding fit to burst against my ribcage, it was someone I loved walking perilously close to a stream of heavy traffic.

I strode off, with Isaac hurrying to catch up.

“I thought you were… I thought… are you married?”

“Fuck, no. A cute idea, though. Carly—Jonty’s mum—is many, many excellent things, but my wife ain’t one of them.”

“But he’s yours, right? I mean, he looks like you.”

He was the spit of me, an undeniable pleasure. “I bloody hope so. Unless I’ve got an identical twin out there.” Since I'd caught up with my boy, I slowed my pace.

“So you’re a dad,” stated Isaac with a little laugh. “And I had no idea.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Wow. I’m an uncle.” He mouthed uncle again, like he was testing out the word.

“I’m a bloody good dad, too,” I added. “Had a great role model. Basically, our father taught me to do everything he didn’t.”

Shaking his head, Isaac laughed again. “I certainly don’t recall him ever taking me to the park. Or picking me up from school.”

Jonty and his mates loved this little playground.

Fuck knows why; the swings were marinated in bird shit and the patchy grass awash with lager cans and cigarette butts discarded by skint teenagers maintaining a long tradition of late-night playground drinking, then vandalising the equipment.

A Tupperware of samosas appeared from deep within the folds of Faizan’s mum’s voluminous sari.

I waved my thanks as Jonty crammed one into his mouth.

Leaning against the park railings, I lit up a fag and watched Isaac watching Jonty. “I’m not with Jonty’s mum,” I offered. “She’s had another kid since Jonty, with a bloke called Dave. Jonty lives with me most of the time; he goes to hers every other weekend, or if I’ve got something on.”

Isaac threw me a sidelong glance, sheepishly.

“I was pretty sure you were… um… gay.”

“Oh, I am.” I chuckled. “Exceedingly. I was back then, too. But I was also young and horny. And drunk most of the time. I’d have fucked a lamppost if it made the first move.”

Isaac's cheeks flushed. “Charming.”

“That’s me.” I took a long drag. “Prince Charming fucking personified.”

Isaac and Faizan were, as all kids did, lying on their bellies on the grubby swing seat and twisting the chains into knots as they spun around.

“He’s so like you.” Isaac said, as if he knew my pride in my son was boundless. “Although I imagine you were a terror at his age. Are you and his mum… ah… cordial?”

I smiled to myself. Carly was the reason I had a roof over my head, a functioning liver, and most of my sanity. “Yeah. She’s my best mate. We’ve been through a lot together and come out the other side.”

“So you had a… a long relationship with her?”

“Is a couple of hours considered long these days?”

Isaac’s face was a picture; I took pity on him.

“If you’re asking if we were taking folate supplements and saving for a starter home, then that’s a no.

” I huffed a laugh. “She was seventeen. If memory serves, I think we did the deed three times in total. She swore she was on the pill, and I was irresponsible, pissed, feckless, and happy to believe her. I fucked her mum a couple of times, too.”

Isaac groaned. “Jeez, Ezra. Really?”

“Yeah. I drew the line at her dad, though. He’s not my type.”

Isaac’s mouth hung open. Literally. I didn’t think that was actually a thing.

I wasn’t usually so crude. Call it bitter leftovers, anger, resentment, or plain orneriness, but an unlikeable part of me gained pleasure in riling him, in a way no one else prompted. My chance to stick it to my father had vanished on his death; innocent, privileged Isaac was the next best thing.

“You’re catching flies,” I said, for the gratification of seeing another blush creep up his neck.

“You’re…” He swallowed and blew out a breath. “You and I have led very different lives, to say the least.” Despite hitting upon a diplomatic response, he sounded disapproving. He had a fucking nerve.

“Yes, well, as I think I may have informed the esteemed guests at the memorial, I was a cross my father had to bear. The least I could do was make sure it was bloody heavy.”

“I can’t quite see how having indiscriminate, unprotected sex got back at him, though.”

Annoyingly, it was a valid argument and typical of Isaac’s logical thought processes.

“It didn’t, but at the time it made me feel a hell of a lot better.”

God, those years after my mum died had been bleak.

One massive, internal boiling soup of anger and confusion and lashing out.

Mixed with a sense of rejection by the entire world.

But anger dominated. My hatred of my father had been almost a living thing.

Isaac’s mum hadn’t been much better; Isaac and the twins had been by-blows.

So I drank to forget. I went clubbing to get laid.

Trying to prove a point—not that I ever knew what point, exactly.

“Are you out? Being g-gay, I mean,” he stuttered.

“Open your mouth and you’ll discover for yourself.” God, I was obnoxious. “Yes, I have been since school.”

Isaac digested that. The disapproving pursed lip was back. “And you still ended up getting some poor girl pregnant.”

When had my sweet Isaac become such a prig? “Carly wasn’t some poor girl. She hadn’t been then, and she isn’t now. She’d known what she was about. I did the right thing by her at the time, and I still do.” My voice rose so sharply Jonty peeked over. I gave him a wave.

“All right, all right,” said Isaac, “Calm down. I wasn’t judging.”

“You sounded judgy. What’s it like up there on the moral high ground? A bit chilly? A bit lonely?”

Casting his gaze over at Jonty, Isaac hitched his coat closer around his body. “Listen, Ezra. If you brought me here to rail at me, then I’ll say my goodbyes now.”

Arsehole . Even as I thought it, a pang tugged at my chest. Him and Jonty hadn’t even been properly introduced.

But he was nevertheless an arsehole. “Good idea, why don’t you?

” I said, as if I didn’t care. “And feel free to take your sanctimonious, middle-class, imbecilic fucknugget attitude with you.”