‘Jesus, Jo …’
‘Cole was two. Dad could have killed him with one blow, so it was all I could do.’
‘What happened to him? Your dad?’ Cam almost spat the word, as if the man had no right to carry the title. And he didn’t really, did he?
I curled my lip in disgust as I thought about Dad’s greatest moment of stupidity. ‘Assault and armed robbery. He got ten years in Barlinnie Prison. I don’t know if he served all his time, or when he got out – all I know is that by the time he did we’d already left Paisley with no forwarding address. Mum never told anyone from the old life where we were going. Neither did I.’
‘Was your mum always the way she is?’
‘She drank, but not like this. She still functioned.’
‘I take it she started after your dad went to prison?’
‘No.’ I scoffed bitterly, knowing exactly why she’d started. ‘Not that she was a great mum or anything, but she was better than she is now. No.’ I closed my eyes against the dull pain in my chest. ‘She went downhill for another reason.
‘Growing up I had one person in my life I trusted. My uncle Mick. He wasn’t my real uncle. He was my dad’s best friend when they were kids. Uncle Mick was a good guy, though. Straight as an arrow – made a good living as a painter and decorator. But he was friends with my ass**le of a father. I never really found out why they were friends, but I got the impression they went through a lot together as kids. Although Dad pissed him off, Uncle Mick couldn’t seem to let go. Whenever he could, he’d check in with us. He used to take me to work with him sometimes.’ The ache intensified as I felt the loss of him again. ‘He didn’t know Dad hit me. Dad was careful in front of him. I think he was always a little wary of Uncle Mick. That changed when I was twelve.’ I shuddered as the memories washed over me.
‘It was a Saturday and Dad was drinking while watching the football. Mum was at work. I made the mistake of walking past the television at an important point in the game. He backhanded me and I was on the floor …’ I sucked in a breath, staring at Cam’s carpet, feeling the pain all over again. I’d never felt anything like it. The bite, the sting, the heat … ‘He took off his belt and hit me … I can still see the look on his face, like I wasn’t human to him, let alone his daughter.’ I shook myself and lifted my gaze to Cam’s. He had grown pale, his features stretched taut with emotion he was trying to control. ‘I guess I was lucky that Uncle Mick turned up when he did. He heard me screaming and came crashing in. Uncle Mick was a big guy and, well … he put Dad in hospital that day. He was arrested, but neither of them mentioned Dad’s assault on me for fear the social services would get involved. Dad just dropped the charges and Uncle Mick walked away with a fine.
‘Dad disappeared. Next thing we heard was that he’d been jailed for armed robbery. While he was inside, Uncle Mick was around a lot more, helping out. For the first time in my life I had an almost twenty-four/seven parent who really cared. He even had a good influence on Mum.’ I huffed, the resentment welling up again. ‘Too good.’
Cam guessed. ‘Your mum was in love with him.’
I nodded. ‘I think she always had been, but as far as I know nothing ever happened. Uncle Mick cared about her but not like that.’
‘So what happened?’
Someone took him away from me. ‘Just a little over a year later, Uncle Mick left for America.’
‘America?’
‘Years ago he’d had an affair with an American student. She was studying at Glasgow University for a year and they were together for a good few months. But she left and Mick didn’t follow. Fourteen years later Mick was contacted by his thirteen-year-old daughter, a daughter he never knew he had. He flew over there to meet her, get DNA testing rolling, hash it out, I imagine, with his kid’s mum. He came back for a while, but the results came in and the kid was his … so he left everything behind to be with her.’
Seeming to sense how much that had ripped me up inside, Cam whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Jo.’
I nodded, feeling the emotion claw at my throat. ‘He told me he would have taken me and Cole if he could have.’ I coughed, trying to force the pain back down. ‘He e-mailed me, but I stopped responding and eventually his e-mails stopped.’
‘And your mum fell apart?’
‘Aye. I think he broke her heart. She started drinking more than normal, but things didn’t get really bad until we moved here. She was fine for a while, had a good job, but then she put her back out of commission and couldn’t work. So she got drunk instead, and then she got drunker. Until eventually she wasn’t even a functioning alcoholic.’
‘And you can’t take Cole away from her because he’s not legally yours and if the social services ever found out about your family situation they’d most likely put him into care rather than let you have him …’
‘Or worse … they’d contact my dad.’
‘Fuck, Jo.’
‘Yeah, you can say that again. I dropped out of school at sixteen, got a job, tried to keep us afloat, but it was really rough. There were days it took everything I had to buy Cole a tin of beans. We were checking down the sides of the couch for lost coins, measuring out how much milk we were using. It was ridiculous. Then … I met someone. He helped me pay the rent and put some money aside for a rainy day. However, he got bored after six months, so it wasn’t really all I’d thought it had been.’