Eighteen years before Now

He pulled up the collar of his coat, trying to shield his neck from the bitter night air, and tapped his foot impatiently. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and checked the time: ten past three in the morning. “Fuck’s sake,” Paul muttered under his breath.

This is why I hate night shifts, he thought. He’d gotten a shitty job with a local event company, where he was forced to wait hand and foot on privileged, ignorant arseholes who complained about things like the amount of cucumber in their water or the placement of napkins upon their table. He’d served all sorts, from footballers whining about the portion size of their starter—as if the cost wouldn’t have fed a family of five for a week—to the CEO of an international white goods company who insisted on lecturing him on his lack of discipline and ambition, claiming that was why he was waiting tables instead of starting his own company. He even recalled the aggression of a reformed Christian priest who demanded he be served the wines not kept on the menu, regardless of the fact that they didn’t exist.

Tonight, he’d had the misfortune of working the bar at the Policewomen’s Netball League’s Annual End-of-Season Gala. They’d turned out to be a bunch of out-of-control, disrespectful, and sexually aggressive harpies. He’d struggled through the night as these women forcibly stripped a male security guard against his will, threw water in the face of fellow bartenders for not accepting hotel room keys, and complained about every course and drink.

It had been exhausting.

Now, he was standing under a lamppost outside the venue gates, waiting to be picked up, ten minutes after all his co-workers had already headed home, and his father was late. Again.

As he looked up and down the road, hoping to spot the headlights of his father’s car, he noticed a different sight. Four stumbling figures were making their way up the roadside toward him. They were young lads, about his age, likely heading home from a night out. As they passed under the lamppost, Paul watched them go and thought he recognised one of them.

“You looking at me?” one of the boys said.

“No,” Paul replied honestly, without thinking. He raised his arm and pointed at the young man who seemed familiar to him. “I’m looking at him,” he said.

“You fucking what?” the young man replied, and both he and the other boy who had spoken marched toward Paul, their arms swaying at their sides in an ape-like display of dominance. That was a dumb fucking thing to say, Paul thought as he realised he had never seen the person before in his life. The other two of their group hung back, watching like a pair of hyenas waiting to scavenge a discarded carcass.

The series of jabbering that escaped the mouths of the two jackals now squaring up to him was almost unintelligible—a random mix of “Who the fuck are yous” and “Do you think you’re ards,” among other cliché threats. They jutted their heads back and forth in feigned headbutts like a pack of clucking hens. For fuck’s sake, Paul thought as he felt his rancour rise.

His fists clenched, and his jaw tightened as he rolled his eyes, trying to look away from the fools in front of him. He wanted to smack them—he pictured himself repeatedly clobbering their heads against the lamppost so clearly that he almost thought he’d done it. But he had promised he wouldn’t get into any more fights. Not now that he’d left school and given up on an education. He had to behave more maturely than that. He had to stay out of trouble. Then, one of the boys swung at him, the punch smacking—though a little softly, in Paul’s opinion—against his cheek.

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Now Paul looked at the boys.

Paul’s temper dissipated, replaced by a cool sense of calculation. I can take them, he thought. The lads were boisterous, but they were skinny, their confidence arising from their numbers rather than any individual’s stature, and all of them were shorter than him.

“Wut?” the unfamiliar boy who had hit him muttered as Paul examined him. Paul smiled in return. He took a deep breath, ready to make his move, but before he could, the three of them were dazzled by a bright light.

Headlights were finally coming up the road.

The boy who had thrown the punch sucked his teeth. “Come on,” he said to his companion, and as the car pulled up, the boys hurried down the road. Paul watched them go for several seconds before turning to notice the car wasn’t his father’s. He raised an eyebrow, wondering why his mother had come to collect him instead, and forgot all about the boys.

“Friends of yours?” his mother asked as he closed the passenger door.

“Who?” Paul questioned, and his mother nodded in the direction the boys had disappeared. “Nah, dunno ’em,” Paul answered.

“What did they want?”

Paul looked at his mother and considered telling her the truth, but noticing the puffy redness of her eyes, he decided against it and lied. “They just asked if I had a lighter,” he said, turning to look out the passenger side window. “Told ’em I don’t smoke.”

“Okay,” his mother replied. Her voice croaked as she spoke, and Paul turned to look at her, and worry constricted his chest. She’d been crying. That was obvious. Whatever had caused it was still raw, the pain etched across her face, casting distraught shadows that grew and shrank in the light of passing lampposts.

“Where’s Dad?” Paul asked.

“Don’t ask,” his mother answered.

The next day, a few hours into the afternoon, Paul woke to a knock on his bedroom door. He tossed back and forth in his single bed before rolling out, grabbing his dressing gown off the back of his desk chair and throwing it on. When he opened the door, his father stood on the landing, solemn and statuesque.

“Everything alright?” Paul mumbled.

“Yeah,” his father sighed, his shoulders dropping. Not alright then, Paul thought, waiting for an explanation. “We need to talk,” his father added.

“What about?” Paul asked.

“Best we talk in here,” his father said, stepping into the room. Paul stepped back to let him in, and his father closed the bedroom door. His father gestured to the chair, and Paul took a seat while his father sat on the edge of the bed. Silence lingered for what felt like forever while Paul looked at his father, his father looking at the bedroom floor, taking in the scattered clothes, empty bottles of pop, and discarded papers.

“I’ll tidy that up in a bit,” Paul said, noticing his father’s gaze. His father looked up, startled as if snapped out of a trance, before offering a forced smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” his father said. Paul nodded, returning the awkward smile.

“So,” Paul began, “what’s up?”

His father sighed deeply before taking a breath. “So, me and your mom separated yesterday,” he stated, almost as if it were routine. “I’ve already spoken with your brothers about it, but you were at work. I figured I’d come round and tell you today why I won’t be around anymore.”

“You won’t be around?” Paul echoed.

“Oh no,” his father quickly corrected, “I don’t mean I won’t be around. I’ll still be around; we’ll still see each other. I just won’t be living here.”

“Where will you be?” Paul asked, processing the information without much thought.

“I’m staying at your Nan and Granddad’s for a bit until I find a new place. But don’t you worry, you can come and stay over and see me whenever you need. Okay?”

“Okay,” Paul replied, nodding.

“Do you want to ask any questions?” his father offered.

Paul shook his head. None needed, he thought. He had seen this coming. His parents argued more than most, and they never spent any of their free time together. Divorce was always coming sooner or later.

“Right,” his father said, looking awkwardly around the room before forcing another smile. They both stood up, and his father hugged him before heading out of the room. At the threshold, his father hesitated. “One more thing,” he said, turning back to Paul. “You should know this has nothing to do with us separating, but you need to talk to your mom. It’s not my place to tell you, but I know she won’t if I don’t. She has cancer.”

Shit, Paul thought.