‘Do you remember this?’ He gave her a photo. ‘It’s me
when I was fi ve, and Maria. She was really pretty – well, she
still is. It was my birthday party, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ his mum said.
‘It was the last birthday before Dad left,’ Jason said.
‘I remember it very well.’
‘Th e party, or the day Dad left?’ asked his mum.
‘Both,’ said Jason. ‘In my mind, they both happened on
the same day.’
‘Th ey didn’t, but it all happened a long time ago,’ his
mum replied. She walked to the window so Jason couldn’t
see her face.
Simon, her husband, left their house in Moreland Road
early one morning twelve years ago. He wrote her a letter
and put it on the kitchen table. And then he left. For twelve
years she didn’t hear from him. No letters, no birthday cards
for Jason. Th en, last week, there was a phone call. ‘Why did
you go?’ she asked Simon again and again. He wanted to
meet her. ‘No,’ she said, but she wanted to say yes.
Jason’s mum turned away from the window. ‘Jason, what
about your homework?’ she said. ‘Why are you looking at
old photos?’
‘I want to fi nd all the ones I’ve got of Maria. I want to
take them with me to London, you know, when I go to art
school.’ He smiled at a funny photo of Maria, aged eleven.
‘It’s a bit early to think about all that, Jason,’ his mum
said. ‘You’re not going until the autumn. And you don’t
know if you’re going to get a place at the art school.’
‘I will, I’m sure I will. When I went to visit them two
weeks ago they said, “We think your work’s very good. We
really like your ideas.”’