Tony Parsons - Man And Wife

’We have these group sessions. Such stories, Harry. You’d love it. All these alcoholics and cokeheads and junkies telling you where it all went wrong. Every kind of addict under the sun. Some of them are very articulate. And do you know what I heard someone say this morning? Alcohol gave me wings to fly

– and then it took away the sky. Isn’t that great? That’s exactly how I feel about coke.’

’But that still doesn’t explain it. You’ve got this great life

– money, fame, weather girls. And you screw it all up for a feeling. Not even a feeling – the memory of a feeling.’

’Come on, Harry. I know you’re not a drinking man. And I know that drugs are not your thing. But it’s the same for you.’

’How’s that?’

’It’s the same for you with women.’

And I saw that he was right. That’s why I wanted Cyd to be the woman I first met, that’s why I had gone to Kazumi’s door. I was hooked on a feeling too.

The remembrance of the greatest feeling in the world.

It wasn’t the rush of cocaine or the fog of alcohol, it was the feeling I got when I was starting with a woman. Passion, sex, romance, feeling alive, feeling wanted – it was all of those things, wrapped up in a fleeting moment of time.

I liked the way it made me feel.

And I couldn’t help it. I wanted that feeling again.

Even if it meant trouble galore.

Jim Mason resembled a male model just starting to go to seed.

The chiselled features were beginning to show signs of a double chin, and under the leather jacket the beer paunch was developing like a promising marrow. But he still looked capable of causing trouble. Cyd’s ex-husband arrived to pick up his daughter.

’Hello, Harry. How you doing, mate? Peggy ready to rock and roll?’

It was one of those scenes that I had never imagined playing, an event where I would love to have known the correct etiquette. This man had broken the heart of the woman I loved. But if he hadn’t broken her heart, my wife and I wouldn’t be together. Should I thank him or thump him? Or both?

Cyd was once crazy about this guy, and behind her back he had jumped on the bones of every Asian woman who would let him from Houston to Hoxton. My true love had done everything to make it work with this creep. She had followed him to London when it was clear that America was indifferent to his existence, she had supported him when he fell off his motorbike and mangled his stupid leg, and she even gave him a second chance after she had met me. And of course she had given birth to his child, and then raised her alone. I should have hated Jim Mason. But I found that I just couldn’t quite manage hate. Only the dull ache of jealousy.

The real reason he made my flesh crawl wasn’t because he had treated Cyd so badly. It was because he had won her heart without even trying, and shattered it so casually. But I couldn’t loathe him, this man who was my wife’s other husband.

He was always so nice to me.

’Cyd out working? A woman’s work is never started, right? Only kidding, mate, only kidding. Give her my best. My little princess ready?’

’ Daddy!’

Peggy threw aside her Lucy Doll Ballerina and charged her dad. Jim scooped her up and placed a loud kiss on the top of her dark hair as she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, hugging him with theatrical abandon. They saw each other so sporadically, this dad and daughter, that their reunions were always emotional affairs, resembling a prisoner of the Vietcong being reunited with his family. But I was never quite sure if the emotion was forced or not. Prolonged separation can sometimes make a parent and child act with the self-consciousness of strangers.

I saw them to the door. Their routine was always the same. A ride on Jim’s motorbike to KFC or Pizza Express. At Peggy’s age, I don’t know if it was even legal. Jim wasn’t the kind to care. Once Cyd had protested that Peggy was a bit too young for motorbikes, and Jim had stormed out, leaving his daughter in bitter tears. He didn’t see her for three months. After that, the joy rides were never questioned.

Jim’s visits traditionally involved the purchase of a large, inappropriate, stupendously useless toy. Stuffed bears that were bigger than Peggy herself were a favourite.

When Peggy had gone I realised with a jolt of alarm that she had forgotten her child-sized helmet. Cyd had laid down strict rules for motorbike riding.

Always wear a helmet.

Hold on tight to Daddy.

No riding in the rain.

No long journeys.

No motorways.

I dashed out to the street but the bike – a huge brute of a Norton – was already roaring away, Peggy clinging on to her dad’s leather-clad back, the hair on her bare head flying.

I chased down the middle of the street, shouting their names, the kid’s helmet in my hands. But they didn’t hear me. It was a long straight road and I watched Jim’s taillights receding, cursing him for being so thoughtless.

And then at the last moment they turned back.

I stood in the street as the bike barrelled towards me, my heart filling my chest with that boiling feeling you get when your child has been placed in unnecessary danger. The Norton skidded to a halt in front of me, Jim and Peggy grinning, their faces flushed with excitement. I jammed the helmet down on her head.

’You fucking idiot, Jim.’

He shook his handsome head in disbelief.

’What did you call me?’

’You heard. And what did your mum tell you, Peggy? What’s the most important rule about the bike? What’s rule number one?’

Neither of them was smiling now, and the way they were looking at me from under their helmets made their faces seem almost identical. I always thought that Peggy resembled Cyd. But I saw now that she was just as much Jim’s child.

’Come on. What did Mummy say, Peggy? What did Mummy tell you again and again? What must you always remember?’

’Hold on tight to Daddy,’ my stepdaughter said.

It’s so difficult for the step-parent to strike a balance between caring too much and caring too little.

The horror step-parents – the ones who end up in court, or in newspapers, or in jail – don’t think about it. They don’t care. The child of their partner is a pain, a chore, and a living reminder of a dead relationship. But what about the rest of us? The ones who are desperate to do the right thing?

There’s nothing special about us. We are not better human beings because we have taken on the parenting of a kid who is not our biological child. You get into these things without thinking about them, or if you think about it at all, you imagine that it will work itself out somehow. Love and the blended family will find a way. That’s what you think.

But the blended family has all the problems of the old family, and problems that are all its own. You can’t give your stepchild nothing but kindness and approval, because no parent can ever do that. And yet you do not have the right to reproach a stepchild the way a real parent does.

I had never raised a hand to Pat.

But I couldn’t even raise my voice to Peggy.

Step-parents – the ones who are trying their best – want to be liked. Parents – real parents – don’t need to be liked.

Because they know they are loved.

It is a love that is given unconditionally and without reservation. A parent has to do very bad things to squander the love of their child. A step-parent just doesn’t get that kind of love.

And, increasingly, I believed that there was nothing you could do to earn it.

I was either too soft – desperate to be liked, starving for a few scraps of Peggy’s approval – or I tried to pass myself off as the real thing. Passing, that was the step-parent’s major crime. Pretending to be something I wasn’t, and could never be.