Amen to that. Having him here was a relief. I was only just holding it together, and I knew Samantha would be the same.
“We used to have a saying,” I added sagely, stroking my boy’s back. “Today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper.”
Ryan sniffed and regarded me blankly. “Fish and chips don’t come in paper.”
Matt winked at him. “Your dad’s old-fashioned, mate. Try and humour him, he means well.”
After a good cry and offloading all the worries he’d bottled up onto his dad, Ryan seemed in better spirits. I hadn’t come up with an immediate solution, but then not all adult problems had one. Sometimes we had to plod through crap until it passed. With a brave, watery smile, Ryan went upstairs to change out of his school clothes, leaving me and Matt alone.
“Bloody hell. That’s not what I expected.” I suddenly felt exhausted. “Now what do I do?”
Matt shrugged. “Carry on loving him? Give him lots of cuddles and nice dinners? Tell him how proud you are of him for not succumbing to peer pressure, even though he’s heading for a rough few days? Show him how loved he is?”
I stared at him in surprise. “How do you know all this stuff?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t, I’m just trying to think of all the things I’d have liked to happen whenever I had a shit time. I used to watch my mate Phil’s parents a lot. They always seemed to say and do the right thing. Mostly, they just showed him how much they loved him, even when he behaved like a dick. Which, believe me, happened a lot.”
I shook my head. “He’s only bloody sixteen, Matt. He shouldn’t be dealing with this sort of bilge. I knew I didn’t like that Chloe. Samantha didn’t either. I wish I’d told him now.”
Matt rolled his eyes. “Trust me, if you’d done that, he’d still be with her just to wind his parents up.”
“I’m glad he said no to sex if he doesn’t feel ready. But in a way, I’m amazed. That took some nerve, I should think.”
Matt gave a throaty chuckle. “He’s his dad’s boy. You’d have said no, too, if you didn’t feel ready. Like I said, you should be proud of him for being so strong.”
“I am.” Proud and relieved that he’d turned to me when everything had become overwhelming. Even though, being a totally amateur parent, I still hadn’t a clue how to proceed. The love and cuddle thing—I could do that, but handling it for him, no idea.
“I need to speak to Samantha. We need to come up with a plan. Get in touch with the school. See what they’re going to do about it. Maybe find out the whole story when he’s less upset and then speak to this girl’s parents, too.”
Matt wrinkled his brow. “Don’t you think you might want to include Ryan in some of this decision-making? He might not want you to wade in, all guns blazing. He’s told you about it because he’s upset and wants your support—he hasn’t asked you to wave a wand and make everything magically disappear.”
That gave me pause. The day wasn’t too many years off when my boy would spread his wings and leave home forever. If I fixed his problems now, how would he equip himself with the tools to fix them in the future when I wouldn’t always be around? Like stacking the dishwasher properly, but on a grander scale. I found myself nodding.
“Yes, okay. We’ll go slow. I won’t let Samantha rush into doing anything. Thanks for being here. I’m supposed to be taking you on a date and seducing you across the bonnet of a Renault FT17 World War One tank, not including you in all my dramas.”
Matt gave me his slow smile, the one where the hesitant curl of his lip had my stomach turning somersaults, and my heart and dreams spiralling into outer space.
“Don’t worry about that, Alex. Hang around long enough and believe me, I’ll have plenty of dramas of my own.”
He crossed the room, dropping gracefully onto the sofa next to me before interlinking my fingers with his. Pressing the lightest of kisses to my temple, he murmured in my ear. “And you’ve already seduced me. Twenty-five years ago.”
Ryan came downstairs an hour later, with his head in a much better place than when he’d gone up. He’d showered, and two of his rugby mates had been in touch, grumbling that he hadn’t been at lunchtime training. Seemed they didn’t give a stuff about whatever played out on social media and in the playground, but they most definitely cared a hell of a lot when their best flyhalf went AWOL. And would he be joining in the XboxBattleshipsextravaganza they’d lined up for the evening’s entertainment?
Yes, was the answer, but we needed another chat first. And a three-way FaceTime with Samantha, during which Matt found himself occupied inspecting the borders of the lawn after my latest exploits with the petrol strimmer. If he’d thought my knee-jerk response overprotective, then Samantha took it to a whole new level, threatening to sue Chloe for slander, call in the police, and write to her MP.
“I don’t want you to do anything, Mum,” Ryan pleaded, during a pause in her ranting. “I can handle it.”
“Of course you can’t handle it, darling. Not on your own. We can’t allow this to happen.”
Apart from a shadow at a window when I dropped Ryan off, this was the first time I’d seen Samantha in months. She was her usual glossy, glamorous self; I don’t know why I’d thought she’d be any different. Nor why I’d dreaded seeing her, because speaking to her now, perched primly on an immaculate cream linen sofa, had no effect on me whatsoever. Perhaps the knowledge that a mischievous handsome man was most likely sabotaging the perfect orderliness of my tool shed had something to do with it. I wouldn’t put it past him to have found the hedge trimmer and begun some lewd topiary.
Samantha hadn’t listened to what Ryan tried to tell her at all, and I switched off as she continued outlining the myriad ways we should wade in and manage Ryan’s problems. We would need to act at some point, I agreed with her on that, if only to ensure the school were reminded that boys could be sexually harassed too.
An ungainly figure plonked down onto the sofa next to my ex-wife and placed a heavy arm around her shoulders—Mike, in his pants, his hairy belly on display for all of us to admire. Next to me, Ryan rolled his eyes, and I stifled a snort.
“I think, Sam, my dear,” he interrupted in measured tones. “We need to sleep on it. Let’s not rush into things. Sometimes issues are a lot clearer in the cold light of a new day.”
Wow, so that was not what I expected. Even less expected, my ex-wife had shut up and seemed to be taking his words on board. For the first time ever, Mike’s presence didn’t leave me with an irrational desire to punch something.