Sunday evenings overflowed with the melancholy of living alone. A single inflatable armband rested on the kitchen chair.
They began with the drive home from Emma’s, followed by the washing machine droning through damp swimming towels, then Finn waiting patiently beside the cupboard where his lead hung. He had no understanding of weekends or custody arrangements. He only knew that, at six o’clock, they walked.
The fields behind the estate were quiet. Finn trotted a few paces ahead, stopping to investigate something invisible in the long grass before catching up again.
One hour earlier he’d been a dad, drying wet hair and tying shoelaces. Out here, with only Finn for company, there was nothing left to think about except what he’d been trying not to.
He wished he hadn’t asked, but the words fell out before he knew it.
They had been getting changed after swimming. Oliver wrestling with a swimming top that clung to wet shoulders.
“Has Mum seen George much?”
The question sounded overly casual, but Oliver hadn’t noticed anything unusual.
“Quite a lot.”
He remembered tugging at his own sock.
“He’s funny.”
Then, after a pause:
“He says I’m getting much better at football.”
Three ordinary sentences from a seven-year-old redistributed his insides.
Finn stopped suddenly, nose buried beneath a hedge. He waited.
It troubled him that he knew almost nothing about George. He didn’t know his occupation, whether he was patient, whether he drank too much or remembered birthdays. He didn’t know if he was the sort of man who read bedtime stories or left that to someone else while he watched snooker.
All he had were the handful of details a seven-year-old had mentioned.
He realised, with a flush of embarrassment, that none of the questions he’d wanted answered had been about Oliver. Not whether George was kind to him, whether he felt safe, or even whether he was happy.
They had all been about Emma.
He had wanted reassurance that there were parts of that old life no one else could ever occupy. The unfairness of it was not lost on him.
He’d been the one who had first said the marriage was over. They had stayed together too long already, held together more by practicality than love, and leaving had been the right decision.
But another man appearing hurt him in ways he hadn’t anticipated.
The path curved between waist-high grasses that brushed against his jeans. Finn wandered back carrying a stick as long as himself, tail swishing through the seed heads.
He couldn’t help but smile when Finn dropped it at his feet. He threw it, and Finn bounded after it without hesitation. He watched him disappear into the grass.
George would now collect the small memories he no longer would. School runs, burnt fish fingers, and repetitive YouTube catchphrases. The ordinary moments that spread into a childhood. George would accumulate far more ordinary days than he ever could. There was no malice in it, just arithmetic.
He had told himself, when the marriage ended, that Oliver would never become a messenger between two parents. Yet this afternoon, in a damp changing room that should have been about swimming and ice cream afterwards, he had made him one.
Somewhere beyond the hedgerow, a blackbird sang into the fading light while the estate behind them grew steadily quieter.
Finn returned, dropped the stick again, breathing hard. He scratched behind his ears.
“Next weekend,” he said quietly.
Finn wagged his tail.
Five days would pass before he saw Oliver again. He couldn’t change that.
He could only be there when they arrived.
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