Down London Road

like I wasn’t human to him, let alone his daughter.’ I shook myself and lifted my gaze to Cam’s. He had grown pale, his features stretched taut with emotion he was trying to control. ‘I guess I was lucky that Uncle Mick turned up when he did. He heard me screaming and came crashing in. Uncle Mick was a big guy and, well … he put Dad in hospital that day. He wasarrested, but neither of them mentioned Dad’s assault on me for fear the social services would get involved. Dad just dropped the charges and Uncle Mick walked away with a fine.
    ‘Dad disappeared. Next thing we heard was that he’d been jailed for armed robbery. While he was inside, Uncle Mick was around a lot more, helping out. For the first time in my life I had an almost twenty-four/seven parent who really cared. He even had a good influence on Mum.’ I huffed, the resentment welling up again. ‘Too good.’
    Cam guessed. ‘Your mum was in love with him.’
    I nodded. ‘I think she always had been, but as far as I know nothing ever happened. Uncle Mick cared about her but not like that.’
    ‘So what happened?’
    Someone took him away from me
. ‘Just a little over a year later, Uncle Mick left for America.’
    ‘America?’
    ‘Years ago he’d had an affair with an American student. She was studying at Glasgow University for a year and they were together for a good few months. But she left and Mick didn’t follow. Fourteen years later Mick was contacted by his thirteen-year-old daughter, a daughter he never knew he had. He flew over there to meet her, get DNA testing rolling, hash it out, I imagine, with his kid’s mum. He came back for a while, but the results came in and the kid was his … so he left everything behind to be with her.’
    Seeming to sense how much that had ripped me up inside, Cam whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Jo.’
    I nodded, feeling the emotion claw at my throat. ‘Hetold me he would have taken me and Cole if he could have.’ I coughed, trying to force the pain back down. ‘He e-mailed me, but I stopped responding and eventually his e-mails stopped.’
    ‘And your mum fell apart?’
    ‘Aye. I think he broke her heart. She started drinking more than normal, but things didn’t get really bad until we moved here. She was fine for a while, had a good job, but then she put her back out of commission and couldn’t work. So she got drunk instead, and then she got drunker. Until eventually she wasn’t even a functioning alcoholic.’
    ‘And you can’t take Cole away from her because he’s not legally yours and if the social services ever found out about your family situation they’d most likely put him into care rather than let you have him …’
    ‘Or worse … they’d contact my dad.’
    ‘Fuck, Jo.’
    ‘Yeah, you can say that again. I dropped out of school at sixteen, got a job, tried to keep us afloat, but it was really rough. There were days it took everything I had to buy Cole a tin of beans. We were checking down the sides of the couch for lost coins, measuring out how much milk we were using. It was ridiculous. Then … I met someone. He helped me pay the rent and put some money aside for a rainy day. However, he got bored after six months, so it wasn’t really all I’d thought it had been.’
    ‘But it showed you a new life. You started dating men with money to get by?’ Cam’s body tensed as he asked the question.
    I turned my head from him and even though there was no longer any censure in his question, I still feltashamed. ‘I’ve never dated a guy I wasn’t attracted to, or that I didn’t care about.’ My eyes found his and I prayed for him to believe me. ‘I cared about Callum. I care about Malcolm.’
    Holding up his hands, Cam stopped my worries with a gentle look. ‘I am not judging you. I promise.’
    I raised an eyebrow.
    He grunted. ‘Any more. Or ever again.’ He shook his head, his brows dipped in consternation. ‘You must have thought I was such a self-righteous prick.’
    I chuckled. ‘I do believe I may have actually called you that.’
    His eyes brightened. ‘Good girl, by the way,’ he said approvingly. ‘Giving me what for.’
    I smiled a little shyly. ‘I usually hate confrontation, but I did quite enjoy putting you in your place.’
    My words had the opposite effect of what I’d intended. He didn’t laugh. Instead he was grave. ‘Earlier in the hall, I grabbed your arm …’
    I looked away as I remembered my reaction. ‘I tend to freeze if someone