Lifesaving for Beginners

told me in school at lunchtime. He drew diagrams with his finger in the muck. For someone who hates art, he’s pretty good at drawing.
    Dad looks at me and for a moment I think he’s going to tell me anyway but then he shrugs his shoulders and says, ‘OK-sey,’ instead of ‘OK.’
    I say, ‘Do you want me to help you pack?’ Now that I know he’s going, I sort of can’t wait for him to be gone. Once he’s gone, it’s fine. I just don’t like knowing he’s going when he’s still here.
    He laughs and tosses my hair out of my eyes with his fingers. ‘Trying to get rid of me, are you, son?’
    ‘No, I just . . .’
    ‘I’m not away till after lunch. There’s one other thing I have to do.’
    ‘I could make you a sandwich. Ham and eggy mix. I think there are some rolls in the breadbin.’ Eggy mix is Mam’s invention. It’s hard-boiled eggs, mashed in a bowl, with anything you like chopped up and thrown in. Then you mix it all up with mayonnaise and maybe some mustard. My favourite mix is chives and green peppers. I don’t bring eggy-mix sandwiches into school, on account of the smell.
    Dad winks at me. ‘We’ll let Faith worry about lunch, son. That’s what the ladies do best, isn’t it?’
    If Mam were here, she’d say, ‘MCP,’ which stands for Male Chauvinist Pig, and he’d laugh and say, ‘I suppose you’ll be burning your bra next,’ and Mam would laugh and pretend to whack Dad over the head with her rolled-up newspaper. Later on, when they fought all the time, she wouldn’t laugh. She’d just say something like, ‘You’re a great role model for a seven-year-old boy, aren’t you?’ Then Dad would tell me to go to my room and I don’t know what they said after that, but whatever it was it was loud because I could hear them shouting from my room, even when I closed the wardrobe door.
    The other thing that Dad has to do before he leaves turns out to be about Christmas. He says we have to go and buy a tree. A real one, even though there’s an artificial one in the attic that Mam has used every year since Dad went away.
    He says, ‘You have to have a real tree at Christmas, son.’ But he doesn’t say why.
    I say, ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit early?’
    ‘It’s never too early for Christmas, son.’
    We go to a garden centre and he tells me I can pick whatever tree I want. They all look the same to me. I point at the nearest one.
    He says, ‘That’s a sorry excuse for a tree, son.’ I point to the one beside it and Dad sighs and shakes his head and then he picks a tree near the back. It’s so big, he can’t lift it. He has to drag it to the man, who takes the money and doesn’t give him any change, on account of how big the tree is.
    Dad says, ‘That’s highway robbery!’ But he ends up sort of saying it to himself because the man has gone over to another customer, who is buying the first tree I pointed at. He gets change.
    There’s no roof rack on Dad’s car so he has to lay the tree across the back seat with the top of it sticking out of one window and the bottom of it sticking out of the window on the other side.
    I say, ‘We’ll have to be careful of cyclists. And pedestrians. And lamp posts.’
    Dad says, ‘Get in.’ I have to sit in the front on account of the tree.
    I sit up really straight so that I look like I’m twelve, or a hundred and thirty-five centimetres, in case we’re stopped by the police because of the Christmas tree poking out of both sides of the car.
    We don’t get very far before Dad starts talking again.
    He says, ‘I presume you’ve written your letter to Santa?’
    I say, ‘I don’t believe in Santa. I’m ten.’
    ‘You’re ten?’
    ‘Well, I’ll be ten on Christmas Day.’
    He looks at me, which is dangerous because you should be looking at the road when you’re driving, especially when you have a Christmas tree sticking out of your car.
    He shakes his head. He says, ‘It seems like only yesterday when you were born, son.’
    Adults always say that it seems like only yesterday when things happened, even though they happened years and years ago. And they always say that time flies. I don’t think that’s true. I think time drags and drags, which is good because I don’t want it to be Christmas Day. It won’t be the same. This year, I’m not going to call it Christmas Day. I’m just going to call it Sunday.
    Another thing that I’m never going to do when I’m an adult is tell the same story over and over