‘I’m sorry, son. I am. I know it hasn’t been easy. I know other kids have their mums around, that they all have dinner together and their dad takes them to play football on Sundays.’

‘I don’t give a shit about Mum!’ Sam yelled, his voice croaking under the weight of his own sadness.

‘Watch your language.’ William snapped. ‘Your mother made her choice to leave. It doesn’t make her a bad person.’

‘They said she was a whore…’

‘Who? At school?’ William frowned. ‘Is that why you hit that boy?’

Sam’s silence was more than enough to confirm it. William had been called to the school upon the news of Sam breaking another pupil’s nose. It was why they were driving home through the rain and why he’d made Sam promise not to fight unless he had to. Sam suddenly looked embarrassed; his school uniform stuck to his scrawny body.

‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ he eventually uttered.

‘It’s okay, Samuel.’ William stepped forward and wrapped his arms around his son. ‘You’re a good lad.’

After a few rain-soaked moments, the two of them turned and headed back to their car. With the road ahead of them cleared, the light green and a cacophony of car horns polluting the air behind them, William started the car up immediately and pulled away.

‘Seat belt,’ he ordered. Sam laughed and obliged before dabbing away the last of his tears. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Sam looked up at his dad with admiration.

‘How come you always see the good in people?’

‘Because there is always good to be found,’ William responded, not taking his eyes off the road. ‘And if you can’t find it, fight for it. It’s the right thing to do.’

Sam sat back, absorbing his dad’s words as gospel and looking out at the streets of the latest town they were living. He knew his father was a good man.

A hero.

When he was old enough, he would enlist in the army and work his hardest to forge a career that he and his father could be proud of. And when the time came for him to have his own child, Sam would do whatever it took to keep them safe.

Just like his father had to him.

‘I promise I won’t fight anyone again, Dad,’ Sam said. His father pulled their car into their drive, killed the engine and turned to his son with a wry smile.

‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’

Chapter Fourteen