It was about five or ten minutes before he heard his father’s footsteps approaching. Gary lay back down on his pillow and squeezed his eyes shut as the door to his room creaked open.

‘Son? Are you awake?’

Gary held his breath as the footsteps came across the room. He felt the bed creak and sag as his father sat down near the foot of it.

‘It’s alright lad, I know you’re awake.’ Gary opened his eyes and saw his father looking down at him. His eyes were red and Gary could see the veins standing out in his cheeks.

‘You okay, boy?’ Gary’s father shifted closer along the bed and leaned forward to look down at him. Gary restrained the urge to cringe away. His father’s breath smelled of whisky and cigarettes.

‘Did you hear any of that?’

Gary stared up at his father and shook his head slowly, and his father sighed. ‘Yes, of course you did. That bloody woman, she—’

His father paused and looked down at him. He shifted his gaze and glanced around the room, not focusing on anything in particular. Without seeming to realise he was doing so, he reached over and pulled Gary’s Winnie-the-Pooh bear out of his grasp.

‘You’re getting too old for things like this,’ he said mildly, staring out across the room and squeezing the bear in his large hands. Gary noticed his knuckles were red.

‘The thing you’ve got to remember, Gary, is that women aren’t like us.’ He was still staring out across the room. ‘With men, it’s simple. We get angry, sometimes we shout at each other or have it out, and then we move on. Women aren’t like that. You can’t have it out with a woman, because if you do they just cry and then you’re the bad guy.’

He paused, then looked down at Gary. Fixed him with his stony blue eyes.

‘Take it from me, son, you’re best off having nothing to do with those scheming bitches at all. They bring out the worst in us.’

He leaned down and kissed Gary on the forehead, then stood up and went to leave the room. Before he got to the door he glanced at the Pooh bear still in his hands, then tossed it into the corner where it lay next to Gary’s tennis racket and his school P.E. kit. Then he left. Even after the door was closed and his father’s footsteps had receded down the hallway Gary still didn’t dare to go over and pick it up, afraid it was all a test and that if he moved to get the bear his father would know and come back to teach him a lesson.

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