Really it’s because he just wants a day to himself.

He’s a good father. He loves his son. Jake’s a great kid. But the relentlessness with which Jake looks up to him is exhausting. His eyes seem to beg Shayne, constantly, for approval. It makes Shayne feel like he can’t just be himself; that he has to be some sort of role model all the time. Like the whole seal thing, when they took Jake tuna fishing back in February: it’s grey—Shayne knows it’s grey—but he could feel Jake wanting him to say it was all right. And it was all right, but not so all right that you want to say it out loud, or that you want to teach it to your son. You just want to be doing what you have to do and not be thinking about it. But when your kid’s around you have to think about it. That’s what parenting is all about, which isn’t something you take into account when you’re a horny twenty-something and you come before you should, then think: What the heck? Why not keep it? You love her, after all. But you don’t realise that it means from then on you can’t be your own person anymore, or at least, not wholly your own because you’re part dad, no matter what else happens. You can split with the missus, and sure, you can abandon the kids. But you’re still their dad, one way or another.

If it weren’t for the fact he was going with Rob, Shayne wouldn’t have got out of bed. It was dark and crispy cold outside when the alarm went off, while his bed was soft and warm and Angie was snuggly with sleep, in a way that suggested a little something something could be on the cards. He’d had a shower before going to bed the night before so his skin felt silky against the sheets and he lay there, nuzzling into her, prodding her a bit with the old dawn horn and flexing his toes happily. Then his second alarm went off.

Fifteen minutes later, Rob’s Nissan Patrol pulled into the driveway, boat in tow, and Shayne was climbing in, rugged up in his winter woollies, cup of coffee in hand. One of those keep cup things. The kids gave it to him for Father’s Day. So you don’t spill coffe in your lap when your going fishing really early in the mourning, Emma wrote on the blue card. Her handwriting is really neat. She was the third person in her class to get their pen licence and she was so proud when she came home with the news. They printed out the photo of Shayne standing next to Jake, who’s holding up the munched albacore, and glued it to the front of the card, then drew a border of little fish (with sparkly pens so it looked like the fish had scales) around the edges. In each corner they drew an orange starfish or octopus—something orange with numerous legs, anyway. Six or seven, they each had. So fuck knows what they were meant to be, really.