Father Figure

by Ann Widdecombe

Genres: General Fiction; Sagas; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Ann Widdecombe's controversial novel about the position of men in today's society. Jason Kirk is a 32-year-old teacher who believes he is happily married until he returns home one day to find that his wife has left him, taking their two young children with her. Suddenly Jason finds the role of father denied to him as he is separated from his children and reduced to the role of visitor. The law is weighted against him and his wife produces a series of excuses to withhold contact with Jake, eight, and Leah, three. Jason, who had wanted to bring his children up to maturity on a daily basis, not only has to face the pain of this loss but endures the misery of persecution by the Child Support Agency. He discovers he is not alone and that among his friends and colleagues, there are others enduring the same situation. FATHER FIGURE is an enthralling, thought-provoking novel of modern fatherhood.

Release date: December 1, 2011

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 365

Sample

1

Kat walked out between the Roman and Norman conquests. Jason knew this because she had rung him on his mobile as he was making
his way to the staffroom having spent the last period before break explaining straight roads, mosaics, central heating and
veni, vidi, vici to a Year Seven class which would never have any acquaintance with the Latin language nor read the works of Julius Caesar.
As usual Nick Bright asked too many difficult questions and Terry Pepper daydreamed, spending the last five minutes of the
lesson carefully colouring a toga in his workbook despite Jason’s clear statement that togas were mainly white.


Kat’s call had surprised Jason. She too taught and rarely rang him at school, being deeply critical of the use of mobile phones
for what she described as idle chatter and wary of the possible effects on the brain. The second reason for his surprise was
that the number on his screen was that of their home not her school or her own mobile. He was about to ask if she was all
right when she forestalled him with an enquiry about the whereabouts of Jake’s Harry Potter, which he had confiscated at midnight
after his eight-year-old son had started reading in the forlorn hope that his light would not be noticed once his parents
had gone to bed.


Jason might have wondered what had prompted such a query in the middle of the working day if he had not been so preoccupied with the need to locate one of his colleagues in
the short time allowed for break. He replied that he could not remember but that he would look for it after school, sensing
that Kat found this frustrating. Any puzzlement he might have felt was immediately forgotten as he glimpsed his fellow teacher
and hurriedly set off in pursuit.


He did not think about this conversation with his wife until just after lunch when he was in the middle of describing the
Bayeux Tapestry. The girls winced as King Harold received an arrow in the eye but some of the boys looked mildly interested
for the first time during the lesson. For some reason he suddenly recalled where he had put the Harry Potter and rang Kat
between classes. When she answered her mobile it was obvious she was using the hands-free kit in her car. This time he did
ask what was going on. Why wasn’t she at school and was that the kids he could hear in the background? She said, ‘Tell you
later’ and rang off.


On Tuesdays he returned home late because the history club met after school and today it took longer than usual because the
pupils were practising an archaeological dig in a nearby field which was being excavated for development. The finds were minimal,
had no historical significance and caused a great deal of merriment.


Nick Bright was studying a halfpenny. ‘It says 45 BC, sir. Do you think Julius Caesar dropped it?’


‘I am more interested in who made it. He must have been a clairvoyant if he knew when Christ was going to be born.’

Amid the laughter Jason noticed one or two disappointed faces. Surely they hadn’t fallen for so obvious a joke? He looked at his watch and decided it was time they went home.


Collecting a set of Year Twelve essays from the classroom, he made his way to the car park, vaguely noticing the few remaining
vehicles: a Fiat belonging to a young drama teacher, the sports coach’s Ford Focus, a battered Vauxhall Estate in which Ed
Deacon, head of geography, used to bring his older children to school. Ed’s wife had left him a year ago, taking the children
with her, and now the geography teacher delayed his return home for as long as possible each evening.


The car of Angus Gaskill, the deputy head, stood in front of the school under the sign saying ‘Reception’. Jason did not need
to look at the space beside it to know it was empty. The head, Ralph Hillier, only stayed late for meetings of the governors,
leaving parents’ evenings and other functions to his deputy. Ten years ago pupils went to Oxford from Morton’s, now applications
were falling year on year and the arrival of children such as Nick Bright was greeted with sarcastic speculation as to whether
anyone had told their parents that there were other schools in the area. The police came to the school several times a week.
Hillier was focused on his retirement, now less than eighteen months away, and the rest of the staff were waiting for it to
happen before deciding what to do next.


Not everyone had given in to the malaise and those who still had hope and energy left tried to stimulate and inspire, drawing
closer to each other as they pooled their efforts. No one contradicted them or made any overt attempt to cool their enthusiasm,
simply meeting their ideas with shrugs rather than argument. Their numbers dwindled each term as some left for other schools
or, in two cases, other professions. Kat had nagged Jason to follow their example and he had talked, without originality but with much conviction, about rats and sinking ships. Kat too
had shrugged but with impatience rather than resignation.


Jason put the pile of essays and his jacket on the back seat of the Astra and his boots, muddy from the archaeological exercise,
on the floor behind the driver’s seat. As he was about to get in the front he heard his name called and looked up to see Angus
Gaskill approaching from the main entrance. He stood by the open car door and watched warily as the deputy head walked towards
him. He was conscious suddenly of fatigue and was unwilling to be further delayed.


‘Just had Social Services on the phone. They’re taking the Beggs children into care.’

Jason’s heart sank. Chrissy Beggs was in his form and already disruptive to the point of having been twice suspended. He had
tried to persuade Hillier to exclude her and believed that the head was close to agreeing but now he knew that he would decide
to wait and see how the new domestic arrangements worked.


‘Why?’

‘Mister is in prison and Missus injecting heroin.’

‘So what’s new?’

‘The disappearance of the three-year-old for an entire afternoon. Mother was too spaced out to notice and it only came to
light when said child wandered into the path of a car.’


Jason shuddered. ‘My God!’

‘It’s OK. The driver managed to stop but he was pretty shaken.’

‘I suppose they’ll want reports?’

Gaskill gave a sympathetic grin. ‘Yes, sorry. The good news is that the nearest relation lives in Blackburn so it may become Lancashire’s problem rather than Somerset’s. I wouldn’t shed any tears.’


‘No, but I wouldn’t uncork the Champagne either. The relative may not take them.’

‘Not if he or she has any sense.’

The callous, careless words lingered on the air. Even Gaskill was becoming disillusioned, thought Jason sadly. They all were.
The Beggs children were merely nuisances, not small beings to be pitied and helped. If Chrissy and her brothers got through
the day without misbehaving it was as much as their teachers asked; whether they were also happy or had absorbed even the
most minimal information were not questions which would actively preoccupy those who saw to their education.


Gaskill read his thoughts. ‘I’m getting too old for it all.’

‘So am I and I’ll be thirty-two next month.’ Jason climbed into his car and looked up at the deputy head. ‘Don’t let it get
to you.’


‘Ghastly American expression.’

‘Is it?’

‘Totally ghastly and also illiterate, but you teach history not English so I don’t suppose it matters.’

‘I meant, is it American? Anyway Matt Johnson tells me he doesn’t teach much grammar any more. Not enough time for it in the
curriculum.’


‘That doesn’t stop me. Not that they let me do much teaching now. It’s all paper, paper, paper, targets, statistics and meetings.
Not for much longer though.’


Jason, who had been wondering how to cut the conversation short and who had inserted the ignition key as a hint, now looked
up sharply. ‘Not for much longer?’


‘No. I’m not applying for Ralph’s job next year and I’m not staying in this one either. I’m going early.’

‘Will they let you?’

‘I shan’t be giving them a choice in the matter.’


‘What about your pension?’

‘It will do. My parents left me money and Elizabeth will have a pension too. Anyway I can always try to teach in the private
sector for a couple of years. I haven’t told anybody else so keep it under your hat for a while.’


Gaskill gave the roof of the car a pat of farewell and stood back to let Jason drive away, leaving him unsure as to whether
he should actually do so. He wondered if Gaskill wanted to be argued out of his proposed course of action, if he wanted to
talk, if the fate of the Beggs children were not the real reason the deputy head had stopped him leaving, but when he looked
in the mirror Gaskill was already walking back into the school.


Relieved, Jason let his thoughts turn to home. He would still arrive in time to read to Leah and have supper with Kat and
Jake. The essays on which he had already made a start would only take a couple of hours after that. On the way he stopped
at Oddbins and bought a bottle of Jacob’s Creek. It had not been an easy day and Kat had sounded fraught when she had rung
him earlier.


It was not the absence of Kat’s car from the side of the house or the unlit windows which told him what had happened: it was
the silence. The stillness he felt as soon as he entered his home, their home, was not that of temporary absence but of emptiness, taking Jason back twenty years when he had walked into his great-grandmother’s
house after her funeral. Twelve years ago he had returned to the flat he shared with his student girlfriend and had known
she was not coming back even before he saw the note on the kitchen table, carefully placed between his knife and fork as if
she had measured the distance and straightened the envelope with a plumb line. It might have been a statement of finality, of careful thought, of an orderly departure, or maybe she had stood there,
uncertain, her hand still on the letter while she pushed it into place, adjusting it, lining it up because she did not want
to let go.


Now he stood in the hall and switched on the light, uncomforted by its yellow beam, untouched by the warmth of the central
heating, cold with shock, numb with fear, seeing everywhere the evidence of desertion even as he mentally denied it. There
was no pushchair in the hall, no schoolbag carelessly dropped, no boots by the back door, which he could see through the kitchen.
In the hall cupboard were no coats or jackets or waterproofs but his own.


Foolishly he still hoped as he entered the other rooms, searching in each for some contrary sign, some flood of reassurance,
some wakening from the nightmare. Instead he found, as he had known he would, only the misery of confirmation, the chill of
certainty. Kat had not found the time or the space in the car to take everything from the children’s rooms yet they already
looked empty, dusty, abandoned, as if their occupants had left long ago. In the room he had shared with Kat a screwed-up tissue
with lipstick stains lay on the otherwise bare dressing table. Lipstick stains, not tear stains, thought Jason. Kat had been
thinking about her appearance as she left him.


What had she told the children? Had she said they were going away for a little while, a big adventure in the middle of the
school term, or had she told them the truth? We are leaving Daddy. You won’t be able to see him every day any more. He won’t
be living with us.


There should be a law against it. That sentiment up till now had been a family joke, a superior distancing of the small unit
of Kirks from those who could use the statement and mean it. Even Jake had taken to uttering the words with smug amusement especially when commenting on Leah’s
three-year-old antics. Now Jason found himself at a loss to understand why what had happened to him was allowed to happen,
though he was scarcely aware of the question forming in his mind beneath the turmoil of shock and denial.


The telephone shrilled and he sprang to it. ‘Kat?’

There was a brief but discernible pause on the other end of the line. ‘No, it’s me. Is anything wrong?’

‘No,’ he lied as he wondered what to tell his mother. Eileen Kirk was a worrier who doted on her grandchildren and he would
need to work out how and when to tell her that full-time parenthood had suddenly been snatched from him, without explanation,
without a quarrel. Despair made him want to be cruel, to devastate as he had been devastated, to say, ‘Kat has walked out’
and to listen to her reaction, but he did not do so because her response would inevitably be, ‘Why?’ and he had no answer.


The momentary anger was succeeded by deep misery as he realised he could not protect his mother for much longer, that she
must know. Three months a widow, she must now face a son’s broken marriage. He could no more shield her from life’s spears
than she had been able to shield him as he passed from childhood to adulthood. Although relations between her and Kat had
always been perfectly cordial they had never progressed to warmth in the way his friendship with Kat’s parents had and he
knew that she would hate her access to Jake and Leah resting on the goodwill of her daughter-in-law.


For now he must be content to deceive. ‘Kat is out somewhere and I was wondering if she wanted me to do anything about supper.’

‘Oh. It sounded more urgent. Is my little Jakey there?’


Jason’s teeth automatically prepared to grit at the diminutive but tonight pity replaced irritation. ‘Sorry, no. They’re both
with Kat.’


‘Well, ask him to ring me when he gets back.’

‘I’ll do that.’ He knew he was playing for time, to find some way of minimising the pain. When his mother did not receive
Jake’s call she would ring back and by then he would have had time to think. Some dim recognition flitted across his mind
that he was postponing not her misery but his own, that he was refusing to confront what had happened, that he wanted urgently
to end the conversation not so that he could order his thoughts but to avoid them altogether.


‘Dear, you do sound a bit distracted. Are you sure there’s nothing wrong? Anything I can do?’

‘No. Look, I’ve got something I must do right now but I’ll get Jake to phone as soon as I see him.’

As soon as I see him. Would his mother notice the odd phraseology, that he had not said ‘as soon as he gets in’. Would it
in some ill-defined way give her an inkling of the truth, some vague preparation for what he would soon say?


After he had replaced the receiver on its rest, which lay on top of a small pile of books on the bedside table, Jason lay
back on the bed, waiting for the despair and disbelief to subside, knowing they would not. Somewhere, deep within his stomach,
his heart, his soul, a small cold knot waited to explode.


He knew of no unhappiness on Kat’s part. They had been married for ten years and he still loved her. Until just under an hour
ago he had thought the feeling fully reciprocated. Fruitlessly he searched for clues to what had happened and found none.
They rarely rowed and when they did the storm passed fairly quickly. It occurred to him now that perhaps he had been too complacent, had taken his marriage
too much for granted, but if so then there had been no warning signals that he could recall.


He was surprised to find himself prowling the room in circles, having no recollection of rising from the bed or of what he
had been thinking. He glanced at the clock. Two hours ago he had been turning into his drive, his mind on Angus Gaskill. Two
hours ago desertion was something that happened only to other people, to the Ed Deacons of this world not to the Jason Kirks.
Two hours ago he could pity from afar.


The two hours became three and Jason had twice thought he was hearing Kat’s car turn into the drive when the telephone rang
again. He picked it up reluctantly, preparing to tell his mother the truth, to absorb her distress and her questions, to prevent
her making any precipitate journey from Dorset.


‘Jason? I’m sorry. I know it must have been a shock but I didn’t want a scene, especially with Jake and Leah there.’

He found he was shaking though now it was with anger not grief.

‘Why? What have I done to you or the children that I deserve this?’

‘Nothing. It’s just not the same any more.’

‘Is there someone else?’ He heard the fear in his own voice as he suddenly grasped at the only explanation which might make
any sense.


‘No, no one at all. It’s just not the same.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I can’t tell you yet. I don’t want you coming here until the children are settled.’

‘For God’s sake, Kat, they’re mine too. You can’t just take them and not tell me where they are.’

‘I will tell you, but not now. If you need me I’m still on the same mobile. I’m sorry, Jason, really sorry. The last thing
I wanted to do was hurt you.’


Alice in Wonderland, thought Jason, Alice in bloody Wonderland. He listened to the dialling tone for some seconds before accepting
that Kat had cut the connection. Almost immediately the phone rang again and he answered its summons to explain why his son
would not be able to talk to his grandmother that evening.


Much later he found himself back in the bedroom, swaying towards the bed, unsolaced by the concentration he had forced from
himself to address the Year Twelve essays, by the routine of preparing and clearing up a meal he did not eat, by the over-indulgence
in red wine for which, never having been able to hold an excess of drink, he knew he would pay in the morning.


In the bathroom he had looked around at the emptiness, at the space where Leah’s huge cat-shaped sponge used to sit, at the
slightly dirty shelf where Kat had kept her make-up, at the bare corner where the bath met the wall and which used to be occupied
by Jake’s plastic battleship. Once in bed he pulled the duvet over his head to shut out the silence.


The same silence woke him before the alarm clock had a chance to do so and he sat up abruptly, sure that he had overslept,
that everyone else had already left for school. As his memory suddenly supplied the true explanation he sank back, not wanting
to get up at all, eager only to shirk the day ahead and to withdraw from the complexities thrust upon him from a new and unwelcome
routine. He pushed back the duvet and placed his unwilling feet on the carpet. A warm, furry body began to weave around his
ankles and he looked down in surprise.


If he had thought about the cat at all he would have assumed Kat to have taken it, reasoning that Jake would never have agreed
to leave it behind. It came to him now that Objubjub’s presence must mean that Kat had found only a temporary base, that she
must be postponing the removal of her son’s pet until settled somewhere permanently. There was of course another explanation
but this did not occur to him.


‘So where were you last night?’ Jason bent down to stroke the animal’s head. ‘Come on; breakfast.’

His own breakfast would be Alka Seltzer, he thought ruefully as he went downstairs, trying not to fall over Objubjub, aware
that normally he ran down lightly and today walked with all the reluctance of Jake when called from his computer to accompany
his mother to the shops.


In the kitchen he opened the cupboard where the cat food was kept and was surprised to see so low a supply, but it was only
when he hunted in vain for a bowl that he realised that Kat had not intended to leave the animal after all. She had packed
feeding bowls and a sufficient supply of food. Presumably when the moment of departure arrived Objubjub could not be found
or had resisted being put in the pet carrier and had escaped.


Jason went out into the hall and looked in the cupboard under the stairs, the one Kat always referred to as ‘the glory hole’.
The pet carrier was missing. His brain worked slowly towards the only explanation. Objubjub had been taken with the children
and had made his way back to the only home he knew, which in turn meant that Kat was nearby, that the time which had elapsed
before she rang him the previous night had been calculated to mislead him into thinking she had just completed a long journey,
or perhaps she had delayed calling out of cowardice or until the children were in bed and he had subconsciously arrived at the wrong conclusion.


When his shaving was interrupted by the telephone Jason went to answer it not in the bedroom but in the hall where the screen
showed the caller’s number. He wrote it down as Jake’s words came tumbling out.


‘Dad, is Objubjub there? He got out of the bathroom window last night.’

‘It’s OK. He’s here. Where are you?’

‘At Mrs Mackenzie’s. Dad, I don’t want to leave—’

A click on the line announced the lifting of an extension.

‘Jake, I told you not to bother Daddy. Objubjub will be all right. Now hurry up and get dressed. Say goodbye to Daddy and
put the phone down.’


‘Mum, Objubjub’s gone home. I want to go home—’

There was a sob from Jake before the line went dead and, for the first time since realising his family had left him, Jason
felt tears in his own eyes. The children would have been as unprepared and bewildered as he. He must stop this folly for their
sake and he must stop it now.


He raced upstairs and made a cursory finish to his shave, pulled on his clothes and ran outside to the car. Mrs Mackenzie
was Leah’s childminder. She lived three miles away and Jake was not yet dressed. After half a mile he joined a traffic jam
and cursed impotently, beating the steering wheel with his fist. He glanced at his watch. In half an hour Kat would have to
leave for the primary school which Jake attended and where she taught but she might guess his intentions and leave sooner
rather than later, relying on the unlikelihood of his creating a scene at the school. Afterwards he wondered at his simplicity
in basing his plans on Kat’s following a normal routine.


He felt a small tremor of relief as he saw Kat’s Vectra outside Mrs Mackenzie’s house. He was in time.


‘I’m sorry, Mr Kirk, they’ve gone.’ Alice Mackenzie looked not only embarrassed but regretful. She followed Jason’s bewildered
glance towards the Vectra and added, ‘In the van.’


Jason could only nod dully when she asked him in. He sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands while she made tea,
her eyes full of anxious sympathy.


‘Where have they gone?’

‘I don’t know – no, truly, I don’t – but it can’t be that far because Leah is coming back to me next week.’

Jason looked at her, trying to absorb what he was being told. Mrs Mackenzie was sixty-something, forty years older than most
of the childminders they knew, and had also looked after Jake in his pre-school years. She herself was bringing up a twelve-year-old
granddaughter whose father had walked out when she was two and whose mother had died four years later. Jason had always pitied
the child, comparing her lot with the security enjoyed by his own children. Now their world too was being brutally shattered.


‘I can’t believe it’s happening.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

That was what everyone would say, thought Jason. It was what he had said over and over again the previous evening as he listened
to his mother’s heartbroken sobs before the end of their conversation left each in a pool of loneliness. It was what Kat had
said when consigning ten years of marriage to the scrap heap; it was almost certainly what she had said to the children as
she stole them from their father.


Horrified, Jason heard himself swear violently as a fresh tide of misery and bewilderment flowed into his heart.


‘I’m so sorry,’ he apologised to Mrs Mackenzie but she seemed perturbed less by the profanity than by the helpless, bitter
laugh which followed his words. He got up from the table and thanked her for the tea, knowing that she wanted to say more
but was constrained by awkwardness.


As he drove to Morton’s he watched the parents taking their children to school, looking at everyday scenes with new eyes,
envying, protesting, grieving. A young woman who looked scarcely out of her teens pushed a small girl of Leah’s age in a buggy
while two boys scampered beside her. A child of about eleven walked along with a large bag on one shoulder, holding a much
younger child by the hand. A healthy looking redhead in jeans and trainers urged on a group of five youngsters of assorted
ages. Jason wondered if they all belonged to her or if she were helping out a neighbour. Then he saw the man.


He was tall with a shaven head and arms covered by tattoos. He wore jeans, a T-shirt and very dirty boots. Jason guessed that
he was taking the children to school because he was unemployed and his wife was working or perhaps not yet up: the boy and
girl looked none too clean. He watched the man say something to the boy and the lad respond with a huge grin, running jauntily
alongside his father, happy, carefree, loved. The girl in the pushchair dropped a soft toy she had been clutching, a purple
creation of indeterminate species, and the man stopped to retrieve it, ruffling her hair as he handed it back to her. Long
after he had passed them Jason kept glancing back in the mirror.


He was often to think of them in the coming weeks, his mind showing him again a scruffy, tattooed man, a small mischievous boy and the infant girl in the pushchair with her earrings and too adult hairstyle. They had so little and so
much.


He sought out a parking space in the school grounds and found himself looking for Ed Deacon. Instead he saw Gaskill talking
to two boys from Year Nine. Jason was reaching for the pile of essays in the back of the car when he began to focus on the
deputy head’s words.


‘Ignorant … basic grammar. It is not “like I do”. It is “as I do”.’

Jason paused in the act of retrieving the papers, listening incredulously. The pupils being berated were of an ability level
just above special needs. He withdrew his head from the car and stared at the pair who were just then being dismissed. Gaskill
greeted him briefly and walked after the boys towards the assembly hall.


‘What on earth was all that about?’

Jason turned to see Carol Marsh, the newest recruit to the staff at Morton’s. She taught food technology and resolutely refused
to call it anything but cooking. ‘Mum taught it too and called it domestic science and I learned it as home economics but
Gran calls it cooking and Gran’s right,’ she had said. Even Hillier had looked amused.


‘That,’ said Jason, not sparing her, ‘was the sound of our deputy head cracking up.’

Carol looked back at him, uncertain if he was serious. He could read her thoughts. A time-serving head, the deputy having the next best thing to a nervous breakdown, an Ofsted inspection on the horizon, the
doziest school in Somerset: what am I doing here?

‘Are you OK?’

It was not the response he had expected but he answered immediately, deriving satisfaction from the words.


‘No, I am not. Yesterday I had a wife and two children and today I don’t know where they are.’

Somewhere in the distance a car door slammed and the high voice of a young boy called out, ‘Bye, Dad!’

The words hung in the air, a reminder of his loss, an eloquent description of his future. Jason turned towards the school
and other people’s children. Goodbye, Dad.


2

‘Sir, I’ve found out how the Romans dated their coins.’ Nick Bright joined Jason as he walked along the corridor to the staffroom
and gave him an excited explanation.


Looking down at him, trying to take an interest in the child’s recently acquired knowledge, Jason felt some of his tension
dissolve. He wondered i