Songs For Your Mother Gordon MacMillan (good books for 7th graders .txt) 📖

Even thinking the word nappies gives me flashbacks to being in the park with TSP and Georgia when she was small following a nappy explosion.

‘Well, what would you call it then?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve been at this for a matter of hours. Besides, it feels unfair,’ I say.

‘And your point is? You’ve written about everything else. People love the dating column,’ Susan says.

‘Yeah, right up until the point I got that double-barrel blowback from that woman who read what I’d written. Not much love there,’ I say.

‘That was dating justice. You should have told her you that you were writing something. What did she message you again?’

‘She said she felt like she had been publicly violated and never to contact her again,’ I say.

‘You’re a nightmare,’ Susan says.

That’s harsh and, to be fair, it is more accurate to say I’m relatively useless at dating, which has evolved into some modern-day gladiatorial sport. The rules are complicated. Winning is difficult, and sometimes winning is not even the point. I guess there must be one, maybe it’s progressing? Simply moving around the board, like a game of Monopoly, gradually enhancing your status with relationships, engagements, marriage and children. I seem to have skipped over all those stages. I’m not sure I even passed go.

That’s why I like Rachel. Maybe I am a total nightmare? There’s a sobering amount of self-realisation taking place this morning.

‘I’m not writing about how I was parachuted into fatherhood or whatever this is,’ I say.

‘Give it some more thought. I really think you should. There’s a story here, and it is one that’s full of tragedy, twists and turns. Trust me, as your editor, this would be gold,’ Susan says, smiling beatifically.

I already know that she is thinking that when she pitches this idea in her editorial meeting, everyone is going to love it.

‘You think? Somehow, I can see it backfiring. I could do without that as I work out what Luke…’

It is at this point I look around for Luke. He was right next to me a moment ago, looking at the kids’ magazines, only now he isn’t. I understand instantly what has happened. For the minutes that Susan and I browsed newspapers and magazines and jabbered on about dating and other nonsense, it completely slipped my mind that I had Luke with me. It slipped my mind that I have a five-year-old child.

I’m a terrible instant parent. He was there tugging away at my pocket one moment, and then he was gone. It was like I exorcised him from the picture and carried on as I would on every other Saturday, quietly amusing myself and paying absolutely no attention to anyone around me, talking about babies or football or whatever. Will always talked to me about football and Arsenal, even though I’ve zero interest in the game. It’s funny what you miss when it’s gone, as I would love to hear Will’s football chat again. I wonder what is going on with the team. Are we even winning anymore?

‘Where’s Luke?’ I ask with rising levels of panic in my voice.

The two of us start to walk away from the magazine rack toward the vegetable section. There’s no sign of Luke anywhere. There’s no Luke, I say to myself, although unlike earlier when I was hoping I would wake up from some child-inhabited dream, I now know there is a Luke and he was with me only moments ago. Lauren entrusted him to me; he is our son. He’s my son, we have the same colour eyes, and now he’s out there somewhere on his own in a strange supermarket and in a foreign land. Holy crap I lost my kid.

‘He was just here,’ Susan says.

‘It was you and your baby and dating discourse,’ I say. ‘I can’t lose him. I’ve just got him.’

‘He can’t have gone far,’ Susan says. ‘Besides they’re very fast, everyone says so. You go that way, and I’ll go this way. I’ll meet you at the other end.’

The two of us head off on our search for Luke. I walk across the front of the supermarket, peering methodically down the aisles. I pass fresh produce, pizza and Italian, meat and fish. I skirt the bread aisle and canned goods, and before I know it I am at household goods. I can’t see Luke anywhere. I start to head in the opposite direction. It is only then that I start to freak out. Lauren sent Luke all the way here and I lost him after a couple of hours in a bloody Tesco.

I start to call out Luke’s name, and I sound like one of those idiot parents I’ve often seen wandering around the supermarket calling out for ‘Ava or Oliver, who is only four and wandered off’. I was always so scornful of these people and labelled them useless parents and terrible people. How difficult could it be, I smugly thought to myself, to keep sight of your child? I mean, how hard could it be?

The truth is, it is a lot harder than it first appears. I feel guilty now about all the perfectly decent parents that I previously denigrated. For multiple numbers of wandering parents, the loss of a child in a supermarket or other large retail establishment is probably not an uncommon occurrence. I make a mental note. Apparently, children are very easy to lose due to low height and deceptive levels of speed.

‘Luke! Luke!’ I’m calling, and I’ve raised my voice, and I realise saying the word Luke is wildly ineffective. Detecting distress, a supermarket supervisor, a woman with blonde hair in her late fifties walks over towards me. She has a look of calm reassurance on her face that says, I know what’s happened and it will be all right, as if all this has happened before and will happen again.

‘Are you all right, sir? Have you lost someone?’ she asks.

I come over sheepish, and I don’t want to own up to my