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digs instead of creepin’ in here like Marley’s Ghost at all hours. There’s a nice slice of beef in the fridge if your hungry.’
    After Diane’s phone call, that hateful morning after my father died, to announce the unwelcome news that I was going to be a father, I sat on the stairs unable to comprehend the enormity of what was happening to me. I had no idea what to do but an increasing sense of panic told me that I had to get out of the house. It was still fairly early and I had no idea where I was going. I headed off across the park, stunned by the way my life had been turned upside down in a matter of hours, walking around in a daze asking myself a thousand questions.
Top of the list was ‘How the bloody hell am I going to explain this one to my mother?’ I felt sick at the mess I was in, and dry retched on what was probably the twentieth fag I’d smoked that morning. This was it. Life over. The end of my world as I knew it. Sitting on what was left of a bench I weighed up my situation. Dad dead, mother seriously ill in hospital, and to cap it all I’m about to be saddled with a baby – a piece of news that I really could’ve done without, especially on today of all days.
    For a moment I contemplated ‘doing a runner’, following a white rabbit who would lead me down a hole, vanishing forever from my increasingly complicated life, or curling up in a ball somewhere and going to sleep, pretending none of this had ever happened.
    I thought about my father and my devastated mother and the tears came again.
    Oh, the sheer hopelessness of it all. And yet I knew deep down, no matter what my fears, that I’d never be able to run away as, apart from a genuine affection for Diane, good old guilt would step in the way and prevent me from doing so. No, I’d stay and face the music. It was the first sensible solution to my problems that had entered my head that morning and I felt instantly more relaxed for it.
    Lighting up yet another cigarette, I watched as a man crossed by the children’s swings, a canvas bag swinging from his shoulder that almost certainly contained his ‘carry out’ – a lunchtime meal of cheese or egg sandwiches and a flask of tea – no doubt lovingly prepared by his wife this morning.
An alarming thought sent me panicking again as I watched him vanish down the hill and in the direction of Cammel Laird.
    Jesus tonight! What if I was expected to do the decent thing and marry Diane? No, that was definitely out of the question. I could see us, unhappily married and living in her flat in Bootle, pushing a pram around Stanley Park, skint and miserable and hating each other as we played Mummy and Daddy for the baby’s sake, a baby I’d bitterly resent.
    The notion that I would be a father in nine months’ time did nothing to awaken any paternal urges that might be lying dormant. I loved kids, I’d been ecstatic when I first became an uncle and was never away from my sister’s house. I’d spend a good part of my wages each week on books and toys for my nephews and nieces and had happily babysat nearly every weekend. I was crazy for them, yet the idea of having one of my own did not appeal in the slightest. Maybe I’d change my mind when I saw it, I thought. I might just fall instantly in love with it, but then again I just might not. As for a full-time relationship, should I give it a go? Millions of others do it, I thought, so why not me and Diane? Probably something to do with the fact that I was gay and saw Diane more as a friend than a lover. No, it just wouldn’t work and I was determined to ‘have it out’ when we met up the next day in Liverpool, sitting at an out-of-the-way table in the Lisbon pub to discuss what we were going do.
    Diane was as shell-shocked as me at the news she was going to have a baby as she’d foolishly believed that it was impossible for her to conceive. I was too naive to believe otherwise. Ha. If only I’d listened to my aunty Chrissie’s warning to