Gavin Jones and his son Tyler sat in the far corner of the room, staring in awe at the shared pizza they had ordered. It was so big it took up half the table, but Tyler was hungry enough that he reckoned he could probably have given the majority of it a good go by himself. He reached for the crust and tore off a slice, dropping it onto his plate as the hot cheese burned his fingertips.

‘Steady,’ Gavin said, giving the boy a smile. It wasn’t reciprocated, but Gavin hadn’t expected it to be. It was going to take more than a pizza to win Tyler back over. During these past five years Julie had had plenty of time to fill the boy’s ears with poison against him. He had probably heard all sorts, most of it lies.

‘So how’s school going?’

It was a lame question, but he didn’t have much else to start with. He didn’t really know anything about his own son, but it had been obvious years earlier that things were going to go that way. Besides Julie doing her best to keep the boy from him, there was Tyler himself. Studying his son as he chewed a mouthful of pizza, Gavin realised not for the first time that the two of them had nothing in common. Tyler was nothing like him. In fact, Gavin had wondered years earlier whether the boy was even his. A DNA test reluctantly agreed to by Tyler’s mother had years ago proved he was, yet Gavin still found it hard to believe.

‘Fine. Yeah … it’s fine.’

Tyler was at the start of Year 9; Gavin at least knew that much. He couldn’t remember much about Year 9 at school – he hadn’t been there most of the time, and when he had bothered to turn up, his mind was always somewhere else – and he could already feel the conversation drying up before it had even begun. He wondered whether his son got bullied. He was a prime target, what with the shoulder-length hair and the pale skin, although apparently that sort of look was back in fashion. Maybe elsewhere, Gavin thought, but he couldn’t see it catching on round these parts.

‘Not long left,’ he said. ‘Couple of years and you won’t have to go any more.’

‘I like school,’ Tyler said flatly.

‘Oh.’

Tyler took another bite of pizza, while Gavin aimlessly prodded with a knife at the slice on his own plate. He wasn’t particularly hungry, and the tomato base that had been added too liberally was spilling from the edges of the melted cheese, oozing onto the plate like fresh blood on an operating table.

‘Look,’ he said, knowing he couldn’t spend much longer submerged in this uncomfortable silence. ‘Your nan’s probably said a lot of stuff about me. She’s poisoning you against me, that’s what she’s trying to do. She doesn’t want us to be friends, I don’t know why. Don’t believe her lies, okay, Tyler?’

Tyler looked blankly at him across the slice of pizza he was holding near his chin. There was a thin string of cheese caught at the corner of his mouth. ‘You’ve been to prison,’ he said. ‘That’s not a lie.’

‘I know,’ Gavin said, leaning across the table. ‘But it was years ago and I never did anything to hurt anyone, Tyler. Only myself. You believe that, don’t you?’ It wasn’t strictly true, but he figured that what the kid didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. It was all a long time ago now and a lot had happened since then. He had served his time: didn’t that mean he was entitled to a fresh start?

Tyler was looking at him sceptically. That was another reason why Gavin had doubted his paternity: the green eyes. They were almost too green, unnaturally so, as though the boy was wearing contact lenses. Tyler leaned back in his seat and reached both arms behind his head, gripping his hair in his hands and pulling it into a knot. To Gavin’s horror, his son pulled an elastic band from around his wrist and used it to tie his hair back into a bun.

‘What about your face? You’ve been in a fight.’

Gavin had wondered how long it would take before the bruises were brought up. He had already prepared his answer, which mostly involved telling Tyler the truth. He could afford it on this one. ‘I got jumped, that’s all.’ It wasn’t entirely a lie. Those Hassan brothers had been looking for trouble – everyone knew they were both always ready for a fight wherever they could find one – and he had only given them what they were after.

‘It wasn’t your fault, you mean? That’s what Nan says you always say.’

Gavin forced himself to bite his tongue, something he’d always had trouble doing. He was going to have to play the long game here, he thought; chip away at Tyler bit by bit until he realised that his nan wasn’t exactly a saint either. It was okay: Gavin wasn’t in a rush.

In fact, he thought, as he watched his son take another slice of pizza, he had all the time in the world.