The Arrest

I was five when I saw my dad being arrested. I remember every bit of it, especially the looks on my friends’ faces at the playground, and their mums’ and dads’.

My dad was taking me out like he did every
Saturday, two hours in the afternoon. I went to
his house on Wednesdays as well, after school. But it was the Saturdays I enjoyed the most.
Playing football in the park, or up on the Downs flying his model planes, or just going for a walk along the seafront and getting chips on the pier. It kept me going all week because I loved my dad to bits. I still cried when he took me home to
Mum, even though I knew I was getting too old for that. Mum hadn’t told me a lot about why her and Dad didn’t live together. To me then he was the best adult in the world, always winding me up. He would tell me something completely mad and I would believe it because he sounded so sincere, then he’d say he was just joking. It wasn’t mean, he did it in a really funny way. But when I was telling Mum how great Dad was and I wished he could live with us, she changed the subject or told me to be quiet.

Anyway, this Saturday we were at the park, like
we were quite a lot, and Dad was pushing me on the swings, when suddenly the swing stopped. I looked round to see what Dad was doing, and there were these two policemen talking to him. Actually, one was a woman. A lot of other people were looking, too. Straight away I thought something bad was happening. They were going to take Dad away. I couldn’t understand what they were saying to him, but Dad pointed at me and
said he was with his son. I got off the swing and stood next to Dad. The woman crouched down to talk to me, she was trying to be all nice but I knew she wasn’t. She said they had to ask my daddy some questions, and it had to be at the police station. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll take you home to your mummy first.”

“I don’t want to go home,” I said. “I’m out with my dad. It’s Dad and Mum, not Daddy and Mummy. I’m not two.”

She just gave me this stupid smile, really fake, then told my dad that we both had to go with them now. My dad was handcuffed. I didn’t know why, he wasn’t going to hit them or anything. We had to walk back over the grass to where the police had parked their car, with everyone looking at us. Kids that I knew were there and everything. I knew they’d all be talking about it, and it would be all round the school on Monday. I hated them already for it. Obviously they had got the wrong person. What could my dad have done?

They took me back to my mum’s house. I knew she had told them where my dad was, because they didn’t ask where I lived or anything. So they had obviously been there first. I didn’t realise till later that they must have known the address anyway, to go there in the first place, but
still, how did they know where Dad was? Only Mum would know. So I knew straight away.

I was sitting next to Dad in the back seat and holding his hand, even though he had cuffs on.
Dad wouldn’t look at me and I guess it was because he was embarrassed. I never thought that
he’d done something wrong. We didn’t say
anything, though. It only took five minutes to get back. We had walked to the park – Dad didn’t have a car. I didn’t want to go home, I wanted
to stay with Dad. I was worried. What were they going to ask him?

The policewoman got out and opened my door for me. I knew I had to go, but when I thought about Mum I felt sick and angry. Why did she tell them where Dad was? I feel differently now, of course –she couldn’t have done anything else, lying to the police could make things worse. But at the time, all I thought was that she hated Dad and she wanted to ruin my life. So she must hate me, too. Dad was the best thing in my life, and Mum was boring.

The woman walked up to the front door with me and rang the bell. Mum answered straight away.
“Here’s your little boy, Mrs Harris,” she said.
“We’re going to have to take Mr Harris in for questioning.”

“What’s he meant to have done?” Mum cut in.

“I’m sorry, we can’t discuss that at this time, and certainly not in front of your son. We’ll
contact you in due course.”

“I see. Well, thanks for bringing Paul back. In you come, darling.”

I didn’t need telling again. I pushed past Mum and ran upstairs. I didn’t want to look at her or talk to her. I didn’t hear her saying goodbye to the policewoman, because I was too busy slamming my bedroom door. But I heard the car driving off and watched it out of my window. What would happen to Dad? This was all wrong. Mum should have just told them they’d made a mistake. That was what I thought.

It took a long time for me to trust Mum after that. I thought this was all her fault. At first, I thought they’d let Dad go and I’d see him on Wednesday. But that didn’t happen, and next Saturday didn’t happen. It went on and on. I hated not seeing Dad, and I spent every night and the whole weekend in my room, avoiding Mum. When I asked her what was happening, she said she didn’t know. I knew she was lying. He was my dad, I had a right to know!

Things just went from bad to worse. After a year, I found out Dad had been sent to prison. The sentence – fifteen years – was a lifetime to me. I would be a grown-up before I saw him again. I wasn’t allowed to go and see him because I was too young.

I started getting into trouble at school and from when I was about seven, I stopped spending
most of my free time in my room and went out with my friends instead. We would do normal stuff, playing football, but it started to get more and more into dodgy stuff. I was normally the one doing it, the others would dare me because I would do anything. When I was ten, I started nicking booze from the offy, and we’d all share it. I’d hide behind people and stuff whatever I could in my bag, so sometimes it was whisky, sometimes it was gin. It didn’t matter.

My relationship with Mum was awful. She never tried to talk to me, so I thought she didn’t care about me. She was the parent and she let me out all the time. I think she was drinking a lot too. When I was fourteen, I came in drunk and she asked me what was going on with me. I was saying, how come she cared about me now? She said not to talk to her like that. It went on and I ended up hitting her. I actually broke her nose. I felt bad about it afterwards. I went to the hospital with her, but then I got talked to by the police. Because I’d had warnings from them before, I ended up getting put in a Young Offenders place for three years. So now I was just like Dad, Mum said when she came to see me, which wasn’t often.

I knew by now what he’d been convicted of – he’d been part of a gang that robbed an old woman’s house and assaulted her when it went wrong. I believed it now, because I was just like him. Needless to say, I didn’t get on well in prison. I was still drinking – it wasn’t hard to get hold of it. I was starting to get into drugs as well. It didn’t help that the conditions were terrible, and staff seemed to get away with doing anything they liked to the kids.

Then when I was sixteen – totally out of the blue – Dad came to see me. He’d been let out early, as it turned out there was new evidence and he’d never been there on that night. He’d been set up by the other gang members because he didn’t want to be involved. I used to be convinced he hadn’t done anything, but now I knew it was true, I couldn’t take any comfort from it. He was stupid for letting people do that to him, and for being involved with people like that in the first place. He was the reason I’d ended up in here. I stopped looking up to him pretty much as soon as I was behind bars, and I can’t see things getting any better with Mum. Now I feel like when I get out, I just want to make a fresh start, away from both of them. There’s nothing they can offer me.