Putting the Foca in the picture

The Foca brings back our son two and a half hours late. My son gives me a shell he picked up on the Brighton beach for me and runs in to get his Beaver top to proudly show his father.

"We've been handed notice," I say. "I was thinking, when you handed us notice, you should have gone to live with your sister and I should have stayed to let this process legally evict me from your brother's house."

He stares at the ground as I say this saying nothing, which I expected. "[Our son] says you're moving upstairs."

"No," I smile that manic smile of having had only a piece of toast to eat all day. "This is a process, the same nasty process we've been stuck in for years. Look how skinny I'm getting," pulling the sides of my skinny jeans as I say this.

We start discussing our son's birthday party but I want a reaction to what I said earlier. "I plan his parties every year but I can't this year. I feel bad as his birthday is the most important day in the year, but I can't take care of it right now. If you hadn't evicted..."

"I never evicted you," he shouts and doing the motions of carrying something heavy continued: "I moved you out, I physically carried your stuff!"
"To assuage your guilt!" I say.
"Oh fuck off."
"Don't speak to me like that." And off he stormed.

Back then, what feels like a hundred years ago now, I did ask him to go and live with his sister and let me stay there and claim benefits for the flat but he said no.

One day, after the Council came round to see if it was actually true that a father had handed notice to his son and son's mother, we had an argument.

"You're such a victim," he said.
"If I'm a victim you're a bully." I replied.
"Victim," he shot back.
"Bully."
"Victim."
"Bully."
"Victim."
"Bully." On and on until he left the room.

I was a victim back then, I'm sorry to say, but I had just been made redundant for the second time since my son's birth. My son was a year old. Following that row the Foca said he'd go to his sister's, pay off his debts, come and get us. So I moved out, he moved in with her and the flat went to estate agents to take care of.

Notice from him, notice from the Church, now notice from a Housing Association in accordance to its lease with the Council, my keeper, and the owner of this flat who bought it from previous owners two years ago.

Just giving you a bit of history.