‘You have the same awful sense of humour,’ I said, and she tried not to look pleased.
It was then that the owner, overhearing our conversation, mentioned that he had a photograph. ‘I keep pictures of all of my tattoos,’ he said, from under a heavily waxed handlebar moustache. ‘I like to have a record. Just remind me of the date?’
We stood there silently as he flicked through his laminated binder. And there it was, from almost two years previously, a close-up of that black and white design, neatly inked onto Will’s caramel skin. I stood and stared at the photograph, its familiarity taking my breath away. The little black and white patterned block, the one I had washed with a soft cloth, which I had dried, rubbed sun cream into, rested my face against. I would have reached out to touch it, but Lily got there first, her fingers with their bitten nails tracing gently over the image of her father’s skin. ‘I think I’ll get one,’ she said. ‘Like his, I mean. When I’m old enough.’
‘So how is he?’
Lily and I turned. The tattooist was sitting on his chair, rubbing at a heavily coloured forearm. ‘I remember him. We don’t get many quadriplegics in here.’ He grinned. ‘He’s a bit of a character, isn’t he?’
A lump rose suddenly to my throat.
‘He’s dead,’ said Lily, baldly. ‘My dad. He’s dead.’
The tattooist winced. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I had no idea.’
‘Can I keep this?’ Lily had started to work the photograph of Will’s tattoo out of its plastic binder.
‘Sure,’ he said hurriedly. ‘If you want it, take it. Here, have the plastic cover as well. Case it rains.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, tucking it neatly under her arm, and as the man stuttered another apology, we walked out of the shop.
We had lunch – an all-day breakfast – silently in a café. Feeling the day’s mood leach away from us, I began to talk. I told Lily what I knew of Will’s romantic history, about his career, that he was the kind of man who made you long for his approval, whether just by doing something that impressed him or making him laugh with some stupid joke. I told her how he was when I met him, and how he had changed, softened, starting to find joy in small things, even if many of those small things seemed to involve making fun of me. ‘Like I wasn’t very adventurous when it came to food. My mum basically has ten set meals which she’s rotated for the past twenty-five years. And none of them involves quinoa. Or lemongrass. Or guacamole. Your dad would eat anything.’
‘And now you do too?’
‘Actually, I still try guacamole every couple of months or so. For him, really.’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘It tastes okay, I suppose. I just can’t get past the fact that it looks like something you blow out of your nose.’
I told her about his previous girlfriend, and how we had gatecrashed her wedding dance, me sitting on Will’s lap as we turned his motorized wheelchair in circles on the dance floor, and she had snorted her drink through her nose. ‘Seriously? Her wedding?’ In the overheated confines of the little café, I conjured her father for her as best I could, and perhaps it was because we were away from all the complications of home, or because her parents were in a different country, or because, just for once, someone was telling her stories about him that were uncomplicated and funny, she laughed, and asked questions, nodding often as if my answers had confirmed something she already believed. Yes, yes, he was like this. Yes, maybe I’m like that too.
And as we talked well into the afternoon, letting our cups of tea cool in front of us, and the weary waitress offered yet again to remove the last of the toast we had taken two hours to eat, I grasped something else: for the first time, I was recalling Will without sadness.
‘What about you?’
‘What about me?’ I put the last crust into my mouth, eyeing the waitress, who looked as if this was her trigger to come back again.
‘What happened to you after Dad died? I mean, you seem to have done a lot more stuff when you were with him – even with him being stuck in a wheelchair – than you do now.’
The bread had turned claggy in my mouth. I struggled to swallow. Eventually, when the mouthful had gone down, I said, ‘I do things. I’ve just been busy. Working. I mean, when you’re on shifts, it’s hard to make plans.’
She raised her eyebrows a fraction, but she didn’t say anything.
‘And my hip is still quite painful. I’m not really up to mountain-climbing yet.’
Lily stirred her tea idly.
‘My life is eventful. I mean, falling off a roof isn’t exactly humdrum. That’s quite a lot of excitement for one year!’
‘But it’s hardly doing something, is it?’
We were silent for a moment. I took a breath, trying to quell the sudden buzzing in my ears. The waitress, arriving between us, swept up our empty plates, with a faint air of triumph, and took them to the kitchen.