Don’t do that again, please, sweetheart.
‘Anyway,’ she says, chewing her mouth, again trying to find something to say. ‘Uni’s pretty good. I’ve met loads of brilliant people, Dad, and I love living in London. I’m going to have to get a job, maybe bar work or something. It’s just so expensive …’ She tails off and lightly places her hand back on top of mine, the best medicine.
‘That’s why I haven’t been to see you for a couple of weeks. I’m sorry. It sounds so selfish, but I’ve just been so caught up in my own stuff. I decided to stay in London over Christmas. Mum wanted me home in Brighton, of course, but I just wanted to do my own thing …’
Lucy looks at me, frowning slightly. She chews one of her fingernails. My heart seizes. Something’s on her mind; I can tell.
What is it, my love?
‘Mum was going to come with me to see you today, Dad, but she bottled it at the last minute, said something came up with Gran and she had to go and help her.’ Lucy rolls her eyes at her mum’s transparent excuse. We both know Ange’s mum prides herself on never asking for help, and even if she did, we know she wouldn’t ask her daughter.
‘I thought she should tell you herself, but –’ Lucy rubs her face with her hands, and shakes her head a couple of times ‘– Mum’s got a new boyfriend, Dad. Craig. He works in insurance, and he’s pretty much the most boring man I’ve ever met.’
Ange has a boyfriend, a boyfriend called Craig. Strange, the simple sentence doesn’t appal me, doesn’t even surprise me that much. I imagine insurance man Craig, a lumpy face, the colour of porridge, pulling his double chin away from the collar of a cheap polyester suit and I hope he’ll succeed where I failed again and again. I wonder if he’ll be able to make Ange happy, lift a life full of disappointment. I wonder if he can make Ange’s mouth so often pursed as a tight knot finally loosen into a long-lost smile. I hope so. I’d like to think she could be happy; it would be good for Lucy to see her mum happy.
Lucy leans over me to look at the photo of us, me dressed as Santa, her on my knee, she laughs a small, wet laugh.
‘We had fun, didn’t we, Dad? You and me?’
Remember our fishing trip to Wales?
‘Remember when we went to Wales? I caught, like, ten fish and you caught one tiny little thing.’ She laughs again before she looks down at me and her smile disappears. When I was with Lucy, the creature seemed to nap. I didn’t want to drink when I was with her; didn’t want to miss a thing.
She puts the photo back on my bedside unit and comes to sit back in the visitor’s chair. Silence settles around us and I feel her struggle for something to say. Luce and I used to laugh at things no one else saw or understood: a jogger’s funny run; a dog kicking clumps of grass in the air with their back legs after going to the toilet. Ange used to tell us to shut up. We used to be good in silence as well, Luce and I, but before the silence was chosen, not forced upon us like now. She fiddles with the ring in her nose, looks at her hands. I wish she wouldn’t search for something to say; it makes me feel like we’re not us any more.
‘I’ve started talking to someone, Dad,’ she says, not lifting her eyes from her hands. ‘A uni counsellor. It’s free so I thought I may as well.’ She shrugs and looks up at me, new tears falling fast as rain down her face. Her voice is a tiny, frightened little thing when she starts, but it gets stronger, practised, as she keeps talking.
‘I want you to know I forgive you. I forgive you for drinking, I forgive you for disappearing and I forgive you for lying to us. I know now that it’s a disease, just like cancer or whatever. You couldn’t help it. It’s not your fault. That’s why I forgive you.’
She leans forward, and squeezes my hand. Her tears dampen my bed and I would die a happy man if the world would just let me stroke her hair once, or tell her I love her. But, of course, I’m asking too much. Her forgiveness chimes through my veins like a sugar rush neutralising, for a while at least, the bitterness of my shame.
I love you, I’m so proud of you.
I say it again and again, my whole body pulsing with the charge, and I hope she senses the flavour of my feeling at least, which I think she does because she splutters a little laugh and smiles down at me.
We sit in silence together for a few minutes, Lucy cries some more before she kisses my cheek, sending the loveliest wave rippling through my blood.
‘I’ll come again soon, Dad. Love you.’
No more piercings! That’s an order!
She gives me a final little smile and then she disappears.
The space around my bed seems to ache with her absence and I am alone again.
12
Cassie
Cassie sips her coffee and stands back in the shed to look at the canvas, which glistens, wet with paint, before her. The coffee tastes processed, too meddled with. She’s not used to decaf. She winces and puts it on the windowsill, careful to avoid the bumblebee that has been bashing itself uselessly against the window pane all afternoon. Every time she tries to rescue it, the stupid thing flies away.
She turns back to the canvas.
Inspiration struck for the painting while she was swimming in the sea with Jonny at Birling Gap. It was one of those freakishly hot June days and they’d been at a sweaty indoor market all day. Jonny had been nervous, and shouted at Cassie when she’d swam underwater. He’d said there were invisible rip currents, but she’d been hypnotised by how the sunlight, as seen from underwater, silvered the undulating surface of the water, weird and mercurial. She’d wanted to harness that mottled, refracted light on her canvas, and hoped it would fill the viewers’ ears with the endless silence of the ocean. She’d wanted them to feel peaceful, held, safe.
Before she started painting, she imagined taking a photo of her work so Jonny would finally understand her vision, but now that feels needy, too desperate for praise, and besides she hasn’t got it at all. The canvas is flat, one-dimensional; it looks like an A-level attempt. Completely shit.
Suddenly the shed feels stuffy, claustrophobic. She pulls off the old shirt she uses for painting. It slides to the floor but she can’t be arsed to pick it up. She leaves the disgusting coffee on the windowsill. The shed door bangs shut behind her, and after a brief armistice, the bee recommences its assault, bashing itself against the pane again and again and again.