After the punch, Flora had apologised over and over to Nan. The sisters sat side by side on Gil’s bedroom floor, and Flora learned that their father’s early symptoms of indigestion and sickness had been ignored—firstly by himself, and then by his GP—until it was too late. There had been some treatment offered that Gil had refused, saying it would only delay the inevitable and insisting on coming home as soon as he was able.
From the veranda they watched the sparrows pecking at the crumbs of toast Nan had thrown out, taking turns with a dust bath in a dip they had made in front of the gorse bushes, and then Flora watched Gil sleeping, his eyeballs moving under his closed lids like a dreaming dog’s. She took her sketch pad from under her chair and got out a charcoal pencil, putty rubber, and a small piece of rag that she kept wedged in between the sheets. The smell of drawing was cream, a clotted and buttery yellow.
She moved into the shade to stop the glare coming off the blank page and drew her father, his head tipped against the wing of the chair, his right hand resting in his lap and the other in the sling, his good cheekbone polished to a knuckle by the clear light reflected off the sea. With the rag she moved the charcoal across the page, lifting it with the rubber, smudging it with the tip of a wet finger.
“Have you had an argument with your young man?”
Flora looked up. She’d thought he was still sleeping.
“Not really.” The angle of his head had changed and she redrew the line that ran from his temple past the hollow of his cheek to under his chin.
“It’s not worth it,” Gil said.
“What isn’t?”
“Upsetting someone you love.”
Flora glanced up. “Who said I loved him?”
“You never know when you’ll see them for the last time.”
Flora stared at her drawing, tore it out of the pad, and crumpled it up.
She began again, a series of dashes, shadows, and lines—the bones in Gil’s head no different from the chair’s structure. She liked to see how much could be left out of a drawing while keeping it recognisably human. People’s brains always wanted to fill in the gaps—imagine a nose where there was only a hint of a nostril, or the fully formed whorl of an ear where she drew a short coil. Everyone saw a different picture. Flora’s fingers were grimed with black and there was dirt under her nails. The man on the paper didn’t look like her father: he was healthy and young, and he would live forever. She ripped this page out too, and tore it in half.
“Aren’t you going to show me?” Gil said.
“They’re rubbish. I can’t do it anymore.” She leaned forwards in her chair, picking at the rinds under her nails. “Daddy?” she started, but when her father looked up she didn’t know which question she wanted to ask—whether he was certain he had seen Ingrid in Hadleigh, what it felt like to know he was dying, or why he really wanted all the books burned. Instead she said, “Did I tell you that it rained fish the other day, when I was driving here in Richard’s car? They were bouncing off the roof and the bonnet.”
“I don’t know why you think you can’t draw anymore, Flo. It seems to me you did a bloody good drawing in Queer Fish.” Her father winked.
She looked through her sketchbook: Nan hanging out the washing, Martin in his slippers reading the paper, Richard sleeping, his glasses skewed on his face.
After a few minutes Gil said, “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”
“What?” Flora said.
“Bring your chair closer.”
Without standing, she shuffled her chair towards his.
“Closer,” he said. She moved until the arms of their chairs were touching. Behind him, some optical illusion made the sea appear higher than the land, as if it were being sucked away in the presentiment of something momentous. “It’s always been you and me, Flo, hasn’t it? I should have let your sister in more, and your mother of course. But that’s done now. There’s something I want you to do for me.”
“What is it? I’ll do anything you want, Daddy.” She sought his hand from under the blanket.
“I want you to get me a baby’s boot. One of those knitted ones.”
Flora pulled her hand away. “A what?” she said.
“And it must be blue. Blue wool. I don’t need a pair—just one will do. I wondered if Nan might have them at the hospital. I can’t ask her myself; she’ll think I’ve gone mad.”
“Christ, Daddy.” Flora laughed. “I thought you were going to ask for something important. You nearly made my heart flip.”
“It is important. It’s very important. I need it, Flora.” Gil’s face didn’t change.
“Come off it, Daddy. You can let me in on the joke now. What do you need it for? A one-legged baby?”
He didn’t answer.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Flora stopped smiling.
“Completely.”
“God, Daddy. What is all this?”
“I’m going to bury it.”
“What?” Flora said again. “Why?”
“It’s just something your mother . . .” He stopped midsentence, as if checking his words. “So you won’t ask Nan?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Forget I ever asked. Forget it.” Gil tucked his hand back beneath the blanket, rested his head against the wing of his chair, and said something under his breath.
“What?” Flora said. He didn’t repeat it, but it may have been, “Baby shoes, never worn.”