I hug him, carefully. He’s lost quite a bit of weight since having COVID. “It’s good to see you, Dad. How are you feeling?”
“Ah…well, not so good,” he says, trying to smile. The effort of this exchange has already been so great he has to close his eyes for a few moments. I wonder if he knows he’s had COVID. I wonder if he even understands where he is, in this unexpected shaft of lucidity.
“Can I help you get more comfortable?”
“Oh no, I’m all right.” His speech is slow, deliberate, as if he’s having to shape each word before speaking. “How is it all going? How many laparotomies have you got under your belt now?”
Dearest Dad. I had to get one hundred laparotomies under my belt before completing my training, and in two of my surgical reg jobs they’d only come about rarely. When they had presented, I’d had to fight for the cases with peers and seniors alike, all the while pretending not to fight at all. I explained this to him probably seven, eight years ago, yet it’s the thing he remembers first today.
“I got the full hundred by ST6!”
“Of course you did.” He smiles. “I always knew you would. Your mother will never admit she was wrong, but she was, wasn’t she? You were always meant to be a surgeon.”
Dad has always been the safer and more reliable of my parents, but he’s far from perfect. More than thirty years have passed since they split up, but he still needs Mum to be the bad guy.
“Listen, Dad,” I say. I know this is neither the time nor the place, but I don’t feel willing to pass up this opportunity. “Bit of a strange question, but did you—ah…were you in touch with Johan around the time he was imprisoned?”
Dad doesn’t say anything for a while, but he’s looking at me oddly. My diaphragm pulls up.
Then: “No,” he says. “I mean, I don’t think so.”
I stare at my father, torn between my desperate need to know moreand my instinct, as his daughter, to protect him from anything that might feel stressful or difficult.
“I know it’s a bit of an odd question, but did you speak to him while we were in Thailand?”
“It’s possible,” he says slowly. I look at him sharply. His tone has changed ever so slightly; he sounds a little more polite now, a little more wary. Oh, Dad. Please don’t go.
He’s got new pajamas. Blue and white stripes; they’ll be one of the many things Nicola has bought to distract herself from her grief.
“Would there be any chance of ateh tarik?” he asks after a pause. I’m pretty sure I’ve lost him.
“Of course. Do you have a mug?”
With some effort, Dad passes me a used mug. “There you go, dear. Do you know how to make it?”
I stare into my father’s mug and tears fill my eyes.Teh tarikwas what Mum made for Dad the very first time he visited her in her studio flat in west London. Although he stopped loving her a long time ago, Dad never stopped lovingteh tarik. Frothy, sweet condensed milk tea, poured repeatedly from one cup to another; he’s been drinking this for decades. His bedside cabinet here at the nursing home is full of cans of Nestlé Carnation. Nicola’s trained all the staff to make it for him.
“Of course I know how to make it, Dad,” I say gently, but he’s gone—visibly uncomfortable that this woman in his room is calling him Dad. And I’m not sure what feels worse: my selfishness in using this precious window to ask him about my ex-husband, or the prospect that this may be the last time he recognized me.
I go off to get his tea and come back to a man who has no idea who I am. The sky brightens as we make small talk, this polite elderly gentleman with the stranger in his room, and long winter shadows creep through his window. I tell him Maya will be back from London in afew days and he says tiredly that that sounds nice; I must be looking forward to seeing her.
By the time I leave his room, he’s close to falling asleep.You and Yoursbabbles on in the background on his portable radio and he’s smiling as he begins to drift. The scene is warm and calming, hard to parse with the reality of a slowly dying man at its center. I don’t tell him I love him, because I don’t want to embarrass or confuse him, but I do tell him I’ve had a lovely time chatting to him, and he seems pleased to be signing off in this way.
—
I go for a walk near Dad’s care home. The drive back to my house is less than half an hour, but I don’t feel able to sit still for twenty-seven minutes.
I try the Thai number from Dad’s phone records again. This time, it’s answered.
“Hello?” a voice says, just as I say the same. Two or three times, same thing.Hello? Hello?
Eventually, I manage to ask who I’m talking to.
“Ah…this is Katerina,” she replies. She sounds like she’s from eastern Europe, although I can’t pinpoint the country. “This is a hotel room. Direct line. Who are you looking for?”
I apologize, calmly, but my heart is pounding now. “Which hotel?”
“Er…the River Paradise Lodge.”
