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Sharp words, absent touches, thin blankets, empty plates.
I think about the times I thought of her as a hard woman, an unfair mother, and I realise what mercifully pale reflections those moments were.
He says are you asleep, gently, and I open my eyes and he says are you okay?
I say yes, fine, I’m just a bit tired.
He says do you want to stop for something to eat? I could do with a rest he says, and he squeezes the back of his neck the same way my father used to.
He was always a weary man, my dad.
He seemed to be permanently in the lounge, watching television, slung low in the armchair with his feet up on the table, dark patches on his white socks like mould on soft fruit.
He never seemed to be watching the programmes, unless they were boxing-related, but it was impossible to change the channel without him noticing.
When he did move around the house he moved slowly, easing his workboots off by the door, shuffling through to speak to my mother, settling into his chair as if into a hot bath.
Sometimes when I got back from school he’d already be there, not in his chair but scraping his way through the house, cleaning slowly.
The curtains would always be closed on those days, my mother an absent presence upstairs.
Your mother’s not feeling so good today my dad would say, but she never went to the doctor’s.
He would cook me tea, burning fishfingers under the grill with tiredness clouding his eyes like bruises.
Once we ate from paper plates, and I didn’t think to ask why.
He says there’s some services here do you want to stop for a while, and he’s already indicating so I say yes and we drive in and park.
We sit in the restaurant in the bridge, picking at overpriced and overheated food, watching the traffic slashing beneath us.
There’s a group of women at the table next to us, and I hear one of them saying but I don’t understand why he was naked in the first place.
He says so anyway how did you get on then, was it okay?
I say well my mum at least admitted she wasn’t that impressed, I think, and my dad didn’t say much at all.
I don’t tell him what my dad did say.
A woman at the next table says I didn’t really think he was like that, and another woman says well he’s not usually is he.
He says but do you think it was worth going, and I say yes, yes it was, I think maybe I’ve started something, I think maybe they just need a little more time.
One of the women says no it was Phoebe’s idea, she said he needed to show some empathy, to get the apartment, you know, with the ugly naked guy.
I stand by the entrance and wait for him to come out of the toilet.
I watch a boy with David Beckham on his t-shirt playing a football game in the arcades.
I watch a woman with a pushchair waiting for someone to hold the door open for her.
I look at the pushchair, at the bag dangling from the back of it, spilling over with nappies and cloths and bottles and all the other paraphernalia of babydom that I know nothing about.
I realise that I haven’t begun to think about any of these things, prams, pushchairs, cots, nappies.
I realise that I will soon be a mother, and my stomach goes sick at the thought of it, greasy and fluid and unstable.
My face feels red, my legs feel as thin as paper.
