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‘Well, you’re wrong. My whole life has been a search for meaning. My whole life has been about trying to work out what the fuck I’m for.’
‘Yeah. Right.’
‘Yes. Right. You know, Henry, did you ever stop and think about what it does to a person growing up with a father like mine? You only had him in your life for a few years. I had him in my life for eighteen. I was already fighting for my own identity, for my own survival long before I ever met you.’
‘But you made me feel so …’
‘What? What did I make you feel, Henry?’
‘Lesser.’
‘That’s such bullshit. Come on. You were the one with the big house and the posh school and the bedroom full of nice things. Iarrived in your house withnothing. Literally just a bag of clothes. And there you were, Little Lord Fauntleroy, witheverything. Everything a child could want. How do you think that made me feel?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know how it made you feel.’
‘It made me defensive, Henry. It made me turn inwards. It made me want to lose myself in books and dreams and thoughts of worlds that existed outside my own tragic existence. And there you were. Wanting, wanting, wanting. Looking at me like I had the answers to everything. And I had nothing, Henry. Could you not see that? I hadnothing. And the more you expected me to give you something, the more it reminded me how little I had to give. You were the one, Henry. You were the leader. You were the one who got us out of there in the end.’
‘But I nearly killed you. Did you know that? I nearly killed you. It was me giving you the drugs that made you ill. They were meant to make you love me. It was a ridiculous fuckinglove potion, Phin. And it nearly killed you.’
‘I wasn’t ill from your love potion, Henry. I was ill from malnutrition. From dehydration. It was their fault I was ill. Not yours.’ Phin sighs and turns to look at Henry, properly. ‘Henry, look, mate. We’re cool. Do you see? You and me. We’re cool.’
Henry looks thoughtful for a moment and nods. But then he becomes agitated again. ‘But if we’re cool then why did you run away from Botswana when you heard I was coming?’
Phin looks at Henry in bemusement. ‘I wasn’t running away fromyou, Henry,’ he says. ‘What on earth made you think I was running away from you? It was the others I was running away from. From Lucy. And … well, Lucy’s daughter. I just wasn’t—’ Phin holds himself together for a moment. ‘I wasn’t ready for thewhole father-daughter reunion thing. I just wasn’t. I got scared. I pussied out.’
Phin shrugs and Henry sighs loudly and says, ‘Fuck’s sake, Phin. Fuck’s sake.’ Then he pulls his phone out of his pocket and he opens up his camera roll and he scrolls backwards to photos of what looks like a family dinner in a restaurant and he opens up a photo of a young woman with blonde hair and says, ‘Phin. Look at her. That’s your daughter. That’s Libby.’
Phin stares at the photo in a hushed silence. A sweet-faced girl, with a huge smile, a dimple. She looks like him. She looks just like him.
‘She’s the nicest person in the world, Phin. And I know you weren’t a fan of the baby thing, I get that. Babies are fucking terrifying. But look at her. She’s not a baby any more. She’s a grown woman with a home and a job and a boyfriend and she doesn’t need a dad. She doesn’t need you. But fuck’s sake, Phin.’ Henry pauses for a moment and turns off his phone, stares at Phin and says, ‘Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you might need her? Come home, Phin. Come and see her.’
Phin closes his eyes. Then he opens them again. He looks at Henry and from somewhere deep inside him comes a wave of certainty, a wave of love. He pulls Henry to him and for a long, drawn-out moment, they hold each other hard.
When they finally come apart, Phin says to Henry, ‘OK. I’ll come. I promise. I’ll come. This year. Maybe August. Just promise me, in the meantime, you won’t tell anyone you’ve seen me.’
Henry looks up at Phin and smiles and says, ‘I swear on my life. I won’t tell a soul.’
