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‘Quite the actor, Mr Melgren.’ Then with a wink at me, ‘Or should I say, Mr Mouse?’
I looked from one to the other, a warm buttery feeling spreading inside me. Wondered if this is how it would feel to have a dad, to be a proper family.
My mother kept a snapshot of my real father in her dresser drawer along with framed photo of a child cut from a newspaper. A girl who’d lived down the street, she said. Died when she was just three.
‘Why do you have it?’ I asked.
She shrugged, head tilted to the left.
‘To remember her by.’
‘And the photo of Daddy?’
‘To remember him too, I suppose.’
I thought about that, wondered what it meant. If she wanted to be reminded of him, did she also want to get back together?
‘Did it used to be on the wall?’
‘No. Why?’
I pointed out the pin marks.
She just smiled to herself, told me I’d understand when I was older. I wondered if I’d understand why he left us when I was older too.
He never called or tried to visit. Every year on my birthday I’d make the same wish. Every year it failed to come true.
I figured he’d forgotten about me, got a new life. A family he loved more. Much later, I learned it wasn’t that at all, though I never did find out the full story.
Meanwhile, the photo disappeared from my mother’s dresser. It must have been around the time Matty became a part of our lives. I didn’t ask about it, reckoned my mother must have thrown it away. Turned out she’d assumed the same thing about me, that I was the one who’d chucked it. Neither of us thought to suspect Matty.
‘Bedtime, young lady.’
Matty was over again, my mother trying to get me out of the way so she could have him to herself.
She was working to keep her cool, trying to impress Matty with her mothering skills. I wanted to impress him too.
‘I’m not nearly tired.’
‘It’s late. You need to go to sleep, Sophie.’
‘Not yet.’
It was Matty who broke the deadlock.
‘How about I tell you a story first?’
I grinned widely, head nodding up and down like one of those plastic dogs people put on their rear parcel shelves.
He made up the best stories. Crazy adventures about dragons and monsters and curly-haired princesses trapped in towers until the brave knight, Sir Mattalot, charged in on a flying steed to save the day.
‘Stop pandering to her, Matty. She needs to learn to do what she’s told, when she’s told.’
‘Have you heard the one about Princess Sophie and the Mountain of Doom?’ he asked me, paying no heed to my mother’s protests.
‘No, tell me!’ I giggled, delighted he was taking my side. I could always rely on him for that.
‘Ah, well this is a good one.’
