AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Every time I see him is a punch to the gut. Being away from him helps, and I can almost convince myself he’s not really dying. But I see it in his frail frame, his skeletal fingers, his sunken cheeks and his grimace of pain as he moves, and I can’t bear to look at him. Every time I see him is a day closer to losing him, but I don’t fall apart.
Ican’tfall apart. Not here with him.
I remember on one of my earlier visits, when I couldn’t hold myself together any longer, so I went to the bathroom and cried until I was tired, but my dad noticed my puffy eyes and told me, ‘When I’m gone, I don’t want you to cry over my grave. I don’t want you to be sad.’
And I realised then that that’s all you can give a dying person: your time. Even though time isn’t on your side, the last minutes or days or years of someone’s life aren’t about you, but them. Even if it breaks you to make sure that that someone stays whole.
So, I save my falling apart for later, when I’m in my car, in the shower, on the floor of my bedroom.
Of course, during the days following the diagnosis, my dad tried to lighten the mood by declaring he wants a turbo on his coffin and he wants to be buried next to a cat in an animal cemetery, and that made both Jan and I laugh through our tears, but my dad keeps slipping away from me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
‘You look really good, Frankie-ming,’ Kevin says. ‘How’ve you been?’
I wring my hands, but I don’t look at him as I answer, ‘Okay.’ He’ll see my lie if I look. ‘Work is going really well.’
‘How’s Prince Charming?’
I roll my eyes. ‘Archeris fine.’
He wheezes. It took me a while to get comfortable with that sound, to remind myself he’s laughing. ‘Still working at that, um… whatsitcalled?’
‘Infinite Worlds Corporation. And yeah, he is.’ Shortly after graduating from school, Archer accepted an apprenticeship offer from the leading games content creator in Britain. His first year paid below average and was strictly paperwork based, but now he’s in his second year at the firm he’s more involved with the creation side of things.
‘He does fancy himself a bit, doesn’t he?’ my dad goes on. ‘Don’t know how he drives that Fiesta. Sounds bloody awful.’
‘Yeah, I much prefer my little shitbox.’ Archer always teases my Astra, but it’s all I can afford. The wordsnot everyone’s mummy and daddy buy their first carteeter on the tip of my tongue, but I bite them down. ‘Makes all the same noises; only difference is my car has a hole in the exhaust.’
My dad waves a hand. ‘Ah, nothing to worry about.’ His face brightens suddenly. ‘Do you remember that Reno 4 we had? That had the same thing, but I left it because you loved the sound it made. You thought it was a bloody turbo.’
I don’t recall that moment, but I remember sitting in the car in Turriff with my mum, waiting for my dad to return with our chips, and my mum and I would watch the boy racers circle around the block, again and again and again, and we’d point at their registration plates. ‘Look! He’s back again,’ we’d say, and we’d laugh, and I remember how fun it looked, how I loved the sound of their exhausts popping and banging and how I wanted to hear it every day for the rest of my life because it made me think of that moment, in the car with my mum.
Happy.
My gut twists. ‘Have you talked to her? To mum, I mean.’
I certainly haven’t. How do I approach her when I was the reason she left? Do I start with an apology? Or do I send her a paragraph of all the ways she hurt me? She hasn’t reached out to me, either. It’s not always up to me to crack the silence.
Kevin’s smile falters slightly, and I regret asking. ‘She knows, but… I don’t think she’s bothered, kiddo.’ I never told him about her affair, and although a part of me hates myself for lying to him, I can’t bring myself to cause him more heartbreak. ‘Not sure it helped that I asked her what day’s best for me to die. She said any Sunday would be good.’ He clutches his belly as he laughs, but I’m mortified. ‘Oh, that reminds me.’
I lurch forward as he struggles to his feet. He grunts and grimaces, and I stand, ready to catch him. ‘Dad, what do you need?’
He waves me off with the hand that isn’t holding his cane. ‘No, no. I’m alright.’
‘Tell me what you need and I can get it for you.’
‘I need you to wipe my arse.’ His laughter follows him into the kitchen. He returns a moment later, newspaper in hand, and gives it to me as he sits. ‘Read that there.’ He points. ‘Two cats were found in a carrier bag, just dumped on the side of the road. How can anyone do that? Why not just hand them into a rescue? Skittles and Thor, they’ve called them.’
The pictures in the small margin depict two cats: one black-and-white with a grey spot on its nose, the other fully black with one eye.
My heart twinges. Not at what was done to them—because that’s fucking awful and if it was legal, I’d hunt down whoever caused their suffering—but because I know, just from their colouring, that they’ll be long-term residents at the rescue. People want grey or ginger or white cats—and kittens. They want kittens for their horrid children to tug around.
At least these two cuties will go to someone who actually loves them.
I wish I could be that someone. Just to see the joy on my dad’s face. We weren’t allowed to kill a single spider or ant or slug growing up—not out of any knowledge of ecosystems and food chains, but because my dad genuinely couldn’t bring himself to harm another living thing.
‘They have as much right to live as we do,’ he’d say.
I’d jump at the opportunity to adopt these two cats, but Archer… Once I had to scream to scare off a Tom because he was seconds away from booting it after it sprayed up the wheel of his car.
