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He gave a small chuckle, the kind that featured in a thousand childhood memories. ‘I guessed wrong.’
I retrieved my abandoned belongings and slid my key into the front door. I’d got into a silly habit of calling out a hopeful ‘Hello’ into the empty flat every time I returned, and it was a real effort not to do so right then with Dad beside me. Would there ever come a time, I wondered, when I stopped believing that one day I’d walk in and find Finn sitting in the kitchen, patiently waiting for me. Only after I’d finally given up and changed the locks, I realised sadly.
Dad looked hot and flushed, which could have been from his wait in the fusty, poorly ventilated hallway. Instead of flicking on the kettle in the time-honoured Fletcher family way, I went instead to the fridge and pulled out one of Finn’s bottles of beer. I made a mental note to replace it, which I immediately crossed out with an invisible red pen, even though I knew I’d do it anyway.
‘So, what’s with the unexpected visit?’ I asked, throwing my perishable items haphazardly into the fridge and grabbing a can of ice-cold soda for myself.
I popped the ring pull and sat down opposite my father, noticing for the first time the twin dark circles beneath his eyes. Those same eyes were clouded with a grave expression that panicked me.
‘Are you okay, Daddy?’ I asked, slipping unconsciously back to the name I hadn’t called him in years. ‘You look really tired.’And older, I added silently.Way older than you did yesterday.
‘I didn’t sleep very well last night,’ he began, his hands restless as he picked at the label on the beer bottle.
The panic that had started as a spasm in my stomach was beginning to rise inside me, like a sickness that I might embarrassingly expel at any moment.
‘Are you ill? Is that it?’
In the single beat before he answered, I threw down a defiant gauntlet to a God I’d not had a proper conversation with since Sunday School days.Oh no you don’t. Not Dad. You’ve taken away too many people I love. You are NOT getting him too.
It was disconcerting to realise I was including Finn in the same category as my mum. Did I truly think he was ‘gone’ from me in that way? Now I really did feel sick.
‘Something’s been troubling me, really troubling me, ever since I saw you yesterday.’
‘Something physical?’ That was not the voice of a thirty-three-year-old woman. It was the voice of a frightened child.
Dad stopped trying to destroy the beer label and reached for my hands. ‘No, sweetheart, it’s not an illness. But it’s been like the world’s worst itch that I simply couldn’t scratch.’
I frowned, still no closer to understanding what was wrong. ‘Erm, I’ve got some calamine lotion in the bathroom cabinet,’ I offered hesitantly.
His laughter released the tension, allowing me to dial down my concern from ‘raging panic’ to ‘quietly concerned’.
‘Not a physical itch, Gemma, honey. A mental one.’
‘Oh,’ I said, nodding as though this was suddenly all making sense to me. Which couldn’t have been further from the truth.
‘There was something we said at lunch that I couldn’t shake off. It kept quietly nibbling away at the back of my mind, you know, like mice gnawing through a wall. And then today, I finally got it. And I had to tell you.’
‘And you couldn’t have done it on the phone?’ I asked. ‘You had to drive all the way here?’
He shook his head, his eyes solemn.
‘No. This thing I have to say is too important for me not to be here with you when I tell you.’
The fear was coming back, but it was swept away, just moments later, on a tide of incredulity.
‘I think you may be right, Gemma. No. It’s more than that. I know you’re right.’
My heart was beating fast, because unless I was reading this wrong, I was about to hear something I never thought anyone would ever say.
‘You’re right about Finn. I think something may have happened to him.’
*
My hands were shaking. It was a miracle that the can of soda hadn’t puddled all over the table. Dad reached across, gently removed it from my grip and folded my hands within his.
‘It was the gerberas that did it,’ he said.
I nodded fiercely, still with no idea what he meant but happy to wait for the fog to clear.
