12

“Mark, sorry about Friday night, just leaving like that. And sorry that I’ve not been in touch. I really owe you an explanation, and here it is: a couple of months ago, I got really involved with this guy, and it was all going well. Apart from his children, and though we got on really well, his kids just hated me for some reason, and it was like no matter what I did, I could not get them to like me. And eventually they kind of just broke up our relationship. Like even though we were getting along really well, he told me it just wasn’t working out, and it was all because of his kids. And it really hurt me.

I’m not saying that I don’t like kids, I wouldn’t even mind a couple of my own some day, maybe, but I just had the bad experience and it’s made me wary of guys with kids. But y’know, what the hell? I really did have a good time on Friday, with you, and I shouldn’t let the fact that you have children already put me off, I mean I’m sure your kid is very nice if I got to know her. If you still want to know me that is. I’m a little afraid that you won’t, and that’s why I’m sending you this email rather than ringing you. But please get in touch if you do, we can go for coffee again, nothing fancy, and it’s not like we have to rush into anything,

Love, Angela xx”

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11

“Hi, Mum, I can come pick the girls up today.” It was Sunday.

“Mark, I tried to ring you yesterday.”

“I wasn’t in.” When I got back, I had been overcome with tiredness and had gone to bed and fallen asleep almost instantly.

“I know, but I tried ringing your mobile.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the little telephone. It was switched off.

“I think the battery must have run out, I didn’t notice. What were you ringing me for anyway?” My mother hushed her voice when she next spoke, and I could imagine her looking around the hallway where I knew she stood to check she was alone.

“It’s about Gemma. Son, she doesn’t feel she can talk to you.”

“She doesn’t try to talk to me. She locks herself in her room,” I said, almost immediately blaming her.

“That’s because she doesn’t feel she can. It’s not easy being a teenage girl, y’know, son, and sometimes they need a bit of encouragement.”

“I’m sorry, I know it’s not her fault. It’s mine. I…I can’t be a good father.”

“Son, you are a good father; they’re good girls, and I know you’re always there for them, but sometimes I don’t think they know that.”

“Gemma locks herself in her room all the time though, I took that as a sign that she doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Sometimes hiding is what we do to protect ourselves, because we are afraid to reach out to people.” This simple straight-forward advice was one of the reasons that I loved my mother, and one of the reasons why I felt it was such a shame for my children to not have their own mother in their lives. “So your daughters, Gemma particularly, really need you to reach out to them. You left her here with a black eye and I asked her about it. Do you know how she got it?”

“I…I was afraid to,” I said, a child again before my mother.

“You were afraid to?”

“I…how did she…what happened?”

“Mark, she’s being bullied at school. She said that you didn’t know, and she said you never even asked her about it.”

“Bullied?”

“Yes. Why were you afraid to ask? Why are you afraid to talk to your own daughter?”

“I…I thought I’d done it.”

“You? Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know, I…had a dream, and then I my epilepsy kicked in and I couldn’t remember what I’d done that day, and then I saw her with the black eye, and I thought I must have done and that she was afraid to say because she was afraid of me and didn’t want to talk to me.” For a second I thought I was going to cry, like I did when I was child, until I was protected in my mother’s lap, cocooned against the world by her enclosing arms, but I was no longer a child, and my mother was not here, she was on the other end of a telephone line.

“Oh, Mark” she said.

“Why?” I asked, “Why is she getting bullied? She’s got lots of friends, and she’s pretty and nice, why would she get bullied?”

“Well she told me about it, but it seemed very complex and she was crying it all out while she was telling me” For a moment I could picture the scene in my head, Gemma against my mother’s shoulders, soaking her soft wool jumper with her tears, and my mother’s arms, a little more wrinkled now, but still soft, enclosing, comforting, around her back, stroking her hair. “From what I could understand, it was over some boy. Apparently Gemma had liked this boy and had been ‘going out’ with him. But then she slept over at his one night and they had a fight, he was being too pushy or something and she thought that he didn’t really care about her, but just wanted her for how she looked. She wasn’t too clear on that bit. Personally, I think she’s too young to be sleeping over at boy’s houses.”

“I never said she could. When was this?”

“She didn’t say, but surely you must have noticed she wasn’t there. Anyway, so she fell out with this boy and came home. Only, you weren’t in, and so she was in the house alone and upset. And then apparently you came home at some late hour with some woman, which Gemma knew nothing about. Do none of you ever talk in your house?”

“It’s complicated and it’s difficult. I’d only met Angela a couple of times, and that’s why I hadn’t told the girls about her, I… I remember now, Gemma said she was sleeping over at her friend’s house, her friend Marisa, she never said she was going to see her boyfriend.” I wondered how I had not worked that out sooner.

“Well, apparently this boy was quite popular, and a few other girls liked him. These girls were apparently jealous of Gemma for being liked at him, and then she fell out with him. So he started being nasty to her, and this prompted these girls to do the same, and that’s when they started bullying her. First they were calling her names, and throwing things at her in the classroom, then they started attacking her after a few days. That’s how she got the black eye.”

“Oh shit,” I said, “how is she now?”

“She’s okay now. I rang up the school yesterday, talked to the headmaster. He’s said that all the girls in question shall be suspended from school and that he will sort the whole thing out, though I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.”

“Can I talk to her now?”

“Yes, I think you should.” I heard my mother call Gemma, her voice distant and echoing as she held the phone away from herself. There were a few noises as the phone changed hands, and then Gemma’s voice, a little small-sounding, came out through the headset.

“Hey, Dad,” she said.

“Hey, sweetie,” I said, “How are you?”

“I’m okay now; Grandma’s been looking after me. How are you? How was your trip?”

“I think I’m okay now too. Yes, my trip was good; it felt good to get out. And it gave me some time to think on the journey, and I missed you both while I was gone, even though it was only a couple of days.”

“I missed you too, Dad.” I smiled when she said this. It brought her closer, though she was a few miles away, on the other end of a telephones, she was closer now than she had been on the other side of her bedroom door.

“I’m coming to pick you up in a bit.”

“Grandma’s cooking Sunday dinner. She’s done enough for you.” I smiled again; my mother was an excellent cook, as all mothers should be. “It should be ready in about an hour.”

“I’ll be there in a little less than an hour then.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.” There was a pause, I thought she was about to put the phone down, but she had not yet, so before she did I said,

“Gemma,”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

Read Final Part

10

“Mum,”

“Mark, hi, how are things?”

“Uh, not too bad, I guess,”

“How are the girls?”

“They’re fine. Look, I have a big favour to ask, I mean, I don’t want to put upon you, but could you maybe look after the girls for a few days, three or four? I’ve, uh, I’ve got to go on a business trip thing.”

“When?”

“The day after tomorrow. I know it’s short notice, and I really don’t like to put upon you, but it’s important.” I felt bad about lying to my mother. Well, it was important, but the business trip bit was a lie.

“Well, it is short notice, but I understand. Okay, I’ll look after them.”

“Thank you, Mum,” I said, “I wouldn’t ask unless it was important.”

“I know, Mark.”

Thursday evening. The three of us were in the car. Gemma sat in the back seat, leaning against the window, silent and moody. I saw her sad face in the rear view mirror reflected on the glass, her eye still bruised. I thought she might appreciate getting away from me for a little while, but she had protested at first, and asked that I let her stay at home on her own; she would be alright. I told her to pack some stuff for the few days.

Lucy had been more obedient than Gemma in the packing, and I knew she liked her grandmother. Though as I sat on her bed, watching her pack, telling her what to bring, I wondered if I should be doing this; removing my children for my own convenience. But then, maybe they were better off away from me.

No one said anything, and instead the radio supplied the conversation. Soon I pulled the car into my mother’s drive. The gravel crunched under the car wheels and we got out. I went round the back and opened the boot, pulled out Lucy’s Barbie rucksack and Gemma’s hold-all.

“Now you be good girls for Grandma,” I said as we walked towards the front door, “she’s doing me a big favour.” My voice sounded hollow, I thought, even to myself.

“Where is it you’re going, Dad?” Gemma asked.

“On a business trip.”

“I mean where, location.”

“Oh, um, London,” I said, it being the first place that came to mind.

“Couldn’t we come too?” asked Lucy.

“You have school, and besides, I’ll be too busy to look after you, that’s why you’re staying with Grandma.”

When my mother answered the door and invited us in, I stayed only for a cup of tea and a little conversation, for politeness’ sake. Then I left. Before leaving I hugged Lucy and told both the girls that I loved them. Lucy said it cheerily back and told me that she would miss me. Gemma just said,

“Are you…” and then stopped.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. As she turned away I noticed a fragility in her slim frame.

I drove home.

Once I had opened the door, I inhaled deeply, as if waking from a deep sleep. I imagined for a moment that I could smell everyone that had ever been in that room, as if they were there now as ghosts in the little dust motes that floated and eddied around the air. I exhaled slowly, then breathed in again, breathed in the remnants of the ghosts, of Angela, of her perfume, of Lucy, her innocence, the shampoo in her hair, of Gemma, her complicated, hormonal teenage scent, of that boy she brought in that time a few weeks ago, of Rachel too, of her beauty, her life, her skin, and even of myself, of Mark, a man now wanting to no longer exist as a ghost, but wanting to seize back life, and be free of the ghosts.

Beyond this thin veil of floating memories, the house was empty, a hollow shell again, as it had been after Rachel. For a second, I held my keys over the glass dish by the door, then I let them drop by slowly releasing my fingers until the last resistance from the plastic fobs slipped away. The sound as they landed was loud in the silent house. Then I untied my shoes and put my slippers on. I stood up and wondered what to do now.

In the end I cleaned every room in the house over the next two days, meticulously going over every surface with a duster, vacuuming every carpet, straightening everything out. Not that I really know why, but it seemed to help somehow. Gemma’s room was the last I went into; the room I was usually restricted from accessing. It was messy, as usual; lived in. But I did not feel compelled to clean this one, I just looked around.

On the desk stood her computer, an old CRT monitor with dust on top. A few small items were scattered around the desk as well: pens, pencils, a little cat ornament that had been Rachel’s, a pair of glass dolphins jumping through a glass wave, and a couple of small stuffed animals. A desk lamp stood there as well, but it did not work when I flicked the switched; the bulb had gone.

I briefly considered turning on the computer, seeing what she got up to on there, but resisted, knowing that I was already trespassing too much. I went over and sat on the bed, stared out the window. The sun was setting now, casting long shadows over the room. I lay down onto the bed, sinking into the slept-in sheets. Lying on my side I could smell the fabric conditioner on the cotton, mixed with the scent of Gemma.

Twenty years ago, it would have been my ambition to get into a teenage girl’s bed, but now the experience felt tainted and I again felt like a ghost, existing in my own separate world while everyone else existed in another. Had I been in here on Tuesday, conscious or not? Had I attacked Gemma? The questions flowed through my head like a tidal sea as I stared at Gemma’s partially open wardrobe, its pine frame being highlighted in the orange sun.

I must have fallen asleep like that, my head on Gemma’s pillow, my knees tucked up in my arms, because I was not aware again until it was completely dark. Of course I could have had another attack and actually lain there perfectly conscious for the whole time.

I fumbled in the darkness for Gemma’s bedside light. It instantly cast both light and shadow over the room. I lifted my watch up to my face. It told me it was four-thirty a.m. Moving my head slightly I realised that the pillow, and my eyes were both a little damp. I rubbed the stickiness from them, then I sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed my face. The beard that had started to grow made my chin and my cheeks feel rough.

I yawned then, and stretched, and felt completely unrested, but I also knew that I would not get back to sleep so I stood up, a little too quickly perhaps, for I felt a little dizzy for a minute or so. Then I went downstairs and put on the coffee machine. I felt like I needed to do something today, I just did not know what. I went into the front room and put on the television while I decided what to do. For some reason I flicked to Cartoon Network and began to watch that. At this time of morning they always seemed to show the old cartoons, and right then Danger Mouse was on. I used to watch that show when I was a kid.

I watched to the end of the episode that was part way through when I turned it on, and then watched another one after. It made me smile, sat there in yesterday’s clothes, unshaven and watching cartoons from my youth. And that was when I decided that I would go to Brighton. I went back upstairs almost immediately after deciding to act on this impulse and packed a few clothes into my bag.

By 7 a.m. I was on the road to Brighton. The roads were clear and the sun was shining; it would be a great day. After about three quarters of an hour I stopped at a petrol station to refuel. Stepping out the car I felt a sea-breeze on my skin, and thought I could smell the salt-water, the fish and chips, the grassy dunes, over the petroleum smell that lingered in the air.

Inside the petrol station, when I was paying for the petrol, I glanced at the cigarettes behind the girl that was serving me. On an impulse I said,

“And ten Lucky Strikes, please.” The girl handed me the little red and white packet and I paid and left. Just another twenty minutes to Brighton.

It was just as I remembered it, almost. The sea was there of course, eternally, and the beach had not changed, nor the iconic pier. The arcades were still there, though they seemed to have become louder, brighter, more obnoxious. And everything seemed to have been coated in a plastic sheen, rather than the peeling wooden displays I remembered from my youth. But it was still the place where I had formed so many fond memories of summer.

I pulled up in a car park over looking the beach and got out. As soon as I got out I opened the cigarette pack and lit one up. Lucky Strike used to be my brand, but it was years since I had smoked. I had not even wanted one in years, and I suppose I did not really need one now, but it was an impulse decision that I stood by, in the same way that coming here had been an impulse decision.

I inhaled, perhaps a little too deeply, and coughed a little, but beyond the temporary discomfort of the cough came that once familiar little rush that filled my lungs and spread outwards. It really had been a long time.

By this time it was eight o’ clock; still early, too early for all but the early morning jogger, or even the early morning swimmer who felt compelled to brave the cold water at this time of morning, before anyone else got a chance. It would be a fine day though, and a Saturday too, so soon all the beaches would be crowded. But for now I had the beaches to myself. I took advantage of this privilege by stepping out onto the beach and walking along it.

The stones and pebbles crunched under my feet as I walked along, and the sound made me think of the gravel outside my mother’s house, of my children inside, safe and protected by the woman that brought me up. And I knew they were safe with her, for she had brought me up single-handedly, after my father died of cancer when I was four. Though I was never old enough to really get to know my father, I always felt that I would have chosen to have been brought up by my mother rather than my father.

I must have walked at least a mile or so down the beach, for I reached, after a while, the Brighton Marina village. I spent a while here looking at the boats, at the way some were kept immaculately, shiny and white with a plastic veneer as if they had just come out of a cellophane wrapper, while others had been left, neglected, and the algae had built up in layers along the underside of the boat, turning them a decaying green.

I am not really sure how I spent most of that day; it seemed to drift by, blurred like a dream. Most of it I spent walking, up and down streets, wherever I felt like going. Around one I stopped for lunch at a pub with windows facing the sea. I had a steak there, with chips and peas and an obligatory slightly limp salad on the side: a real pub lunch.

I ate that meal voraciously, as if I had not eaten for days, devouring the whole lot until I was satisfied. I realised after I finished that all I had had that day before the meal was a cigarette. After I was finished I went outside and had another Lucky Strike. It was good, satisfying, though not as much so as the meal I had just eaten. And then I began to walk again.

It was like I was looking for something, somewhere, but I know not what. I was thinking all this time as well, perhaps that is why I cannot fix definitely in my mind the details of everything I saw, everywhere I went, beyond the image of the crowds of people that surged around me; holidaymakers perusing the shops, teenagers killing time on the streets, and the people that lived in the city, going to work, to shops, and about their daily business.

The subjects of my thoughts were mostly Gemma, though Angela crept in every now and then. I was still wondering about Gemma’s black eye, about what I had done to her. I should have asked before I left, but I could not face it. And so now I would have to ask when I saw her again, get everything in the open. Maybe she would even forgive me and love me again.

As for Angela, I wondered about what I could do about her, should I want to pursue her, and if she was worth pursuing, or just a lost cause. Maybe she hated me now too. But then maybe it had just been the shock of finding someone neither of us expected in my house. Maybe I should call her. Maybe I should wait and see if she called me. But she was nice, and she had seemed fairly keen, especially on that date. And I really needed someone, especially now that the prospect of being with someone had rekindled within me my old repressed desires.

When I got back, I decided, when I got back, I would sort everything out.

Somehow, I managed to just wander until the evening, by which time I had returned most of the way back to the car, and was hungry again. I went to the nearest fish and chip bar, and then sat facing the sea eating fish and chips, real fish and chips, from the ocean in front of me. I closed my eyes putting a chunk of fish onto my tongue and I was nine again, my mother sat beside me and my sister on her other side, all of us eating fish and chips staring out to the sea we had spent the day beside and within.

But that was just one facet of the memory the taste, the experience, was bringing back to my consciousness, for the summers I spent here were not single memories but a feeling, a complex tapestry of multiple experiences, layered upon one another, and in their too was Rachel, leaning against my shoulder as we ate fish and chips and sat on this very beach, watching the sun set.

When I had finished eating the little bundle wrapped in plain white paper, I continued to sit there, silent, watching the last few families leave the beach. As the sun began to set, the only remaining occupants of the beach were a few couples, sat together watching the big orange ball of gas disappear over the horizon. I lit another cigarette, my eighth of the day, and wondered if they were as happy as Rachel and I had been.

When the sun had disappeared completely I stood up. A cold wind swept through my hair, over my neck; it was the sea-breeze I imagined I could feel from my bedroom window. The Lucky Strike pack was in my hand, two cigarettes remaining in it. I clenched my fingers and the packet slowly crumpled into my palm, then I turned away and walked back to the car, tossing the broken cigarettes and crushed red and white pack into a bin as I passed. It was time to go home.

Read Part Eleven

9

My bed that night, the same I had once shared with Rachel, felt empty. Particularly now, after I had been turned on and disappointed by Angela. If I closed my eyes, and thought hard, I could imagine Angela naked and warm on top of me in the darkness. But the image was blurry, and kept fading into nothingness as I realised that I may just as well image Rachel as imagine Angela, for neither of them were here.

I sighed. It was one am, and I was horny, but there was nothing I could do about it. Well, there was something, but I just was not in the mood for that, not without someone there for stimulation, her warm skin pressing against mine, her tongue in my mouth. Instead I just lay there and thought about the day.

I wondered why Angela had run off like that so suddenly. Fair enough, I never mentioned my children, but it seemed like an over-reaction. So did Gemma’s reaction. It’s not like I was intentionally deceiving anyone. And why was Gemma home anyway? Maybe she would tell me tomorrow, although I doubted that.

My suspicions were correct: Gemma spent all of Sunday avoiding me. Lucy had Sunday dinner at my mother’s house, which meant that the simple meal Gemma and I had was devoid of conversation. After lunch she just went back to her room. I did not even try to see if the door was locked. When Lucy did get home, she just came in and started watching television. I joined her for a little while, but the cartoons she watched were annoying and repetitive, even after a few minutes, so I was alone for most of Sunday.

I spent the time in my study, just killing time on my computer. I thought about emailing Angela, but did not know what to say. I thought too about downloading some porn, but with two children in the house, even if neither of them were interested in talking to me right now, there was too greater risk of getting caught. Maybe I should put a lock on my study door, I considered briefly.

I was beginning again to feel as I had when I was sixteen; that I was the only guy in the world not having sex. Sometimes it felt like I was in a loveless marriage; sexually frustrated, but tied down by my children. But I could never resent them for that, because I loved them, even if they did not always want to talk to me, and perhaps that made it worse.

On Tuesday night I had a dream. I was in bed, it was a beautiful Summer morning and Rachel lay on the bed next to me, naked, every curve, every bump, every hollow and facet of her skin, highlighted in the morning sun that shone through the blind, making her seem as if she was glowing.

I was overcome with lust, and I just kissed her slowly all over her body. I started with her legs, letting the smooth skin lightly brush my lips over and over again. Then I worked my way up, kissing her hips, her stomach, the little mole she had under her left breast. I kissed her breasts, her shoulders, her collar bone, her neck, her cheeks, and then finally, slowly, her lips. And then we were locked together, an intimate embrace, our hips moving in an undulating rhythm.

Outside, in the dream, the sounds of birds chirruping beautiful songs filled the air, and insects, flying through the sky on vibrating wings, dancing from flower to flower. But we were oblivious to all that, my wife and I, moving as one, together. And I suppose we spent the whole day like that; an hours’ long sensual intimacy, because the light changed in the room and the sun eventually set, slowly leaving us in darkness.

All was silent outside, all the birds, the insects now sleeping in their nests, their hives. And all that could be heard inside the room was our slow, satisfied groans. Slowly though, Rachel seemed to become more distant; we were still held together, but inside she seemed to be turning away from me.

The room too had changed. We seemed now to be in a single bed, although that seemed of little consequence as we were taking up so little space. Rachel seemed to become stiffer though, like clockwork slowly rusting up, and she kissed me less on the mouth. I ignored this though and started kissing her body again. She definitely felt different though, almost as a different person, but somehow still the same.

Slowly the room became lighter again. At first I thought it was dawn and we had been making love for the whole night, but then I realised it was artificial light, and it was still early in the morning. This was when the shocking revelation hit me, when the room was no longer in darkness: It was no longer Rachel beneath me at all, it was Gemma.

She began to fight me, trying to throw me off, but I resisted her, fighting back, though I do not know why. And the dream was now a nightmare, for I was repulsed by what I was doing, but could not stop, as if my body would not listen to me, and my hands pinned her against the bed against my will.

I woke breathing hard with sweat running down my forehead. That was all I remember of the beginning of my conscious day on Wednesday, for it seemed like seconds had passed between my waking and my being stood, as I now was, at the stove cooking pasta. I looked around the kitchen, confused for a moment, and then realised that I must have had an attack of my epilepsy that had wiped the memories of the day, my first in eight months.

Usually these did not bother me too much, but I was already disturbed by my dream of the previous night, having only just remembered it, and now I could not remember anything since it until this moment. I could have, though probably had not, done anything, but what worried me was that I was occasionally prone to sleep walking.

I noticed the pasta was about to boil over, so I turned down the hob and tried one of the soft shell-shaped pieces. It was done. I went to the front room and told Lucy, then shouted up the stairs,

“Gemma, dinner’s ready.” She did not answer. I went back to the kitchen and started to dish it out. Lucy came in and sat out. Somehow, having no memory of the previous few hours gave the rest of the day a dream-like quality.

We had already started eating when Gemma walked into the room. She said nothing, just sat down and began to eat, almost robotically. I watched her for a moment, sat there on the side of the table between Lucy and myself. Lucy too watched her, but longer than I did because I looked back at my food.

It was not for a while that I noticed Gemma’s black eye. Lucy had obviously seen it straight away, being sat on Gemma’s right side and it being Gemma’s right eye that had sustained the injury. From her left, where I sat, it was obscured, until she happened to glance over my way at the same time as I looked up.

I just stared at her at first, at the purple bruising around her pretty blue eye. She stared back for a few moments, then broke eye contact and looked back at the table. Sometimes she reminded me of a timid little animal. I was about to ask her what had happened, but I was afraid of the answer, just in case…but surely not. I put down my fork.

“I’m just going to the toilet,” I said slowly. Lucy looked up and watched me leave the room. Gemma did not.

When I got into the bathroom I locked the door. I had never felt the need for a lock before that time I walked in on Gemma, but now that we had one I was beginning to use it all the time. I stared into the mirror. I looked tired; dark circles under my eyes and the stubble I usually let grow for a few days, that I usually thought looked quite stylish, just seemed to make me look tired and unkempt.

My dark eyes looked back at me sullenly. What sort of face was it in the mirror? I loved my daughters, and I knew I would never hurt them, but that dream had been so real. And I was feeling so sexually frustrated. And I had no recollection of what I had done since it. How had Gemma got that black eye? Had I done it? But I would never. But someone had.

I clenched my fist a couple of times and looked at it, my hand; the fingers were thin, a little bony (that perhaps came from all the time I spent with a computer). What if, I wondered, what if I had suffered more severely than the doctors realised in that car accident? What if I had worse brain damage than they thought and it had made me psychotic?

On the landing behind me, through the door, I heard Gemma’s door open and close again, even in the quietness the little click as her lock slipped into place. Maybe she did not just not want to talk to me, but she was afraid of me. Had I ever given her any reason to fear me though? Well, at least she was safe, locked away in her room like her own little cocoon. I wondered if she locked it when she slept, or if she would start doing so now.

Then I turned my attention back to the mirror. I stared again into my face, I rubbed my eyes with my hands, splashed a little cold water onto my cheeks. I needed some time alone I decided.

Leaving the bathroom and going back down to the kitchen, I met Lucy about to leave the room, her plate cleared away from the table. Neither of us said anything as I entered, but she just came over and hugged me where I stood. I felt her little arms wrap around my legs and her head press into my crotch. The contact was awkward and so I did not want to hug her bag, to press her any more against me.

She looked up, sensing my awkwardness.

“Daddy, is Gemma okay?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, looking back down at her. She loosened her arms from around me and left the room. I looked at the now cold pasta on the table. I no longer had an appetite, so I scraped it into the bin, put it into the dishwasher and turned it on.

Read Part Ten

8

I watched Angela take another bite of the pasta she was eating. Her lips were thinner than Rachel’s, and she wore a paler shade of lipstick, but I still found it a little seductive the way her tongue slipped out between her lips, and slid over her bottom one, collecting a lingering drop of the red pasta sauce. I wondered if she had done that deliberately because she knew I was watching.

“Have you seen Trainspotting?” Angela asked, swallowing the pasta she had just put into her mouth.

“Yeah, a couple of times,” I said, moving my attention from her lips to her eyes. Angela’s were blue; Rachel’s were brown.

“I saw it for the first time on Tuesday; my friend brought it round on DVD.”

“Did you like it?” I asked.

“Yeah, it was pretty good. It was pretty disgusting too, like that bit when he goes into the toilet, or the bit with the baby. Yeah, I didn’t like that bit, I had to look away.”

“I always hated the bits where they showed you the needles,” I said, “I can never watch stuff like that. I’ve always hated needles since I was a kid.” I cut away a piece of the steak on my plate and put it into my mouth. It was not often I had steak, one of my favourite foods, because it was two expensive to buy for three. Angela seemed to watch in the same way I had watched her.

“I’ve always been afraid of bats and moths, and things like that, that fly at night,” she said, “I don’t know why.” She laughed a little. Though I could not help comparing her to Rachel in my head, she was charming in her own right, I decided.

There was a little pause while we continued to eat. It was not an uncomfortable pause, I felt, but I still felt the need to break it.

“Your hair looks nice,” I said. For a second I felt very unimaginative, clichéd, with such a standard comment, but Angela smiled and almost involuntarily put her hand up to her hair, which was shining golden in the restaurant lights and with a slight wave that hung down on the left side of her face.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling, “I don’t usually have it down, it usually annoys me too much.”

We continued to talk in this way until we had finished our meal. I found Angela easy to talk to, and she was attractive too. It seemed hard to believe that such a great woman had just walked into my life without me even having to do anything. It was early days yet though, I reminded myself, and I was still wary of falling for anyone too quickly, because then my loneliness would be so much more keen afterwards.

“Do you want dessert?” I asked her when she put down her fork.

“Oh no, I’m full thank you,” she smiled, “but go ahead if you want any.”

“No, I’m fine,” I said. I put my hand up and called the waiter over, asked for the bill. He returned a few moments later with the little slip of paper on a small, white dish. Angela began to reach for he handbag, but I said,

“No, it’s fine, I’ll get it.”

“Are you sure?” She asked, her handbag halted in mid-air. I smiled and said I was. “Thank you,” she said, “you’re a perfect gentlemen.”

“Oh, I’d hardly say ‘perfect’” I replied jokingly, putting the money onto the dish. “Shall we go?” I stood and offered her my arm. She took it and we walked out the restaurant together.

The weather was warm for April, so we forwent the car, parked in the restaurant car park, and walked to the cinema, it only being a few streets away. When I had arranged to meet her I had realised her clichéd a dinner followed by a movie was as a date, but at the time, or even now, I had not been able to think of any alternative, except maybe the theatre or a concert, but there was nothing good on at the time. Also, I suppose, such things have become clichés because they are reliable, you really cannot go wrong with dinner and a film.

Angela insisted that I let her pay for the tickets as I had paid for dinner and, after a short debate over whether to see ‘Hot Fuzz’ or ‘Becoming Jane’, we went with Angela’s choice and bought two tickets for ‘Becoming Jane’. It was not really the sort of film I would have chosen to see, but, as I sat there, I thought at least I was there with an attractive woman, and not watching something at home on my own, or a kid’s film with Lucy.

A couple of times during the film I considered using the old trick of pretending to yawn then putting my arm around her. After all, clichés seemed to have worked so far. But I did not have to rely on any embarrassingly old-fashioned moves in the end because, just a little way into the film, I felt Angela snuggle up in her seat against my shoulder. I put my arm around her and we remained like that until the movie was over.

Walking back to the car, my arm resting lightly around Angela’s shoulders, I asked,

“Do you maybe want to come back to mine, have a glass of wine maybe?” She smiled, perhaps noticing again the slight hint of the nervousness I was feeling, but had not felt around her since our I had picked her up at her flat, that must have crept into my voice as I asked. It was not often I was able to ask a woman back to my house, my children usually being in, and even rarer for me to actually have anyone to ask back. But tonight was going perfectly, and continued to when Angela replied,

“I’d love to,” and looked up and smiled at me.

A short drive later and we were walking up the short garden path of my house. Before I unlocked the door, Angela stopped me, pulled me close to her, and kissed me. I was surprised at first, but fell into the rhythm of the kiss within a few seconds. I tasted the pasta sauce on her mouth, and the glass of red wine she had drank with her meal as well. She pulled away after maybe a minute. I felt a bulge begin to grow in my trousers.

“What was that for?” I asked, smiling at her. She shrugged,

“I just felt like it.” She said.

I pushed open the door, bent down and began to untie my shoes. Angela slipped off her shoes stood behind me. I was distracted for a moment by her elegant legs, her nylon tights making them shine. I was almost tempted to run my fingers over her calves right then, kiss them maybe, but in a second she drew her leg away.

I pulled my second shoe off and was about to stand up when I suddenly noticed something. Looking up the stairs I saw someone stood at the top, Gemma. I stood up slowly and just stared at her for a moment, puzzled. She was staring back at me, wearing an open dressing gown over her dark t-shirt and jeans. Her eyes were streaked black with eye make-up that had run down her face; she had been crying.

She just stared back at me as I stared at her, then she looked at Angela. Angela had only now noticed what I was staring at. I looked at her and she was staring at Gemma. No one spoke. I felt the bulge in my trousers diminish.

“Mark, you never said you had a kid,” Angela said slowly, looking at me now, surprised, accusative. Gemma too was looking at me, stood there above us both. She had the same expressions on her face, but looked sad and angry as well. I felt wretchedly awkward, caught between the gazes of the two.

“I was going to,” I said hopelessly, “I just hadn’t gotten around to mentioning it.” I felt guilty too; Gemma looked like Rachel.

Angela began to put her shoes back on. “I better go,” she said. She looked as if she was about to cry herself. “Sorry, I… thank you for dinner and everything,” she said, opening the door. My mouth was becoming very dry, and the Angela’s taste was fading from my tongue.

“You don’t have to go,” I said, pleadingly perhaps.

“No, sorry. Look, I’ll email you or something,” she was out the door now, talking to me on the front step.

“At least let me give you a lift home,” I said.

“No, it’s fine, I’ll call a taxi.” She closed the door. I shut my eyes tightly for a second and inhaled deeply. Some of Angela’s perfume lingered on the air in the hallway. I exhaled and turned around. Gemma was no longer stood at the top of the stairs.

“Gemma,” I said through her bedroom door.

“Go away,” she replied, her voice high. I tried the handle but the door was locked.

“I thought you were out tonight. Why aren’t you at Marisa’s?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Her voice sounded closer to the door now, perhaps just on the other side. I leant against it, feeling the hard wooden surface pressed against my shoulder, my face. “Why weren’t you in? Who was that you were with? Why haven’t you told us about her?”

“I…I only met her a couple of weeks ago,” I explained, “We just went out for dinner and watched a movie, that’s all.”

“And then you brought her back here.”

“Is that a crime? I thought you were out.” I wondered if I would be pleading my case so desperately if Gemma had been in the same room as me, if I could see her.

“I suppose not,” Gemma said, “you can do what you want.” She sounded less emotional now, although she seemed to put particular stress on ‘you’.

“I was going to tell you about her.”

“Were you going to tell her about us?”

“Of course, in time. I just didn’t want to put her off.” I only realised after I said that how bad the choice of words was.

“Put her off?” Gemma repeated, angry again.

“Not put her off. I mean…I’d want her to be comfortable with me before I introduced you all. It’s just unfortunate that you met like this. I think you’re overreacting.” Surely Gemma must understand that I could not just stay alone, sexless and pining for my lost wife until I died. She said nothing though.

“Gemma, don’t ever think that I stopped loving your mother,” I said through the door, “but everyone gets lonely.” She was crying again now, I could hear her sobs, so close that she must be pressed against the door as I was. I imagined her, sitting there, back against the door in that dark room.

“It’s not just about you, Dad,” she said between sobs.

“Let me in, Gemma,” I said. I wanted her to stop crying, to forgive me, partly I felt, because Rachel could not.

“I just want to be alone.” She said. What else could I do?

Read Part Nine

7

It was Sunday night. I was lying in bed and something had awoken me; a scream. I thought I had dreamt it until I heard another one. It was Lucy. She must have had a nightmare. I rolled over, half asleep and switched on my bedside lamp. The little clock underneath it had been knocked over by my book, so I picked it up and studied it through my still-adjusting eyes. It told me it was quarter past two in the morning. Behind me the Venetian blind tapped gently against the window frame, swaying in the breeze from the slightly open window. I sighed and slid out of bed to put on my slippers and dressing gown.

When I got on to the landing, I saw that Gemma’s door was open and a light was on in her room. I wondered if she had stayed up all this time and, before going to Lucy’s room, I stuck my head in through the door frame to see if Gemma was still up. Looking around, all I saw was the slept-in bed, the bedside light casting uneven shadows over the clothes and schoolbooks scattered over the floor, and the open window letting cool air flow into the room, but no Gemma.

For a second I considered going and looking out the window, though not because I thought I would find anything. Then I remembered Lucy. I retreated from Gemma’s room and went a few more feet down the landing to Lucy’s little bedroom. I stopped before I reached the door though, because I could hear Gemma talking softly to Lucy and Lucy quietly crying. Lucy’s little pink bedside lamp was also turned on, and it sent a shaft of light through the crack between the half-open door and its frame. I moved silently closer and discovered that I could see them through the crack.

They both sat on Lucy’s bed, Lucy in her pink Barbie pyjamas, Gemma in a plain camisole and check shorts. Lucy had her arms wrapped tightly round Gemma’s neck and was crying into her shoulder. Through the tears she choked out the details of her nightmare.

“We were in the car – and Mummy was there – and so were you and – Daddy was too – and then the car crashed and you were all gone – and I was all alone.” Her voice rose with these last few words and she began wailing again.

Gemma pressed Lucy’s head tightly into her shoulder and made gentle shushing sounds, encircling Lucy’s back tightly with one arm and rubbing her dark hair with her free hand. It struck me again how much Gemma reminded me of her mother, seeing her now comforting her sister just as I had witnessed Rachel comfort her so many times when Gemma was that age. I felt a little surge of sadness rise from my chest to my throat, and it almost made me choke out loud. I caught myself however and remained silent.

Lucy pulled her head away from Gemma now and looked at her with a red, teary face.

“Do you want to go to sleep now, Lucy?” Gemma asked her. Lucy shook her head,

“Not yet, Gem, stay a little longer. Tell me about Mummy.”

“I’ve already told you everything I remember about Mum,” Gemma said.

“Tell me again,” Lucy insisted, “you remember her.” Gemma sighed, she was obviously tired, but as she began to speak, she started to look more animated and reminded me of how she had been as a child.

“We all went on holiday together this one time,” Gemma said, “to the seaside. I think it was your first time in the sea and you were just beginning to walk. Mum carried you down to the waters’ edge and stood you down in the soft sand. I was there, watching you and running around and swimming in the sea, and you wanted to swim in the sea too. So you broke away from Mum’s hand and you ran towards me before she could grab hold of you again. And then a little wave rolled in, only a few inches high, but it knocked you over, and you fell onto your bum and started crying. And then Mum came over and picked you up, and held you. I remember her standing there in her swimsuit in the afternoon sunshine, the waves lapping at her shins, and her just staring at you as if there was nothing else in the world until you stopped crying. Which you did, after only a little while, staring back up into mum’s face with your little baby eyes. And when you’d stopped crying, Mum carried you out into the deeper water where I was, and she held you waist-deep in it so it was like you were swimming.”

Gemma trailed off when the quietly breathing Lucy began to loosen her arms from around Gemma’s neck, smiling as she slid down onto the comfortable duvet. Gemma eased her into a comfortable position and pulled the duvet up over her, again reminding of her mother, rather than the child she had seemed a few minutes ago. I realised she was about to go back to her own room and so, not wanting to be seen eavesdropping, I slipped silently back to my own.

Lying again in the darkness, wrapped up safely in my duvet, I heard Gemma close her door in the room next to me and then, in the silence of the night, heard the little click as she turned out her bedside light.

The scene she had just described to Lucy had occurred on that last holiday we all had together, the one we had been driving back from when the accident had occurred. I wondered if Gemma realised that she had been talking about something that had happened just a few days before she had lost her mother. I wondered also how much both of my children remembered about the accident.

For a number of months afterwards, mostly during the period Gemma and Lucy had spent living with my mother, Gemma had had nightmares almost exactly the same as Lucy’s; the car crash, everyone being killed, her being left alone. These had become less frequent, though still occasional, as she grew older. I think the last time she had one was about a year or more ago, at least that I knew of.

Physically, Gemma had been lucky in the accident, only baring a scar on her left arm as a lasting testament to her involvement in the accident. The scar was a result of a shard of glass from the rear-view mirror that had been thrown backwards by chance and stuck into her arm. The injury had required a few stitches at the time, but I was not awake to witness these and only saw the resulting scar afterwards.

Lucy was the luckiest in the accident, being completely unharmed; safe and protected in her baby seat, and barely sensible of the collision through her sleepy child’s eyes.

I had not gotten off so easily though. True, having the steering wheel to hold onto had saved my life, offering me support in the collision that Rachel did not have, but the force of the impact had also slammed my head into the top of the steering wheel. That was what put me into the coma. It also left me with acute damage to the memory centres of my brain.

Most of the time it did not affect me, though I was worse for the first few months after the accident, causing a case of amnesia that lasted the time I was in hospital. For a while the doctors thought it might be permanent, but then my memories began to return, patchy and fragmented to begin with, but slowly becoming more cohesive and complete.

Of course I suppose I will never know if all my memories have returned, because anything forgotten is lost forever. For a long time this filled me with a sense of absolute dread that I might have forgotten something about Rachel, however trivial, and then it would be gone. This fear was sharpened into an almost physical pain by the knowledge that memories were all that I would ever have of Rachel from that point onwards.

On top of the long-term amnesia I also developed an acute form of epilepsy as a result of my head injury. Its attacks were sporadic, and unlike some forms of the condition, did not involve debilitating fits. The attacks were neither painful nor long lasting, and it was rarely obvious to anyone else when one was occurring. Their effects were a little more prolonged, often causing me to forget the events of the last few hours. These attacks were rare though; generally kept at bay by the medication I took daily. They could however be brought on as a result of stress.

“Dad.” Gemma broke the silence at the dinner table that had previously been disturbed only by the sounds of us eating, of our knifes and forks clicking against the plates and each other, cutting up chicken burgers.

“Yes?” I said, looking at her. We were not always silent at the dinner table, or at least not through any pre-determined design. It was just that sometimes we did not seem to have anything to talk about. But what could we talk about? There was only so much Lucy could tell me about her day at school, and then she only bothered if something worth mentioning had happened, or if she had a question about something. And my day was even more boring, at least to talk about.

As for Gemma, well, she was a teenager now, and so she would rarely volunteer information unless asked. Maybe she assumed that we would find the events of her day just as boring as we assumed she would find the events of ours. Often she seemed quite distant from us too, locked in her room, staring into that computer screen, though she was only ever a few feet, a few walls away. She was talking now though,

“Is it okay if I sleep round, Marisa’s on Saturday night?” I noticed that she paused for a second before Marisa’s name, but then maybe I had just imagined it.

“Um, yeah, sure.” I said. It had been a while since Gemma had slept round anyone’s house. I had wondered if maybe she had grown out of it, preferring to just visit her friends during the day after school.

It did not take me long to see the sudden advantage that Gemma being out that night had presented; if my mother would baby-sit Lucy that night then I would be free to go out myself. It was only Wednesday now, so I could ring Angela and see if she was busy that night, having not seen her since we first met nearly two weeks before. I smiled to myself.

Looking over, I saw Gemma was smiling too, her Mother’s smile lighting up her young features. For a second I felt I was in danger of being reminded too strongly of Rachel if I continued to stare at that smile, and that might stir within me a vague feeling of guilt, of disloyalty, in thinking about Angela, to a woman that only existed now in my memories. I looked away, looked at Lucy.

Lucy looked puzzled. First she was looking at Gemma, questioning I thought, the smile on her face, then she turned to look at me when she was conscious of my gaze on her, with the same look, as if wondering why we were both smiling. Perhaps she felt that she was missing out on some private joke. I said nothing though, as I planned to not yet tell them about Angela unless anything seriously developed between the two of us.

Not that I thought they would react unfavourably to the news. After all, they had both gotten on well with Carrie-Anne when she had been around them. Lucy had seemed particularly fascinated with Carrie’s red-orange hair, that had been long and springy and the rich colour of autumn leaves. Lucy was only little more than a baby then, just coming up to her fourth birthday.

Thinking back, that had been one of my happiest times since Rachel died, particularly the time we all went on holiday together to the seaside and it had felt, for a little while at least, almost as if we were a family. It was that feeling I was reminded of whenever I thought about Carrie, that feeling and that holiday. In fact, Carrie-Anne had become synonymous in my memory with that summer, and particularly when I remembered her hair, completely unlike Rachel’s; the colour of the setting sun.

Of course those happy memories were always tinged with a little sadness, coloured by the remembrance that Carrie-Anne left me alone again when she went back to Canada, and that she was not the only woman in my memories synonymous with summer, with love, with life.

It was only when I heard Gemma’s knife and fork tap lightly on her plate as she put them down, heard her chair slide back along the vinyl floor as she stood up, that I realised I had been absorbed completely into my nostalgia, ignoring completely for a few minutes the half-eaten chicken burger and chips on the plate in front of me.

My attention was now drawn to Gemma as she put her plate and cutlery into the dishwasher, then left the room. When I had watched her leave, I began to eat again, but Lucy had already finished her meal and was now sat there, watching me. Then asked,

“What were you thinking about, Daddy?”

“When?” I said.

“Just a moment ago. You stopped eating and just stared at the wall.”

“Oh, nothing really.” She sat there for a few moments more and then pushed back her chair, jumped off, and carried her plate over to the dishwasher. As she put it in I said,

“Do you remember Carrie-Anne?” She shook her head.

“No, Daddy. Who is she?”

“Just this woman who we all went on holiday with once when you were about three” I said, and then added perhaps a little unnecessarily, “She had red hair.”

“I remember a little bit a woman with lots of red hair,” she said, thinking hard, “and I remember we were all at the seaside. Was that her?”

“Yes,” I said. Lucy paused, wondering whether or not to say what she was thinking, I watched her. After a few seconds of apparent deliberation she said,

“Sometimes when I thing of that I think that it must have been Mummy, because she took us all to the seaside once, didn’t she?” I nodded, “and so sometimes I get confused between them, but Mummy had dark hair, not orange.” She began to trail off, not really sure what she was trying to say, then said, “and I wondered who the other woman in my memory was, and now I now.” She nodded as if having just confirmed something she had been thinking about a long time and then was silent.

I was silent too, not knowing what to say after that. I looked back down at my half-eaten chicken burger and began to cut another chunk off. Looking back up I saw Lucy still looking at me, her features expressing something like concern, then she turned away and walked out the room. I finished my dinner alone, having only my thoughts, and the muffled noise from the living room next door of Lucy’s cartoon shows, as company in the empty kitchen.

Sitting there, I wondered what Gemma remembered of Carrie-Anne, her being eleven at the time of that holiday, and ten when she first met Carrie. I seemed to think that she had not taken to her at first, being suspicious and often rudely avoiding her, or trying to fix all my attention on her rather than Carrie. But eventually Carrie had won her over by taking her part in arguments when I had reprimanded Gemma for her rudeness, and by cooking food for us all, and taking the children to the park, and buying Gemma a doll she had really wanted on that one Christmas we spent together.

I also remembered that Gemma had become sullen after Carrie had left, and for quite a few months afterwards frequently asked me when she was coming back. All I could say (and hope) was “soon”. I wondered now if Gemma had forgotten all about Carrie, or if she even missed her still, but it would be weird to just ask her out the blue, so I did not.

Read Part Eight

6

I fitted the lock on the bathroom door that evening. It took about twenty minutes. When I was finished I admired my handiwork, trying out the shiny gold-coloured lock a couple of times to make sure it worked, then I went to tell Gemma.

I knocked on her door and, when there was no immediate answer, pushed down on the handle to go in. The door would not open. I pushed a little harder and still it seemed it stuck. A few moments later I heard a little click and Gemma opened the door.

“Yes, Dad?” She said. I looked at her door to see why it had not opened.

“You put a lock on your door?” I said, surprised, perhaps a little annoyed.

“I told you I was sick of having no privacy in this house.” I was about to argue, then decided against it and stood in silence for a few moments.

“What did you want, Dad?” she asked me, apparently impatient.

“Oh, um, I put a lock on the bathroom door.”

“Oh. Okay, Dad. Thanks.” She was about to close the door, I put my hand out to stop her.

“Gemma,” I said.

“Yes, Dad?” she said, looking at my hand on the door. For a moment I was aware of the sounds of the cartoons Lucy was watching downstairs.

“Are you, um, alright? I mean, in general, kind of.” I trailed off. Gemma looked at me, looked as if she was about to say something, but then a little stiffly, I thought, just said,

“Yes, Dad, I’m fine.”

“Well, I’m here for you, if you ever want to talk about anything, okay?”

“Okay, Dad,” She closed the door. I thought that had not gone too badly, until I remembered that she had actually gone to the effort of going out and buying and then installing a lock on her own door. I suppose it is understandable that she would want her own space and privacy, but she seemed to going a bit overboard with it. That was only the first time I have walked in on her like that, at least that I could remember. And her claim of having “no privacy in this house” seemed a little unjustified.

Maybe Lucy was bothering her, going into her room too much or something, although the two of them had always gotten on well. I could remember countless times when I had overheard Lucy asking Gemma about their mother, and Gemma telling with a sad smile all that she could remember of the mother she had known for eight years of her life. She used to ask me, but even little Lucy could tell how sad it made me to talk about Rachel, even to talk about all the wonderful things I remembered about her.

“I’m going to be out tonight,” I told Gemma at breakfast on the following Thursday morning, “I’ve got to meet my client to discuss the website.” Part of this was true; I was meeting Jack Morris to discuss his garden company website, but after that I was meeting Angela for dinner and to go to the cinema. I neglected to mention this though as I was not yet ready to tell my children about her. After all, I was not sure they would react favourably to the news, and it was not as if anything was definitely going to happen anyway; it was just a date.

“Your grandma is going to pick Lucy up from school and you can walk to hers from school and she’ll give you tea. Okay?” I said.

“Actually, Dad, could I just come back here, I’ve, uh, got some coursework to do, and the files are on my computer.”

“What you going to do for tea?” I asked.

“I could have something from the freezer, or you could leave me some money.” Gemma said. Then came Marisa’s daily knock at the door. Gemma half stood up, apparently waiting for my response.

“Um, okay,” I said, “there’s some chicken nuggets in the freezer, and chips too,”

“Thanks, Dad,” she said, smiling as she went to answer the door.

“Can you remember to tell grandma that Gemma won’t be coming for tea?” I said to Lucy.

“Yes, Daddy,” she said from the other side of the breakfast table.

“Good girl, let’s get you ready for school then.”

At three o’ clock I sat in a coffee shop opposite Jack Morris, a man a maybe five years younger than me, with a thin carpet of stubble across his chin, short messy hair and a friendly face. He was wearing a casual suit to meet me, but seemed uncomfortable in it, preferring, I imagined, his every-day worn-in gardening clothes.

He liked the site, thought the colour scheme we had decided on worked well and was particularly pleased with the slide show of some of the work he and his employees were most proud of. In fact he had no problems with it at all, which meant that my work on it was now finished.

As we were talking, I felt my mobile phone vibrate in my pocket. A few minutes later Jack excused himself to go to the toilet, so I checked my phone. A text message from Angela came up on the screen, saying that she was sorry but she could not make it for our date. At the end of the message she had put a little sad face emoticon and two kisses. I sighed, disappointed.

Jack returned after a couple of minutes and we made general conversation while we drank our coffee, the business of the website being concluded when he wrote me out a check.

When our drinks were finished, I gave him a copy of my business card and asked that he might recommend me to anyone else who wanted a website designing. He said he would do that, then we stood up, shook hands and left.

Gemma was in when I got home, I could hear her music coming from her room. I wondered how modern kids could concentrate with music playing, but she said it helped her concentration when I had asked her about it before. I pushed my feet into my slippers while absently looking at a leaflet on the floor that had come through the letter box. Apparently a new Chinese take-away had opened up near us. For a moment I considered what to do for the rest of the evening, but decided I would begin by making a cup of tea and checking eBay and my emails.

In my office, I could still hear Gemma’s music faintly, despite the walls and doors that stood between us. I went over to the CD player on my bookshelf and put ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ on, then I turned my computer on, and waited for it to load listening to the music of Pink Floyd and , when it had loaded, opened up eBay.

I drank the last of my tea and realised I needed the toilet. I got up, walked to the bathroom and found the door closed. I assumed Gemma was in there so I waited, and a few seconds later I heard the toilet flush, the taps running in the sink and then the lock click back and the door open. Except that it was not Gemma stood there, it was some kid.

He had messy hair, quite long, and a first-growth moustache on his upper lip. I stood there, surprised, wondering who he was. He said nothing, but just stood staring back at me as if I was in his house.

“Dad.” I heard Gemma’s voice, surprised, from behind me. “I didn’t think you were home till later.”

“Who’s this?” I demanded. She glared at me, implying that I was being rude when I felt my reaction to a stranger in my house was quite justifiable.

“This is Casey, Dad. We go to school together. Casey,” she said, now addressing the boy, “this is my dad.”

“Alright,” said the boy, speaking to me, but not looking at me as walked past me to Gemma, and then disappeared into her room. I watched him without saying anything, then I looked at Gemma. Her hair was slightly ruffled, and with a sudden lurch of my heart, I noticed that, under her thin t-shirt, she was not wearing a bra.

She must have noticed that I noticed, or thought that I had stared for a moment too long because suddenly she looked down and then back at me with a look of disgust, turned and closed her door. Over the music that had been playing in the background the whole time I heard the faint click of the door.

I went back to my study and fell back into my leather office chair. My initial shock and then anger had given way to embarrassment. Maybe my daughter thought I was perverted. But then again, it is hardly my fault if she is going to stand naked and silent in a room, or if she is not going to dress properly. I sighed and wondered why my little girl had to become a woman.

Then I remembered my original anger, and that boy, and the fact that she was not a woman yet, even if she was beginning to resemble one. What were they doing in there? Surely they were not… I was three years older when I first… She was too young. But how could I stop the inevitable?

My emotions were mixed and I thought I even detected a little flash of jealousy in them, and I realised that Gemma was just the sort of girl I would have gone for at that boy’s age. After all, I had wanted to spend the rest of my life with her mother, and Gemma was very nearly as beautiful as Rachel, or at least would be in a few years.

Had I been that boy’s age, no doubt I would have championed him, or been caught up in the excitement of those first experiences with a girl, just like I was with Jodie Young all those years ago. But then I remembered that Gemma was not some girl I passively knew across the playground, she was my daughter and I, as her father, had a responsibility to protect her, in the way that a father should, from the pernicious advances of boys.

I stood up again and went back to Gemma’s door and knocked three times in quick succession. There was a short delay before the door was opened, then Gemma stood there, wearing a hooded top.

“What are you doing?” I asked her. She looked a little hurt when I demanded this, but then she realised that I was not going to leave, so she said,

“Nothing. Just listening to music, and talking.”

“Okay, well you can do that with the door open.”

“But Dad, you hate hearing my music,”

“You can turn it down then.”

“Dad,” Gemma said, putting a slight whine into her voice which really annoyed me.

“Shouldn’t you be doing coursework?”

“I already finished it; I didn’t have as much as I thought.” There was a pause, then she said, “is that everything?”

“Yes,” I said, “leave the door open, fully open, or Casey can go home and you’ll be grounded.” She looked angrily at the floor then turned away from me.

I went back to my study, and then remembered that I still needed the toilet, so left again and went to the bathroom. As I stood over the toilet I heard the two of them go downstairs and the front door open then close. I hoped Gemma had not gone out anywhere with him.

When I left the bathroom I met Gemma on the landing as she came back up the stairs. She said nothing to me, ignored me completely, and went back into her room.

When I was sixteen I had my first real girlfriend, Imogen Martin. We were together for months, and I thought I loved her. Maybe I was right. We did a lot of stuff together, I learned a lot from her. We never had sex though, something I became sorely bitter about for a time afterwards.

She was my first love, I suppose, and she broke my heart, in the process making me timid and afraid of falling in love in case I got hurt again. This meant that, for what seemed like a long period at the time, I was without a girlfriend, wanting one, but being afraid of forming a relationship as well. I grew jealous as all my friends started boasting of all their sexual achievements, and had to wait almost a full year before I had anything to truthfully boast about, and then that had only been the result of a two week relationship, terminated because I found out that she was cheating on me.

Emma Radcliff, that was her name, my first time. Sometimes, looking back, I wish I had waited a little longer, but I felt desperate at the time, and, even though I knew she had a reputation for promiscuity, I had gone willingly with her, a little tipsy, to a bedroom at her party. Before her were only a couple of other girls, both of whom have faded in my memory, taking their names with them, and neither of whom had stayed with me for more than four weeks. After Emma though, came Rachel, joining my college as I moved up into the second year. She made me realise what a petty thing it was to throw away my first time on Emma.

After Rachel, after the depression, came again the loneliness I used to feel as a teenager. But it was different now. Now I was not afraid of missing out, of remaining a virgin for the rest of my life; now it was the fear of just being alone, of never finding anyone to love again. This fear had been present all through my grief, almost immediately after waking up in that hospital bed, but back then it had been only an underlying feeling, pushed back by all the other changes I had to deal with. Once I had gotten my life back on track, after I had set up my website designing business, after Gemma and Lucy had come back to live with me, it had surfaced, and had become a desperation.

This led to five short relationships over the course of seven years, the longest of which was three months. That was with Carrie-Anne, a woman from Canada who was staying over here on an extended vacation. I thought we were getting pretty serious at one time; she liked the kids and we even talked of her moving in. But then her mother had died in Canada and she had gone back home for the funeral and not returned. We lost touch and I have not spoken to her for three and a half years now.

While I still thought about Rachel daily, and missed her, missed the company of anyone really, familiarity had eased me into a loneliness which I now only felt as a dull emptiness. At the time I met Angela, I had not had sex in two years.

Read Part Seven

5

I stood now in the café on the top floor of the big Waterstones in Guildford, waiting for a coffee. It was Sunday. I had been out to buy a lock for the bathroom door when I had remembered there was a book I wanted and may as well get while I was out.

It was not often that I actually got out of the house anywhere, except to the supermarket or Lucy’s school or to give Gemma lifts to places. I was going to buy the lock the day before, but Gemma had gone to town a little while after the bathroom incident and had not returned until after six, and with her out I had not wanted to leave Lucy alone. I thought as well that the town would be too busy on a Saturday, so I waited until today.

The girl serving me handed me my coffee. I thanked her and sat down in one of the comfortable brown leather chairs. My coffee was too hot for the moment, so I pulled the book I had just bought out of the shiny black Waterstones bag and began to read it.

A few pages into it I was interrupted by a woman’s voice from above me.

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?” The voice said. I looked up to see a woman, maybe a couple of years younger than me, with blonde hair tied back, and blue eyes behind plain, black-framed glasses. She was holding a large mug in one hand and indicating the chair on the other side of the table I was sat at with her free hand.

“Um, no,” I said, glancing for a moment at the many other vacant seats in the half empty café.

She put a couple of bags of shopping she had looped over an arm onto the floor, and then put her mug of coffee onto the table a little way from mine. I watched her for a moment, then looked idly at her coffee, until I realised I was just staring blankly at the mound of cream that floated on its surface. I returned to the book, feeling self-concious now.

For a few moments she said nothing and then,

“I’ve read that.” I looked up.

“Oh,” I said, “did you like it?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a good book.”

“I’ve only just bought it, so I’m not far into it.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll like it, I mean, I don’t really know what you like, obviously, but it’s good, so you probably will.” She smiled, gave a little self-concious laugh, then dropped her eyes to her coffee and began to stir it with a spoon. The cream slowly melted into the hot liquid, first streaking it with soft white that reminded me of clouds at sunset, and then turning it a milky brown.

She looked up suddenly and said,

“Oh, I’m Angela by the way.” She smiled again, looked at something to my right for a second, then picked up her mug and took a sip.

“I’m Mark,” I said. I had closed the book and put it back in the bag now. I wondered why Angela had chosen to sit here, rather than anywhere else in the café.

She was quite pretty.

I met Rachel when I was at college. She was seventeen, I was eighteen. A few months later, we were together. I finished college and got a job with an insurance firm. I was on a pretty good wage, and with good prospects. A year later, when Rachel finished college, she got a job at a florist. We got a mortgage and bought a house together. Two years later we married, and three years into our marriage Gemma was born. Another six years later and Rachel was pregnant again, this time carrying Lucy. When Lucy was born our family was complete and, for a year, we all lived in perfect bliss with neither money nor health concerns to upset our happy existence.

But then came the accident, driving back from Brighton that day. My wife was killed, my children were left motherless and our family was torn apart.

The immediate aftermath for myself however was a coma that lasted five days. I had to stay in hospital for just over a week after that before I was discharged. I got a card from work. It said that everyone was sorry about my loss and hoped I would get well soon and they would all see my back at work soon. I never did go back though, except once, a few weeks after the accident, when I had decided that I could not go back to work there, to collect the few things in my desk: A photo of Rachel and the kids, some stationary, and a book.

Before that though, immediately following my stay in hospital, I had had to take a couple of weeks of grieving and recovering time off work. During this time, my mother had taken care of the children during this time (but these weeks had turned into months) and the house had felt so empty, so lifeless. It was so strange, walking through that airless house, with dust that seemed to way down everything and suck the colour from the place.

I was so scared during that time. Scared about a lot of things; scared that I would not be able to bring up the children on my own, scared that I would not be able cope without Rachel, scared that I might never be happy again, now that this huge chunk of my soul had been ripped away.

Gemma, I believe coped fairly well, considering. I only knew this from what my mother told me though, because I went for weeks at a time, unable to do anything except exist, even unable to visit my daughters. But children her age are resilient, they can cope, adapt. Of course there were tears, that is to be expected, but my mother was there to hold Gemma and look after Lucy, absorb all the tears into her own grief; for she had loved Rachel too.

Lucy was just a baby at that time, only just starting to toddle and say her first words. She had it easiest, for she was too young to perceive the loss, and as she grew older, she could not remember a time when she was any other than motherless. I envied her sometimes, particularly then; life went on as always for her.

But for me, life had stopped; staggered to a halt like a clock that someone has torn a gear from. I was diagnosed with depression after a month and was forced to take extended sick leave from work. After the fourth month I realised I could not go back. It was about then, January, after one of the most abysmal Christmases I have ever endured, that I decided life must go on.

It is still painful to me to think back to those miserable times, to that excruciating metamorphosis as I slowly tried to separate myself from my grief that winter. The most painful part was removing all the useless little things that reminded me of my lost wife; her clothes, her shoes, minor things like her toothbrush and even her five months out of date magazines that were still scattered over the floor on her side of the bed.

For months I had held onto these relics, feeling as if they might bring some substance back to her existence with their association, even their scent and colours. I could remember countless days when I had sat on her side of the bed, staring blankly out the window, holding one of her t-shirts, the last she had worn before the accident, pressed into my face, breathing in the scent as if she was there in front of me, me kissing her shoulders, telling her I loved her.

Eventually the t-shirt stopped smelling of her altogether and I could only smell my tears on it, and then it became stale and musty from not being washed. The whole house became stagnant during that time, with only myself moving around it, doing only the most basic cleaning with a slow lethargic half-heartedness. And all that time my children stayed with their grandmother, being looked after by her, loved by her, taken to school, picked up, fed, put to bed, read to; all the things I was in no state to do.

But I knew it could not stay like this. I had a responsibility to them as a father, and to myself as a human being. My mother offered to help in the necessary clean-up of my house, in taking the clothes to the charity shops and throwing away the things that could not be given away, but she had done enough already. So over a couple of weeks in January I put all the clothes, all the shoes, the make-up, the magazines, the toothbrush, all the evidence that Rachel had ever existed outside of photographs and my memories, one by one into black plastic bin-bags, each one a little wrench tightening my chest until I felt like my rib-cage might crack.

“This was fun,” Angela said, putting down her second empty coffee mug.

“Yes,” I said.

“You know, I almost didn’t sit here. I almost just went and sat on my own, and I would have wondered what would have happened if I sat here. ‘Cause you know, a lot of time people think about doing things, but then they feel too awkward or whatever and so they don’t, and it makes it hard to meet people, because people just don’t really talk to strangers.”

“Well, I’m glad you did.”

“Yeah, me too.” For a moment we said nothing, and then I said,

“We should do this again sometime.” She smiled, perhaps at what I had suggested or perhaps at the little nervous hesitation in my voice, the way had said it almost like a question.

“Yeah, we should. Wanna swap numbers, or emails?”

We exchanged both and then Angela said that she had better get going. We walked together to the ground floor of Waterstones and parted at the exit, promising to get in touch soon. I walked back to the car with a small smile on my face.

Read Part Six

Read Part Two

Read Part Three

4

“Dad, will you give me a lift down to the sports ground in a bit?” This was Gemma. It was Friday evening.

“What for?” She sighed when I asked this, looking at me as if it was perfectly obvious, then said in a slightly patronising voice,

“To go hang out with my friends.” I was about to reprimand her for speaking like that but decided against it and instead asked,

“What time?”

“About seven.”

It was half six already.

“You haven’t eaten yet.” I said.

“What we having?”

“Fish and chips.” She wrinkled her nose and I felt a little dismayed; she always used to really like fish and chips.

“I’m not hungry yet,” she paused, thinking, “you could drop me off on your way to the fish shop.”

“So what will you do for tea?” I asked. She shrugged and looked at something on the wall, then back at me,

“You could give me some money, and I could get something later.” I sighed and then said,

“Okay.”

Twenty minutes later we were in the car on the way to the sports ground. Gemma had ejected my cassette and the radio was playing, filling our void of conversation. I glanced at her for a second while we were on a quiet stretch of road. She was looking away from me, her elbow on the window frame and her cheek resting on her knuckle. The sun was low in the sky beyond her, highlighting part of her face while casting shadows over the rest.

“How are you going to get home?” I asked, turning down the radio a little. She watched my hand turn the dial and draw away, then said,

“I’ll walk with Marisa.”

“What time?”

“Ten.” I looked at her, then back at the road.

“I don’t want you back any later than nine.”

“Everyone else stays out till ten”

“I don’t care what everyone else does; you can be in at nine.”

“Aw, please, Daddy, let me stay out till ten.”

I sighed; she used to call me ‘daddy’ all the time, now she only did when she wanted something.

“Half nine, then.” I took another quick glance at her. She opened her mouth as if about to argue, looked at me, then said,

“Okay.”

We had reached the sports ground by this time. I pulled up in the car park, looked out my windscreen and saw a group of kids, mostly around Gemma’s age, some maybe a little older, stood around the children’s play park area. A couple of them were rocking idly on the swings, their dark hooded tops turning them into silhouettes in the setting sun. Three more were sat on the see-saw (one at either end and one in the middle) and there were few boys with their arms around girls, or holding girls’ hands. I noticed some of them were smoking as well and some had cans of cheap lager in their hands. They turned to look at the car when I pulled up, then most of them turned away again, though a few continued to stare blankly at us.

I looked doubtfully back at them until Gemma brought my attention back to her.

“Can I have the money now please, dad?”

“Oh, yeah sure,” I said, pulling my wallet from my back pocket and taking out a five pound note and offering it to her. She reached out then halted her hand in mid-air.

“Do you think I could maybe have ten, please, Daddy?” She asked, smiling. She saw I was about to protest and so quickly said “I haven’t had my pocket money for this week yet.” I replaced the five and pulled out a ten. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said taking the money from my hand and jumping out the car. She was about to walk away, but I said,

“Gemma.” She stopped, a little rigidly, and turned around.

“Yes, Dad?”

“Just, stay out of trouble, okay?” She looked blankly back at me, leaning on the open door, “I mean, just be careful,” I continued, “being out at night on your own as a young girl.”

Marisa was walking over to Gemma now. Gemma had noticed her and so quickly said, “kay, Dad, see you later. Bye, Lucy.”

“Bye, Gem,” Lucy said from the back seat of the car.

“Bye,” I said, as Gemma closed the door. I stayed and watched for a few moments as she walked off with Marisa, then Gemma turned back and looked at me, indicating clearly that I was no longer wanted here. I reversed out of the parking space and pulled back out onto the road.

I thought about what I had just said as I pulled up at a set of traffic lights. I was trying to sound fatherly and caring and give advice to my daughter, but it had just sounded awkward. Thinking of Gemma reminded me that the radio was still on. I pushed my cassette back in and the pop music was replaced by Pulp’s ‘Do you remember the first time?’.

In the rear view mirror I saw Lucy turn her attention from the passing scenery to the radio as I pushed in the tape. She stared at it for a moment, and then she stared back out the window, at the sun, and began idly moving her shiny shoes to the music. I smiled.

Gemma came home at ten minutes before ten. I was watching television when she came in. I heard her kick off her shoes and thought she was going to come in and say that she was back and maybe watch something with me, but then I heard her go up the stairs. After a few minutes I followed her. I knocked on her door once and then went in.

She was sat at her computer, listening to music. The computer monitor was again the only source of light in the room.

“Dad,” she said turning round, surprised because she had apparently not heard me come in.

“I thought I said be home at half nine,” I said.

“Yeah, I know, but I’m only twenty minutes late.”

“Which is quite late.” I pointed out. I noticed the smell of cigarette smoke on her clothes.

“Sorry,” she said. I took a step towards her, almost tripping over some clothes on the floor in the darkness.

“Two things,” I said, “Firstly, put a light on, you’ll damage your eyes with nothing but the monitor on, and secondly, tidy your room tomorrow; it’s a tip.”

“It’s my room,” she said a slight defiance creeping into her voice.

“And who pays for this room? And who pays your pocket money and give you lifts.” I was not sure, but in the low light she seemed to be looking at me as if I was some strange intruder that had trespassed into her territory.

“Okay, I’ll tidy it tomorrow,” she said. I noticed that she was chewing gum.

“Have you been smoking, or drinking?” I asked

“No, Dad,” she said. I could not see her face well enough to tell whether she was lying, silhouetted as she was against the dim light. She saw me looking at her intently, so added “A few of the guys in the year above me were smoking near me and that’s why it’s on me. But I hate the smell.”

“Good,” I said, giving her the benefit of the doubt, “I wouldn’t want my little girl taking up bad habits.” I put my arm out a little way, about to make some gesture of affection, ruffling her hair perhaps, as I had done when she was young, but drew my hand back, the action incomplete, and realised how stupid what I had just said must have sounded.

“I’m going to watch Lord of the Rings in a bit,” I said, filling the pause I had created.

“Um, okay,” Gemma said.

“Well, do you want to watch it with me?”

“Um, well, actually I was just going to stay on the computer for a bit then go to bed. Maybe another night.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. She turned back to the screen. Before I left I said, “turn a light on.” She did not respond for a moment, then when she realised I was waiting, she got up and turned her bedside light on. It suddenly illuminated her unmade bed, the clothes discarded over it, and the jewellery and various other small items she kept on the table around the lamp. It also set a warm amber contrast to the cold white glow that lit her face as it coloured her from behind.

“Don’t stay up too late,” I said, about to close the door.

“I won’t,” she said, not turning away from the screen. I closed the door and went downstairs.

As I watched the film I again thought about the amount of time Gemma spent on her computer, and the distance that seemed to have grown between us over the last few months. Before going to bed I checked on Lucy. She was sleeping peacefully as she always did. I also listened at Gemma’s door as I went past. Through the wooden door I could faintly hear the tapping of her fingers on the keyboard.

I woke up late the next morning, having gone to bed late, after the film finished. For a while I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling, letting thoughts drift in and out of my head. I would probably have lain there longer if my bladder had not forced me to leave the comfort and warmth of my bed. So I got up and walked across the landing to the bathroom and opened the door. Doing so revealed Gemma stood there, completely naked in front of the tall bathroom mirror. It was in the mirror that I saw her face reflected (for her back was to me), a troubled expression darkening it as she held a hand on her ribcage and scrutinised her chest in the mirror. Then the expression turned to shock and then, a moment later, to a surprised, embarrassed anger that reddened her cheeks.

I too was shocked, not expecting anyone to be in here at all, let alone standing unclothed. For just a second too, an image of Rachel flashed into my mind, and fixed me, paralysed and incomprehensible to the spot where I stood, staring blankly. Gemma was quick to react though and shouted

“What the fuck, Dad? Don’t you ever knock?” at me while reaching for the nearest towel to wrap around herself. I snapped out of my paralysis at these words, realising again that I staring at my daughter. I said

“Sorry,” quickly turning away and closing the door behind me, then, by way of explanation, “I didn’t think anyone was in there.” She did not answer and so I just stood there, embarrassed, wondering what to do or say next. And then I realised what she had just said. “Hey, don’t use that kind of language in my house.” I called through the door.

From the other side came the angry, indignant reply “No, I will,” Gemma’s voice a little higher than usual with emotion. “You should knock,” she continued, “and why isn’t there a lock on this door? How can we have a bathroom without a lock?” It was true that our bathroom had not had a lock when we had bought the house, and it was one of the many things that I ought to sort out but was not a desperate issue and so could wait a little longer, until I got around to it.

A few seconds later she pulled open the door and I realised I had been leaning against it a little as she did so because the action made me take a step towards it to regain my balance. Gemma pushed past me wearing her pyjamas and saying “there’s no privacy in this house. I’m sick of it.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I’ll put a lock on this weekend. It’s just never been a problem.” I said following her the short walk across the landing, seeking her forgiveness, but she closed the door before I had finished speaking.

Again I now stood on the other side of a door to her, indecisive and wondering whether to go after her and apologise again or to just leave it. I stood there for maybe thirty seconds before I sighed and decided I had better just leave her alone for a while, rather than aggravate her further, and besides, I still needed the toilet. I went into the bathroom and closed the door.

As I stood over the toilet, I thought about Gemma, stood a few feet away from where I now was stood, moments before. I had never noticed before how much she had grown up; I realised now how much more she was beginning to look like Rachel. She had always had a fairly strong resemblance to my wife, having similarly wavy hair of about the same length, though a different style and light tone, but now she was beginning to develop the figure Rachel had had.

The images of Gemma suddenly evoked images of Rachel in my mind. I saw her now stood before me, naked and beautiful, as she used to do. I felt a pang of desire mixed with a sharp, nostalgic sadness. I stepped away from the toilet, washed my hands and face, then stood before the mirror and looked into it. I wondered if Gemma was coping alright with the way her body was changing, without a mother in her life to guide her through the process of becoming a woman. I wished I could supply that absence, but our ordinary conversations felt awkward enough, without talking about such delicate issues.

Read Part Five

Read Part One

Read Part Two

3

“What did you do at school today?” I asked Lucy, trying to drive through the obstacle course of primary school children with a loose grasp of road safety and parents in oversized SUVs with an even looser grasp of road courtesy.

“We did maths in the morning and we learned about cubes and cubic centimetres.”

“Oh, that sounds difficult,” I said, pulling into a gap to let a car with no intention of stopping for me go past, “could you do it alright?”

“Yes, daddy, I got a gold star. See” I glanced quickly at the little sticker on her red jumper.

“Well done, sweetie” I said.

When we got in the house, Lucy went straight into the front room and started watching the children’s television programmes that she always watched. I went to fetch her some biscuits and orange juice and then went back upstairs to do some more work. Since lunchtime I had started coding a Flash slideshow of pictures the garden maintenance company had sent me, and I would have it finished in another hour, if I did not get distracted, and that would be my work done for the day.

I managed to avoid getting distracted, and after finishing it, passed the rest of the evening in front of the television, eating dinner and then watching a film with Lucy. I had asked Gemma if she wanted to watch with us too before it started, but she said she had some stuff to do on her computer. The evening just seemed to drift by and soon I was tucking Lucy into bed.

“Sweet dreams,” I told her, pulling her pink My Little Pony duvet up to her chin and kissing her on the forehead.

“Night night, daddy.” I turned out her bedroom light and went over to the door. For a moment I stood there and looked at her, her hair flowing across the pillow and her stuffed dog held tightly in her arms. She looked beautiful.

I closed the door softly, went to the bathroom, cleaned my teeth, went to the toilet, filled a glass with water. Before going to my bedroom I went to Gemma’s to say good night to her. I knocked on her door. There was no reply for a minute and then she opened a little way, stood there in the door way, almost as if suspicious and then looked at me expectantly.

“Um, I’m going to bed now,” I announced, and then “so, good night.”

“Oh, okay, Dad. Night.” The room behind her was illuminated only by her computer monitor, casting eerie shadows around the room. She seemed about to the close the door, so I said

“You should probably do the same soon, too.”

“Okay, I will.” There was a pause.

“Night,” I said.

“Night.” She closed the door. I stood there for a moment, feeling sort of unfulfilled, as if something was left unsaid, then went to my own room.

I started to undress, and then realised how stuffy the room had become over the day. I went over and opened the window. A cool wind immediately swept in and blew over my chest. For a second it reminded me of childhood, of the seaside, though our house was miles from the sea, and my window did not even face the nearest beaches. Within a few seconds I found the wind too cold though, it being only March at the time, so I closed the window again, brought the Venetian blind down, and continued with changing into my pyjamas.

I climbed into bed, pulled the covers over myself and picked up the Tom Clancy paperback I was reading and finished two chapters before I felt too sleepy to carry on. I slipped the book mark back into the book, put it down and turned the light out, then I stared at the ceiling waiting for sleep to come.

Before sleep though came various thoughts about my day. I thought about my conversation with Gemma. What I had said to her before going to bed was most of the conversation I had had with her all evening. She had been in her room almost continuously since she got in from school. She had come downstairs for tea, but then had not said a great deal, and after tea, when I had asked if she wanted to watch the film with me and Lucy she had refused. And then when I had had a conversation with her, it had been short and stilted and even superfluous.

I exhaled slowly into the darkness. Was it my fault? Did I need to make more of an effort to start conversations? I never knew what to say though, what to talk about with her. It would be a lot easier with her mother around to help, but she was gone, and so I had to work this out on my own. Maybe Gemma just did not want to talk to me. Maybe she had outgrown me and had decided it was uncool to talk to her father. But surely she could not have grown out of talking to me so quickly. But it seemed a little unfair that my daughter should have to grow up at all, that she would ever grow out of seeing her daddy as anything less than all the world, especially when she was all I had.

Maybe it was neither hers nor my fault, maybe it was just the way human society was going as a result of technology that increasingly alienates us. It was true that Gemma spent a lot of time on her PC, and I am certain that she was not doing homework on it all that time. But then, what could I do about that? Computers are wonderful tools; I would be out of work if it was not them, or at least I would find it a lot more difficult to work at home and have time to take Lucy to and from school. And Gemma did need her PC for homework, and computer skills will be valuable for her in later life. So even if technology was to blame for our relationship, perhaps it was a necessary evil.

I concluded that this must be the case, and then tried to push the thoughts of Gemma from my head. I managed this quite easily because, within a few minutes, they were replaced by the images of that road accident I passed earlier. Throughout the day I had not been able to shake off these images, the crying woman, the crumpled car, the blood on the tarmac, and now, in the darkness, they came back clearer than when I had first seen them.

I tried again to clear these from my mind, but with nothing to distract myself with, they refused to disappear. I tried rolling over onto the other side of my large empty bed, and staring out the window, but they were still there. Eventually I got up, pulled up the blind, opened the window and let the cool air blow on me, through the gaps between the buttons of my pyjama top and onto my stomach.

For a little while I focused on nothing but that feeling, and slowly I felt the thoughts fade into nothingness. I took a drink of the water on my bedside table, partially closed the window and climbed back into bed.

The following day I again watched the news while I ate my lunch, having taken Lucy to school, had a shower and done some more work. Nothing particularly significant had happened since yesterday, just a shooting in London, and a possible arson attack on a pub in Nottingham and a story on the latest inadequacies of the NHS. And then, on the local news a story caught my attention.

It was a report on an accident on Edgerton way, the dual carriageway I had driven down yesterday. I had not thought about it since last night, but here were all the details of it. Apparently some kid had been playing football in his back garden, next to the road, when he had kicked the ball over his fence. He had then climbed over, run down the small incline and, in an endeavour to get his ball back, straight into the road.

The driver of a white van, a Mr. Fretley, had had no chance of stopping in time when this eleven-year-old boy darted out of nowhere in front of him. He immediately slammed on the breaks, but had been unable to avoid the kid. The kid, something Marshall, had gone flying, landing about twenty feet down the road. He had been killed instantly. Then the green Subaru that had been following the van, “way too close” according to Mr. Fretley, had ploughed into the back of the suddenly stopped vehicle.

There was an interview with Mrs. Marshall after the main outline of the incident. She was not a particularly attractive woman, a little dumpy, and with her hair scraped back into a tight ponytail and her face and eyes blotchy and red from crying, but she was distraught, and her open, abundant grievance almost moved me to tears: I could sympathise with exactly how she felt; Rachel had been killed in a road accident.

For a long time I had blamed myself. After all, I was the one driving, although I do not remember much from either right before or right after the accident.

It had happened about seven years ago now, when we had been driving back from a family holiday in Brighton. Gemma and Lucy were sat in the back, Lucy asleep in her baby seat and Gemma playing ‘I spy’ with Rachel. The last thing I remember before the collision is those two talking and laughing together as I drove us down a long, single lane national speed limit road.

I remember that I was careful not to go above fifty-five because there seemed to be a lot of long blind bends for a road with such a high limit. I was road safety conscious even back then. Unfortunately for us, the driver on the other side of the bend was not. He had decided to overtake the person he was following on that bend just as we were going round it. This I was only told afterwards, because, as I have said, I can not remember the incident itself.

Seeing our Maestro estate suddenly appear round the corner the driver, who was only a year younger than myself, had slammed on his breaks and lost control, skidding right into our path. I too hit my brakes, but was unable to get out of his way and he slammed right into our car, hitting us head on, a little to the left. All I remember was driving with my family, blackness and then waking up five days later in a hospital bed in Crawley.

I turned off the television, stood up, crossed the room to the phone table, picked up the photograph that stood next to the telephone, and sat back down on the sofa with it in my hand. It was a family portrait, minus Lucy because it was taken two years before she was born. Rachel was twenty-six then.

For a long while I just stared at the picture, at the little image of my wife, static, eternally young in the photograph while the world continued to move. I wondered what she would look like now if she was still alive. Still beautiful, I am sure, because she would do no matter how old she lived to be, and still full of energy, but also, somehow I am sure, wiser, more experienced, a calm, gently lapping energy like a lake, rather than an impulsive sweeping energy like the sea.

I felt momentarily, as if the glossy ink would draw a few choking tears from my throat, but there was only a slight tightness in the muscles and then dull ache. When this had passed I replaced the picture frame to its position by the telephone and the lamp on the table and rubbed my face with my hands. I breathed in deeply a couple of times then wiped my hands on my trousers and went to the kitchen to put on the coffee maker.

Read Part Four