by Jake Cross
‘To their kids, yes. The best dad ever. Not that they’ve had more than one to choose between. Some do, though.’
Julia poked her head around the doorway. Katie was rubbing her wrists, that habit of hers. ‘I need that clothing back.’
Julia found her pyjamas and slipped into them. ‘I remember once wanting my friend Alison’s dad. He’s a fireman and he can do magic tricks. But then Alison says my dad is like a superhero. And he is, I suppose. Viruses and bacteria could kill us all. Like my dad says, they’re invaders that need no ships or planes or bombs, move silently, invisibly, can attack us anywhere. The ultimate soldiers in an army with no manpower limit. And he’s the one who finds this army’s Achilles heel and destroys it.’
‘Didn’t you ever want his job? I thought kids wanted to follow in their father’s footsteps.’
‘I did, actually. My dad studied drama at college, but Mum said he quit when he found out she was pregnant with me. He wanted a real career, so he went to university to study microbiology. I sometimes wish he’d stayed with drama. I don’t have much of an interest in microbiology, but I’ve picked a few things up because he talks about it a lot. Want me to prove it?’
‘You love him, and that’s important. But more so is that he loves you. He’d do anything for you. He was there from the day you were born, taking care of you. Making sure you were happy and safe. Kids need that. That’s all you need to be the best dad in the world. Not everyone gets the best dad in the world, but you should feel lucky you did.’
Dressed, Julia grabbed the door to open it, but Katie’s hand held it tight. She realised it was to avoid displaying those burns. ‘Katie, I know why you have tingling hands.’
‘It’s just underuse, stiffness. Can you pass my other clothing out? It’s on the floor.’
‘You don’t have to get dressed in the hallway.’
But Katie insisted. Julia fed the clothing through the gap.
‘No, it’s not underuse, that tingling. You’re a strict vegetarian. Strict vegetarians miss out on certain foods like liver and eggs, which contain the vitamin B12. If you don’t get enough, you get over-big red blood cells, and they can’t carry enough oxygen around the body. There are a lot of symptoms of B12 deficiency.’
‘Sounds fascinating.’
‘I know that’s sarcasm. But one of the B12 problems is paraesthesia. I think you’ve got chronic paraesthesia. Long-term pins and needles.’
‘You’re smart. I’m jealous. I never had the opportunity to fill my brain like you have.’
Katie lobbed her nightclub outfit over Julia’s head, into the wash basket, a perfect shot.
But Julia retrieved it. ‘No, no, I have to hang this stuff back up, or Mum will know it’s been worn. Besides, the washer’s broken.’
Katie apologised and tried to step past Julia. Their shoulders touched. Julia raised an arm to block Katie, who turned her face. Inches apart, Julia couldn’t stop herself. She leaned in to kiss Katie’s mouth, but instead her lips touched the scar as Katie turned her head.
Julia backed off with her hands up. ‘I’m sorry for that. Oh, God, I’m sorry.’
‘I get pain in my back and neck, too,’ Katie said. ‘I get pain everywhere. I’m falling apart, even though I’m young.’
Julia thought Katie was rapidly trying to change the subject, and condemning that stupid kiss attempt to history was something she also craved. ‘Paraesthesia is—’
‘It’s not that. It’s nothing you could imagine, or ever guess. I could tell you what it is, if you want. And it’s nothing to do with vitamins or food. I know my own body. You’ll be shocked. You might think me weird suddenly. You might not want to be near me ever again. Sure you’re ready to hear this?’ Katie leaned against the doorframe, a grin on her face like a tease, or a taunt.
‘We all like you, Katie, me especially. But not in that way, honest! You’re like me in many ways, and like my big little sister. So I don’t even know what came over me. So hit me with what you’ve got, because I doubt you’ll shock me.’
She was wrong.
* * *
‘Eager for something?’ Rose said as Chris hit the accelerator. He shook his head, but she grinned at him as if doubtful. She patted his leg. ‘I need a shower. And I might need help.’
He said nothing. After half a mile in silence, she said, ‘I have an idea. I think Katie has got no confidence about her achievements, about what she’s made of her life, but she’s proud of that go-karting trophy. It’s a bit old and battered and the winner’s plaque is missing. We could replace it. There’s nothing to say who presented it to her, the go-kart place, but it was manufactured by a company called Cooper & Sons. I thought we could email them and see if they could make another one, with an engraving. A nice present for Katie.’
‘By we, you mean me.’
‘I mean you. It’s old if she was under seven, but they might still have the mould or whatever they use, if they make a lot of similar trophies. Or if not, we could just get a new plaque. We can’t really ask Katie where she got it because then she’d know what we were planning.’
He didn’t really care at the minute, but he nodded. ‘I’ll do it.’
A few moments later, she asked him a strange question. ‘When you took the socks up to Katie in the bathroom, was she dressed?’
‘She was still in that smoke-smelling T-shirt. Why?’
‘So not naked? She wasn’t standing there naked?’
‘No, why?’
‘No reason.’
A lie. Carol’s words still haunted her.
When they got home, Rose kissed her husband’s cheek and said, ‘I need that shower. And probably help with it,’ and got out. He followed her up the path. She threw a cheeky glance back as she unlocked the door.
It was half past midnight, but Katie and Julia were still up, watching TV. Rose dumped her bag.
‘Good night? Did the women win again?’ Julia said.
Rose ignored the question. She stared at Katie. ‘You’re in make-up. You’re so pretty, did you know? Of course you know, sorry.’ She slapped her own head, like a dumb cartoon character. ‘We won, yes, of course, always.’
Chris sat on the sofa, next to Julia. He wondered if it might look like favouritism, but he could hardly sit next to Katie, could he? He saw Rose looking at him with wide eyes and figured she’d had the same thought. But no.
‘You sit the same,’ she said.
Chris realised he was cross-legged, and so was Katie. That propelled him to his feet before Julia could question Rose’s comment.
He was about to leave, but Rose called Julia out into the hallway. Out there, he heard his wife apologise to his daughter. He watched the door as if it allowed better hearing.
‘I’m sorry for trying to make you miss your gig, just to wait in for a package. It’s just that it was important. It’s for my pain and my circulation. But that’s no excuse for selfishness. I’ll make it up to you.’
‘Mum, it’s fine. There will be more gigs, and you needed that machine you bought.’
‘No, it was bad of me, Julia. I could have collected the package tomorrow. Your gig was important. And I made you miss it. I want to make it up to you.’
Julia gave a laugh. ‘Mum, really, it’s fine. Just forget it. I’m glad you got your machine.’
‘And it was wrong of me to think Katie couldn’t wait for the package. It was only a signature. But I’m going to make it up to you for missing your gig.’
‘Katie didn’t take offence, if that’s your worry. And I don’t want anything. Just forget it. It’s fine.’
‘So I’ll pay you. I’ll give you two hundred pounds for lost money on the gig.’
‘Okay. But it was two-fifty I lost,’ Julia said without missing a beat.
Chris bit back a laugh.
As they returned to the room, Chris glanced at Katie, who’d remained silent. She was staring at him. She only smiled when caught looking.
He got up. ‘I’m going to bed.
You ladies have fun.’
He left the room, and Rose followed. He stopped in the hallway between the front door and the foot of the stairs. She appeared beside him and leaned close.
‘Did you see that make-up? Why was she wearing make-up?’
He shrugged. ‘Teenagers.’
She glanced at the living room door to make sure they weren’t overheard. ‘Maybe. But when I cleaned her smoke-stained jeans, I found a folded-up condom packet in the pocket. It was empty. Julia told me Katie said she has no interest in sex. She must have lied.’
Tomorrow he might give a hoot, but not right now. ‘So?’
Not the answer she expected. ‘Oh, I don’t know. What a thing to say. But if she is sleeping with boys, then I don’t think I want any of them coming round here. Can you have a word?’
He said sure, okay, and she went past with a pat of his bum. Halfway up the stairs, she stopped.
‘What’s wrong? Are you not coming up?’
He was still by the front door. He grabbed his keys off the rack. ‘I need to go run an errand.’
She checked her watch.
He said, ‘I want to go talk to Alan at home about something.’
Katie appeared in the living room doorway just as Chris said this. Sensing a private moment, she backed off.
‘You mean go to his house? It’s the dead of night. Won’t I do instead?’
‘If you can clear up a big problem at work.’ She looked hurt by that, or just having her sexual offer declined. ‘I need to clear up a problem and apologise to him. I need to do it tonight. I forgot earlier.’
She waved him off, annoyed, and clumped up the stairs.
Chris decided not to inform the others that he was going out. He got the satnav from Rose’s car, because she had borrowed it, and climbed into his own vehicle. But then he thought of something. It sent him back into the house, to the cupboard under the stairs, for his toolbox.
Things might not go as easy as he hoped, so he took an item he thought might help. He hid it in his coat and then oozed out the door like a burglar.
FRIDAY
Twenty-Five
He was home ninety minutes later. All the lights were off, which was good because he didn’t want to meet anyone. He crept in. Rose was dead to the world and didn’t stir when he turned the en suite shower on, although he washed in darkness in case the light stirred her. He dressed in an old T-shirt and jogging bottoms and took his dumped clothing downstairs. He stuffed it all into the washer, then remembered the damn machine was broken.
When he turned around to head back upstairs, he saw a faint glow from the living room. The door was ajar. He pushed it a little wider and saw Katie on the sofa, in the sleeping bag, with her face lit by the glow from her phone. Had the noise of water thumping the shower floor woken her? The kitchen light was off and the light from the phone would probably make it impossible for her to see Chris, so he hoped to get away unnoticed.
Didn’t happen.
Katie looked up from the screen, then turned her phone to light him up.
‘Hey. You’re back. Pop the light on. Where have you been?’
Chris flicked on the living room light and leaned against the doorframe, hoping that this wouldn’t take long. Being alone with Katie still seemed awkward, especially at night, and even after alcohol. She sat up. She was still wearing Rose’s old long-sleeved top and jeans.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked again.
‘Just an errand. Had to see my boss. Look, I’m tired, so can we chat tomorrow?’
She didn’t respond, so he decided that was authorisation to leave. He turned to go.
‘You can’t change me,’ Katie blurted out.
Sighing, he faced her again.
She continued. ‘Babies are born blank canvases, and parents paint that canvas as they raise the child. But I’m already a painted canvas.’
It sounded like she’d been drinking too.
‘We don’t even look similar. That will always prevent a special bond between us. But I understand it. I’ll accept it. I don’t even have to call you Dad.’
He couldn’t work out a response.
‘The future isn’t set until we get the results,’ he finally said.
Katie nodded. ‘I know you said you didn’t want more children. Certainly not like this. And, like I said before, I don’t even have to be in your life. I just want you to know that.’
‘Rose couldn’t have more children.’
Katie blinked at him, slow and steady.
‘That’s why we don’t have a spare room. We wanted a second child. In fact, we wanted three. But after Julia… she lost the ability. Much later, when her arthritis got bad, she tried to pretend it was for the best. That she wouldn’t have been a good mother being so immobile at times. But that spare room was like a… its emptiness was like a missing baby. It was always there, that empty space, a constant reminder that we were… incomplete.’
‘Fateful,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
What? What did that mean?
She said, ‘Julia doesn’t know this, and I won’t tell her. And thank you.’
Thank you? For what?
She settled back and raised her phone to her face. Chris took it as permission finally to leave. He was eager to get this bizarre day shut away in history, but first he had something else to say, and after tonight he was worked up enough to not find an excuse to put it off.
‘Katie. I saw your Facebook page. That line you put about being conceived during the Formula 1 World Championship. I think it’s a little crude. Can you delete it?’
Katie said she would. No problem.
‘Right now,’ he snapped. Then he shut the light off and left.
At not much past two in the morning, Chris woke with a bursting bladder which he blamed on Rose’s healthy diet. In the bathroom, he was startled by a noise downstairs, which was a burglar with a knife until his dozy brain remembered that Katie was sleeping in the living room.
And then, a bizarre moment when he worried that it was a burglar after all and that Katie was in danger. Christ, he remembered being like that with Julia when she was a toddler. His worst fear had been waking to find that someone had slit Rose’s and Julia’s throats in the night, not a clue left. In one nightmare, the cops, sans clues, arrested him for their murders. He’d slept with a realistic-looking fake gun under the bed for about a month after that, until Rose found it.
He put on old tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt. He flushed the toilet, partly to let burglars know that other people were in the house. Then he went to the top of the stairs and cocked an ear.
Silence. He went down. The living room light was still off, no one in there or the dining room or the kitchen. Katie’s sleeping bag was on the sofa, empty. Now he was awake enough to know he hadn’t dreamed up a long-lost daughter, so he went to the window. He didn’t see her motorbike. It could have been in the section of driveway running alongside the house, of course, so he turned on the light and looked atop the fireplace where Katie always put her keys. The trophy was there, the keys weren’t. Katie had definitely gone out. But, this late, where?
He was about to leave the room when he spotted Katie’s notebook on the sofa.
It was in his hands before he could stop himself, but restraint kicked in right there. He shouldn’t look through this. Not because it was someone else’s private property, but because he had no idea what he might read. What if there was something bad inside? About him or Rose? What if Katie didn’t like them, didn’t want to be Chris’s daughter?
That disc was there, too. The one labelled ‘MUM’. And something new: a folded sheet of paper. That he couldn’t resist. It was a printout in PDF format titled, Overview of ‘The Rise and Fall of Humour’, from Social Psychological and Personality Science.
On a dentist’s waiting room table, it would be something to be completely ignored. Here, now, he devoured it.
It talked about something called BVT: Benign Violation Theory. Apparently, huma
ns found something humorous if it violated their view of the world, of cultural or social norms, but in a benign way. Too intricate? Laymen got a cartoon example: a monkey riding a motorbike. Now he thought he understood.
There was a theory that people could eventually see the funny side of tragedy. Deep and convoluted stuff about when a person’s emotional response to a tragedy, or something dangerous, was diluted enough to make it ‘benign’ but still raw enough to create a ‘violation’, thus allowing humour. Too complex? Laymen got another cartoon: a bomb exploding with glitter. He thought he got that one, too.
Then the paper got a little far-fetched. It claimed to have pinpointed the exact time period it took for a person to overcome tragedy and look upon it with humour. Thirty-six days. What? Apparently, thirty-six days after someone got their leg cut off in a freak industrial accident, it was okay to take the piss about it. No cartoon illustrated this point.
Why did Katie have this? Had she been researching when and if she would ever get over the death of her mother?
As he was replacing the sheet, the disc slipped out. And of course, he found it hard to put back. With the book on his lap, and the disc atop it, he sat in debate and the clock counted twenty minutes. An internal battle which caution won. He put the disc in the book and the book on the sofa. He switched off the light and went upstairs.
Before getting into bed, he stopped and stood in the dark, and the debate raged again. He even headed back to the stairs, but thankfully Julia’s door opened at that point. She staggered out like a zombie and said she needed the toilet; he said he’d just been and scuttled back into his bedroom.
He turned Rose onto her other side and got into bed. The book was trying to pull him, like moon and ocean, but he tucked the covers in around his body and closed his eyes. He hoped he wouldn’t see the notebook again, because he knew his will would falter next time. Better not to know what was on that disc, or in that book. Better to keep his head buried in the sand.
But sleep would not come, and he got up and he slid his laptop out from under the bed. He was thinking about something Katie had said. About her mother wanting to film the suicide.