Why now? Why do I find the house now?
I stop on the corner. The grinding tread of the tank behind me. The neon of the noodle bar.
The fade.
Ten years since you made me. Six since you sent me away.
I finally have a new way to reach you.
And I have to knock it down.
The bin bag is still there outside next door.
The door is closed and I don’t hear anything from inside. Why wouldn’t they just take it to the rubbish chute? I’m not doing it. Not my job.
Inside.
Boots off.
My head is swimming. It happened. I was there. With you. Through the house, that I now have to destroy.
Alan. Unresolved feeling will fester, Thor.
No shit.
Who can I tell?
No one. No one can know, Marcie. Just me and you.
The need to see you pulls me to the table. The old typewriter smiles. Like it knows.
Like it knows.
You’re drying a dinner plate.
Coral stands next to you, washing the last of the dishes. Her Lauryn Hill MTV Unplugged album is playing from the living room. She hums along as she washes.
You thank her for dinner and for the banner and the cake. She tells you not to be silly and offers to drop you off wherever Cara and the others are. You tell her you’re tired and that you’re just going to watch a film and, as she passes you the pan, you notice a mobile phone number inked on the back of her hand.
You ask her if she realises that it’s nearly ten years since you moved in with her. Coral drops the sponge. Of course she remembers it, she says. She remembers it like it was yesterday. She tells you that becoming your legal guardian is the best thing that ever happened to her.
You smile.
She asks if you’ve seen your dad. You tell her you’ll go tomorrow.
She pulls you in for a hug and tells you that she is so proud of you and that you are so smart and so special and that university is going to be the best time of your life and, as she kisses you on the head, you close your eyes and see me.
Diane’s gift-wrapping a slim hardback for an old man with a crooked spine and long ears.
They’re the only two people in the shop.
Street sounds are muffled as I close the door gently behind me. Deep breath.
The calm of being surrounded by books.
Something folky is playing quietly through the wooden speakers behind the till.
“Morning, Marcie,” says Diane, in her PhD voice. She’s wearing one of her self-knitted cardigans over a sky-blue denim shirt buttoned up to her slender neck. Hipster bookshop chic.
The old man is watching her fingers gracefully wrap the book, like a young boy watching his grandfather fix a precious watch. He gives a grateful nod as Diane hands him the finished gift and then he just stands there, like he doesn’t want their interaction to be over.
“Have a lovely day,” Diane says to him, and I get a little bit of leftover smile as he leaves.
“Bless him. That’s the third time he’s been in this week.”
“I think he likes you,” I say, dropping my jacket over the chair behind the counter.
“He’s sweet. I wonder who he’s buying them for?”
“Maybe it’s no one. Maybe they’re for himself, and he just loves opening presents.”
Diane looks at me, her glasses resting on top of her Disney-heroine hair.
“That’s so sad, Marcie.”
“Is it?”
I watch her try to see it my way. Her thinking face makes her look like a little girl. I’m not sure how old she actually is. Old enough to be doing a literary doctorate and to like Nirvana in a non-retro way. Old enough to be having a not-so-covert thing with Dad and it not be creepy. Early thirties? Pretty and clever and slightly vacant in the eyes. She’s the most English person I know.
“How is he?” I say, pointing at the ceiling.
Diane pulls a pained expression. “He’s ‘working’,” and the way she rolls her eyes tells me it was a long night.
“I’m just gonna go say hi. Do you want a coffee?”
Diane zones out, like she’s contemplating a tough life decision, then snaps back. “I’d love one, please. Wait, are you done? Last exam?”
“Yep. All finished.”
“Congratulations! You must feel amazing.”
“I guess so.”
“You’re going to love uni, Mars, trust me.”
I nod. She smiles again, then gets on with her stock check. I run my fingers along the spines as I walk, giving my usual wink to Johnny Cash, staring out from his autobiography in the music and film section next to the door for the stairs.
It looks like somebody poured a skip-load of paper through the skylight. A snowdrift of empty white A4 curves up the walls of the small shaded room at the top of the stairs.
There’s a kind of path, where someone has waded through the middle. I can hear Dad muttering as I follow it to the open living-room door.
He’s in the corner, past the sofa, standing on his head.
“What are you doing, Dad?”
His eyes stay closed, still mumbling something to himself.
“Dad.”
He slowly lowers his bare feet and stands, blinking slowly, readjusting to being the right way up.
“Better. Feel my face.” He pushes back his black pipe-cleaner hair. I don’t move.
“Come on. Feel my face.”
He takes my hand and presses it against his cheek. His skin is stubble-rough over sharp cheekbones. “You feel that? Morning, gorgeous.”
He leans in and kisses my cheek. I smell Imperial Leather soap and tobacco.
“Circulation, Mars. You know, in some cultures people believe that ideas exist in the blood. More blood to brain, more ideas.” He taps his temple.
“So vampires must be geniuses then,” I say, looking out of the tall window on to the sleepy high street.
Dad smiles and sits down at the little table. His yellow legal notepad is pristinely