Dad

The sunlight streamed in the large bay windows at the front of his
house, burning rainbows into the pale green carpet. Most of the room
was taken up by a large pine dining table. The surface varnish was
scratched away in some places and scattered across were various
magazines, newspapers and comics. These marks of family life made
Holly's eyes sting and she looked up and out of the window. The house
was part of a newly developed estate in an unfamiliar part of town.
Children played in the street and sounds of bikes and the
"wheewhaw-wheewhaw" of a pretend police car reached her indoors. A car
approached and paused while the children scattered off the road. It
carried on at a sedate pace. It was that kind of neighbourhood.

"This is you and your brother in the old flat".

One half of the table had various packets strewn across it. He was
looking through them, randomly selecting ones to show her. The one he
was pointing at was a standard snapshot: two kids at dinnertime. The
girl was still a baby and sat in a high chair wearing sugar pink bib
and booties. Food was smeared over her face and congealed in her hair.
A slightly older boy sat beside her at a dining table, both gazing at
the camera. Holly presumed the girl was her. It felt strange to see
herself as a child. The blue eyes and blonde hair were the same
although she realised, tugging at her hair scrunched back into a loose
bun, that bleach was needed now for her hair to reach that
lightness.

"Look at this one. That's Lightwater Valley. We went there in summer
1976. You were only about two; Chris was four. He loved it there with
the cars and the bikes. He ran round all day, never satisfied with one,
desperate for the next. You pursued him well enough at the start;
desperate to show you could do anything your brother could do and
better!" Dad laughed. "Granny and Mum stopped a lot for tea and scones
and stuff, you know what they're - what I mean
is&;#8230;Well."

Discomfort followed as he realised his mistake. He stole a glance at
her face, turned down to the table. Seconds passed and she drew a deep
breath from the depths of her stomach. She looked up. This is it.

"I haven't seen her in years!" he exclaimed. "That's Aunt
Jessica".

He had cut in, disrupted her plans, and now trawled through the photos
again. Perhaps he had known she was going to ask the question. She
thought that he had to be expecting it. This first visit to her seemed
simply an opportunity for the inevitable moment when all would be
revealed.

There were obvious similarities between them, no doubt about it. She
could see where she'd got that nose and those grey-blue eyes. She
wondered if there was any resemblance to her mother also.

A change came over her father. He told her the stories behind the
photos yet he was really talking to himself. He seemed to be in each
place, tasting the same foods, smelling the same rooms, and reliving
each conversation. At that moment he was staring at a shot taken in a
back green, where her mother and another lady were hanging washing on
the long communal lines whilst Chris ran though and under the damp
white bed sheets wiping his grubby features against them.

"That was around the time he ran away. I wasn't there, it was just your
mum. They were outside - she gardening and he dashing around in his
usual fashion, pretending to be a Transformer or something. Then the
little bugger ran back into the stair and closed the door so your mum
was stuck outside. That put her in a state and she went round the green
trying all the doors until finally old Mrs Peterson let her in. But
back at our stair, the front door to the flat was shut and he was
nowhere to be seen. About two years old he was!"

Holly leaned in to look at the photo more closely and caught Chris's
furtive glance to her mother as he dirtied the sheets. She smiled
inwardly, recognising in her mother her own fair hair.

"So Mum was in a panic," he repeated "She got all the neighbours out
and called the police so there were all these elderly ladies outside
with their hair curlers in, searching for Chris on the street. Mrs
Peterson even trotted along to the corner shop in case he had run over,
desperate for one of those orange chewy bar things. What's their
name?"

He paused and looked towards the window, his face wrinkled with
concentration in the sunlight.

"Anyway, he wasn't there. I was called home from work and so I was
running back from the bus spot and spotted something ahead, dashing
from one parked car to the next. He was trying the door of a blue
Morris Minor when I caught up with him. Perfectly fine, he just grinned
and made another dash for it when he saw me, the toe rag."

His face now exuded calm and affection as he beamed down on her
attentive face.

"Are you sure you don't want a biscuit?"

She looked at the proffered selection carefully before taking a
chocolate bourbon cream.

"You just nabbed my favourite. At least you don't eat those awful pink
wafer things - you used to love them. We always got them for your
parties. Wait a minute and I'll show you."

She sat mesmerized as he sifted through the mounting piles.
Surprisingly he looked as if he knew what he was looking for amongst
the numerous packets of Kodak, Supasnap, and Kodasnap. There was a
strange efficiency in his searching.

"Aha. This is your third birthday. Just before mum died."

He pulled out a set from Klick. There she was with bunches sticking out
at different angles, wearing a badge with a huge red three printed on
balloons. They went through it together and she edged her seat further
round to his. The photos went in chronological order from the morning
when she, having rudely awoken her parents, sat in between them on the
bed ripping paper from various boxes and squishy parcels. Then there
was a party with numerous other small children running around. She saw
Chris in the background trying to trip them up. Every detail she took
in and she desperately tried to locate a place in her brain to store
her father's deep, long voice recording the events for her.

"What did you get me?"

Her voice was a strange noise in the room. It was soft and she had
pronounced each syllable clearly. He responded and it encouraged her to
ask more - what games did we play, what kind of birthday cake did I
have? She thought that if she could remember every tiny last thing and
procure all information from her father then the memory would be hers.
She could assimilate it to her own mind as if it had always been
there.

She watched the tears, the goodbyes and the waves; saw the balloons
tied to the front gate. Finally came the infamous shots of bath time-
her father was washing her. Holly saw the care he took as he held her
frothy head in one of his big hands - the same as the wrinkly ones
beside her now. She had sleepily relaxed into it full of trust. Her
father had known her body then, but now, after so long apart, there was
no reason for him to recognize it. But he had known her completely,
every freckle, every blemish. He would know she had a chickenpox mark
on her stomach and a birthmark on the back of one knee. How was it that
he knew these innermost parts of her, yet now they seemed strangers?
How was it that she had laid then in his arms unquestioningly yet one
hour ago they had surveyed each other warily? Why had it worked out
this way?

She was unaware of the long look he gave her. She felt ready. She could
feel it. It was definitely time now. All she had to do was make a noise
and shape it into words.

What would she call him - Dad? She felt strange thinking of him as her
father. But she wanted to ask it, finally, to know why.

"Dad?"