Minnie lifted the lid off the plain brown box, and held her breath while she looked inside. To her surprise, there was another box, a black one, within. She lifted it out and prepared herself again. She took the lid off that box only to find another, a red one, this time.
‘Oh, come on!’ she whispered to herself. ‘Bloody annoying.’ And then, a bit too quickly, she ripped the lid off that inner, final box to see the treasure within. A small baby’s hospital wristband, with ‘Florence Lindon-Clarke 1–1–2000’ printed on it. It was clear it had been cut off. Underneath that was a pile of airmail letters with African stamps on, all unopened. Seventeen of them. Minnie lifted the letters out very carefully, to see that under them, at the bottom of the box, was a small knitted hat in pink and yellow stripes. It was so teeny, almost as if it were actually for a doll.
Minnie marvelled at how small a baby’s head actually is, and she had a fleeting moment of relief, considering her own imminent future. She put the hat down and gathered up the letters. They were in a stack, bound up with an old piece of red ribbon that Minnie felt she recognized, but wasn’t sure where from. Some distant toy or Christmas wrapping maybe …? She untied it and the letters splayed out on the carpet. They were in order of date, according to the postmarks. The stamps were colourful and not like any stamps she’d ever seen, not that she’d seen many.
The only time Minnie wrote a letter that had a stamp attached and was sent off was when Hope insisted she write proper thank yous for any presents she was given on her birthday or at Christmas. She wrote all the time, in her notebooks and diaries, and she did write letters, but not ones that she actually posted. These stamps appeared exotic. They had images of hornbills and snakes and famous explorers she’d never heard of, mostly dark-skinned ones. There were what looked like chess players and astronauts and trains and boats and even, in 2007, one of Diana, Princess of Wales, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of her death. The envelopes were so definitely not British, the paper was thin and in various pastel colours, with stripes around the edge to indicate they were for airmail. For a different country. Leaving Africa and coming to England. To Bristol. The writing on the address was the same on every envelope:
Miss Minnie Parker, c/o Hope Parker, and then the PO box in Bristol.
So, he had always put Hope in charge of these letters. She was the one who would decide when Minnie should have them, or even if she would EVER have them. Clearly, he respected Hope and, for a moment, in the midst of this awful anger, that chimed with Minnie. Hope was indeed respectworthy. Usually.
Minnie took the first letter in her hand, and laid the others aside temporarily. She was shaky. She lifted it to her nose and sniffed it. The aroma was faint, but undeniably there, a woody, sweetly musky smell. Was it a bit of Africa or Isaac? Or was she imagining it? Wishing it? She looked once again at the handwriting on the envelope. Scrawly blue Biro, old-fashioned slightly curly cursive style. It looked friendly, inviting, not too formal.
She opened it carefully and took out the pages, and two unfamiliar green banknotes dropped out. African money. She opened up the pages to look.
It’s just some writing, she thought, how can writing hurt me? But look at it. My father wrote each of those words himself. Held the pen and wrote those words. To me. Actually … is he my father? Who is he to me? Stepfather? Kidnap dad? Captor? Stop stop stop these horrible thoughts and read the letter.
And so she did. It was two pages. Two very thin pages, and as she read them, Minnie didn’t blink once. She didn’t want to miss a single second of Isaac.
It began ‘Dear Daughter’. Already, she was welling up. Until now, there was only one other person in the whole world who called her this. She read on: ‘I am your father, and I love you.’ It made her gasp, out loud. A tiny sob. It was a bit Star Wars, but it was manna from heaven, and perfectly what Minnie needed to read and know and believe.
She ravenously fed on all of the letters, in order, one after the other, without any hesitation. There was money in every one. He’d written each one on her birthday, and as the seventeen years went by, in the lines of those letters, he drip-fed her both his life and all the support and encouragement she’d longed for. She read fast, and she very quickly adjusted to his handwriting style. She easily scanned the lines, cherry-picking key things to remember, the passages that stuck out.
When she was three:
I hope your birthday was good, and you got to eat too much cake, and maybe then you were a bit sick, so to feel better, you ate a bit more cake …?
When she was five:
I want you to know that this year, I am going to marry Efiba, my girlfriend, because she is going to have our baby. I wish I could ask you to come, I wish I could know that you are OK with this, but I am just going to have to believe that you would understand. She doesn’t know, can’t
