The more polite guests just turn the conversation; they ask how we met, because everyone has a meet-cute story, even if they don’t have offspring. It’s safe territory. Was it technology or chemistry? Swipe right or eyes across a crowded room? We still make such a big deal about the distinction. As though either method is any less random.
We are often called an adorable couple. We look good together. We’re frequently laughing. We do a lot of sport. We habitually urge the other one to finish a story.
‘You tell it better!’
‘No, you tell it!’
The story of how we met is always mine to tell, though, no debating. The beginning is always the sweetest bit. The forever, never-to-be-taken-back bit. The story that is subsequently shared with friends and family, that gleams and glistens despite the constant retelling. Perhaps it sparkles even brighter as though each time it is told it is being polished – which I suppose it is in a way.
Even ours. Despite everything.
‘I miss us too,’ I tell Daan.
10
Kai
Four years ago
The sun is shining. I mean, really unapologetically shining and it is only March, so we have no right or expectation of this. Normally the sun shining is an unequivocal joy to me, today it seems like a taunt. Shouldn’t it be raining? Shouldn’t it be grey and desolate? I can’t stay in the office, eating a sandwich, hunched over my desk as usual. I might as well make the most of the fine weather, allow the sun to soothe me, I need comfort. Work is punishing. Everything is punishing.
I have just heard my father is dead. I mean literally just heard, this morning. I can’t process it. I can’t imagine that he’s no longer on the planet. No longer anywhere. Freddie, the oldest of my three half-brothers, called my work landline. I don’t know how he got my number. I can’t remember giving it to him. I do remember writing it down for my dad, along with my mobile and my home number, years ago. Opportunities to reach out, scribbled on a notepad near the telephone that sits in his hallway. Stiff, restrained. Like everything about my father. Was it possible that the notebook had remained in the same position for all these years and Freddie found it? Or had Dad transcribed the numbers into his address book? I don’t know and I find myself thinking about this gossamer-thin strand of longing, or hope, or something, stretching between us.
His death is unexpected. At least to me. I hadn’t known he was ill because we are going through one of our phases of estrangement which happen periodically throughout my life. Were going through. Happened. Past tense. Funny formal word, estranged. We throw ourselves into formality, don’t we? When we are ashamed, or sad or simply defeated. I don’t know when else that word is used except when families splinter: husbands and wives, parents and their children. People who should be closest become as strangers. My father and I have not seen one another for over a year. We spoke on his birthday, it went badly, as it often did between us since years of tension and resentment simmer under the surface of our relationship, always threatening to erupt. Until now, I suppose. No chance of an eruption now. Or a reconciliation. Or anything.
My father always liked to give the impression that he was trying, that I was difficult, resistant. The implication was that the disappointing thing about our relationship was that we hadn’t found a way to click, when in fact the disappointing thing about our relationship is that we don’t have a relationship. Didn’t. And now can’t. My father liked to give the illusion that he was a good father to me, fair, that I stand equal with his three sons. That he worked just as hard to please me as he did them – harder, in fact. That also hurt. Because the truth is, he never had to work hard with them, with them it was effortless.
We’ve only exchanged a handful of texts since that birthday call. This morning, when Freddie awkwardly passed on the news, my first thought naturally was, I should have rung more often, because that is what people think in times like this. Regret is kneejerk. Apparently, the cancer was diagnosed eight months ago. Why didn’t Freddie contact me before now? Now is too late. But I don’t blame my blond-haired, blue-eyed brother. I never blamed any of them for coming after me, expanding into my space, inadvertently pushing me out of it. To blame takes a level of confidence and entitlement. I never had either thing when it came to my father.
What would I have said anyhow? Those never-happened calls would have been punctuated with long silences, awkward pauses, miscommunications. Recriminations. We have never found it easy to speak to one another, even at the best of times. Whenever they may have been.
I’m not much of a sharer. I don’t want to tell anyone at work my news. I know they will make a fuss. Kindness will lead to them insisting I go home but I don’t want to do that. Nor do I want to receive their sympathy when I’m unsure whether I’m entitled to it. I have often said that I hate my father – to his face, to my mother, to boyfriends when lying in bed, sheets soiled with fucking that couldn’t quite exorcise out the complexes. I did not hate my dad
