‘Thanks,’ Dad said. ‘You’ve lost a fair bit of weight, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I have a bit.’
‘You not eating properly, or something?’ Dad asked.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not really.’
He nodded and then crossed the room to stand right in front of me. He grasped my forearms gently. ‘How long’s she been gone, son?’ he asked.
I sighed. ‘August,’ I said. ‘She’s been gone since August, Dad.’ But I couldn’t speak any further. Because for the first time in months, I was crying.
‘Oh, Joe,’ Dad said, releasing my arms and then wrapping me in his. ‘Oh, son!’
Eventually we sat down and I told him the full story, from our ill-fated holiday in Spain to my imminent eviction from the house. He listened in silence until I’d finished, then said that he’d suspected it for months. He’d simply been waiting for me to tell him.
‘So you’re toying with the idea of coming home,’ he continued, and I was unsure if it was a question or a statement. He’s always been able to read me like a book.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. There’s the whole Ben situation to sort out, so that makes everything a bit complicated.’
‘I think you should,’ Dad said. ‘Even if it’s only for a while. The boy’ll be OK with his mother. Sometimes a return to the source is the only thing that makes any sense.’
‘A return to the source,’ I repeated. ‘I like that.’
‘Your room’s still upstairs,’ Dad said. ‘You’ll probably be wanting to fix it up a bit, but it’s still there, still waiting for you, with all your stuff.’
I laughed at the concept of ‘my stuff’. These were things I’d last used over twenty-five years ago. ‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘And if you need a room for Ben, you know there are plenty,’ he said. ‘You can take a whole floor if you want.’
‘Thanks,’ I said again. ‘We’ll see. Right now, I might go and lie down for a bit. The drive up was pretty hellish.’
‘Of course,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll call you for dinner if you don’t wake up.’
With the exception of the bed, which they’d replaced at some point with a double, my room on the top floor hadn’t changed much since my teens. The turquoise wallpaper was the same, if faded, and my old Akai ghetto blaster was still in the corner. I opened the drawer and rifled through a jumble of ancient cassettes, but only the rubbish ones remained. I must have taken all my favourites with me when I moved out.
I lay down on the bed and looked over at the window, at the raindrops dribbling down the pane. I listened to the familiar whistling of the wind around the chimney stack, and the distant sound of waves crashing on the beach.
There was a poster on the wall beside the headboard – the cover of Moving Pictures, an album by Rush, one of my favourite bands from adolescence. The image was a photo of a team of removal men in red overalls carrying paintings from a gallery, and just from looking at it I could hear the songs in my head – I could remember every detail of the guitar riffs. Staring at that poster made me feel weird, but in a good way, and I thought about all the hours I’d spent studying it.
A return to the source, I thought, and Dad was right – just being here felt healing. It was reminding me who I was, where I came from. I’d lost track of myself in all that madness, I realised. But here I was, Joe Stone, the kid who had mates, the lad who liked rock music, the adolescent learning to play the guitar. I was the son of Megan and Reg, and though I wasn’t the best-looking guy on the block, I was solid, people liked me, people trusted me. Solid Joe. That’s what my friends had called me, back then.
I’d had parents who were cool, who were clever, and who, more importantly than anything else, had always, indisputably, loved me. Another round of tears welled up, and I let them happen, I let them rise and slide down my cheeks, and I felt glad, because they weren’t tears of sadness, but tears of remembrance. I was remembering my warm, caring mother, Megan, and my spiritual seeker of a father downstairs; I was picturing my childhood: learning to play the guitar, smoking joints out of the window, kissing Tiffany Dennis on the bed – and whatever happened to her?
This was Joe, this was where I came from, and for the first time in ages I knew I was going to be OK.
I liked Emma instantly. She was a bit of a cliché Buddhist, but I mean that in a good way. She seemed calm and friendly and kind. She listened more than she spoke, too, and I liked that. She reminded me of Dad’s friends when I’d been growing up, so I felt instantly at ease.
She’d made a vegetable hotpot with dumplings, good hearty nosh for a cold winter’s day, and we chatted comfortably as we ate.
Dad told Emma quite matter-of-factly about the breakdown of my marriage, and it was peculiar to hear it told second-hand, like a story. Emma nodded and reached for my wrist. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, scrunching up her nose. ‘It’s one of the hardest things that can happen, that is. But I somehow sense that you’ll be fine.’
‘Of course he’ll be fine,’ Dad said. ‘He’s a Stone! Nothing’s tougher than stone.’
‘Erm, I think diamonds might be tougher,’ I offered cheekily.
‘Yep, and a diamond would be . . . ?’ Dad asked. ‘Come on, boy. A diamond is a . . .’
‘OK, it’s a stone,’ I said. ‘You win.’
‘A proper little diamond, this one . . .’ Dad said, winking at Emma.
She squeezed my wrist and let go. ‘I can see that,’ she said. ‘Like father, like son. I can tell.’
I awoke the next morning to sunshine and shrieking seagulls, and
