Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen (ready to read books .txt) 📕

On later visits, I’d decline to hold Jakob, and avoided any awkwardness.

That period was marked with these highs and lows. There was the delight in Jakob, that reflected from us to him and back again and again like a hall of mirrors. Then there were the moments when the only thing to do was to keep your mouth closed to avoid a falling out. There was the day when Seb and Evie had a screaming match because Seb had let Jakob suck his finger for a moment to stop him crying and Evie was worried it would give him wind or that he’d catch a bug because Seb hadn’t washed his hands. There were the mornings Evie would hardly speak to me because she was inputting data about Jakob’s naps and feedings and they weren’t aligning with the guidelines. Her face would be drawn and pinched in the faint glow of her workSphere and I’d quietly let myself out.

I told myself that Evie’s overprotectiveness was simply born out of wanting the best for Jakob, and made my peace with those episodes.

But only around a month after Jakob was born, two things happened that changed everything.

* * *

It began, and ended, with a phone ringing.

One night, I found myself dialling Dad’s number. There was no particular reason for the call; I hadn’t heard from him in a while and wanted to try to catch him. His phone rang and rang, only stopping when the message system kicked in.

I wasn’t worried. I ran through at least five reasons why he didn’t answer and then carried on with my evening. I left a message saying hello and not much else.

I forgot all about calling after that and only the next morning did I remember and think it odd that he hadn’t rung back. I tried to call again. Once more, the phone rang out until the automated voice of the answerphone started to play. I left another stilted message asking him to call me.

In the end, when I still had not heard back, I drove round to his flat. Even as I walked up to the stairs to his front door, I didn’t really imagine that something was wrong. Years ago there was a problem with his phone and he could not tell if it was ringing or that there were messages. Only that time, it had been Evie who had sounded the alarm as I had been away for a few days with Roger.

My father had become a studied creature of habit since he’d retired. He had openly liked the routine of going to work each day and Evie and I both worried that he would find retirement too aimless, like a winding, empty road stretching out before him, with no features, no landmarks along it. We needn’t have worried. He’d revealed his allotment like a card trick, with a sleight of his hand, a hidden ace.

When I found him face-down, unmoving and cold on the sitting-room floor, the television droning on tonelessly, I wished he could have died on his allotment, his lips pressed against the dark, rich soil that he so loved. Surrounded by the squashes and the legumes that he’d tended since they were seeds, when they were only the promise of something more.

That was what I first thought.

There wasn’t much of him in this flat. Afterwards, when Evie and I had packed up his belongings, stripped the cupboards, taken the few things off the walls, we were struck by how the flat seemed hardly different to when all of his things had been laid out about the place. It was in a nicer part of the quarter than where I lived and was practical and easy to maintain, but to the point that it was devoid of any character.

He was lying across the beige carpet, a daub of colour amid the drab. At first I could not make sense of it, that it was him lying there.

In the moments that followed, I began to close down; as though there was a darkness travelling through my body, a numbness that disconnected me from what I was seeing. There was silence outside; not the sound of a car driving past, the song of birds, people talking, the hum of the Spheres.

I could just make out a clock ticking, a drum beat that never lost its rhythm. I wanted to call Evie; I should call an ambulance. Before I did either, I ran to his side.

His arms were at angles, his palms to the ground. I wondered if he had tried to get up, if he had realised that he was lying there and that there was no one to help. His body was stiff and heavy to turn over; I was sure that there was nothing that could be done but I made myself roll him over, and faced him eye to eye.

He was so utterly still, he didn’t look like himself any more. His face was a hollow mask. He stared past me, the brown of his eyes dull, lightless.

‘Dad,’ I whispered. ‘Dad.’ It seemed important to say it aloud.

I had no hope of rousing him. As I knelt there next to him, I was suddenly aware that this would be the last time I spoke to him, the last time I would hear his name on my lips with him before me.

I thought I would cry. I wanted to, but couldn’t.

Instead, with one hand I calmly picked up my goSphere to call Evie and with the other, I closed his eyes. It looked like he was only asleep.

NOW

She’s fast asleep, curled in a crescent moon, much like how Thomas sleeps.

She’s grown in the month I have not seen her. Her cheeks are paler, her hair is longer, almost straggly.

I want to wake her, I want to hear her say my name – the only one I have that matters to me at the moment – but I