The Happy Family by Jackie Kabler (electric book reader txt) 📕

which has gradually claimed more and more of his eyesight. He’s not blind, not totally, but his vision is pretty poor these days, and that combined with the partial leg and arm paralysis caused by the stroke finally made it impossible for him to live alone. I considered, briefly, moving him in with us, but his need for full-time care just made it too difficult, and anyway, he refused point blank.

‘I know a couple of lads who are about to move into Holly Tree anyway,’ he said – his words were slightly slurred, the stroke having affected his face too, but only a little – when he first mooted the idea of going to see the newly built residential and nursing care home on Lansdown Road. ‘Pretty fancy, apparently. Got a bar and everything.’

He’d winked and smiled his newly lopsided smile, and I’d felt a surge of relief, then immediately felt guilty again. But when we did the tour, we discovered it was indeed pretty fancy: a state-of-the-art modern building with a bar and restaurant, swimming pool and gym, games room and library. It was expensive yes, but Dad, a former accountant, had always been thrifty and had enough money put aside to cover the fees for the first eighteen months or so. After that, the proceeds from the sale of his house, a tidy three-bed in Shurdington which sold within days of going on the market, will hopefully be enough to pay for his care for as long as he needs it.

Today, when I popped in just after one, I found him sitting in his wheelchair by the window in the bar, nursing a glass of red wine in his good hand and snorting with laughter at something his friend Billy, another ex-accountant who was sitting in the armchair opposite, was telling him.

‘Well, you two look like you’re having a nice Friday,’ I said. ‘Wine at lunch? I’m jealous.’

Dad turned to look at me, squinting, trying to focus on my face, then grinned.

‘Beth. Hello, love. Sit down. How are you?’

He looked neat and groomed as usual, wearing a dark-brown cardigan done up to the neck with his thin grey hair recently brushed. He may be almost blind, but he still has pride in his appearance.

‘I’m OK,’ I said. ‘Tired. Ready for the weekend. Are you all right? And hi, Billy. How are you?’

Billy, a kind-faced old man in a blue checked shirt, raised his glass of what looked like gin and tonic and nodded.

‘Grand, lass, grand.’

‘I’m all right, love,’ Dad said. ‘We’re going in for lunch at quarter to. Billy and I were just reminiscing about the old days. Some of the stories …’

He laughed again, and I smiled. He’s frail, but he’s content here, I can always see that. We chatted idly for a few more minutes, Billy joining in to regale us with another half-forgotten memory of some notorious local businessman and his attempts at money laundering. My mind drifted a little, the overheated room making me sleepy, and random thoughts tumbled over each other.

Indian or Thai tonight?

Did I remember to put the bubbly in the fridge?

I need to put some clean pyjamas in Eloise’s overnight bag.

Was that really him again last night in the car park, or was I imagining it? Who the hell is he? What does he want?

A shiver ran through me, despite the warmth of the room. I sat up straighter in my chair, trying to concentrate on Dad and Billy’s conversation.

I really need to stop thinking about him. Forget him, Beth.

I’ve never mentioned him to Dad; it’ll only worry him, and he’ll try and make me go to the police, and what’s the point, really? The man has never tried to approach me or harm me, after all. He’s just been … well, there.

‘I was saying to Billy earlier about what we talked about the other day … about it being Alice’s sixtieth birthday next month. Seems strange to think of your mother as an older woman, doesn’t it?’ Dad said suddenly.

‘I know,’ I said. We looked at each other in silence for a moment, then I said: ‘Well, wherever she is, I hope she has a good one. Sixty’s a big deal.’

He shrugged, then grimaced.

‘Not as big a deal as eighty.’

‘True.’

I smiled, then leaned over to squeeze his hand. Dad turned eighty recently, with a Saturday afternoon knees-up here in the home, tea and cake and a few tots of whiskey, and a singsong in the bar. The twenty-year age gap between him and Mum could well have been one of the reasons she left, I’ve sometimes thought on the rare occasions I’ve allowed myself to think about it. I could be wrong though – that’s probably just me, as an adult woman, trying to make excuses for her. But a twenty-year age gap is big, isn’t it, especially when you’re young? Who knows, though; it’s not something Dad and I have really discussed, not ever. She was unhappy, she cried a lot, and then she left. It was what it was; we suffered through it and then just got on with it, me and him. He was fifty when she went, she was just thirty, and already mother of a ten-year-old, me. Married at eighteen, to a man who was already nearly forty. My memories of her are hazy now – a vague image in my head of blonde hair, smiley eyes, the smell of the coconut-oil body lotion she loved, the tiny triple star tattoo on her collar bone.

One star for her, one for Dad, one for me.

She must have loved him once, must have loved me, to get that tattoo, mustn’t she? Or did she know, even as she sat there in the tattooist’s chair, the needle pushing colour into her skin, the smell of antiseptic in her nostrils … did she know even then that she was going to leave us? Was the tattoo enough, a souvenir, a memory, of the family she no longer wanted to