Lissa feels her mouth quirk into a smile at the total incredulity in Jack’s voice – like no one sane could possibly want to go skydiving. And true, she herself wouldn’t want to do it – definitely not – but lots of people enjoy it, don’t they? It’s not that far-fetched.
‘No, I didn’t,’ she says. She didn’t even know he’d lived in Morocco. It makes her realise how little she knows about him. It makes her want to ask him about it.
‘Yes,’ Jack says with a sigh. ‘I think he’s seen just how fragile life can be, and he’s seen, from me, how fear can eat you up. He fights against that. And that’s good,’ he continues, nodding. ‘I don’t want him to end up like me either.’
His mouth thins then, a hard line. And Lissa’s heart twists a little at the self-judgement there. She wants to say something, to offer comfort. She starts to open her mouth, not totally sure what she’s going to say but hoping it’ll come to her, when Jack beats her to it.
‘He’s been a while, hasn’t he?’ His voice is different now, a little brighter. But she feels, because she’s done it so many times herself, the effort it takes for that brightness to come. Still, he clearly doesn’t want to talk about it any more, and that’s fair enough. She’s not totally sure how they ended up in such a deep conversation so quickly anyway.
‘Maybe he’s forgotten where the tea is,’ Jack says, and he pushes down hard on his stick, making an attempt to get up. He loses his balance as he’s rising, rocks back onto the sofa. Lissa jumps to her feet.
‘Let me,’ she says, and he concedes with a nod.
She heads out of the living room, and as she does, she hears a high-pitched incessant beeping. She follows the noise to the kitchen.
Ash is standing there, staring into the fridge. One hand holds a carton of milk, index finger hooked through the handle, the other rests on the open fridge door. He is still – frozen, almost – and doesn’t seem to notice the beeping.
‘Ash?’ Lissa asks hesitantly. He jumps and spins to her. His expression is tight, and his gaze flickers past her, down the corridor. He turns back slowly, reaches for something inside the fridge, then shuts the door. The beeping stops.
He faces her again, and this time he holds something up in his free hand. A set of keys. Lissa frowns at them. ‘What …?’
‘He put them in here,’ Ash says, his voice hoarse. ‘My dad.’
‘Oh.’ For a moment, she doesn’t know what to say. She wonders if she should brush it off, say that everyone misplaces things sometimes, that we can all be absentminded. That she herself has been known to store keys in the fruit bowl and then forget about them.
Instead, she crosses to him, lays a hand on his rigid arm. She feels his muscles relax, just a little, under her touch. Their gazes hold, and she squeezes his arm. He blows out a breath, nods. And just like that, the right thing to say is nothing at all.
Chapter Twenty-One
Thankfully, there are no more deep conversations about love and loss during the rest of the visit with Ash’s dad, but rather general chatter about everything ranging from what the new tax rate will mean for small businesses to whether they’ll have another cold snap before summer.
Jack hugs Lissa goodbye when it’s time to leave, his checked shirt soft, his arms surprisingly strong. ‘I hope I see you again,’ he says, pulling back with a wink.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow for the doctor’s appointment,’ Ash says, clapping his dad on the back as he did when they got here.
Jack waves a hand in a way that is clearly supposed to say,yeah, yeah, but Lissa can tell, from the way he offers her a small, apologetic smile, that he’s not actually brushing it off so lightly. Maybe this is why he talked to her about losing his wife – because he wanted her to understand a little about what exists between him and his son. She doesn’t know why, exactly, he thought she needed to understand, but she thinks she gets it. She feels that way sometimes – the need to explain why her mum is how she is.
He mentions you a lot.
She supposes that could also be the reason he opened up. She tries hard to control the fizzing in her stomach when she thinks about that.
‘He’s not well,’ Ash says as they leave the front garden. Lissa slows her steps. She could see that, of course, but she glances at him, waiting.
‘He used to be a military man, you know,’ he says, and Lissa frowns a little at the change in subject. She tries to picture it – Jack in the army. He seemed so … soft. Not the hard edges she’d expect, which shows how much she knows. Ash looks towards her car, a few metres ahead of them. ‘You need to head off?’
She hesitates. ‘I can walk for a bit, if you want?’
‘Better idea,’ he says, heading for her car. ‘You drive.’ She raises her eyebrows as he gets out his phone, then shows her his maps app, set to directions for somewhere five minutes away.
Deciding it’s easier to go along with it, Lissa follows the directions to Prior Park, a National Trust landscape garden. Ash pays for them both to go in, and leads them into an oasis of green, with views overlooking the stone spires of Bath in the distance.
‘Why here?’ Lissa asks.
He shrugs. ‘Why not?’ He tugs his hand through his hair. ‘I guess that’s why I’m so used to living in different places,’ he says, like they’re continuing a conversation without a massive detour.
‘Huh?’
‘Because we moved a lot when I was a kid,’ he explains. ‘When my dad was in the army. We settled here once he left, but I suppose it’s in my bones, all the travelling about.’
