“As a bloody Ox,” he’d gritted out.
Half an hour later, I’d walked into the living room to see them cuddled up on the sofa, watching a nature documentary.
I’d had this conversation with Mum once. I remember I’d just come home from school, and one of my friend’s parents were divorcing because they ‘used to argue a lot’ but were apparently not talking to each other anymore. I must have been quite young, because I had come to the conclusion that my own parents would be due to divorce, if the qualifier was arguments.
But when I’d said this to Mum, she had laughed, and sat me down.
“Love, it’s when you stop arguing that you stop caring. If I didn’t love your dad so much, I wouldn’t care. Arguing can be cross, but it also means you care enough about something to get all riled up. It’s normal. If you can’t be bothered to argue with someone, you’ve stopped caring.”
It had taken me a while to understand that, but looking at them now, I thought it made perfect sense.
Mid April
It was a beautiful day. One of the first truly clear ones we’d had since I’d been back in the UK.
Dad and I were in the kitchen, washing up after lunch, while Mum was outside on the porch. She’d been feeling a lot better this week, but her second round of chemo was in a couple of days, so she’d wanted to soak up the sun now before she couldn’t stand to look at it again. Last time her migraine had been triggered by too much light.
I kept joking with Dad that she was a plant, growing roots in the garden.
The ring of the doorbell surprised us, heads snapping up like Meerkats before we looked at each other, our expressions equally confused.
“Did you place an order?” I asked, thinking of the weekly online shop we did from Booths.
“No,” he replied, “did you?”
“No.” I shook my head.
The doorbell rang again, but we seemed frozen to the spot, still-life statues, one holding a soapy dish, the other clutching a tea towel.
It was like we’d forgotten how to act during normal interactions, when every outside setting was rife with the implied danger that strangers possessed.
We lived in – as Becka had called it – interesting times.
The unknown person knocked on the door twice, and then a few moments later we heard the sound of an engine, and the crunch of tyres on the gravel driveway.
Dad and I shared a look, before he shrugged and said, “Better go see what that was.” And placed his tea towel to the side.
I quickly finished up the few remaining dishes in the sink, bunging them haphazardly in the drying rack, before grabbing the tea towel to dry my hands just in time to see Dad walk back into the kitchen.
Or, rather, an enormous bouquet of flowers with my dad’s legs walked back into the kitchen. It was so big, so… leafy, that everything above his belt was obscured – a fact that was reinforced when the walking spray of blooms and leaves bumped into the door frame.
“Bugger,” the bouquet muttered.
I walked over to help guide the foliage to the breakfast counter.
“Phew,” my now-unencumbered Dad whistled.
“Who the hell sent that?” I eyed the arrangement speculatively. “A friend of mum’s?”
“There’s a card.” Dad reached into the elegant tangle to pull out a small, cream coloured envelope. He slid out the card and began to read. “Jagy-ya,” he said, frowning as he struggled to pronounce the foreign word.
I snatched the card from his fingers and backed up, clutching it as if it was a prize I’d just stolen. Dad blinked at me, his fingers still held in front of his face, like they hadn’t figured out they were empty yet.
“From your fancy man, is it?” His eyebrows raised.
“Daaad,” I whined. “Jihoon is not my ‘fancy man’.”
I moved over to the sliding doors leading out into the garden, but didn’t step through, not wanting to bother Mum. I began to read.
