The largest of those?Guilt.
Rationally, I knew he hadn’t chosen to die when he did, dropping Mum and Dave in my lap like hot potatoes.
Four years on, and I was still hurting.Only differently.
Needing a distraction, I started searching the desk drawers for Dad’s mobile.He wasn’t fussed about flashy phones, unlike Dave, who had to have the latest model.
When Dad’s phone stopped working, he started using one of Dave’s older iPhones.I remembered seeing it in the bottom drawer with his iPod.
Digging it out, I spotted something else — a Google phone tucked under some receipts.
Two phones?
Why did he have two?
Maybe one didn’t work.I’d know for sure after powering them up.
That was after spending half an hour searching for the chargers.They took ages to charge — like waiting for a kettle to boil.Having never used either model before, just switching them on was tricky.
But both worked.
I stared at them, puzzled.Then started looking through the apps.
No Grindr or dating apps.Nothing apart from the standard pre-programmed ones.
Same story with the photo folders.Nothing remotely dodgy.No unfamiliar names in the contact list either.
It was strange...disappointing.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find, but I’d expected something.
Instead, I’d found another mystery.
Why did Dad have two phones?
It was time to search his email account.Inbox, sent items, archive.There had to be something I’d overlooked — a random email, a forgotten attachment, maybe even a clue in the body of a message.
I wasn’t ready to move on by myself just yet.And in discovering Dad’s hidden life, it felt like his hand was still guiding me — like I hadn’t lost him completely.
Grabbing the useless phones, I stuffed them back into the drawer and shoved it closed.
Only for it to jam halfway.
Wrestling with it didn’t help.I was going to need to pull out every drawer to find the cause.
After a bit of effort, and more than a few choice words, I found the culprit.
A plain brown envelope that had once been taped to the bottom of the drawer above had fallen down.
A bit like that Martin Scorsese film with DiCaprio, The Departed.Maybe that’s where he got the idea?
Instead of a CD, this envelope had a USB.
Ugh.Dad’s PC.I was losing the will to live waiting for it to spark into life.It was just so slow.
Part of me was desperate to know what was on the flash drive.Another part was dreading it.
What if it wasn’t porn, but something worse?
