I’d expected some change when I came home. Something different. But in this street time had stood still. Apart from the cars. Nearly every one of them was electric. Tucked up on drives, life-source cables plugged in while a circle of blue neon light lit up the wall. Teslas mostly, like someone had got a bulk deal.
I drove to the end of the road, to where I couldn’t drive any further. It wasn’t coincidence that my parents had bought the house at the top of the cul-de-sac. My dad’s vantage point. It was slightly uphill, and from there he could watch down the street, see who was coming and going. And no one could come from behind.
I parked my car across the drive, blocking in the Audi. He wouldn’t be going anywhere yet, anyway. The Audi wasn’t electric. And that was typical. Because following the crowd was senseless in his eyes. The only conforming he did was to the law and service. Everything else was on his terms and his terms alone. And that was going to be exactly the same with the cup of tea he would make me and that I would drink like I enjoyed it. Even though I preferred coffee.
“You’re late today, Soph,” he called from the armchair, dropping his newspaper just enough that he could peer over the top of it to look at me.
Even his favourite seat looked out down the road. The chair had never moved. The carpet had been replaced around it many times but was still flattened at his feet. I knew when he gotup the seat would be sagging and soft. The sofa on the dividing wall was as tight and pristine as when he bought it five years ago.
“I had a lie-in. Lots of extra shifts this week with the junior doctors’ strike.”
I watched him roll his eyes, then fold his paper. He stood, saying nothing, moving past me and down the hall. He didn’t need to give an instruction for me to know I needed to follow him. The kettle didn’t take long to boil. He’d have been pushing down that switch every twenty minutes for the last hour. I was only half an hour late, but in my father’s book, if you weren’t ahead of time, you were late anyway.
I inhaled. The house still smelled the same. Furniture polish and toast and the faint, permanent trace of cigarette smoke baked into the walls from a lifetime ago. He made tea. Two sugars in mine. He never forgot that.
We talked about nothing at first. The weather. His neighbour’s new fence. A burglary two streets over that he was certain the police had already fucked up. I let him fill the silence while I gathered my nerve.
“You’re going to see your mother today?” he asked casually.
He never said her name in front of me anymore. It was like she didn’t exist. Just an entity. I knew it was just his way of coping, that she no longer remembered him. That she would shrink from any approach from him.
“Yeah. Later.”
I would later. When I picked up the courage to get to the care home and go through all my introductions again. Dad visited her every day. And every day she didn’t know who he was.They’d been childhood sweethearts, though she was a couple of years older. But she was still too young for this.
“I had a patient the other night,” I said eventually, the subject now easier to change. “Biker.”
He stilled. Not much. Just enough that I caught it. The mug ascending to his lips taking a half second longer than normal.
“Yeah?” he said carefully.
“He was… part of a club. Northern Kings.”
Dad took a slow sip of his tea. I could see him thinking. But there were no tells. No furrow of his brow, no tick of a lip. A perfect poker face. His old work colleagues had joked that was why he’d made so many crack and confess. He was too calm. Too stoic.
“Dog on the Tyne,” he said, almost to himself. “Back of the Saltmeadows estate.”
He nodded once, as if confirming something already known. When he looked at me, his expression had shifted. Not angry, just watchful.
“They’re not your world, Soph,” he said. It wasn’t unkind. Or even patronising. Just final. “And they don’t come out of it clean.”
“I know,” I said too quickly.
His eyes stayed on mine. Measuring. “If one of them is sniffing round you,” he added, “you shut it down.”
I nodded. Of course I did.
Yet those words echoed in my head. Not a warning. A challenge. And for the first time since I’d said his name out loud, I stopped pretending I wasn’t already halfway in.
I wrapped my hands around the mug, heat seeping into my palms, playing my next move carefully.
“Dad… do you know anything about motorcycle clubs these days?”
He had in the past. For a few years, it had become an obsession. He knew every club. And the hierarchy in those clubs. He was diligent. Committed.
“Depends,” he said carefully. “Why?”
I shrugged, too casual. “We’ve had a few in A&E. Different patches. Same night. Felt… off.”
