Foster

Maybe the way back will somehow make sense of the coming.

You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’

He looks happy but some part of me feels sorry for every version of him.

This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted: it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone.

Why did he leave without so much as a good-bye, without ever mentioning that he would come back for me?

But this is a different type of house. Here there is room, and time to think. There may even be money to spare.

I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.

‘Daddy,’ I keep calling him, keep warning him. ‘Daddy.’

I hold on as though I’ll drown if I let go, and listen to the woman who seems, in her throat, to be taking it in turns, sobbing and crying, as though she is crying not for one now, but for two. I daren’t keep my eyes open and yet I do, staring up the lane, past Kinsella’s shoulder, seeing what he can’t. If some part of me wants with all my heart to get down and tell the woman who has minded me so well that I will never, ever tell, something deeper keeps me there in Kinsella’s arms, holding on.

‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’