I laughed. Not because it was funny.
Because I knew exactly what that was.
He still had me filed as the woman he left. Alone. Forgotten. Embarrassing.
He had no idea what the last eight years had been.
Dalia came in as I put the phone down. “You’re not actually thinking about going.”
I looked at the lights going on across the city.
“Oh, I’m going.”
Christmas morning came up hard and blue and cold.
And the helicopter went up with the four best things that have ever happened to me in it.
“Mum,” Rory said, about four times, “are we actually meeting Grandad today?”
“And Grandma?” said Saskia.
“Maybe.”
Four eight-year-olds opposite me in matching red. Rory. Linus. Saskia. Mirren. Two boys, two girls.
Every one of them with his grey eyes and
that jaw and the smile.
Eight years of a man running from fatherhood, with four of them sitting in a helicopter over the Thornedge road.
