After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,4

ever wanted. He looked half a head shorter than her. The picture showed how she couldn’t ever leave him because they held hands.

Opening the desk drawer he saw that her passport, usually bulldog-clipped to his own, had gone too. He tried her mobile for the fifth time, and it went straight to answerphone and he hung up. He spent the rest of the morning with the phone in his hand sitting on the edge of the bed, but nobody called him.

She’d come in the night before, a secret look about her, and Frank had thought for a while that she was pregnant. It had taken him so by surprise, but it all added up – she’d told him she was going to see a friend who was upset and she might end up staying over – she was worried about it, that was all. She wanted time to get used to the idea, had booked into a hotel for the night, or maybe she’d stayed with a friend, talking it through. She was scared, worried about how he might react. He felt his palms tingle and realised he was excited. He wanted to pull her down into a chair and make her tell him. He had it ready what he would say, and how happy the next days would be. This all happened within ten minutes of her getting in the door. He poured her a glass of wine to test her, but she drank it. A glass of red now and again was good, he’d read that, that was fine. But she’d have to stop the cigarettes.

She looked at the red and white tablecloth, rubbed a spot of grease away with her index finger and started. ‘Look, I’ve been to Sydney.’

Were the doctors better there? She caught his eye, smiled and looked down again. She was nervous.

He took her hand. ‘How come?’ He could feel that his eyes were wide open, he didn’t want to miss the moment. She looked at him again. He inhaled.

‘I’ve been to see your father.’ His hold on her hand grew slack but other than that nothing changed. He kept his gaze steady and she must have taken that as encouragement, because she started talking at ninety miles an hour.

‘I had to ask around a bit, but the shop’s still there, and once I found it and I went in, I could tell he was the right one, he looked just exactly like you, it was weird, a bit smaller, tired, but it was like you were there. And I talked to him, I actually bought a pie first, just to be sure, and then we got talking and he really was a nice-seeming guy. Charming. Friendly.’ She paused, thinking Frank might say something but he didn’t, just let his hand hang open on the table. How could she have done that to him? She didn’t seem to notice he’d let go of her hand. His old man, who when he looked at you looked up and to the centre of your forehead like he was reading something printed there, whose body was old, mouth slack and full of dark teeth from drink and banana paddle-pops, the wrappers wet in his pocket. Who still somehow managed to bring home, every so often, a young pretty thing, in between the old and the fish-smelling, the fat and moustached women that he found by the bucketload. The daytime drinkers and their terrible loud voices, their piss, dark and strong in the toilet. That was ten years ago. It was a surprise he was still alive, let alone that he still managed a day’s work.

‘And anyway,’ she went on over his thoughts, ‘I didn’t tell him who I was or anything like that, but I asked for directions back to the train station and he drew me a map.’ She scrabbled around in her handbag and brought out a paper napkin, carefully folded, and laid it on the table like it was a child’s drawing. ‘He knew it just like that.’ She took a long gulp of her drink and pushed the map closer to Frank. ‘He did look tired, though. Really tired. And alone. I really think now’s the time, love. We could just go and say hello, take it from there.’

Where did all this ‘we’ come from? She looked at Frank like he was a puzzle she’d just fitted the last piece into. He sat back in his chair and drained his glass, and when