21
Edinburgh, five years later. Andie.
It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. Despite all my expectations, the pain I’ve been avoiding for so long feels suddenly small in comparison to the obliteration of my dad’s death. As if two events were tangled, tied together in a great knot in my chest, and now a piece of rope has loosened enough to pull them apart. A dull ache compared to a great cavern.
My shoulders relax, my heartbeat beginning to slow. I’m still on the bench, in the car park: I can hear the noise around me, the chatter, the footsteps, some of which are moving in my direction. I open my eyes, and he is there.
This time I don’t react, I don’t try to push him away. I just look at him, more open to his presence than I have been this whole trip. It makes absolute sense that he’s here now – he’s the last piece of this.
‘I was worried when you didn’t show up at the event,’ he says, sitting gently down next to me. His movements are slow and soft; he doesn’t want to startle me. ‘As soon as it ended, I went out to find you. For some reason, this was the first place I thought to look.’
‘I think,’ I say, slowly, the words coming from somewhere deep inside me, somewhere that’s not quite so afraid now. Somewhere that knows this is the right thing to do. That’s resolved, finally, to take Sara’s advice. To face this, whatever might happen. ‘I think I’m ready to talk about what happened.’
‘Are you sure?’ he says, turning to me now, a frown crossing his features. ‘Don’t humour me just because I’m angry.’
‘I’m sure,’ I say, and something on my face convinces him, because he takes a breath. And then he tells me.