Chapter 22
Ava
The handbrake of my dad’s silver Vauxhall grinds as he parks against the kerb. Outside, the grey afternoon light is already fading, leaving the street in a damp gloom. The engine cuts out, and the exhaust gives a metallic tick into the sudden quiet.
I survey the sandstone villa looming in Pollokshields.
It’s grander than I expected but run down in a way that suggests it’s holding onto dignity by a thread.
The street is wide and tree-lined with mansions that boast names like Thornhill but have seen better days.
This one has bay windows, the skeleton of a climbing flower clinging to the stone like an exposed nervous system, and a front door painted in a bold high-gloss purple.
It has character and history. And it’s going to be my home for the time being, part of the company’s emergency accommodation pool – a network of former dancers or their families who house those of us who, for one reason or another, need a place to stay for a while. The rent is affordable, too.
‘This it, then?’ Dad sounds like a rusting hinge, unused to voicing emotional support.
I check the email again to have something to look at other than him. ‘According to the address the company gave me, this is it.’
I didn’t tell him everything, but enough. He knows about Nevin.
Dad releases a pressurised breath, a sharp exhale through his nose that I immediately catalogue as inconvenience. I unbuckle my seatbelt before the sound has even finished fading.
‘Right. Let’s get this done.’ He pops the boot and gets out.
I’m out the door a second later, rushing into the rain to beat him to the heavy stuff. It’s that nagging Glasgow drizzle that doesn’t patter – it permeates. I feel translucent, as if the wind is blowing right through my ribcage.
Nine days since I walked out on Scottie.
Nine days of Airbnbs that held the stale tang of bleach, paint, and heather-scented candles. Nine days of waking up and not knowing where the bathroom was. Of checking my credit card balance and watching the red grow darker.
I promised myself I wouldn’t do it. I’d rather sleep in the studio, curled up on the floor, than ask my father.
But the deposit for this place required a chunk of cash I didn’t have, and the company’s welfare officer had looked at me with such professional pity that I’d cracked.
I slipped into the one role I hate most.
Da, I need your help.
Tragic, I know. And I merely expected him to send money. A transfer and a text: Sorted. That’s our style. He pays, I don’t complain about the lack of a father figure, and we pretend we’re a normal modern family.
But for some reason, he drove down all the way from Aberdeen this time. No idea what prompted this strange demonstration of parental affection, but here he is.
He’s round the back of the car now, wrestling with the flat-pack bookshelf we bought from IKEA.
Dad nods at the cardboard. ‘Grab that end.’
I take hold of the packaging with stiff fingers.
‘Lift on three.’
We lug it out. The weight strains my shoulder. He lets me carry my half. I don’t know if that’s respect for my strength or negligence. With Dad, that line has always been blurred.
We walk up the path in sync, a sad procession of two.
The front door swings open before we reach it.
A woman stands on the threshold. She’s small, but she creates a density in the air around her.
Claire Carmichael, my new landlady. Sixty-four, according to the company’s info, but her posture is timeless.
Spine elongated, shoulders down, chin level.
She’s wearing a thick wool cardigan over a leotard and joggers, and her white hair is pulled back in a French twist so severe it looks painful.
I know that style. I’m looking into a mirror of my future self. Provided I survive the next forty years.
She audits me first – posture, exhaustion – then Dad. ‘Ah! You’ll be Ava.’ Her voice is crisp, but warm. ‘The attic studio is ready. Mind the third step on the first flight. It creaks.’
Dad shifts his grip on the box. ‘Kenneth MacKinney. I’m the furniture assembler.’
A smile crosses Claire’s mouth as she takes in the IKEA box. ‘Brave man. That brand’s instructions are written by sadists. Start with a whisky. I would.’
I manage a smile, but it feels tight. As if the skin of my face doesn’t fit this sort of movement anymore. ‘Thanks so much for having me, Claire.’
She moves aside to let us pass. ‘Us swans need somewhere to land where we don’t have to paddle so hard. And don’t thank me until you’ve survived the plumbing in winter.’
As I squeeze past her, her heady perfume – vanilla and liquorice – fills my nose. She catches my eye. Her gaze is laser-focused, sweeping over the grey, washed-out set of my face.
She doesn’t ask if I’m okay or offer platitudes. I almost sag with relief. If she asked me how I was, the cheap tape that keeps me together would peel right off.
‘Kettle’s always on,’ she says to my back.
Dad and I trudge up the stairs and dump the box on the bare floorboards.
My room is at the very top. The attic conversion.
It’s decent. Coombed ceilings that will definitely result in a concussion if I’m not careful, a skylight streaked with rain, a double bed with a duvet, a small kitchenette, a minuscule bathroom, and a laminate wardrobe that looks as though it might collapse at a cough.
It’s austere and safe. And lonely as hell.
I’ve never lived alone.
The stairwell door has a deadbolt. I asked before I agreed to the viewing.
The company solicitor’s cease-and-desist to Nevin was posted on Friday.
Small fortifications, practical and unglamorous.
They do the job. I hope he stays under his rock.
There have been no further TikToks. Not that I’m aware of at least.
‘Right then.’ Dad unzips his fleece. He brought a multi-tool he keeps in his glove-box and a bloody-minded determination to conquer Swedish furniture.
I sit cross-legged on the floor, unwrapping the plastic packets of screws. A. B. C. The little wooden dowels scatter across the floorboards. For twenty minutes, the only sounds are the rain on the glass and Dad swearing under his breath.
‘Who designs this shite?’ He twists the Allen key, and it slips, scratching the white veneer. ‘Bastards.’
I reach for the key. ‘Let me do it, Da. You’re stripping the head.’
‘I’ve got it, Ava.’ He pulls it away, shoulder blocking me. ‘I build oil rigs; I can build a bloody shelf.’
‘Yeah, but you don’t build them with an Allen key.’
‘Aye, well. Same principle. Things fit, or they don’t.’
He forces the screw. The wood splinters slightly, but he ignores it.
It’s hilarious, theoretically – a lifelong structural engineer being humbled by IKEA.
I watch his hands. They’re scarred from years of literal heavy lifting.
He’s turning sixty next year, and his eyes are squinting in the grey light.
But… He’s here.
The realisation hits me with the force of a grand jeté landing on concrete. He’s actually here. In this room. Sweating over a bookshelf because I called him.
And instead of gratitude, I feel a brick in my stomach. He wouldn’t have to be here if it wasn’t for… My messed up relationship radar and my toxic impulse to stay with a narcissistic abuser.
‘You didn’t have to come.’ My words are quiet and slightly defensive. Because openly moaning, ‘Why didn’t you just send money?’ would be a bit rude. Even for us.
‘Don’t be daft. I should’ve been there for you earlier, but I can’t turn back time.’ He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘You’re my daughter. You need shifted, I shift you.’
He twists the key again. This time it bites. ‘Och, your mum always did this bit.’
The mention of her hangs in the damp air. Mum. The other half of the demolition site I came from.
‘She invited me to Ballyclare,’ I pick up a plastic cap and worry it between my thumbs. ‘For Easter.’
Dad stops turning the key. He looks at the chipboard like it holds the secrets of the universe. ‘Did she, aye?’
‘Aye.’
‘You should go if you have the time.’ He grunts, returning to the screw. ‘Derek’s a prick, but she misses you.’
‘You still talk?’
‘Sure, now and then.’ He lifts the shelf, and I help him position it against the wall. ‘Mostly about you, pet.’
Pet. I haven’t heard him call me that since I was a girl. Before the slamming doors started. Before I became the expensive, inconvenient thing that needed an endless supply of shoes and relentless driving around. It feels foreign. A coat that doesn’t fit me anymore.
‘Was it the petrol?’
Dad stops checking a dowel. ‘What?’
‘The driving. The pointe shoes. The fees.’ I dig my thumbnail into the rigid rim until the skin stings. ‘You and Mum… You always fought about the ballet. The money.’
The grooves in his forehead deepen as he shakes his head. ‘Ach, Ava. Don’t be daft.’
‘I’m just saying.’ I shrug one shoulder. It’s a defensive jolt.
He lets out a weary sigh. ‘It wasn’t the money.
It was never the dancing. We were twenty-one when we got married.
We grew up, and we grew apart. Simple as that.
’ He turns the Allen key over in his fingers, studying it as though it holds instructions for this conversation, too.
‘We should’ve admitted it a decade earlier, instead of screaming over the bills to avoid the truth. ’
Dad turns his attention back to the white veneer and dodges my gaze. But he points the small tool directly at my knee. ‘You were the only right thing we did back then.’
The plastic cap slips from my fingers and rolls across the floorboards.
It’s not an epic emotional breakthrough, but it’s a tiny, pressure-relieving fracture in a guilt I’ve dragged behind me half my life.
Dad wipes his hands on his jeans. ‘Let’s get this upright.’
Together, we lift the bookcase up.
‘It’s squint,’ I say.
He sits back on his heels, surveying his handiwork. The shelf leans perceptibly to the left. It seems drunk.