Chapter 2
TWO
brODY
Present day, Oxford
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Shannon asks me, dancing around the room, her blonde hair trailing behind her. Her face is permanently set to ‘excited’, and she looks so much like her mom that it almost breaks me. ‘I just can’t believe I’m finally here! I can’t believe I’m part of this!’
I tear my eyes away from her, and take in our surroundings.
Sure, it’s beautiful – if you like beamed ceilings, oak wood panelling, and fancy chandeliers.
Portraits of the great and the good from olden times gaze down at us, and the whole place reeks of history.
The kind of history we don’t have back home.
Still, just because something’s old doesn’t mean it’s perfect – just ask my fifty-one-year-old body.
‘Sure,’ I agree, more interested in her than the damn room. ‘It’s kinda like Hogwarts. I’m half expecting the miserable old guys in those paintings to start talking, and they don’t look like a lot of fun…’
She pauses and glances up at an especially unhappy-looking dude in a wig, a scowl on his face and a scroll in his hands. He was probably someone real important, back in the day, and his surly expression is sour enough to sink ships.
‘He looks a bit like you, Dad!’ she says, doing an impression of the scowl. ‘He’s all gruff and grumpy and disapproving, staring at us just the way you stared at every boy I ever brought home!’
I frown at her, and she laughs. I guess I just proved her point. Mr Gruff and Grumpy, at your service.
‘You want to go get dinner?’ I ask, changing the subject.
I know I’m not exactly sunshine and rainbows these days, and I feel the ache of the reason why deep inside my bones, just as raw and real as the ache in my back.
Maybe it’s good that she’s making this move.
Maybe it’ll live up to all her expectations, and give her the chance to blossom.
That’s what I want for her, even if it sucks for me.
Her smile falters slightly, and she hesitates. I get it straight away – she has other plans, but she doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. I feel like a jackass for even asking. My daughter has already spent days with me, seeing the sights of Oxford, pretending she needs my help getting settled in.
That was all for my sake, and we both know it.
She asked me to come with her so I could see her new home, feel part of her new life.
So I’d feel less freaked about her leaving.
Shannon doesn’t really need my help with settling in, or with anything at all – she’s a beautiful, confident woman of twenty-two, with a brain the size of a planet.
Sometimes I wonder if she was swapped at birth – my kid should be drinking beer and lifting weights and messing with motorbike engines, not moving to Oxford and studying biochemistry.
‘Actually, Shannon,’ I say, rubbing my back, ‘now I think about it, would you mind if I take a rain check on dinner? I’m feeling kind of beat. If it’s okay with you, I might just go back to the hotel and chill.’
‘And by chill, do you mean drink Guinness and watch TV in your room?’
‘Maybe I do. I’m getting into the Guinness thing. It tastes better here for some reason. What do you think? Will you be okay on your own tonight?’
I see the doubts and arguments flutter over her face, her blue eyes narrowed as she thinks it through.
She knows me too well to be fooled, but this is a dance we have done many times.
The dance where we both try and figure out what the other one needs from us.
She can’t stand the thought of me being lonely, and I can’t stand the thought of her worrying about me.
I’m her dad. It should be the other way around.
‘Well, there is a thing at the college bar I wouldn’t mind checking out…’ she replies eventually.
‘A thing? Will there be drinking, and boys, and rock and roll music?’
She winks at me. ‘Hopefully all three! But I’ll be done by ten or so, if you want to meet up later?’
‘That’s bedtime for me, babe. How about we just call it a night, and do brunch tomorrow?’
She nods, and we both know the dance is over for now.
We’ve been on our own for too long, clinging to each other like life rafts after Sandy died five years ago.
We’ve navigated high school, college, my injury.
We’ve helped each other through it all – but now it’s time to let her go.
It’s time to let her shine. I need to fly home to Chicago, and she needs to spread her wings without me getting in the way.
‘Okay, Dad. How about that place in the covered market? Say, around noon?’
I agree, and we stroll out into another perfect English evening.
We flew to the UK a week ago, landing early to see London together, caught for days in the kind of rain that makes you say things like ‘we’re going to need a bigger boat’.
But since we arrived in Oxford, there’s been nothing but sunshine and bright skies – like it was laying out the red carpet for my baby girl.
We walk through the green square that I now know is called a quadrangle, surrounded on all sides by ivy-covered buildings, towards the Porters’ Lodge.
It’s quaint and cute and pretty, like everything else here.
There’s a huge wooden door – wide open and useless – and the porter is the guy who sits behind a little glass hatch and allegedly keeps an eye on things.
He’s maybe a hundred years old and looks like he’s welded to his chair.
Frankly I’d have preferred a Navy SEAL. It’s not a world class level of security, and it makes all my spider senses tingle.
Will she be safe here? It seems quiet and polite on the surface, but you get psychos everywhere.
Or maybe that’s just my world-weary take on things – I see things through a different lens.
I watch a young man walking through with a backpack, the porter not even asking for ID.
Does he belong here? What’s in the backpack?
Why does he seem so nervous? Does he have a gun, or is he just heading to a test?
There are potential threats everywhere – even a quick look around reveals open windows, bicycles without locks, young people paying no attention to their personal security.
What kind of a place is this? A crazy place, that’s what.
A crazy place where my daughter now lives. Panic starts to rise up inside me.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she says, laughing. Reading my mind, as usual.
‘Don’t go all SWAT on me – this isn’t Chicago, Dad!
And yes, I’ll watch my drinks to make sure they don’t get spiked, and yes, I have my attack alarm, and yes, I remember everything you ever taught me.
A punch to the throat and scream my head off. ’
I find a smile for her. Shannon was raised to be able to protect herself, and I know she can.
But the truth is that no matter how tough she is, or how many tricks I showed her, she’s still only a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet.
She’s vulnerable in ways that mess with my mind.
How can I protect her when she’s thousands of miles away?
Protecting her and her mom was the most important job I ever had, and I already failed on one count.
‘But run if you can, Shannon. Always run if you can. And stick with your friends, don’t end up alone if you can avoid it. And—’
‘Always make sure my phone is charged, and to have emergency cash. Yeah. I know, Dad. I’ll be okay. I promise.’
I don’t want to leave her, even for one night, never mind the rest of the year.
I want to lock her in the basement back home and keep her safe.
But I lean down, and kiss her forehead, hiding it all inside where it belongs.
Where it can’t poison her pleasure at being here.
‘Yeah, you will. See you tomorrow, sweetpea. Have fun at the college bar.’
She gives me a quick hug, and then drops her leather satchel to the ground. ‘Before you go, I have something for you. I found it in a little bookstore while you were watching the soccer in the pub.’
‘That kind of sums us up, doesn’t it?’ I say, as she produces a paper-wrapped package.
‘Yeah. I’m the precious intellectual diva, and you’re an under-developed Neanderthal who looks like a bear. Except neither of those things is totally true. I can kick ass, and you cried at the ending of Romeo and Juliet when we saw it at the Navy Pier that time.’
‘I thought we agreed never to speak of that again, Shannon? Anyway, I had something in my eye.’
‘Both of them?’
I glare at her in a way I know will make her smile, and pretend to be annoyed. I’m not annoyed. I just don’t want to start crying again.
‘Here, tough guy,’ she says, handing me the parcel. ‘I thought you’d like it. I was in the bookstore and the minute I saw it, I just knew it was for you. It kind of called to me. Open it over a Guinness.’
I take the package, thank her, and give her one more kiss.
I walk away, leaving her in the ivy-coated quadrangle chatting to the useless porter.
I make my way along the busy roads, dodging kamikaze cyclists and herds of tourists.
Everything hurts, my back, my heart, even my goddamn brain feels like it’s swelling inside my skull.
The further I get from her brightness, the more grey I feel.
This is not healthy, I tell myself. For her, or for you.
Stop being a loser, and get on with your own life.
I follow the crowds to the High Street, then cut through to a pub we visited the day before.
I need to decompress before I head back to the hotel for another sleepless night.
Ten might be my bedtime, but I rarely make it a few hours without waking up in pain.
Once I’m awake, my mind takes over, and my mind is a ruthless bastard.
Yet another thing I hide from her, the insomnia.