Page 17 of Swept Away

“It was my dad’s, like I said at the pub,” I say, sitting down beside her. “We have some unfinished business.”

The deck chairs just about fit side by side. The sun’s off to our right, low in the sky. It makes me think of a lemon fruit pastille: it has a kind of sugarcoated haze to it. I look away from the empty horizon.

“Didn’t you say your dad’s dead?” Lexi says, wincing as the deck chair sags beneath her.

I nod. “Heart attack, five and a half years ago.”

“OK, so, is this houseboat haunted by his unsatisfied ghost or something?” she asks, without particular alarm.

I laugh. It’s the sort of thing Dad would’ve joked about doing—haunting us all after he’s gone. Lexi looks surprised for a moment, and then smooths her face clear.

“Most people tiptoe around dead people,” I say, trying a forkful of the pasta. It’s good: just the right amount of nuttiness from the Red Leicester, smooth texture from the milk. Wish we’d had cream, though. “You’re very chill. Talking about it.”

“I’m not very sentimental.” She points at her chest with her fork. “Hard bastard, I’m afraid.”

Hmm. She’s definitely tough, but I wouldn’t sayhard.

“I didn’t even cry when my mum died,” she says. Kind of defensive, like she’s annoyed I didn’t believe her.

“I’m sorry you lost your mum,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s been four years, so I think I’m supposed to say I’m over it, but I’m not sure I am, actually. Is it the shock, or is this really bloody delicious?” She stares down at the pasta as if she’s just noticed it, even though she’s four forkfuls in.

I smile. “You can’t go wrong with that much cheese.”

This actually isn’t true. I’m kind of proud that this dinner isn’t just a big sticky beige lump.

“And you don’t have to be over it,” I say. “My dad died in 2018, and, like…”

I try to find the words for the total mess that’s been my grieving process over the last five years. How it started with no tears, barely missing him at all. How it hid behind drunken nights out and awkward morning afters. How starting therapy last year made me see that I’d packed all the feelings away without looking, and that’s a shit way to cope with anything. There’s been a lot of crying since.

“This stuff’s complicated,” I say. “There’s no right way to do it.”

She lifts one eyebrow—doesn’t have much patience for this kind of thinking, maybe—and takes another forkful.

“You and your dad, were you close, then?” she asks eventually.

I tilt my head, trying to catch her eye, but she’s focused on her bowl. This is so weird. The world’s strangest second date. The world’s longest morning after. I know she wasn’t interested in getting to know me yesterday, or this morning—she wanted fun, and then she wanted me gone. So now what?

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” she says, when I don’t answer right away. “I was just making conversation.”

“No, no,” I say. “It’s good, I want to talk. It’s just a complicated question.”

She shrugs, lifting her chin toward the open water. “We’ve got a bit of time.”

I smile at that, but it makes me shiver, too.

“OK, well, Dad was…a character. That’s what people used toalways say about him. He was separated from my mum, so me and my brother and sister only visited him once a month. He had this big scruffy beard, believed in aliens. He was totally obsessed with puzzles, and he was always reciting lines from Bob Dylan songs, you know, like someone might wheel out a Bible quote for every situation?”

Lexi’s lip twitches. “I think I might have quite liked him.”

I’m glad she says that. People either got my dad or they didn’t—I never met anyone who thought he was justall right. As kids, Jeremy and I were in the hero-worship camp—always willing to forgive his oddities while Lyra turned moody teenager and began to scorn them. But then Dad’s weirdness started to seem less cool to me, too. I got a hint that he held things back, maybe. I realized he kept secrets, and I got to thinking about what those secrets might be.

When he died, I was seventeen, and we’d not spoken in three years. Our estrangement wasn’t dramatic: just a slow, awkward drift. My therapist has suggested that it was more than simply a case of rejecting my dad before he could reject me—he thinks I distanced myself from Dad to ingratiate myself to my mum. As much as I hate the thought, I do kind of wonder. Mum’s hard to win over. I’ve tried worse things to get her approval, or her disapproval, come to that—either would do.

Dad leaving me the houseboat felt like a message I completely failed to understand—typical of our relationship, really. I sold it as quickly as I could, just wanting it gone. Wanting him gone. And now here I am, spending most of the money my granddad left me to get the houseboat back.

“You said last night you weren’t going to be in this part of the country for long. Is this where your family are from?” she asks.

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