BY STEVEN PATCHETT
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I’VE LOST track of time, gently dozing in the warm office, so the knock at the door is a slight surprise. Carol, the new manager, smiles with sympathy in her eyes. “He’s here again, regular as clockwork.”
He’s waiting for me in the showroom, examining the couches nearest to the door. He appears to be in his 50s; same old brown coat, hair slicked back by something that smells of vanilla and fixes his grey streaks in place, leather shoes scuffed, and a lost look on his face.
Whenever one of the other sales staff approaches him, he tells them he’s browsing, until I take matters in hand.
I greet him in the usual way, and the flash of careful concealed recognition is there, despite the years. He tells me he’s interested in buying a new sofa, and I give him a tour of the latest models. He doesn’t seem to notice they change each time.
“Would you like a cuppa, Tom?” I wince inside. He hasn’t told me his name yet.
His smile falters, but he recovers. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
I bring him into the office and sit him down. Carol has already made his drink, and I hope this doesn’t disturb him further.
He becomes erratic if we don’t follow the routine.
“How did you know my name?” He asks. I shrug and tell him he looks like a Tom. He nods, beaming.
“You know, you look so much like my fiancée.”
I’m braced for this, but I’ll never get used to it. “Do I?”
“Oh, yes.” His eyes are downcast. “She was lovely, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
I bite my lip, but I have to go through with it. “Oh, that’s so sad, what happened?”
“Oh,” he says, as if he’s inconvenienced by telling the tale, but I can see it, bottled up inside his burly frame. “We had a blazing row, the night before the wedding, and I . . . I left, joined the merchant navy. Didn’t come back to Blighty for another 20 years.” He looks to be on the verge of tears.
“Right,” I reply. I’m tempted not to go through with the next part, but once more, for old time’s sake. “So what happened to your girl?”
He’s gathering his courage. This big old man, doing something he is terrified of. “She’d sadly passed before I came back, but I found out that she had a —” He swallows, glances at me, tries to hold my gaze. “— a daughter.”
I used to lose my shit at this. I’d scream at him how he’d abandoned us, how my mother had been ruined by his leaving, how she’d had to do unspeakable things to make ends meet. It was a different time back then. There was a stigma when you had a child out of wedlock. For us it had been hell, for years.
And he’d sit there, slumped, shrinking in my rage, wishing the world would open beneath him. He would wait until I fled the room, and there would be that awful noise. The percussion that gave me nightmares for months afterwards.
Or I’d ignore him, or refuse him, or tell him to get out, and each time the same end result.
That revolver he hides in his pocket always ends the loop.
But not this time.
“I know, Dad,” I say.
He looks startled, the smile is more genuine, and so are the tears. I’ve never touched him before, but I gingerly reach out, and he’s warm and real and smells of tobacco and vanilla.
And then I’m holding air.
I sit, wait for Carol, and wipe my eyes. She peeks around the door and sees I’m alone again.
“Thanks for coming in, Miriam,” she says. “Did it work this year?”
I shrug. My husband is waiting in the car, entertaining my grandchildren. “I hope so, Carol, I truly do.”
***
Steven Patchett is an engineer, father and writer in the north east of England. His works have been published in the National Flash Fiction and TL;DR Press anthologies, Skull and Laurel Magazine and many others. He can be found on Blue Sky, being encouraging. linktr.ee/stevenpatchett