The Ice Cream Girls by Dorothy Koomson Read Free Book Online

the day and all evening – it’d been planned for a while – and they’d see me in the morning. And PS, I could have the shepherd’s pie that had just finished cooking in the oven for my lunch and dinner if I was hungry.
    The half-drunk cup of tea on the kitchen table, the half-folded laundry sitting in the washing basket by the washing machine, and the open door of the dishwasher all told me that she had left in a hurry. She was that desperate to escape from me, the dead daughter who was not meant to come back, she had left her housework unfinished.
    I eventually found the plates, heaped on the shepherd’s pie, and then took my meal outside. The temperature had dropped dramatically since I had arrived, but I still settled myself at the mildew-covered white plastic table at the bottom of the garden, and ate the too-hot food. Then I sat and smoked a pack of cigarettes, watching the sky, watching the climbing vines on the walls, listening to the neighbours going about their business, immersing myself in the outside world until my fingers and limbs were so cold and achy that I could hardly move them, and the only light came from the rectangles of orange-yellow thrown out by the kitchen door and window.
    Eventually I stubbed out my last cigarette and went inside to go to bed, deciding to change the sheets on the bed for cotton ones. Still achy and cold, I washed up my plate and cutlery and water glass, then climbed the stairs feeling a little more like Poppy Carlisle again and a little less prisoner EX396798.
    On the landing outside the bathroom, beside the huge picture window that lets light flood into the upstairs areas, I bump into him. Not literally – he is leaving their bedroom – I am leaving the bathroom, but our worlds have converged at this point.
    He looks old. There is no other word for it, no other way to describe him. Mum had looked older, but he looks old. As if time has paid particular attention to him, ravaging him over and over until he is sixty-one but looks old.
    His hair, although still neat and short, has thinned and disappeared on top, what is left is now almost completely white, with only a few darkish grey spots here and there. His handsome face has been softened and lined; his eyes, the colour of bluebells, are heavy and sad. Incredibly, painfully sad. A sadness that affects the set of his mouth, and hollows out two wells in his cheeks. His body always upright and strong – he was a muscular man who didn’t seem to be physically intimidated by anything or anyone – now he seems to have shrunk, his shoulders hunch forwards a fraction and his limbs seem less solid. The shell of him, the man who he was, is different, but he is still him, still Dad. Mum used to tell me that when I was just learning to talk and he would leave the room, I’d stare at the door for ages, waiting for him to come back. And when I heard a noise outside the room, I would, in my baby voice, call, ‘Daaaaaa!’ Asking him to come back, asking him where he was and what he was doing without me. That was one of the few things she could accurately recall from my childhood, and I knew she was right because, in the entire world, the person I loved the most was my dad.
    I have not seen him in twenty years, since the day of the verdict. In my heart, in my soul, I feel a tug, a desperate need to reach out and touch him. I want to feel his arm under my fingers so that I can confirm that he is real, I have not imagined him, and I am not going to lose him again when reality comes back to me. I smile at him, hesitantly, waiting for him to respond, react, notice me. While I was ‘away’ he could pretend I was not around, but here, in front of him, he has to at least acknowledge me – even if it is just to tell me to put some clothes on. The smallest contact is all I need.
    However, I am a ghost. I am insubstantial and unreal. He looks straight through me, his eyes focusing beyond me, and then he continues on his path to the stairs