Remember Me by Charity Norman

Author:Charity Norman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Thrillers, General, Suspense, Fiction, Women
ISBN: 9781838954192
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 2022-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

I spent the next morning trying to behave naturally towards Dad, despite what I’d found in that box.

To add to all the fun, Eddie and Carmen had held bilateral discussions and announced a state visit to Arapito in a fortnight’s time. Eddie was booked to run workshops in Napier and Palmerston North, so Tawanui wasn’t too much of a detour; Carmen would take a couple of days off work, cadge a lift with him and stay with various friends. They planned to stop for lunch with us on their way through.

Hope this date is okay with you, Eddie had written, as though I had a choice.

‘What an honour,’ I said to Dad. ‘Usually I have to go on a tour of the country for an audience with either of ’em.’

‘You don’t sound very . . .’

‘Enthusiastic? Well, it’s nice of them to include us on their road trip, but I think they’ve got an agenda.’

‘Ah.’ He smiled vaguely as he opened the biscuit tin. ‘Nothing worse than one of those.’

I’d woken up to a message from Sarah: Have you asked your Dad about that girl yet? Communication is the key!

‘Dad,’ I began, ‘I wondered . . .’

‘Biscuit?’

He stood with the tin in his hand, offering me one of Raewyn’s delights. He rarely ate them himself anymore. He complained that nothing tasted right. He was losing weight, his clothes hanging off him.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ask something so deeply personal. I chose a biscuit, mumbled something about needing to crack on with work and scurried off.

I was telling the truth about work. I lack self-discipline. I don’t run marathons or maintain long-term relationships and I’ve never managed to put my holiday snaps in an album, but in my line of work the secret to being in constant employment is to be reliable. Give me a deadline and I will meet it. In this case it meant producing a full set of mixed-media paintings, plus line drawings and smaller sketches, by mid-July. By hook or by crook, I was going to bring the Admiral and his friends to life again.

In the late afternoon I glanced outside to see Dad wandering among his roses. He bowed his head to look at something on one of the leaves. A pair of fantails swooped and flitted—up, down, around—almost landing on him, as though they were showing off to a favourite grandfather.

Even wild birds trusted my dad. A good doctor, of impeccable character, gently pottering in his garden.

A good doctor.

Of impeccable character.

I had to ask him.

I slipped into his room to grab the photo from Bert’s chest. Sarah was right: I should be upfront. He’d have an explanation, and that would be an end of it. By the time I joined him outside, he’d fetched his secateurs from the toolshed and was deadheading roses with the precision of a surgeon. Snap, snap.

‘Hello there!’ He glanced up at me with a placid smile, laying the secateurs down on a wheelbarrow. ‘Aren’t these looking good?’

I approached, holding out the photograph in both hands.

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