Making Ends Meet by Anna Clifton

Author:Anna Clifton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Escape Publishing

Chapter 9

In later years Harry’s thoughts would often return to the events of that night, the memories falling upon him as softly and silently as the weightless silk of a spent parachute.

It would happen in his quietest moments, usually after his mind had abdicated from conscious thought in favour of his left hand working with instinctive assuredness across a canvas. His brush would pause and his eyes would lose focus as he played the private videotape of that night’s silent, broken images in his head, spliced together to form a single story that would set the scene for the rest of his life. Over the years, like a video becoming stretched and distorted through over-use, the images became less distinct. But the razor sharp passage of feeling that took hold of him that night would engrave long-avoided truths across his heart that would never be dulled by time.

It had begun at dusk as Somer had secured a knot in his tie—a knot as secure as his deepest instincts telling him that if things had been different this girl might have become the constant amongst his reasons for getting out of bed each morning. It had ended the following dawn with Rosie. She’d wandered into the kitchen, her head a ruffled helmet of bed hair, her limbs thin and gangly amongst the crisp cotton folds of the pink nightie she’d slept in.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ she said as casually as if it was a daily event to find him sitting at the kitchen table in a full suit at six am.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he rasped, his throat dry and swollen after its long night out in the cold air.

She padded over to him in silence before climbing onto his lap, burrowing her head into his shoulder and popping her thumb into her mouth as he wrapped his arms around her.

Several minutes passed and neither of them moved until he heard a familiar ‘pop’ as the suction of the thumb in her mouth was broken.

‘Daddy?’

‘Yes, sweetheart.’

‘You’re a bit smelly,’ she declared, looking up at him with a gentle smile.

‘Do you know that you’re the second person in twelve hours to tell me that?’

‘Who else did?’

‘Somer.’

‘Is she awake?’

‘No, she told me last night.’

‘Did you come home last night?’

‘For a while—just long enough to see Somer and to give you and Nelson a kiss goodnight. Then I went out again.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘For a long walk.’

‘All night?’ she asked incisively, leaving Harry wondering whether Guy’s career as a prosecutor might be better suited to his daughter’s razor sharp mind than a career as a ballerina.

‘All night,’ he echoed.

‘Why?’

‘I had some things to think about.’

‘Mummy,’ Rosie offered, laying her head against his shoulder again so that he could rest his cheek against the silky softness of her hair.

‘Mostly,’ Harry affirmed.

Rosie fell quiet and Harry guessed she was thinking more deeply in that one instant than most seven year olds would manage in a whole year. She lifted her hand and placed it in the inside crook of his elbow, her fingertips brushing against the silky softness of his suit jacket.

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