Not tonight, Gracey.

I waited in the hall. Home from school early, plaits in my hair straightened, and even my room tidy, I'm a good girl. I wait in the hall. I can hear the clank and clatter of pots and pans as my mother does something culinary in the kitchen. She doesn't like cooking, and we don't really like eating what she makes. But we do it because we feel that we should.

My mother called through, Do you want the gravy on top of your potato, or on the side? I ask if I can pour it instead of her doing it. Of course, she says. I smile, I like pouring it, I like watching them watch me, just in case I spill it. It's been a long time since I've spilt it, though.

In the drive, there's a scrunch of tyres over gravel. Every day as I come home from school, I walk up the furrows in the gravel, from where he drives in every night the same way. In the mornings, on the way out, we're usually running late and my mother says there's no time for games, so we just walk straight.

Face happy and sparkling at his special girls as he came home, through the door, sweeping me up, safe in his arms. Caught and lifted high above in his arms, near the ceiling, squealing in delight and my hair flying in my mouth as he rushed me through the softly scented room that my mother had carefully tended before the cleaners arrived. Always, she had said, be willing to do what it is you're going to pay someone else to do, or at least try it. This house is always tidy, and we pay someone to give it that extra sparkle, she said. I liked that, too. My house was lovely and clean and when I came through the door, I can smell the polish and bleach and all the other things that she used.

In the garden that day, and my daddy came bowling out of the house, almost tripping up. He was smiling and happy and I liked that look too. It's going to be the best thing in the world. Everyone in the world is going to want one, or two even. And I smiled, because my daddy was changing the world. 

And that means i've got all the more time to spend with my Gracey Elizabeth, doesn't it? She said, tickling me, and I squealed in delight again.

I remember the change in him, but not when it started. Less a switch and more a gradual slip, sliding away from where he used to be, as my father went from a man happily enamoured by his passions to someone else, someone consumed and devoured.

There was a lot less squealing, now. I was swept up and away and round in a circle less, and less and less. They're saying that they already did it, that they did it first. And that mine is just an improvement on an existing process. But how can it be, how can it be? Everything, corroding so, so early. And my father coming back in later in the evening, shoulders hunched and head down, smiling with his mouth, and then not even with that. They're saying that I need to just leave it, that they've so much time and money and whatever else, that there's no... ust no way that I can argue with them, even if I'm right. You are right. I know. But I've been told so much that I'm not now that I'm not even sure that I am any more. I just don't know, I just don't know.

Ten more years of this, I'm sure that it would have been fine, but he couldn't see, we couldn't make him believe, my mother couldn't make him believe. And the day I decided I was going to surprise him and make him, actually make him, damnit, remember and believe and spin me round and he'd remember and everything would be OK. That look would fall from his face, and everything would be. Not any kind of description, everything would just be, again.

Rushing towards the door with my arms outstretched towards him and Daddy, you're home, give me an aerrrrrroplane, and practically throwing myself at him, and he caught me. I could feel the muscles in his arms holding me, perfectly still, off the floor, everything in the world perfectly still for just a moment. 




And then everything started moving again, and my feet touched the floor. Not tonight, Gracey. Not tonight. And his footsteps across the hall, and into the living room. The armchair glumphed, as he collapsed into it. His jacket creaked as he leaned back and his arm moved to cover his eyes.

I wait, in the hall.