“But my daddidstick around, unlike my mother. If he hadn’t stayed, whatever his flaws, then I’d have grown up parentless and without a home.”
She holds me then, her arms wrapped around my neck, pressing her body fully against mine, her hand stroking the back of my head as she pulls my face into her neck. We stand here like this for the longest of times, surrounded by the sad, final moments of my father’s life.
11
SOPHIA
We hired a professional cleaning company to come in and blitz the house. Rocco goes through the meagre belongings his father left behind, selecting only a few items to keep. Most of it’s rubbish. His father hadn’t been sentimental, so there’s little from Rocco’s childhood—a handful of photographs, a few pieces of old school work—but that’s it. I can see how much it hurts Rocco that this is all that remains of his father’s life.
“I won’t be like this,” he tells me later that night as we lay tangled together in bed. “I won’t allow my life to end up so all I leave behind are a couple of boxes of rubbish.”
“That isn’t all your father left behind,” I reply. “He leftyouas his legacy, and I bet he was as proud of you as a father could be.”
The funeral is a simple, quiet affair. A couple of Rocco’s father’s old drinking buddies show up to pay their final respects, but other than me and Rocco, they’re the only people here.
Rocco told me he didn’t want to have a wake. He said the idea of sitting in some grotty pub while a handful of his father’s old friends got drunk in the corner was just too depressing to bear. Instead, after the service, we go down onto the beach where we’d spent so many of our childhood years.
Despite the sombre situation, the day is bright and hot. Holidaymakers lay on brightly coloured towels across the sand, while their children build sandcastles around them. Teenagers huddle together in gangs, some wearing t-shirts of bands they’d most likely never even listened to. They play music too loud, and all try to talk over the top of each other in that over-confident yet self-conscious way teenagers seem to blend together.
I sit shoulder to shoulder with Rocco on the beach, both of us out of place in our rented clothes—with me in a summer dress and him in his suit. He looks handsome, though—just as handsome as he did casually dressed in his jeans and t-shirt, the combination of the suit and the tattoos more than pleasing on the eye. We eat fish and chips directly out of the paper and toast his father’s life with cold cans of Coke.
“Is it wrong that I’m enjoying being here with you, despite the circumstances?” he asks me with a wry smile.
“No, not at all. Your dad would have liked to know that you’re happy.”
“I am,” he agrees. “I wish I’d had the chance to tell him that we’d got back together. He always liked you. Called you ‘little Sophia’.”
I laugh. “Not so little now.”
“Nope.”
“I’m going to have to leave for London first thing in the morning,” I tell him, wishing there was a way I could stay.
He glances down at me. “Sure you can’t stay a little longer?”
I shake my head. “Sorry, I’ve got a hospital appointment. I can’t miss it.”
His eyebrows draw together in a frown. “Something important?”
“Well, yes, but it’s just routine as well.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, you’ve still got things to do down here. You’ll be okay to get the train back? I have to get Dad’s car back, too.”
“Of course. I’m going to worry about you driving all that way on your own, though.”
I nudge my elbow into his side. “Like I just mentioned, I’m a big girl now. I can handle it.”
He groans and buries his face into my neck. “Sure I can’t convince you to stay?”
I laugh and hug the back of his head against me. “I want to, I promise I do, but I can’t. This appointment has been booked for ages, and I’ll be in trouble if I miss it.”
He lifts his face from me and frowns. “And what’s the appointment for, exactly?”
I shrug. “Oh, it’s just routine—testing how well my kidney function is and stuff like that. But you know how strapped the NHS is at the moment. They can’t afford to let appointments go to waste.”
“You’re right. I’m just being selfish, wanting you all to myself. I should only be another couple of days and then I’ll be back in London.”
