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Spell and probably waft of Chanel, people part for her path. Out to the car waiting. Knees in then heels up. Slam and immaculate exit. Ignore her, he says dropping his cigarette as, laid bare, I uncoil at curls and rankle. Did you bring your case? Yeah, I’ll get it from inside. But my legs make pools all the way back in, perhaps from the wade and wade.

He shoulders it Coming? We make onto the street. A chiller night than planned to be. Preoccupied silences pushing between, part buffeted by others racing down to the Crown. Coming for a drink? No do. No come. No. Okay, see you next term. Until we’re at Malden Road. You hungry? crossing to Barnacle Bill’s. Starving. Come on then, and he steps in Two large, open please, anything else? No, that’s fine.

Chip smells close the distance as we trek on down. You were great tonight. Really? I had five lines. Not many lines but so much soul and that dress had a vivid inner life of its own! Oh that doesn’t sound pervy at all what about him? Vindice? Not bad actually. He had a lot to carry and I thought he managed it pretty well. The trick with How old is your little girl? Fuck, he says This bag of yours weighs a ton, how about stopping here til we’re fed? Alright, and sit on a bench in the damp. Talacre gardens opening empty behind but, across, the Grafton Arms making plenty of life. He eats his chips though like displacing quiet. Head down. One by one. So I eat and bide but he eats on. I know you don’t like talking about her but Nothing. Chews til his mouth is clear and only at wiping his hand on the paper says I was twenty-two when she came so she’s sixteen, seventeen in June. And it falls through the air like the starting of rain. Put my hand out into, trying to grasp what it means but can’t. Or don’t, so say You must find it strange I do find it strange, he says. Is it strange though? Yes it is why do you think I didn’t call you all those weeks before Christmas? I didn’t know. No how could you I suppose. Why didn’t you tell me before? I don’t know it was never the right time the day you asked about her picture it wasn’t like I thought I’d see you again after that we were always well There were plenty of times you could’ve Maybe but this wasn’t supposed to be More the sex? You know what I mean. And now it is? He nods So here comes the fucking mess. Why’s that? You’re practically the same age as my daughter what do you think that makes me? I don’t know. Well I do, he says. Really? I make you that ashamed? Yes no not you myself I mean what the fuck am I playing at? I mean if you were thirty-eight, even twenty-eight, twenty-five What? I don’t know. Well I don’t know either. And the truth is all I can see is this is harder for him than it is for me. Would be again for her, though isn’t, I’m sure. Does she know about me? Does she fuck! I would never discuss sex with her. I don’t mean sex I just No, she’s my daughter and I can’t even see her that way. What way? Being older being nearly seventeen and I know she is but I haven’t seen her since she was eight and I haven’t really been her father since she was younger than that and, despite the hours of staring at photographs, I can’t seem to make my head make up the time. Which makes So how much do you love her? go all around mine. To not ask I light a cigarette. Smoke and pass. He smokes it and. I. He. I. Then back. Lay my head on his shoulder. He allows that and both breathe out the breeze. I can’t stop thinking about Sunday night. Me too, he says. Do you wish we hadn’t? No, I don’t. Do you want me to go back to my own tonight? No but I can’t think this is normal, can I? Why not? Can’t you think what you want? That’s not how it works, there’s right and wrong. And I’m wrong? You’re not. But being with me is? Yes. Fuck you. I get up. No! Wait! he catches my wrist It’s not as simple as that and there’s just there’s a lot that you don’t know. I want you anyway, I say Do you still want me? I do. Well that seems pretty simple so let’s just go back to yours. Jesus, he — eyes supplicating the sky, cross to the Grafton, down to mine — and breathes out Alright let’s go.

Maybe against his will I hold his hand. He lets me though, now and then swaps the bag but also indulges my Tell me one thing, what’s the story with her? Nothing she’s always like that. We did The Seagull together. It was my first proper job. She played Arkadina. I was Konstantin. One thing led to another. There was some carry-on. Not more serious? No, not for me, but enough for her to wreck something I should have been more careful of anyway any chance that’ll do? For tonight, I grant and at last he laughs. Then we’re fine walking through the scurf streets side by side. My back moulding to the bridge under Kentish Town West where I persuade him to lean and chippy-kiss. Later I’ll ask more. Further from this. After. Once we’ve made our way home.

*

Up out of the world back into his realm. All tidied and hoovered. Expecting someone? Maybe, he smiles but subdued for him. Get that bottle from the fridge. I do. Is this champagne? For you, for the last night of your play. Thank and kiss him and sit on his desk. Open his shirt while he opens the cork. Turn from the pop, then swallow the fizz. Drip bottle mouth to mouth. Kiss. And make what I want, my own normal with him. Belt first. Next his fly. Both now falling back into time where all the past waits outside. It doesn’t matter to me, I say. Then it doesn’t matter tonight, he says Now take off your clothes and show me yourself, I want to remember every freckle when you’re gone. And I. And bra. Kneels down to my breasts. I. Watch his mouth there. Teeth making twitch running right up to my scalp. How he knows me — and all of me — so much. Kiss. Touch. Already damp his. Slip down where he knelt to. Lick. To put. Oh Fuck, he says, gone so hard in there and now neither us care for she’s away to the back of him. Let her. Let her. His hand in my hair God I love how you do that but lie back on the floor. So do and wait for you on me. In me. This is my father. What? Mine. Just beyond. Little girl in a photo who looks like him. He made me doing this, what he’ll do with you. He made you with it but did he mean to? And after, did they know they had? In that other life? On that far-off bed? This is my father. So? What of it? He’s taken care of me. And me, from the first. But he is my father. And your father taught me this, showed me how until I love to and know him like you never can. This is my father. Taking my knickers down. Putting his fingers. Putting his mouth. This is my father. The want he makes and I have no father. Who cares? Who cares? You can never do what he and I can. So sayeth the latest in the longest line. How many have gone before? I am the kingdom. I shine above because he is my father. Do I ever shine? Let me just get a, he says You don’t have to. Why? I’m on the pill. But Sunday. Wasn’t safe, now it is. Are you sure? Yes. And. All him in me. The work of it. God that’s lovely, you’re so wet. He is my father. I prefer him this to that. My father. I choose your father over the dead. Choose to kiss and touch and fuck so it hurts. And good to be hurt by him in ways you never will. Good to be hurt by him in ways no one else has. Kissing each other so deep in our mouths like forgetting now who is in who. He is my father. Not now. Always is. Not where I allow every journey he wants to make across my body. It is for him so get back from it to where you belong in the usual world, in the distantest time as slow he, slow. Kisses back down to wait. His beautiful eyes on me and his beautiful body pacing inside, asking Are you with me? I am. Kissing and. Then we hardly can for There it. I. He I am. All my body, lighting, all over his. I could say anything, anything. Just feeling and heat as and. Wet from inside him so far up inside me. Stings from the rough of. One atom in tiny wishing that the pill was a lie. Wishing for risk or being that moment in his past. Being closest to. Making life with No do not even anything and