By the Radio

by Letitia Payne

---

She hesitates before she places the phone to her ear. Always one to text or email but rarely one to call. He knew this well but rings anyway. She squeezes her eyes shut, and flecks of colour erupt across the backs of her eyelids.

“Hello?”

On the other end of the line the News at Seven echoes through a room, a cat cries to be let out, and a man clears his throat, preparing to speak. Her breath catches at the back of her throat.

“Angel. I have to tell you–” Her father’s voice bellows through the receiver.

“Are you alright?” She places a hand on the kitchen table to steady herself.

“Yes, I’m fine darling, but look I really must tell you what came to me this morning.”

That morning, she’d sat at that same table, picking at the embroidery on the tablecloth. She’d let the phone ring. As it vibrated against the cloth beside her, she glared at the cat bowl filled to the brim with water long turned stale. She thought of emptying it but had sat firm in the chair, unmoving.

“I really can’t talk for–”

“Do you remember Tracy Chapman?” There’s this animation in his voice, like every sentence is a different coloured thread for her to pluck at.

“Look, I was just about to have dinner” She feels the damp begin to creep onto her palms.

“On the way to school, remember? It was the only CD I had that you liked.”

The music underscored every school run. The soft melody of the guitar, his fingers tapping offbeat against the steering wheel, she remembered it well. At that moment, she was six again, her backpack too big for her frame, and her hand didn’t fit in his as they walked to the school gates. She clung to two of his fingers instead.

“Angel?”

She shivers against the cold draught. Her feet are naked against the kitchen linoleum. The windows are open. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since the house fell quiet – a couple of days, a week, perhaps more. That morning, she’d needed to fill the emptiness, so she opened the windows and let the autumn decay creep in.

“I’m here.”

“It reminded me of the time I told you about the Queen sending a birthday letter to every person who turned a hundred.” On his end of the line, the chatter from the television grows louder and recedes again. He’s pacing.

“I don’t think I–”

“No, no. Remember, I was taking you to school, and you said: I hope she sends you a letter when you turn one hundred.” He breaks off into a thunderous chuckle that drowns the entire soundscape behind him. “And I thought, gosh, I’m not that old.”

As his voice trails off, she wonders if it might rain later on. There is a fly in the water, peddling frantically, trying to reach the sloping tin wall of the bowl.

“Dad, there’s something I have to tell you.”

***

In the kitchen, her feet grow roots, and her chest is a drawstring knotted twice over. She wants it out. She remembers the undented pillow on the right side of his bed, the bare shelf with the toothpaste stains in the bathroom cabinet, the plants wilting in the empty study. Outside, evening descends like a dark veil. The fly stops pedalling. The water stills.

“Funny, isn’t it? I always think of you when I find Chapman’s CD.” Her dad had heard her, she thought, but he had to get to the closing line of his monologue.

“I think the cat’s gone.”

***

The cat was the last thing to keep him there. In the corners of a room or an empty chair at the table, she could no longer feel him lingering in all that space he left behind.

It had been a few months, or maybe it was coming up to a year. He liked to listen to Radio 4 – the afternoon he passed, it hummed from beneath the study door. Fickle static bled into every sentence as it tried to cling to a signal. She found him there and hadn’t closed a door in the house since.

***

“I’ve been leaving the door to the garden open and–”

“Listen to me.”

“Dad.” It falters, her voice. Dips out like the static seeping from beneath the door. Her vision mottles as the tears come, hot on her skin. She stands alone in the empty house with the open windows, the open doors.

“I’m coming to get you.”

And with that, it is finally quiet. No more pacing, no sound from the TV to fill his front room. Only the buzz of a dead line.

She wanders through the empty house. Bare feet catching on the corners of rugs, hands slapping against the walls to steady herself, she thinks she can hear someone plucking at a guitar, and she follows the song through the hall. Her bare soles drag across the wood.

She sinks into his chair and presses her forehead to the frayed leather top of his writing desk. She wants to absorb it all, inhale the fragments that are left. The weight of everything she’s left unsaid rots within her with each passing season.

When she returns to the cold linoleum and the open windows, she is not alone. The cat sits on the old embroidered tablecloth, licking itself clean from the wilderness. There is no knock at the door, no turn of his key in the lock.

The next morning, she goes to him, to his spot by the weathered oak tree at the end of the lane. She caresses the branches she’d clung to as a child and feels the sting of the memory suck the air from her lungs. The leaves that cover him have all withered to rust. Tracing her fingers across the stone, she memorises the way his name feels against her skin. There’s a long silence before she speaks.

“The cat came home.” She says, and the wind shakes the last of the season from the old tree in response.