Dear Nobody Read Free

in myself. It’s hard to say the things that matter, but I don’t know why.
    â€˜I’ll have to get you a dishwasher,’ Dad murmured.
    I wrote a song for Helen. I worked out some chords for it on my guitar, then tried it all again in a minor key. I wrote another verse and practised singing it, standing with one foot on the bed so I could balance my guitar on my knee. The last verse was so good that I sang it again, much louder this time. Guy threw a book against the joining wall, and the cat fled downstairs again and headbutted the cat-flap. I wrote the chords down so I wouldn’t forget them and then put a blank cassette into my radio-recorder and sang it all through, strumming softly, picking out a few bass runs with my thumb. I thought I might re-record it the next day so I could do it all finger-style, but I needed to get a new plectrum. The one I was using was the plastic tie-tag from a sliced loaf and it had split. I tried it in another key. Helen had taught me all the chords I knew on the guitar. One day I wanted to just wake up and be able to play like Jimi Hendrix. I decided I would post the cassette as it was through Helen’s letter-box on my way to school next day.
    It was nearly midnight by then. I went back downstairs. Dad was sitting with his feet up on the settee watching a late film.
    â€˜You shouldn’t be watching this,’ I told him. ‘It’s rude.’
    â€˜I close my eyes when the naughty bits come on.’
    â€˜Dad,’ I said. ‘What happened to you and Mum?’ I’d had no idea I was going to say that just then.
    The woman on the television screen smiled knowingly and murmured to me. I thought Dad hadn’t heard me at first, the way I’d blurted it out. If he’d asked me to repeat it I wouldn’t have been able to.
    â€˜You know what happened.’ He seemed to be waiting for the woman to speak again. ‘She walked out.’
    â€˜I mean, why?’
    Dad looked at me sharply as if he was going to tell me to mind my own business. I wouldn’t have blamed him. Then he pulled a face. He swivelled himself round on the settee into a sitting position as if it was all a great effort, as if he was an old man stiff with lumbago these days.
    â€˜She met a feller, didn’t she, and he was younger than me with a bit more hair on top and he wore natty jumpers and he read a lot of books. And she decided she liked him better than me and off she went.’
    We watched the screen for a bit. The woman had a thin face like a snake. She flickered her tongue when she laughed.
    â€˜She just went, just like that,’ Dad went on quietly. ‘Went off. I came home one night and I’d done a shift, I was dead tired, you know, and there she was standing in the hall with her coat on and this feller was with her.’ He bent down and put one of his shoes on. ‘Tying his shoe laces or something, hiding his face, that’s what he was doing. And she told me she was leaving.’
    â€˜Did you know him?’
    Dad blew out his lips. ‘As a matter of fact, I did. Not well, of course. But he’d been round a couple of times.’
    We both stared at the television. I didn’t dare look at my dad. It was as if, now he’d started, he couldn’t stop. It was as if he was talking to himself almost. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him stroking his lip. I daren’t move. The television voices murmured on.
    â€˜Didn’t suspect a thing. That’s what your mother hated most about me, of course. She said I’d got no imagination.’ He laughed briefly, a sharp bark of a laugh. The couple in the play were rowing now. A close-up of the woman showed that she was crying.
    â€˜Are those tears real?’ Dad said. ‘I bet they use some kind of oil or something. Her make-up’s not running, and she’d have to be wearing some with all those lights.’
    â€˜She’s not wearing much