A knock at the door.
Again.
A small hand, insistent. The diminutive sound nearly drowned out by the music on his headphones, only a gap between songs informing him of the extraneous sound.
He cursed, despite everything. Mornings were bad for him normally. Hectic. Too much to do. Breakfast, the routine, the school run. Only then back home did he have the time he needed but by then he was too wired, mind conflicted with too many other thoughts. Regular stuff. Day stuff. Not important stuff.
He had asked for this. They had both agreed he could have some time. There was no school, no routine. Not this morning. It was supposedly his day. Did he not get to do what he wanted to on this very day? He was behind on the commission. There were many reasons why he didn’t wish to be behind, and only the bottom of the list of said reasons did finances come in to play. He was invested beyond money, and he really wanted to make some proper progress.
The next track started, one that he did not care for very much so he skipped it. The momentary silence that greeted him again once more filled with that small frenzied knocking. And something else. Something that he was hard-wired not to ignore or file away.
“Daddy…”
Her small, insistent voice. Asking for him. He succumbed to his genetic programming and removed the headphone buds from his ears, ignoring the small tinny echo of music that began to play.
He guessed that was time up. He never did get what was promised.
Eleven o’clock.
“That can’t be right,” Adam whispered. The clock on the wall above his desk. Large, ornate. Him and Amber had picked it up the year before. She said it would be perfect for the rustic industrial style of his office, the “vibe” he was going for (she laughed as she said that, gently mocking his use of the word). Large serif Roman numerals and hands that looked wrought from iron. A dull metal casing festooned with plastic ivy which hung down in front of and behind the over-sized time piece. He wondered if it’s batter needed replacing, then remembered that he had done it a few weeks prior, on account of missing his dental appointment. He did wonder, thinking back, that it was odd that it seemed to be forever twenty past three every time he glanced up at it.
So if it wasn’t wrong, then logically…it was right.
They had given him his time, and then some.
“Daddy are you coming out?”
“Yes sweetheart, just a minute.” That seemed to satisfy her and the frenzied knocking ceased. He imagined her still standing on the other side of the door, a smile on her pretty little face. The expectation writ large at the thought of him emerging for the biggest, tightest hug.
He sat back and tilted his chair, exhaling slowly. He had been working too closely at this particular piece - since six - and hadn’t even taken the time to look upon it and take it all in. This was the first time, and for all he knew the composition could be wrong, and there would be hours wasted. He would start the day with his family in a foul temper, and there would be nothing they could do or say to abate that.
But it was good.
No. It was better than good. It was better than it had any damn right to be. It was the best thing that he had ever done. The [blank] was rendered so vividly, so captivatingly, that the whole piece - which completely hinged on it, seeing as how it was the subject of the book in the first place - just worked. There were elements in there that were less than perfect, for example the [blank] up towards the upper third of the piece, where the perspective was just slightly off (he could in no doubt place that error on his lack of coming back and viewing the whole piece as he did now), or parts of the background detail. The angle of the light from above was a bit wrong, and there were parts that could be tidied up. It didn’t matter though. None of that mattered. The [blank] was magnificent and absolutely demanded attention. It would be the perfect piece. The perfect cover and she would surely love it. He hadn’t read the full story. It wasn’t finished. Yet he didn’t need to for this. She had described this part to him. This pivotal scene. With the [blank] so vividly etched in his mind.
“Fuck me, if only they could see what you’ve done now,” he whispered to himself.
The thing is, they would. They all would. Yet not the ones that he really wanted to see it. Even then, they wouldn’t see it. It would never be anything more than a commission. It would demand it’s own appreciation but only if that which it adorned demanded the same, else it would go the same way as some of his other work, into obscurity. He was good, and the work he commanded was such that he could choose his clients. There was never a surefire success however, even from more established names, and it was always the risk he took. Another reminder that he didn’t do this for himself, but the creative muse of someone else. Someone who walked similar paths, just on a different plane. They overlapped, these paths, but there was very rarely a way that you could reach one from the other.
Not unless there was a sta-
“Daddy come o-o-on.”
She was still there. Waiting. Of course she was. He had kept her waiting long enough.
“Coming monkey!” He shouted as jovially as he could, as if that would in itself make up for the neglect of the last hour that he had overrun.
But they had let me.
Or they had been too scared to interrupt.
That wasn’t right. They could interrupt him any time they chose to. He always had time for them. Always.
He opened the door to a little girl with her face downcast. She was holding something in front of her and had found something on the carpet to smudge with her toes. Something that glittered in the sun that filtered through the half open blinds of the hallway. It was going to be a lovely day. A lovely day for their trip, and he had begun to squander it. His heart thumped in his chest then. She had been waiting for this day for weeks. She had excitedly told him of the card their teacher had gotten them all to make in school. She couldn’t keep the secret more than five minutes after bursting through the door the day before.
“You okay sweetheart? I’m sorry I was a bit longer than I meant to be.” He said, ruffling her hair. It was still slightly damp from her shower and his hand came away smelling of a summer meadow, that new shampoo that Amber had bought her no doubt during the last shop. He loved the smell of it, whenever he went to kiss her head goodnight over the last few days. That smell would be synonymous with her, and that was just fine. Not just a summer meadow. Exotic spices and layers of scent that he had never smelled before. He loved it. It was unique, like her.
“That’s okay,” she said, looking up at him. Despite her disappointment at waiting she managed a smile that slowly consumed her face until all traces of melancholy were gone. He was jealous how easily it came to children. Adults accumulated baggage to the extent that a change in mood took hours or something momentous. With Violet, all traces of being downcast were gone as quickly as a cloud moving away from the sun.
“Can I give you this now?” She held the envelope out to him.
“What’s this? For me? Is it my birthday?”
A laugh exposing only a few gaps in her adult teeth. Not many left to come in. All traces of her infancy were nearly gone. Another heartbeat.
He opened it, laughing as a whole tubs worth of glitter fell around his feet.
“Fairy dust!” Amber shouted excitedly. “So you can have wishes the whole day!”
The card depicted a hand drawn version of Amber, himself and Violet, large grins on disproportionate heads. Inside was his daughter’s scrawled name with each letter in a different colour of crayon. More glitter covered the inside, glued in place in a series of random whorls and patterns.
“Sweetheart it’s beautiful.” This time he did kiss her head. It felt
cold
warm as though she had already been out in the morning sun. She probably had been passing time in the garden, on the wing that he had put up for her seventh birthday that she had already nearly outgrown and that Amber had pleaded with him to either replace or take down completely before she hurt herself.
“It’s fine,” he had said. “She enjoyed going on it.”
“She doesn’t know any better Adam and you know it. She’s just happy to go on it. It’s going o break in mid arc, she’d going to fall and she’s going to hurt herself.”
He had promised he would do it after he had finished his commission, but that had been three or four commissions ago. Possibly more.
“What are you going to wish for?” Amber asked him.
He bent down and grabbed her under the arms, hauling her up to his chest height. She was getting too big for being picked up, but he was damned if he was going to admit that yet. Not to mention heavy, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that.
“First? Breakfast,” he said in a mock snarl, bearing his teeth and angling towards her. She giggled and pushed his face back with her hands. “But if I can’t have you,” he continued, starting to move towards the stairs, “I guess I’ll settle for whatever your mum is making. It smells good!”
“I’m helping!” Violet shouted joyfully as they reached the bottom.
Adam put her down and she ran off. Leaving him in the downstairs hall massaging his lower back. The days of picking her up - carrying her down the stairs or not - were growing low. He would soon have to admit she wasn’t his little girl any more. Even though he knew she would always be his little girl.
Walking through the living room, he headed for the kitchen. The television was on, showing that mornings news, and he found himself stopping momentarily to take in the main stories. The screen was filled with a somber looking news reporter who seems to be on location in some far off bombed out city, presumably in Eastern Europe where Adam knew there had been constant fighting over territory for the best part of the year, and they were halfway through it already.
“Bombs continue to fall in the now desolate shell that was once the bustling city of [blank],” the reporter was saying in his clipped Thames Estuary accent. “Earlier, a statement was released from Prime Minister Denys Ivanov who stated that -“
“Adam, are you there? It’s going to get cold.” Amber calling from the kitchen. Something was off in her tone. It sounded cooler than he would have expected. He wondered if he had upset her by taking so much time upstairs. He wouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t answer, or move at first, just continue to stare at the screen. In a few moments a thought had formed. Did she not know why he was working? Did he not realise that it took more than her income for this damned house? She could wait until he decided he was hungry. If it went cold, it went cold. It wasn’t up to her.
“Come on daddy, please!”
There it was.
He turned the television off as a large broad faced man standing behind a row of microphones filled the screen, and went through to greet his family.
“Hey darling,” he said approaching Amber. She was busy at the coffee pod machine, the aroma filling the kitchen. He put her arms around her waist and went in to kiss her neck. She stiffened slightly beneath him, which he put down to her being annoyed at him for working later than they agreed. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I guess I got too into what I was doing.
“She’s been waiting,” Amber replied coldly, nodding in the direction of Violet, who was busy humming to herself as she concentrated on her colouring book. It was one the she had got through the school’s book day, and contained intricate floral designs that would have even challenged an adult. She was currently busying herself with the green. Colouring what looked like
ivy
leaves entwined around some kind of structure. He couldn’t quite see from where he stood over at the work surface.
“I know.”
“You promised you’d take her, take us all. It’s nearly midday.”
“The wildlife park is open til six. It’ll take us, what, forty minutes to get there? We’ll have loads of time. I’ll throw breakfast down me and we can go, okay?”
He held her close around her waist, expecting her to soften, even a little. She couldn’t be that annoyed with him? She would have come and got him herself if she genuinely thought that he was taking too low.
“Okay, here,” she said as she passed him a cappuccino. Then, turning to Violet. “Go and get your shoes on honey okay?” Violet looked up from her impeccably coloured in page. “And look out a warm top, your jacket and go to the toilet.”
She beamed. “Are we going?”
“You bet.” Adam said, returning her smile with one of his own. “The crocodiles and tigers aren’t going to wait forever you know.”
Violet giggled as she rose to her feet. “Silly,” she laughed. “There’s no crocodiles.”
“There are tigers though. So chop chop, before they eat all the other animals there and there’s nothing else to see.”
She laughed again as she ran off, her coloured pencils scattered across the table. One started to roll towards the edge and he watched it distractedly, taking a sip of his coffee. He looked across at Amber who had started to wash up the few dishes that were at the sink.
“Just leave them baby, we better get ready too.”
She ignored him and continued to wash up. It was then he noticed a mark on the work surface, just beside the kettle.
“Are you okay?” He asked.
“I don’t know.” She stopped washing up, but remained with her back to him.
“What do you mean? You can’t be that pissed off at me surely. I was just -”
What is that stain? Has something been spilled there?
Something was slid across the work surface towards him. Small, cheap, old. Or at last, designed to look old. A throwback. To a time before touchscreens, the Internet and over complications. Some phone companies had begun to sell handsets like these. For people that didn’t want the faff. For people that just wanted to text, and call.
“What’s this?”
“Don’t you recognise it?” She had turned now. Her eyes were cold fire.
He frowned. “Pretty sure I would.”
“There’s only one number in it. I looked. There’s no lock-out on these basic pieces of shit.”
“I don’t -”
She walked over to the door and shut it firmly, but as softly as she could, turning back to him. “Don’t bullshit me Adam,” she hissed. “I called that number. A woman answered. I hung up before she realised who I was. She tried to call back and I cut her off. I want to hear it from you, not her. But it starts with you telling me who she is.”
“No-one,” he answered meekly. There was no point in trying to argue. There was no defence he could think of.
“Like hell. Someone so secret you’ve hidden her behind a letter on a cheap throwaway phone that looks like it’s twenty years old. I’m going to ask you once more. For the sake of our marriage. For the sake of our daughter. Who is D?”
He tried to think of an answer. Instead focusing on that stain on the work surface. The stain that he hadn’t seen before. That large, red stain.
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