He was wearing the nearest thing he owned to a suit. Well, it was two suits, really. The jacket from one suit and the trousers from another. He’d combed his hair. I noticed that Dad was going grey at the sides and his hair was a bit thin on top. But he looked pretty good, for an old feller.

Kenny had on smart new jeans and a sweatshirt from Gap.

The arrivals hall was filled with light from the big windows. There were dozens of people there, waiting to meet passengers off the flight, like us. Lots of them were taxi drivers holding up names written on cardboard. But there were some other families – mums and dads and kids.

“You OK, Nicky?” my dad asked. He put his hand on my shoulder.

“Yeah,” I told him.

And then I said something I’d never said before.

“I love you, Dad.”

I felt my dad’s hand tighten on my shoulder.

“Because, Dad, you were always … you never went … away.”

“No, Nicky,” Dad said, his voice thick. “I went away. It was you who stayed. It was you …”

“It was us, Dad, us,” I said.

And then I heard a noise from Kenny. It was a mix of a laugh and a cry and a shout of joy and a groan of pain. And then, in the light that was so bright I had to half shut my eyes, I saw her …

Epilogue

Epilogue

And the years went by. Forty of them, and I was here again in the hospital with Kenny.

Mum and Dad were gone. Jenny was still Jenny. She hardly looked different, but she was a little old lady now.

I’d been in the room with Kenny for six hours. They told me he didn’t have long. He was asleep for most of the time. Twice he woke up and looked at me, and I took his hand in mine – as I had all those years ago, when he’d saved me. He was bald, Kenny, from the chemo. But he was going bald anyway. A bit of fuzz had grown back on his head after they’d stopped the treatment. It was so soft it was hard to resist the urge to stroke it.

They loved their uncle Kenny, my two kids. He’d never got tired of playing with them when they’d been small.

“Do horsy, Uncle Kenny!” they’d squeal, and they’d both ride around on his long back.

He’d had their names, Ruth and Stan, tattooed on his knuckles.

Kenny had loved his job at the garden centre. He’d always wanted to work with animals, but that had never happened, and plants were the next best thing.

I think his life had been happy.