She couldn’t speak. In some fairy-tale fantasy, she would hug him and forgive him, of course, and life would go on with his burden, and her burden, lightened. But this was the real world. The terrible pain he had inflicted on her almost twenty years ago, had been deliberate and vicious. She stared at his reflection, too numb to speak, and afraid that whatever she said would be wrong.

‘I’ll put another Gran Gertie tape on while we eat, OK?’ she said.

He nodded glumly and she hoped the tape would contain a little humour. They both needed a smile.

In her mind, she heard her great-grandmother’s voice whisper:

Forgive him, Shelly. Your father’s just a lonely old man doing his best. He simply struggled along from day to day in those terrible days after your mother died, blaming the world and dealing with the injustice while trying to hide his confusion and pain. And being a man, he would never ask for help.

She had never thought about it like that before. Poor devil. But then again, she was little more than a child, desperate for the support of the only parent she had left.

The tape clicked and hissed and Gran Gertie’s words filled the room, so sharp and shockingly clear that Shelly half expected to see her standing in the corner, smiling. Then came the aftershock. The grand old lady with a neat grey bun and pale blue eyes wasn’t standing there with her arms loosely folded beneath her shapeless bosom. Her feet weren’t planted a foot apart in pink, fur-trimmed Christmas slippers. However, that was how Shelly always saw her.

The voice that filled White Cottage was younger than Shelly remembered. Clearly, her great-grandmother’s spirit had come to life in the room.

How I miss you, Gran Gertie.

Gordon was shovelling steak and kidney pie into his mouth like a condemned man. The emotional outpouring had given him an appetite. Then he looked up, and said, ‘Your mum told me that when she was a toddler, Gran Gertie would stand at the back fence, shake a can of seed, and stare at the sky for ages.’

Shelly pressed pause. ‘Why?’

‘Waiting for Icarus, a carrier pigeon, with a message from someone special in Greece.’

‘From Greece? Wouldn’t that be too far for the poor little bird, unless it thumbed a lift off EasyJet?’

He blinked at her. ‘No, a good bird can do it at a push.’

She resisted the urge to make a joke, Gordon took his birds very seriously and woe betide anyone who poked fun at them.

Shelly opened a beer and passed it to her father, then placed their plates in the sink.

‘I’m shocked by Gertie’s tapes, Dad. I had no idea she’d had such a life. Let’s open the trunk, shall we? Did you pack it?’