‘And I’m going to have a child. But I’m doing it as an equal. And you – you were wrong. When you said boys and girls were different, when you tried to prove it was right to treat us differently. You didn’t even know how to interpret the behaviour of children, let alone adults. But I do. I’m fixing the problem.’

‘I … try to …’

She couldn’t hear his words, and suddenly her outburst seemed childish, arrogant. She leaned forwards, the word sorry resting behind her lips. The side of his chin was slimy, glistening in the bright light streaming in between the slats of the blind.

‘You don’t have to talk, Dad,’ she said. ‘I know you don’t agree with what I’m doing, but it’s my choice, isn’t it?’

She thought his body was convulsing, or was he turning away from her?

‘… No, I …’

‘Yes it is, Dad. It’s my choice.’

If he was in pain she wanted to help him. She looked around for a nurse but saw only an emergency cord and it seemed melodramatic to pull on that. There was no emergency here. Just a heartbreaking decline.

He was shaking his head again, moving in one direction and letting it flop back against the pillow. She gently touched his forehead. She didn’t want him to strain his neck.

‘We … try …’ he said.

‘It’s OK.’ Holly shook her head now. ‘I always knew I was lov—’

He pulled her hand, hard, and she stopped talking. Her words were making him uncomfortable. They never were a family for spoken affection.

‘We tried,’ he said, his voice stronger.

Holly frowned.

‘We tried to be fair,’ he said. ‘To let you choose.’

He let out a sigh that made the effort of speaking suddenly unbearably clear to her, and at the same time she saw it – the hurt, in his eyes.

‘You were,’ she found herself saying. ‘You were always … I always felt I could speak up,’ she said, ‘and I always …’

His smile was tired now, resigned, and his right eye, which had been open, connecting with hers, closed over.

‘It’s OK, really, you were … wanting me to get married and … and not sending me to university … that stuff doesn’t matter now.’ Though it did, it mattered to her. She reached for his hand. ‘You were a wonderful father.’ And a man of his time, she thought, but didn’t say. It is true of us all, sooner or later, whether we like it or not.

‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I love you, Dad.’ And she kept clutching his hand as the room dissolved.