She could barely remember what he looked like, apart from the perpetual scowl. He had dark bushy brows, and eyes too close together, but she couldn’t picture his mouth and chin or put the pieces together to make a whole face. She could remember his voice, though: thickly accented, harsh, tyrannical. She would never forget his unpredictable temper and the belt he used to hit her across her bare legs. She remembered him yelling at her school friends, accusing them of being sluts, scaring them so they would never come to her house and avoided inviting her to theirs. He used to embarrass her by using derogatory terms for anyone of a different skin color, especially Aborigines, whom he called “scroungers” and layabouts. It seemed personal, since her mother was Chinese and Val had her thick black hair, buttermilk skin, and almond-shaped eyes. Were they scroungers too? Did his Russian birth and pale skin make him superior?

She remembered the tension of mealtimes after her mother was gone, when her father used to quiz her on general knowledge. What was the capital of Mongolia? How many feet in a mile? She’d done her best to answer, but seventeen years on, as she pulled into the nursing home parking lot, she felt her stomach clench with dread, the way it always used to do as a teenager.

Why was she visiting him? Would he still be able to terrorize her? She was a married woman with a daughter; she must stand up for herself. People could only bully you if you let them.

She walked down the spartan air-conditioned corridor, following a nurse in white uniform. The nurse knocked on a door and pushed it open, and there he was, in a chair by the window, recognizably him, although the bushy brows were silver and the posture was hunched.

“It’s your daughter to see you,” the nurse said in a too-bright voice, and Val approached, stopping when she was six feet away.

“Hi, Dad.” There was another chair, and she positioned it so she was out of arm’s reach before sitting down.

“I’ll leave you to it,” the nurse said, glancing from one to the other, perhaps surprised that Val hadn’t attempted to hug or kiss him.

“How are you keeping?” Val began. Her dad’s eyes were vacant, a paler shade of brown than she remembered, with spidery red veins. Hairs sprouted from his nostrils and ears, and the hair on his head was combed flat across a shiny skull. “What’s it like here?” she persevered.

“You look tired,” he said, his voice croaky. “You’ve got shadows under your eyes.”

Charming, she thought. “My daughter wakes me early and my husband keeps me up late. What can I do?” She tried for a lightness of tone, wondering if he would pick up on the fact that he had a granddaughter. He didn’t.