‘This house is a healthy old house, whatever you say,’ Auntie repeats.

Dad looks out of the window. The sheep are eating grass. The sun is shining.

‘Then you realize that the whole house stayed standing because it was propped up by the wrong things: door frames, window frames. There were no supporting structures, just brittle stuff, and the weather was calm enough for the wind not to blow the house down. An ordinary day, chipboard, a morning in the garden. Then suddenly things fall from the sky and your hand sinks into the wall.’

And having said that, Dad presses his head against the backing paper.

Mum used to stroke Dad’s back. Mum used to say what Dad was like.

‘You need a haircut,’ she would say. ‘You look tired. You look handsome. It doesn’t suit you. It suits you. Why are you asking me when you’ve clearly made up your mind! You can do it. We’re here now, now we’re here.’

Perhaps Mum always said what Dad was like, where Dad ended and the rest began, but now that Mum’s dead, Dad is brittle. His outline’s leaky, the white line’s blurred, his feet disappear.

I’d like to say: ‘Lean against the wall, Dad; I’ll draw your line.’

Then Dad could look at the picture, and colour it in with felt tips. And then he’d see what a big man he really is.

19

19

Sometimes, aeroplanes spring leaks, say in a water pipe or the toilet. That’s a fact. If the water that drips out is blue, it’s from the toilet; if it’s clear, it comes from somewhere else. If the aeroplane is stationary, the drops of water will just fall straight down to the ground. Up in the air, the seeping water will freeze because of the low temperature outside.

A lump of ice that forms during a long flight can be as big as a football. When the aeroplane loses altitude and the air temperature rises, the chunk of ice might detach itself from the aeroplane and drop down on to the ground. Ice is the most common thing to fall from an aeroplane. And when, underneath, there is somebody’s garden, where a person in the middle of planning a strawberry pyramid is doing jobs, that individual might be hit on the head with a lump of ice the size of a football and die. That is a fact.

Dad has started sitting in front of the computer. He looks normal again – perhaps because he has swapped the sunglasses for spectacles and put on his day clothes. Or because his toes aren’t leaking any more. But now he sits in front of the computer, reading and clicking and not listening properly. Auntie Annu tries to get him to do some work, because the sheep enclosure has got to be moved and the composting container emptied, but Dad just growls.