My father is framed in the door of the sitting room. I don’t know how long he’s been standing there, but before I can answer him, he’s already turned away. He doesn’t wait for me to follow because he knows I will.

When I enter the kitchen, he’s sitting at the table, head in his hands. His shirtsleeves are rolled up and I can see his tattoos, and there’s dried paint on his forearm and dirt beneath his nails. I drag out a chair and sit opposite him. The kitchen clock ticks on and on, and I count in time to its beats, because the air feels loaded with something and I don’t know what else to do.

A minute or so passes. I trace the grain of the wood with my finger. Eventually, the silence becomes too much for me.

‘Dad?’

He lifts his head and his eyes are red-rimmed and watery. My father never cries, so this is an alarming development.

‘Brinley, love . . .’

The last time he called me ‘love’ was when I broke my wrist falling off the monkey bars in the park two years ago.

‘You know how poorly Mum is, don’t you? That she’s not going to get better . . .’

I don’t answer. I don’t want to make it easy for him. He reaches his hand across the table. His arm is smooth and strong. I can see a vein pulsing through his skin.

‘Well, the nurse who came today, love, she doesn’t think it’s going to be long.’

I meet his eyes, a challenge in my own. ‘Until she gets better?’

He exhales my name in frustration and tenderness, but I can hear the jagged edges of his impatience too, and something else: sorrow.

‘Until the end.’ The words hang between us. I stare at him. ‘She thinks your mum has only got a few days left, possibly less. I’m sorry, love.’

I put my hands over my ears.

‘Brinley,’ he says sharply. ‘Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

I press my hands in harder until all I can hear is the humming echo of my blood.

‘Mum is dying.’ He speaks slowly, as if I’m stupid. ‘Do you understand that?’

To understand it, I would have to accept it – and I’m not doing that. I’m not giving up on my mother, even if he is.

Hands still over my ears, I start to sing and I don’t stop until my father sweeps my cereal bowl off the table with the back of his hand and stalks out of the kitchen, leaving broken bits of china all over the floor.

26

The whispering started as soon as Shannon walked into the changing room.