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Chapter One
Ruth

Eight Days before Christmas – One Year Ago

‘I bet it was the husband. It’s always the husband in the end, isn’t it, Dad?’

My father looks like he’s actually considering my analysis of the TV detective show from his bedside armchair, and even though in the blank stillness of his mind he’s more than a million miles away, I know he’s still in there somewhere.

I just don’t know where.

I reach across and squeeze his hand, taking in the smell of his musky new aftershave, an early Christmas gift from his buddy Mabel who lives just down the corridor in Room 303. He gives me a vacant but twinkly-eyed smile in return.

‘I know, I know, you men aren’t all bad,’ I joke and my heart skips a beat as I look into his eyes and see for the first time in ages a glimmer of his darling personality that used to shine so brightly before this dreaded illness squeezed the life from inside him.

There are rare little times when I see a moment like this, a memory, a time when he is really my father again. I might hear it in his laughter or catch a knowing smile or feel it in the grasp of a hug or see it in the look in his eye, but such moments are becoming fewer and fewer, so I cling to them and savour them when they do surface.

Mostly now, it’s just me watching him go into an adult-like shell in a childhood like state, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute and it’s killing me to see him slowly disappear from the inside out.

‘It’s about time you found a partner of your own,’I imagine him saying to me like he used to when I worried about him after he had the stroke that started all this sickness. ‘And never mind all this looking out for me, you hear? You’re a special girl, Ruth. Find a good man; a good life partner. Find someone to look out for you for a change.’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I whisper, pretending to have that very conversation with him right now, ‘but I don’t need anyone, so don’t you worry, Dad. I have you and Ally, not to mention her gorgeous boys, Owen and Ben. And you can’t stop me from looking out for you. It’s kind of what I do best these days.’

I can pretend all I want that I am having a proper conversation with him, but I know by the silence and the glaze in his eyes that he’s in his own very simple, hazy world; a world of mixed-up noise and colourful shapes bouncing from the television screen that flashes in this darkened room. I lift the bottle of new aftershave from his tight clutch, put the wrapping paper in the bin and then settle back into my own chair to savour every moment of this precious time with him.

‘You smell really nice,’ I tell him. You smell just like—’

And then I stop because my voice just can’t let out the words. I want to tell him what I’m thinking but I can’t. I want to tell him how his aftershave reminds me of happier times, of safety, of security, of those carefree days before it all went so horribly wrong for us; when our family of three was a family of four. When it was me, Dad, my sister Ally and our mother before it all ended.

‘I always remember your aftershave, Dad. It brings back good memories,’ is as much as I can whisper eventually. ‘How kind of Mabel to remember your favourite just in time for Christmas? I hope she isn’t too cross that we’ve opened it already.’

Dad never did wait until the Christmas Day to open his presents, so I carried on his tradition today, opening the carefully wrapped gift for him and then gave him a generous spray of the cologne. Not that he knows if it’s Christmas or if it’s spring or summer or autumn or winter. But it’s definitely very much winter outside. It’s dropping down dark on the other side of the window and I sit back and relax in the bliss of it all – just me, my dad, the smell of new cologne, Christmas around the corner and some good old Poirot on the telly.

‘This is nice,’ I mutter, but he doesn’t respond of course. Instead, he just smiles and stares at the screen and that’s quite enough for me right now.

We are both totally fixated once again with what is going on in the old-school detective TV show on the small telly in my father’s tiny bedroom, my hand now automatically reaching in and out of a supersize bag of crisps to find my mouth which subsequently chews and crunches and the feeling of contentment I had before the aftershave smell brought me back in time returns and I relax again.

It’s my favourite time of the day on my favourite day of the week and I have thirty whole minutes left before I go back into the rat race of my other life which consists of everything from deadlines at my desk in my home office, to hair and makeup appointments and fake smiling for the cameras, plus everything else that being a ‘celebrity agony aunt’ for the city’s biggest newspaper brings, so I wrap my new fuzzy cardigan around me a little tighter, then reach up and pull the curtains, taking just a moment to notice the dark, crisp December afternoon that lies on the other side of the world from where I am right now.

I reflect on how I somehow lead a double life in many ways. There’s the public Ruth Ryans, the well-known half-Italian, half-Irish thirty-something agony aunt for Today newspaper’s weekly magazine, who is invited to every event in town with a new man for every season on her arm and a new outfit to boot. A curvy and cuddly brunette, average size in height, warm in the face and just pleasant enough on the eye to be relatable to every man, woman and sometimes child who put pen to paper to tell me their biggest fears and problems in this big bad world with a guaranteed reply to everyone who takes the time.

Then there’s the private Ruth Ryans – the quiet, single one of the family, the one who never settled down despite being proposed to twice, the caring one, the soft one, the one who everyone loves to see for a laugh and the craic and then watch on in wonder from afar when she’s gone – the one who takes after her deep-thinking father with her wise words and advice; the one who likes to hide behind the persona that made her a household name; and the one who never, ever mentions the mother who left forever without warning one Sunday all those years ago.

I delete the thought of my mother, Elena, immediately, just as I’ve trained my mind to do so if she dares to make an appearance in my head and I focus on the present which is my father; the one who never, ever left us and who deserves every moment of my attention. I’ve learned, as the years rolled by, to live in the present, even though it’s desperately hard to let go of the past.

Focus, Ruth. Focus on the here and now. The great job in the public eye, the home to die for that has so much potential, the father you adore, the sister you idolise, the opportunities you frequent, the places you go, the people you meet, the independence, the empowerment. Focus.

The places I go. . . I used to travel the world, but now my world is here in this dark little room my father calls home or in the empty and silent rooms of the place we all used to call home. I decorated this cosy room in the nursing home to reflect the beautiful house on the tree-lined Beech Row that he worked so hard for my sister and I to grow up in, despite his pain at being left on his own to raise us. The house that I now live in alone, watching it grow stiller and stiller around me, suffocating me, not only with the memories that my father worked so hard to create, but with flashbacks of childhood memories that are separated into life before her and life after her like a line that is drawn down through everything I do and everything I am.

I’ve tried to awaken my dad’s full senses in this room with family photos of days gone by, moments of great pride captured in press clippings from his lengthy career as a highly regarded university lecturer, memories of my graduation day when he grinned nonstop from ear to ear, pictures from my sister Ally’s wedding as he walked her proudly down the aisle, snaps of my little nephews on the many stages of their young lives and posters of Dad’s favourite movies such as Gone With the Wind and Casablanca. His banjo hangs on the wall and an old flute that he once played with such pride lies polished and proud on a shelf by the window, where a potted plant sits waiting on the morning sun and a CD player, with all his old familiar songs stacked beside it, plays constantly on low in the background.

I have softly lit lamps, a little fluffy rug and a bookshelf filled with novels and autobiographies that he once used to devour but can no longer understand. It is heart-breaking yet soothing to see his things scattered round this room, haunting shadows of the man he used to be, and who I believe, still is inside.

This may not be his ‘real’ home, but I’ve made it the best than it can be. It’s a place where he is looked after in a way that I no longer can and it’s like an alternate universe where the most important things are stripped back and carried out in a regimental routine every day. I feel safe here, close to the nest of familiarity, if you like, even though it’s only been just under a year since my sister and I made the decision to have our darling father cared for, far away from the cosy townhouse existence where he lived with me, when he was well enough to do the everyday things we took for granted.

‘Can I get you a drink, Dad?’ I ask and he nods a bit. A reply of sorts, most welcome in this foggy existence where he struggles with the answer to the simplest of questions.

This place is good for him, I keep telling myself. It is warm, it is safe, it feels familiar by now and most of all it gives him a steady routine that I really couldn’t devote to him at home which is empty and dark and silent without his wise words, philosophical ways, eclectic taste in music and hearty laughter.

My dad loves routine and I love it too. I cling to it like a security blanket, safe in the knowledge of knowing what I am going to do when I wake to face each day.

Tuesdays like today mean an early morning walk around the block before breakfast, then three hours picking through problems sent from the general public to me to give advice in my daily agony aunt online blog, lunchtime here with Dad and a quick dash home for more admin and work for my weekly city magazine column, then back here where I help supervise bingo night for the residents before tucking my dad in for the night. When he’s settled, I set off home where I’ll squeeze in another few hours at my desk, solving more of the city people’s personal problems and file my daily copy to my editor before bedtime.

Most nights of the week are routine like that, minus the Tuesday bingo which is replaced on every other evening with my ‘other life’ of nonstop list of product launch events, movie premieres, dinner dates and other necessary ‘profile building’ occasions that my newspaper publisher and manager, the infamous Margo Taylor, insists I partake in to keep the problems pouring in from readers who are convinced I can help change their world with my wise words.

In the snug of this room, a sense of routine is as regular as clockwork and worlds away from the life I lead outside, so I cherish these moments with my one true hero, my dad, whose life was once like mine with not enough hours in the day, juggling his commitments to his university day job and the students he helped to advise, with looking after my sister and I, whether that be our own education or cooking and washing for us, always making sure we had everything we needed.

I go back to Poirot and my crisps and wait for Dad to tell me to ‘stop munching’ like he used to do, but of course he doesn’t notice if I’m making noise any more. His mind is mostly now only a muddle of faces, faraway places and a whirlwind of random thoughts which he expresses through pigeon speech that is becoming less and less frequent. He is lost in a fog of oblivion and it’s only those who love him and remember the man he once was who suffer so much by watching his whole self-crumble from the inside out.

I turn down the volume as the credits roll, feeling overly smug with myself that it was indeed the husband who committed the deadly crime and ponder for a moment how much more exciting it would be to be a private eye than a super busy ‘celebrity’ agony aunt, a job I fell into almost by accident after a feature I wrote on dealing with a break-up which had the newspaper’s readers banging down the door for more. Is it a bad idea to change career when you’re flying high and kicking the ass of thirty-three years old? I probably wouldn’t change it even if I could. Or would I?

I think of my biggest dream of running away from this world that I know and living in a cottage by the sea where I’d write to my heart’s content with the sound of the waves lapping outside and gulls flying up above. I might even run a little bed and breakfast and I’d marvel at everyone who came to stay with me, hearing all about them and probably trying to solve their problems as it’s what I’m best at these days.

I check my phone briefly and a message from my sister reminds me again of my evening plans.

‘Guess who is coming to see you tonight?’ I say to my father, his smiling face and innocent wide eyes staring back at me like it really doesn’t matter, because it really doesn’t matter to him. He has very little concept of who or why or when any more.

‘Elena,’ he says, reaching his frail hand up to touch my face.

He isn’t answering my question by suggesting her, but mistaking me again for her and my heart skips a beat just like it does every time he mentions my mother’s name. I put my hand on his and take a deep breath in and I remember that the best thing about his stroke is that he doesn’t remember her leaving him. The worst thing about is that every time he mentions her name, I am reminded all over again of the agony he felt when she left.

‘She isn’t coming back, Dad, I’m so sorry,’ I say to him, just like I’ve done for so many years now. He’d insist she would change her mind one day, but I soon came to accept that she wouldn’t.

It is cold now, despite the clammy room, and when my eyes meet his, mine fill up and I shake my head and smile, grateful in so many ways that he forgets how long it has been since we’ve seen her and the pain her leaving caused all those years ago when my sister and I were just getting our heads around periods and puberty and girlhood crushes. She left just when I really needed her most and I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for it.

‘I won’t be here for bingo but Ally will be here tonight! Super Ally?’ I say with a bright smile and his face mirrors mine. His navy-blue eyes, his smooth forehead and his head tilted as he drinks in my every word but understands very little that I have to say about my sister, the daughter he used to call his other super hero. Super Ally and Super Ruth . . . we were always quite a team of three.

I feel that old familiar choking sensation and my bottom lip trembles as I look into my father’s ailing eyes which are so far away from me.

‘I wish you could talk to me, Dad,’ I tell him. ‘Please just say something. I miss you so, so much. Why are you so far away?’