Four

Half an hour later Amy heard Dad’s car draw up. She ran downstairs and opened the door.

Dad heaved something bulky from the boot.

She stared. “What on earth is that?”

“An exercise bike.” Dad grinned. “They were on special offer at that new supermarket.” He slammed the boot, his face red with exertion. “Hold the door open for me, Amy . . . Tyler, please stop snapping at my heels.”

Dad staggered across the path and through the front door. He plonked the bike in the hall. Tyler skidded around it, growling.

“Where are you going to put it?”

“I thought I’d turn the garage into a gym.”

“A what?”

“I don’t get enough exercise. Couple of walks a week with Tyler doesn’t count, and I’ve been piling on the pounds.”

“I haven’t noticed.”

Dad laughed. “Your wonderful cooking doesn’t help. Not that I’m complaining.” He pulled affectionately at a long strand of her hair. “You look after me better than I deserve. But as you get older, it gets harder to burn those calories.” He shifted his waistband. “These trousers feel tighter by the minute. So I thought, William, my boy, it’s action stations.”

Amy looked at Dad’s flushed face and untidy hair; at his eyes, sparkling with excitement. For a moment she saw him at sixteen, taking a girl on his first date . . . falling in love with Mum.

She said, “The garage is a total mess. Shall I help you clear it?”

“That’d be great. Here, let me unwrap the bike.”

He tore at the wrapping. Tyler growled more loudly. The scent of new leather and shiny chrome wafted into the hall.

“There!” Dad said, as if he’d just made it himself. “It’s got a speedometer and a clock with a timer . . . And this shows you how many miles you’ve pedalled.”

Amy snapped, “I have seen one before, you know.”

The bike loured at them aggressively.

“Course, sweetheart, it’s not just for me. I bought it for both of us. You’ll be able to use it too.”

Amy lies in bed, abruptly awake. Beads of sweat on her forehead drip into her hair. She’s had the nightmare again, the first time for ages. The thunder of horses’ hooves, the streak of silent lightning, the terror, the feeling of paralysis.

The details are always the same.

Each time the nightmare returns, she thinks, Maybe this is the last time I’ll ever have it. But she knows she’s only trying to cheer herself up.

She looks at her clock. Five in the morning.

She’ll never get back to sleep now, there’s no point in even trying. She throws back the sheet and blanket, slips out of bed. Her back aches. She and Dad had worked for two solid hours last night, clearing that garage.

She patters into the bathroom, reaches in the cabinet for some toothpaste. A new bottle catches her eye. She pulls it out. It’s hair dye. The seal on the bottle has not been broken. Especially for Men! shouts the label. Lose That Grey! Regain Your Youthful Looks!

Amy replaces the bottle. Suddenly she feels like going back to bed. On the landing, she notices the door to Dad’s bedroom stands slightly ajar. She pushes it open and peers round. Dad’s pyjamas lie crumpled on the bed, his work suit swings from its hanger.

Back on the landing, she hears the kitchen door click. She shoots into her room, darts to the window, wrenches at the curtain.

Dad’s running through the garden towards the Common. No, not running, he’s jogging, his head slanted down, in a concentrated, purposeful way. He’s wearing a bright red tracksuit with a navy stripe snaking down the sides of the legs.

Tyler races ecstatically ahead of him, his silly ears flying.

The pit of Amy’s stomach heaves. She opens the window and takes a deep breath of dawn air. The first delicate swirl of birdsong rustles from the trees.

“I mean . . .” Amy pushed her bike into the school shed. “It was five in the morning, for heaven’s sake. Dad never gets up before six-thirty if he can help it. Not unless a patient calls him out, and then he makes a terrific fuss.”

“Don’t you need less sleep as you get older?” Ruth asked.

“And that tracksuit. I’ve never seen it before. We buy all his clothes together, we always have done since Mum . . .”

“I think it’s great.” Ruth wrenched three battered library books from her bike basket. “Lots of men when they reach forty . . . How old’s your dad?”

“Forty-six,” Amy said sullenly.

“It’s a good age to start taking yourself in hand. Most blokes go to seed – too many chips, too much beer . . .”

“I don’t give Dad too many.”

“And there’s yours trying to stay fit, and all you can do is grumble.”

“I’m not grumbling.”

“You could’ve fooled me!”

“It’s so unlike him. And hair dye! I ask you. I like him just the way he is.”

“This lady friend.” Ruth glanced at Amy as they crunched the gravelled path leading into school. “The one you saw him with.”

Amy growled, “What about her?”

“Maybe he’s doing all this for her.”

Ruth pulled at the heavy glass door. The smell of school gusted out at them: disinfectant from newly washed floors, chalk and sweat.

Amy flushed. “He’d better not be!”

“Face it,” Ruth persisted. “Maybe he is.”

Amy gets home from school, wheels her bike into the garage. For a moment she thinks she’s in someone else’s. The bags of rubbish she and Dad had filled have gone, the brick walls and high ceiling have been cleaned of cobwebs, the concrete floor swept. Dad must’ve asked Dora to finish what they’d started.

Beside the new exercise bike sits a large, unopened box.

Amy tears at the wrapping. A black and yellow trampoline stares out from a sea of white foam. The New Rebounder:The Best Way to Fight Flab. Twenty Minutes a Day! Feel the Difference in a Week!

Gingerly, Amy steps on it. She begins to bounce. Up! Down! Up! Down! Higher, she thinks angrily. Higher!

Her hair escapes its knot, swirls delightedly into the air.

From inside the house, Tyler barks.

For a week, Amy watched Dad more closely than ever.

The grey flecks in his hair began to tone into a new soft brown. A second tracksuit, dark green with a fierce yellow stripe, appeared in the dirty-washing basket, soaking with sweat. A new vegetable juicer sat in the kitchen.

On Saturday morning, Dad appeared with packets of rice flakes, millet flakes, raisins, sesame, linseed and sunflower seeds.

Amy looked up from her list. “Where did you get that parrot food?”

Dad said casually, “A friend of mine suggested I try something different. There’s a new health-food shop in the village . . . I eat too many eggs. This makes wonderful muesli. Much better for me. For us both.”

“But I’ve made scrambled eggs every morning for as long as I can remember.”

“That’s exactly what I mean.” Dad hitched up his jeans. “I’ve done fifty miles on that bike this week,” he said proudly.

Amy refused to congratulate him.

Dad sat at the table. “Let’s go organic this week. Tons of fruit and vegetables, nuts, beans, salad. I’m going to do a strict detox.”

Amy flushed. “You don’t like my cooking.”

“Nonsense, sweetheart. It’s my new fitness regime. More exercise, healthier diet. No point in one without the other. Got to move with the times, specially if you’re setting your patients a good example.”

“I suppose,” Amy burst out, “you want them to colour their hair.”

“Wondered when you’d notice.” Dad smirked. “Looks better, doesn’t it?”

Amy stared at him. “I liked my old dad.”

“Oh, him.” Dad tilted his chair. Tyler took it as an open invitation, leapt gleefully on to his lap. “Let’s say there was room for improvement.”

The phone jangled from the hall.

Amy stood up. “I’ll get it.”

“I wonder,” said the voice at the end of the line, “is that Amy?”

“Yes.”

“Hi. I’ve heard such a lot about you.”

“Oh?” Amy swallowed. “Who . . .”

“My name’s Hannah. Hannah Turner.” Silence. The voice hurried on. “Could I possibly speak to your dad?”

Amy glanced towards the kitchen, at Tyler scampering around Dad’s feet. She turned her back on them, bent her head, murmured directly into the phone, “He’s taken the dog for a walk.”

“Oh.” Another silence. “Then could you give him a message? Tell him lunch tomorrow will be fine.”

“Lunch . . . tomorrow,” Amy said, as if she were writing it down.

“Your dad was kind enough to ask me. At your house. I thought I’d have to be in Cardiff, but my plans have changed.”

Amy clamped her lips together.

A third awkward silence implied that Hannah Turner was finding the conversation hard going. “I’ll be at your place at one o’clock. OK?”

Amy did not answer.

“I hope you’ll be there.”

“Too right,” Amy said coldly. “I’ll be there.” She slammed down the phone.

“Who was that, sweetheart?”

“Only Ruth. She’s just broken a string on her violin.”

“By the way.” Amy glanced sideways at Dad as they drove to the supermarket that afternoon. The glittering sunshine had vanished beneath clouds and heavy rain. I suppose I’d better tell him. “Someone called Hannah Turner rang.”

Dad grated the gears. “You didn’t tell me.”

“You’d gone out with Tyler.” Well, he was just about to.

“Did she leave a message?”

“Something about lunch tomorrow.”

Dad looked at her, then back at the road. His cheekbones had turned pink. “And?”

“Said she could come after all.”

“Great!” Dad gave a puff of joy, like a pricked balloon. “We must make her something special.”

“What about your new diet?”

“It can be healthy and special, can’t it?”

“You tell me.” Amy gazed between the giant firs at the drenched fields. “You might also like to tell me who Hannah Turner is.”

“Sorry, sweetheart.” Dad turned into the car park, slowed to find a space. “Haven’t I mentioned her to you? I must’ve clean forgotten.”

Amy said savagely, “I wonder why. She obviously knows about me.”

“Hannah Turner,” Dad said, as if there were something magic about the name he was rolling round his tongue. He slid into a parking slot. “Hannah Turner’s our new doctor. Brian Cooper retired last month. He should have gone at Christmas, except we couldn’t spare him.”

Raindrops bounced triumphantly on the windscreen.

“Hannah’s our replacement. We’re terribly lucky to have her. She’s highly qualified – spent the last three years in Kenya – and we wanted a woman doctor because lots of our patients feel more comfortable with – I mean, they’ve been asking for a woman. She’s the right age and everything.”

Amy opened her mouth. “How old is she?”

“Thirty-one,” Dad said, a wistful lilt in his voice. “She’s only thirty-one.”

Amy stared at him angrily. “When does she start?”

Dad turned to her.

“Hannah started last Monday. She’s been with us for a week . . .”

He smiled.

“It’s flown by.”