I’ve read the letter three or four times before I notice a sliver of pale light sneaking through a gap in my curtains as the sky outside lightens.

I yawn, but I can’t sleep, and my head is spinning and I can hear my dad’s voice and if I close my eyes it’s OK, I don’t feel sad. I can even pretend he’s here with me and as I let my mind drift I feel his weight on the bed next to me, and he’s really here, even though he’s really not, and I can smell him, and I smile …

… It was close to Christmas, and Mum and Dad’s friends Peter and Annika and some others as well had come to our house for their dinner. I had been allowed to stay up and open the bottle of wine for them, and Peter had given me a two-pound coin before I went up to bed, but I hadn’t really fallen asleep, not properly, so when my dad came in to check on me I opened my eyes.

“Hi,” he said softly, with that little jerky nod of his head that he had, and he smiled his crooked smile.

I smiled back. “Hi,” I said, sleepily. I loved it when Dad came in and sat on my bed, and I knew exactly how to play it. If I was too wide awake, he’d be a bit cross with me for not getting to sleep, and he would tell me to put my light on and read for a bit until I was sleepy. But if I was quiet enough, and acted drowsy, he’d come and sit on the bed, and sometimes stroke my hair, and sometimes chat with me, especially if he had been drinking wine.

I moved my legs to one side of the duvet to make room for him to sit down. From downstairs came Annika’s loud shriek of laughter, and I smiled at Dad who smiled back.

“Tell me a story,” I said.

Dad had loads of stories. He would add little details and do funny voices, so they were a bit different each time, which meant you could hear them more than once without getting bored. Whenever I asked him, Dad would usually say, “no, it’s too late,” then I would beg, and he would say, “but you’ve heard them all,” and I would say that it didn’t matter (because it really didn’t), and he’d say, “what sort of story then?” and I’d say, “one from when you were young,” and he’d think really hard. Sometimes I would prompt him and that’s what I did.

There were two stories that were my favourites. The first one was the story of when he and Mum met.

They were about twenty years old, and apparently he rescued her from drowning in a lake, or the sea, and he went in fully-clothed, or was in his swimming trunks. (That’s what I mean about them being a bit different each time.) Once when he told it, he said she was never drowning anyway, but just called out to him pretending to be in trouble because she fancied him. The only thing that never changed was that Grandpa Byron was with him: they were having some beach party or something with a bunch of other Indians and they had gone to the water’s edge and heard Mum shouting for help and Dad had gone in to rescue her.

The other story, though, was the one I asked for this time.

“Tell me about how your teeth got crooked,” I said.

“What, again?”

“Yes.” I settled back on to my pillow and pulled the duvet up to my chin. I loved this one.

“Well, I must have been a bit older then you are now, maybe eleven or twelve, and Grandpa Byron had built me a go-kart which back then we called a bogey …”

I snorted with laughter. “A bogey! Why’d you call it that? It means snot.”

“I dunno. We just did. I think it just means something on wheels.”

“And you used pram wheels?”

“Yeah, in those days you could still find old-fashioned pram wheels, so that’s what we used. Your Grandpa made a wooden base, like a seat, and he brought all the extra bits like bearings and screws and fixings from work.”

“He stole them?”

“No, not your Grandpa Byron. I think they just sort of fell into his pocket as he walked around, you know?”

I laughed. I loved the idea of things falling into someone’s pocket, like if they walked past a shelf these things would just roll off by themselves.

“Anyway, the only brakes on this thing were a wooden lever that you had to pull up against the back wheel to slow it down, that was all. And I painted it with the only paint I could find, which was left over from painting the garage doors, so it was this weird olive green.”

“Olive green?” This was a new detail.

“Yeah. I called it The Lean Mean Green Machine. I wrote its name in white poster paint down the middle board.”

“You never told me this.”

“I’m telling you now. And me and your grandpa had already tested out the Green Machine, and it was pretty lean and mean, I can tell you!”

“Did your friends like it?”

Dad hesitated. “I think perhaps … I can’t remember them ever … I guess they must have been busy with other things.” There was then a longish gap, so I nudged him on.

“So, this one day I was out with the Green Machine …”

“The Lean Mean Green Machine,” I corrected.

“Yes indeed, The Lean Mean Green Machine, and it was only me, and I was on the long slope that goes down to the promenade above the seawall. You know the one; perfect for bogeys!”

I nodded. I liked the promenade. That’s what we called it anyway. It was really just a pathway on top of the wall that dropped down to the beach. There was a metal railing to stop you falling off, and twice a year the tide got so high that it came right up against the wall and sometimes the waves would crash below and splash you.

“So I’m in the bogey, I’m on my own, and heading down the slope, and there’s this thing I’m shouting from the telly at the top of my voice, Fan-dabby-doziiii! And then—”

“You hit a brick in the middle of the road!”

“That’s right, a huge brick, or a breeze block, or something, I can’t really remember, and the front wheel comes clean off, and I go wheeee through the air and land right on my face in the road – cruuuunch!”

“Was there loads of blood?”

“Blood? I looked like I’d just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, and—”

“What? Who’s he?”

“Doesn’t matter. Blood all over the place, down my front. One tooth missing, two others knocked out of line, my face all scraped from the road and a wire spike from an abandoned supermarket trolley has gone right up my nose.”

I remembered this bit and I winced. It really sounded horrible.

Dad continued: “I’m crying my eyes out, not with pain, but because the Green Machine is broken. And some guy who’s driving along the road at the bottom of the slope stops his car, I can remember it was a blue Austin Allegro, and he yanks the spike out of my nose, puts me in his car and takes me home, while I’m dripping blood all over the inside of his car.”

“Didn’t you go to hospital?”

“No. Perhaps I should have done. Maybe they’d have sorted my teeth out. But your grandpa, he just said, ‘Oh my Lordy! You’ve been in the wars!’” (Dad did Grandpa Byron’s head wobble for good effect.) “He cleaned me up and put me in front of the telly, and I was back at school the next day.”

“You were brave,” I said.

Dad smiled. “Not sure I was brave. It stopped the other kids picking on me for a bit, though.”

“Did that happen a lot?” I asked, but Dad had stood up. The chatter from downstairs was still going on, and Annika was still laughing her laugh. Dad bent over and kissed my head. I could smell the wine on his breath and I hugged his neck hard. I tried to imagine anyone being mean to my dad, and I couldn’t really so I just hugged him again until he gently pulled away and went downstairs.