6

Izzy sits in the kitchen of her restaurant before it’s open, her nails tapping out a rhythm on the metal table. In front of her sit her phone, her father’s letters, an instant coffee and a beef Pot Noodle which she will bury deep in the rubbish once she’s finished it. Her stomach sinks as she thinks of what lies ahead of her this evening: a full shift. All the prep. All those meals cooked, eaten, the leftovers binned. Sometimes it feels so pointless to her. She’s never much liked eating out, is always happier at home with Netflix and a tub of ice cream. But what could she do instead? She’s too embedded here. The owner. The daughter of the founder. And could she really leave it? The place where her mother spent so much of her life? Izzy sometimes thinks she stays just to try and absorb any last vestiges of her mother that might remain here. The way she always erred on the side of sunny optimism. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she’d say when her father worried about things. ‘Lighten up.’ She would never mind leaving late, coming in early, experimenting during her days off with new dishes.

Izzy wants to sit here and explore the feeling that overcame her as she saw her father. The feeling that arrived after the shock and the fear: the feeling of familiarity, of oh, it’s him. The feeling of seeing the man who taught her to walk, to read and to write, how to draw a cartoon dog, how to say I love you and how to laugh at herself.

The jury in her father’s case didn’t think there was reasonable doubt; the verdict was unanimous. But what does Izzy think?

She unlocks the front door, even though nobody’s due yet. She enjoys the peace of the restaurant. Like being somewhere official after hours. A museum or a school. It’s only when it’s full and buzzing that she feels fraudulent; when it’s full of the people who love Sancerre and foie gras and oysters, while she craves beans on toast and Vimto.

The kitchen smells of disinfectant. A single drip of beef sauce rests between her and the letters, and she dabs at it with the pad of her finger.

She picks up her father’s first letter.

His handwriting. She would know it anywhere. Almost two decades’ worth of shopping lists – peas, peppers, cat food – of Christmas cheques – fifty pounds and zero pence only – of notes by the bread bin – Popped out for milk – and gift tags – To Izzy, my little lady: all my love, Dad – and school forms needing signatures. Of birthday cards and passport applications and appointments scrawled on their shared family calendar. Of his paintings, initialled by him – GDE – in a hurried loop. Those words, that handwriting – his loopy Ls, his giant Os – was the messy thread running through the middle of their lives together. She would always recognize it.

Suppose she called him. Anonymized her number. Told him she’d seen Paul.

He already knew where she worked. In some ways, the worst had already happened. If he became too demanding, or behaved strangely, she could simply tell the police: Nick. Her father would be recalled, restrained, kept away from her. What would Nick think of that? For some reason, as Izzy imagines it happening, she sees a look of distaste cross her husband’s face. That she’s on this side of the law, with a criminal family, and not on his side.

She folds her father’s letter neatly across the central line, running her fingertips along the sharp edge it creates, then opens it again. He has pressed hard with his pen, and the letters have scored the page.

Is it time to hear him out? Was seeing Paul a delaying tactic? A way of safely dipping her toe in the water?

Or is this insanity? She can’t tell. She can’t tell at all.

She spoons some more noodles into her mouth. She likes the very end of the Pot Noodle; she doesn’t mix the powder in, so it is deliberately sharp towards the end, almost too tasty.

She opens Instagram listlessly on her phone and scrolls to her favourite family. Two parents. Six kids. They live in Napa Valley, California. Today, they’re sitting on the porch together. She zooms right in on the photograph and studies it closely. The kids’ little toes in their brown sandals. The just-touching knees of the parents, Bob and Sue. One of the children’s hands is curled around Bob’s thumb. The other hand rests casually on his knee, for balance. Izzy winces as she looks at it. That fat little hand, placed so casually, as though it is the child’s own knee.

Family is everything is the caption. #FamilyOfEight.

She knows nothing about family, she thinks, as she likes the photo and closes the app.

But she could learn.

I want to tell you my side of it, he had written in his letter.

Perhaps, if she could understand it, she could put it to rest. Stop wondering whether his temper lurked behind their identical bone structure, too.

But what if he was innocent? I swear to you, Izzy, it wasn’t me. She allows herself to imagine it for a second. Her mother would still be dead, but her father wouldn’t have done it. The image is tantalizing. She and her father on a porch, next to each other. Her hand on his knee.

She struggles to shift the memories, like they are cobwebs across her face, to really see what is sitting beneath them. And there is something. It thrums with its own heartbeat: it is doubt. Not doubting her father, but giving him the benefit of it.

Izzy’s hand twitches on the table. She could just do it, right now, in the empty, safe restaurant, a cup of coffee on the table in front of her. No. She’s not going to. She gets up, circles around the kitchen, staring at the phone.

But … wait. She can’t help it. She has to do it.

Why not? Why the hell not?

She presses the home button on her iPhone, and carefully keys in her father’s number. And then, without any further hesitation, she presses ‘call’.