by Ross Welford
He doesn’t reply. He must be asleep. On his front, presumably.
I’m on my own, and the mood I’m in is not one to start giving in to anyone.
So I email back.
Thanks for your dad’s email address. That’ll come in handy when I want to tell him about your dog and cat scam. Or perhaps I’ll call round in person and tell him myself – after telling the police, obvs.
I don’t believe you about the copy, BTW. But even if you have got one, I’d keep it to yourselves.
Ethel
x
I hit SEND. What do I have to lose? I have a feeling that this is the end of the whole affair.
I should know much better.
Gram is still up. I can hear the cupboard door opening as she extracts the tin box of Mum’s memorabilia.
That’s when I know that I can’t confront her. Not yet. It’s like it’s too much at once, to go into her room and say, ‘Hi, Gram. Look at me – I’m invisible. And by the way, we need to talk about the contents of that tin box and then you can explain to me why you have been lying to me all these years. Oh, and by the other way, that was my dad, wasn’t it?’
I practise it – at least I get that far. But I just can’t do it. Not yet.
I lie on my bed and await the itching and the headache.
They don’t come.
Not by midnight.
Not by 2 a.m., when I am still awake, and have heard Gram put everything away and go to bed.
By 4 a.m. I am still awake, and in the greyish dawn light coming through my curtains I look down to check if I have somehow become visible without the itching and headache. But no: I am still invisible. The birds are waking up outside.
It’s OK, I tell myself. It’s just taking a bit longer to wear off.
At some point, I fall into a light, restless sleep. I don’t think I dream, or if I do I don’t remember any of it.
I hear Gram getting up, and I hardly dare to look down to see if I’m still invisible.
I am.
I am overcome with a fear that is somehow more than a fear. It’s like knowing something, but without knowing how you know it.
This is what I’m afraid of: that the invisibility is now permanent. I have messed around too much with the cells that make up my body. They have lost their ability to … to what? Regenerate? Renew their light-reflecting capacity? How would I know?
Exactly. How would I know? What was I even thinking?
And why, at times of stress, do I keep on hearing Gram’s voice in my head?
‘What’s done is done, Ethel. A strong person doesn’t moan and mope, but deals with the first problem at hand, and then the second, and then the third. Some people either attack everything head on, or they run away. That’s not our way.’
The first problem at hand? That’ll be my invisibility.
Well, actually: there is a closer one. According to Boydy, I’m supposed to be coming home to change before school after disgracing myself at his birthday gathering.
Gram, who I can hear making tea downstairs, will be expecting me in about … ooh, now-ish.
I’ve sneaked downstairs – and, despite the fact that I am invisible, sneaking is much, much harder than you’d think. Lady is out in the backyard doing her morning wee. I have just sent Gram a text. I want to see her reaction.
Hi Gram. I am so so sorry about last night. I know Boydy told you and it wasn’t as bad as all that, but I am very ashamed. Too ashamed to talk to you at the moment. I have my uniform with me. See you later. Love E xx
I have left my phone at the top of the stairs. I pressed SEND and then hurried quietly downstairs, and I am there in the kitchen, standing in the doorway, when Gram’s phone goes ping with the incoming message.
She is sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in her smart work clothes, and she picks up her phone in her usual way: as if someone’s smeared something unmentionable on it.
She reads the message and purses her lips, but the rest of her face doesn’t really do anything.
Then her fingers move over the screen and she puts the phone to her ear. She’s calling me … and I’ve left my phone on the stairs.
As soon as I have the thought, I hear my ringtone loud and clear, and Gram is getting up. I dodge out of her way as she stomps up the stairs, where she glares at my phone ringing merrily.
Picking it up, she goes into my room, where she will see my slept-in bed.
Oh no, oh no. This is getting worse. Gram comes downstairs quickly (I’m already in the kitchen) and she picks up her phone again. Then she puts it down. My phone is in her other hand and she looks at it, then at hers, sheer bafflement clouding her face.
She goes back into the hallway.
‘Ethel?’ she calls up the stairs. ‘Ethel? Are you there?’
I’m on the point of just saying, ‘Gram! It’s me! I’m here, and I’m invisible!’ but her whole manner has been so brisk, no nonsense, and I am so terrified that I might be permanently invisible that I just can’t bring myself to do it.
Two minutes later, and Gram is out the door with both my phone and hers in her pocket. Lady gets left at home on Wednesdays because Carol the dog-sitter goes to college. I think Lady is getting used to invisible me. She hasn’t freaked out, at any rate.
I have to act quickly.
Unless I turn up at school, Mrs Moncur the administrator will be on to Gram in about an hour to find out where I am. Then things will really start going wrong.
Wronger.
I’m not doing the whole walking-through-the-street-naked-but-invisible thing again. I just can’t face it. For a start, it looks like rain, and for another, my feet are already sore from running around last night barefoot and standing on broken china dogs.
So it’s back on with the disguise. Stocking over head, hoodie pulled up, sunglasses on, coat, trousers, shoes …
Head down, I’m out of the house and running to school. I can do it in eight minutes.
The main entrance is teeming with my classmates, who don’t take any notice as I scuttle past on the other side of the road. Better try the back entrance. There, it’s less busy.
This time, I can’t worry about the security camera, and besides, a cloud of smoke emerging from above the rhododendron bushes tells me that there are people inside what I have come to think of as my changing area, smoking cigarettes.
I wait for a lull in the trickle of students approaching the gate, and then I’m there. I press my invisible thumb on the entry pad. How does the machine read it? I have no idea, but it does, and the gate swings open. I don’t go through, and no one takes any notice at all.
That’s me registered as present, then. It’s double Physics first and there is a chance that Mr Parker will notice my absence, but then there’s also a chance that he won’t …
Back home, I take off my disguise, and put on some slippers and pyjamas instead. It just feels less weird. Lady approaches me and actually wags her tail, which cheers me up.
I’m at the house phone, the one that uses the landline. I want to call Boydy, but Gram’s got my phone and I haven’t remembered his number. Meanwhile, I have another number to discover.
The house phone keeps a memory of the last twenty calls made, but only the numbers come up on the little screen. I’ve just got to hope. One by one, I start to call them, preceding each call with 141 so that the caller is unidentified. Some people don’t pick up those calls. I’ll just have to risk it.
0191 878 4566. Voicemail. ‘This is the Reverend Henry Robinson. I’m sorry I am unable to take your call, but please leave a message after the tone.’
0191 667 5544 … ‘Hello, Diane speaking …’ I hang up.
0870 … no, that’s not a personal number.
118 118 … no, that’s directory enquiries.
I’m down to the fifteenth number, and I have still got nowhere. They all seem to be friends of Gram’s, or voicemail, or company numbers. The sixteenth and seventeenth just ring and ring and ring with no response at a
ll.
The eighteenth I recognise as the school reception.
The nineteenth is my mobile, which Gram must have called.
And so this is the last one in the phone’s memory.
A mobile number that I don’t know. I had actually seen it on the displayed list and hadn’t dared call it because I wanted to do it all methodically, and because I was nervous about what might happen if someone did pick it up.
07886 545 377. If I could see my fingers, I would watch them trembling as I pressed REDIAL.
It picks up straight away.
‘Hello. Richard Malcolm speaking.’
My dad.
Why call my dad?
Well, who would you call in an emergency? I know, I know: mums are great. In fact, most mums I know are brilliant at most emergencies. Tax Goodbody’s mum actually gave birth to him on the back seat of a minicab from A–Z Taxis (hence his nickname) and Holly Masternak’s mum used to be a paramedic. It’s just that, having grown up with neither a mum nor a dad, I think I should be allowed to choose, and right now I want a dad.
(I don’t mean to be insensitive here. It could be that you don’t have a dad. I get that, and I’m sorry if that’s the case. Don’t forget: up until last night, I pretty much didn’t have one either.)
I think about people I know who don’t have a dad living at home. Hayley Broad, for example: her dad was a soldier killed in Afghanistan, and she hates her stepdad.
Without thinking too hard, I can come up with at least six people I know whose dads are not around. I’m not including stepdads: stepdads (apart from Hayley Broad’s) are just dads so far as I can see. (As for Boydy’s dad, well – there’s something going on there, I’m sure, but I just don’t know what.)
Any man can be a father. But I don’t think every man can be a dad.
And I want to give my dad a chance. I don’t even know yet what has gone on between him and my mum, him and my gran, even him and my great-gran – because she’s had something to do with it all, and a hundred years old or not, she’s got some questions to answer next time I’m round at Priory View. Come to think of it – that could be sooner than she expects.
I can only assume he wants to see me. Doesn’t he? Why else would he turn up after ten years living as a recluse in a place that’s about as far away from me as possible without going into space?
I want to give my dad a chance to help me in this – the hardest time I have ever faced in my life.
So that’s why I call him.
‘Hello,’ I say, when he answers the phone. ‘This is Ethel. Ethel Leatherhead.’
Long pause.
‘Does your gran know you’re calling me?’
‘Um … no.’
‘So how did you get my number?’
This was not how I had imagined it, to the extent that I had imagined it at all. I’d expected (hoped, perhaps) more of an ‘Oh my God, my long-lost daughter, it’s so good to hear your voice. My heart has ached every hour we have been apart …’
I wasn’t expecting a sort of interrogation.
‘Your number? It was stored in the phone’s memory.’
‘I see, and … Look, this is a bit awkward, you see …’
‘Are you my dad?’
I hear a sigh come down the phone. A long sigh that seems to contain ten years’ worth of regret.
‘Yes. And I’m sorry about—’
I cut him off. His apologies can come later.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in a hotel in Newcastle.’
‘How soon can you get here?’
‘Look, erm … Ethel. I’m not sure your gran—’
‘Dad. It’s an emergency. I really need you. Now. I’ll explain everything when you get here.’
When the doorbell goes half an hour later, my invisible heart is in my invisible mouth, because I know it’s him on the other side of the door, and I have no idea how he’ll react when he sees me.
I can see him through the bobbled glass. I’m back in my disguise: the hoodie, the sunglasses, the gloves. I’m going to tell him about the invisibility thing but I want to ease him into it gently.
No, in case you are wondering, I don’t fling the door open and rush into his welcoming embrace. It is not like that at all.
The first thing he says is ‘Oh!’
That’s it. Just ‘Oh!’
It could have been ‘Oh, good God – what are you dressed like that for?’ but it isn’t. Just ‘Oh!’ (Although I think the rest of those words are sort of bundled up in that one syllable.)
He’s standing there, and I hardly dare look at him, but I do, and the expression on his face is one of total bewilderment.
‘Come in,’ I say after a second or two, and he steps into the hallway and follows me into the kitchen.
‘Why the, erm … The, you know, unusual clothes?’
He’s sitting at the kitchen table, and I make tea while I tell him the story, just like I’ve told you, starting with the acne, and the sunbed, and Dr Chang His Skin So Clear, and it turns out he’s a really good listener.
He just sits there, holding his little teacup in his big hands, and nods, asking a few prompting questions, but not too many. He doesn’t interrupt me when I pause, wondering what comes next, but sooner or later I just have to say it.
‘And then I became invisible.’
I watch his expression carefully. I realise that I’m using it as a sort of test to see if he’s going to be the dad I want, and I know that’s not really fair, but it’s how I feel, and as Gram is forever telling me, ‘Feelings are always genuine, Ethel, but talking about them too much is rather common. It’s how we deal with them that makes the difference.’
He nods slowly and takes a big gulp of tea. Then he pulls a packet of gum from his pocket, pops one in his mouth and chews thoughtfully.
‘So … underneath all of that, you’re … you are invisible, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And no one else knows this?’
‘Boydy knows.’
‘OK. But not your gran?’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to show me?’
And his tone is so gentle, so reassuring, that I nod. He could have mocked, he could have been sarcastic and I’d have had to show him anyway, in a mood of angry defiance: ‘Yeah? You wanna see? You want me to prove it to you? Well, here you go.’
But it is not like that – not at all. He’s just sitting there, Ricky Malcolm, my dad, and he has his head slightly cocked to one side, chewing his gum. Sceptical, perhaps, but definitely interested and, most of all, respectful.
I know now that this is why I haven’t told Gram. I love my gran, for sure, but what I want – what I need – is a calm reaction, without judgement …
Without blame.
I start with the gloves. He angles his head to look up my sleeves. Next comes the hoodie, lifted back to reveal a space where my head should be, then the sunglasses and the stocking leg.
That is enough. I don’t exactly want to strip off.
He reaches out and touches my hand in wonderment, and I grip his back. Then his other hand touches my head and my face, tracing the shape of my nose and my ears, feeling my hair, and my cheeks, and all the while he is saying nothing at all.
I look at his handsome face and I don’t think I have seen anyone look so completely stunned in my life. His grey-green eyes with the pale lashes keep darting around where my head should be, before settling on where he thinks my eyes are. He must be guessing, but it’s right. I stare back, and I grip both of his hands across the table, hard, because I can feel myself wanting to cry and not wanting to at the same time.
His eyes are moist and I really don’t want him to cry. I’ve got nothing against men crying: it’s not that. I just don’t want my dad to, not now anyway.
He gets up and comes round to my side of the table, and we don’t let go of each other’s hands. I stand up. The top of my head is about level with his chin. Then he throws hi
s arms round me, and strokes my hair.
‘You poor girl,’ he says as I dissolve into a crying heap, sucking in gulping sobs and seeing his shirt darken with my tears.
He doesn’t cry. He just stands there, solid and firm, stroking my hair and breathing steadily. I can smell his minty breath.
‘It’s going to be OK. We’ll get this sorted out, just wait and see.’
Well done, Dad. You’ve passed.
‘Getting it sorted out’, though, does not mean acting hastily. There are a few things that need to be dealt with.
Gram, mainly.
And then where do we go? Hospital? The police? It’s the same problem I had when this all started, and have had all along.
Who do you turn to for help when you become invisible?
Yet before we do any of that, I want some answers from my dad.
We’re up in Gram’s room, and I’ve taken down the tin box, which Gram has put back up high in the cupboard, but Dad’s eye has been caught by something else: another box right at the back that Dad can see because he’s taller than me.
Carefully, he lifts it down, and holds it gently. It’s a flight case: one of those silvery boxes with rounded edges and black reinforced corners. It’s not very big – a cube of about thirty centimetres on each side.
‘This was your mum’s,’ he says.
Sitting on the edge of Gram’s bed, he opens it. Inside is just a load of make-up, with brushes and sponges, and tubes of colour, and mascara, and blusher, and foundation.
‘This is how she would transform herself: Miranda Mackay would become Felina, and the one would hide the other. I’d do it for her sometimes.’ Dad speaks quietly.
I reach forward and lift up a pot of foundation, the flesh-coloured make-up that is the base layer. I touch it with my fingertip and then I look at Dad.
Have we had the same idea simultaneously? Or has he thought of it before me? I can’t tell, but he’s grinning at me.
‘Come on, we’ll do this together,’ he says.
Seconds later, I’m sitting on the stool in front of Gram’s dressing table with the contents of the box spread out over the surface before me.
