On the Underground today I caught a glimpse of my father, which I thought was strange since he’s been dead for twenty-nine years.

He was on the east-bound platform of the Circle and District lines at Victoria Tube station. I was on my way home after a long day at work, as was the whole of the rest of the city, it seemed. People were shuffling in both directions along the packed platform, and, since I am a pitifully polite Englishman, I was calmly waiting to take my turn to nip down the stairs off the platform and head off towards the Victoria line.

In the rush hour press, movement on Underground platforms is a series of lurches: slow, slow, very slow, then suddenly very fast as you finally get through a bottleneck doorway and launch into the corridor between platforms. You need to be careful with that change of pace to make sure you don’t stumble and knock other passengers off balance or step on the back of the shoe of the person in front of you. In those slow moments, lurching forwards, I often find myself looking around at the other travellers, wondering who they are, why they’re here, on this platform at this moment.. You can tell the regular commuters from the tourists and day visitors. Seasoned commuters are the ones who are simultaneously purposeful and resigned, anticipating the moment when they can march on to the next part of their journey but reconciled to being ever-thwarted by chatty sightseers laughing as they amble along without the pressure of time or the compelling desire to get home.

That was when it happened. That was when I saw him. Just as I turned to descend the stairs off the platform he galloped up the other side. I spotted him because he was taller than average and stood out above the throng of people around him. I saw him as he approached the stairs, ready to leap up them two at a time. He hadn’t aged a day, though I guess, being dead, that’s only to be expected. He was clean shaven, as always, and he had that very short haircut he’d sported since he’d started receding. My hair’s thinned a lot recently, I guess around the same age his did, and I’ve been wondering about a similar cut.

I remember loving watching my father shave when I was a young boy. He always shaved in the evening, when he came in from work. He arrived home late after his commute back home from London, by which time the rest of the family had already eaten. He liked to stay fit and would cycle from the station at a mad sprint to try to fit some exercise into a working day, arriving home hot and sweaty and panting hard. Mum would command him upstairs to wash and clean up before he ate.

‘Coming up to the men’s room, then?’ he’d say.

‘Yep. Time for some man-talk.’ I’d reply, grinning, and scamper along behind.

A precious ten minutes, just the two of us, me sitting on the edge of the bath as he stripped to the waist, ran a steaming sink of hot water and prepared his shaving cream with his badger-hair brush. He’d do this lovely high-pitched chuckle as I chatted and chatted in my six-year-old way about what had and had not happened at school that day, watching him twist his mouth left and right to get the best angle for shaving clean. I was always bemused that he would shave just before bed time — at age six, I assumed the whole family went to bed at the same time since little Greg and I were put down together, oblivious to how much they relished the rest of the evening together. Now, as an adult, I realise his evening shaves were a characteristic part of his wholehearted gentle affection for my mother, who would push him away, shrieking and giggling, if he tried to smooch her with a day’s stubble. When he finished, he’d put on a clean shirt and go back down to the dining table, where there’d be a place-for-one set. Mum would give him his meal that had been kept warm in the slowly-cooling oven, and I’d quietly eavesdrop as the two of them recounted the days they had each had. They talked beautifully together, listening attentively, waiting patiently as the other spoke, asking a thoughtful question, smiling and nodding in encouragement, chuckling at the absurdities of life.

My father’s tan tweed jacket flapped as he leapt up the last step and hurried away down the platform away from me, and I lost sight of him as he blended into the stream of rush hour travellers. I stood stock still, bewildered, and I was one of those odious, oblivious passengers that frustrate regular commuters. Why had he chosen this moment to return? Why here, of all places? The throng of the busy platform went utterly quiet as if the platform manager had pressed mute on her remote control, silencing even the sound of my breathing. I stared. And then, within a the hair-space of a moment, the waterfall din of the busy station clapped back and the gushing torrent of the human flow carried me as flotsam away from the platform, away from my father, away from my past.

…

My father died on 21 December 1988 when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in Scotland. He was flying to New York for a brief business meeting before returning for Christmas with the family. I was eight when he died. My younger brother was five. Greg has virtually no recollection of our father; my memories are few but vivid. Jane was just a tiny baby: she only has what she has heard. Our mother was thirty two, two months older than Dad. We all have a hole, but for her it is the deepest.

I remember the shock. I remember the tears.

There were bodies for many of the victims, but not for my father. I remember being confused that we could see his picture on the television but that we could have no coffin at the funeral. Eight-year-old me thought funerals had to have coffins.

Afterwards, we went to the graveyard, but there was just a gravestone to gather around as the vicar made the doleful commission.

‘We commend unto thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the soul of this our brother departed.’

But no earth, no ashes, no dust for us.

It was a good tombstone for my father: not a common fieldstone piece, nor some extravagant marble with grand engraving making up in kitsch death for lost honesty in life, but a solid, strong chunk of dark natural granite that glinted when the sun briefly flashed from behind the heavy clouds as we raised our eyes after the final prayer.

Over the next few weeks we saw his face occasionally on the evening news as the story unfolded. But then he was gone and we saw him no more. The tears remained.

…

Three packed trains passed through the station before I could gather myself sufficiently to board. People were pressed in tight, staring blankly, being careful not to make eye contact. I gripped a handrail in the ceiling, glancing down the carriage and out at each platform we passed at the occasional tweed collar and man’s shaven head searching for familiarity but finding only the anonymous miscellany of the commuting city. There was no reason to see my father again on a different station when he had been travelling in the opposite direction, but still I looked. I don’t really know what I hoped I would see. Another sight of him would make me fear I was losing my wits; not seeing him made me question all the more what I had seen.

I caught a reflection of myself in the window opposite and saw that I have ended up looking a lot like him; maybe, unconsciously, I have largely become him . In two-and-a-half years I’ll be the age he was when he died. I commute through London for work just as he did, though Rebecca and I live in the city itself, not in a dormitory commuter market town as we did when I was growing up. When Dad was the age I am now, Greg and I were both around. Jane was born four months before Lockerbie, so she wouldn’t have been conceived yet. Rebecca and I have never spoken about children — not that we’re against it, but the conversation has never happened. I suppose we have made a tacit agreement that while we are both enjoying our work it’s not a question we need to consider. It’s just not for now. I like to stay fit, as he did, though I’ve caught the modern contagion for running and have even entered the lottery for the next London Marathon; he preferred the furious speed of squash in the winter, tennis in summer. We’d both prefer a book to a party, though he was always very handy in the kitchen, and would always cook for dinner parties with lashings of red wine, butter and double cream. I, on the other hand, can burn a cup of tea.

I got off the tube and stopped at the off licence on the way home to pick up a bottle of red, as usual for a Wednesday — the working week is over half-way done by Wednesday, reason enough for a small celebration. A Malbec day.

When I arrived home Rebecca was already soaking in the bath, tired after a long day in court. I poured a large glass each of the Malbec, took it into her in the candle-lit bathroom and recounted what had happened.

‘And you’ve spoken to Elaine, have you?’ she said.

I realised I had barely thought about my mother since seeing my dead father. How strange. They had always been a pair , a complete unit, the two of them . This evening, though, I had only thought about him.

Rebecca was right, I should have called Mum. I didn’t, though. Not tonight.

…

I went to see Mum on Saturday. Rebecca needed to prepare for a hearing, so it seemed like a good time to go and talk about things together. She was out with her walking group in the morning, with the dogs, so the house was quiet and empty when I arrived. The kitchen had a familiar lingering aroma of porridge and honey. I made tea and inattentively leafed through the newspaper while I waited.

I wandered into the lounge, cup in hand. The usual family photos in the usual places, and there, on the large occasional table behind the couch were the two studio portraits of my parents. There was the man I had seen at Victoria Tube station, the same easy smile, the same even shoulders, the strong nose he had inherited from his father, the bright eyes from his mother.

…

She came in with the usual pandemonium, the dogs all paws and wagging tails and barking, Mum’s busy-graceful kitchen dance as she took off her coat and muddy boots, noisily filled the kettle, a fresh cup of tea forced into my hand even though I still had half a cup left, all punctuated with rapid-fire analysis of the latest from each of her walking group — health problems; errant grandchildren; difficult neighbours. The usual village gossip.

Finally she sat down at the kitchen table with me, the dogs collapsed beside the radiator. ‘So, to what do I owe this rare pleasure, dear Ben?’

‘I just wanted to see you, Mum.’

‘It’s been a while, hasn’t it?’ A gentle prod.

‘I think I’m missing Dad. How much do you think about him these days, Mum? I worry that I’ve forgotten him.’

‘About your father? There’s rarely a day when I don’t think of him, Ben, even after all these years. The hardest days are anniversaries and birthdays, of course, but I miss him every day. He always made sure we celebrated birthdays properly. Said they were for making a fuss of someone, and we all need a fuss made of them at least once a year.’

As we remembered early birthdays — bizarre cakes we had demanded; children who had cried; his magic tricks that always went tragically wrong and made our sides hurt from laughing — I drew the courage to say more.

‘I saw Dad,’ I said quietly.

‘Sorry, what was that, Ben? I don’t think I caught you.’

‘I said, I saw Dad. And not just, you know, in my mind’s eye or something. Actually saw him.’

‘Really? Where?’

‘On the Tube. On Wednesday. Running to catch the Circle line. I was on my way home and he was coming the other way. He shot past me on the stairs and I only caught a quick glimpse. But I’m sure it was him.’

‘Are you feeling OK, Benjamin? Are they working you too hard? Let me phone Dr Williams.’

‘No, no, I’m not ill. I’m fine, Mum. I saw him, I’m sure I did.’ My voice caught in my throat. The kitchen clock ticked. The heating hummed. The dogs snored.

She took my hand in both of hers, stroked the back of it gently with her thumb, and looked directly at me for a long moment. A calm smile. ‘I believe you, dear Ben. I do.’ My eyes brimmed and I knew if I spoke I would cry. ‘I know you still miss him. Maybe he’s come back to see you for a reason.’

…

I never stay very long with my mother, I realise. I find village life too claustrophobic, ironically. All that open air and fields, the hills and forests, those stone cottages and quaint pubs gives most people a sense of escape, of liberty and replenishment, but the closed world of a Sussex village makes me feel like I’m under a microscope, being inspected, eyes everywhere measuring me up and down. The chatter about the minutiae of everyone’s lives is suffocating and I reach my limit all too quickly and find the first viable excuse to head home to the safety of incognito existence in the city. Busy London is a good place for a relative introvert, I suppose: it is easy to be anonymous amongst the crowds, to choose the spaces and places to connect with people on your own terms.

The train rocked gently as it sped along the line back to London and the countryside relinquished its hold as familiarity of the city came into view. The train passed under the planes at Gatwick Airport and I could feel my tension begin to recede. Redhill. Purley. Croydon. Streatham. Though the familiarity of streets and buildings I have seen hundreds of times brought a certain calmness, I kept pondering the conversation with my mother. I was relieved, astonished even, that she had believed me and not just dismissed it or suggested I was projecting onto an unsuspecting passer-by. Maybe she was right, that I had seen my father for a reason. You could hardly call it a visitation, though — not exactly a Dickensian Ghost of Paternity Past, with clanking chains and warnings of woe. I had simply caught a glance of him in passing. What possible reason could a fleeting glimpse like that have?

On Saturdays the Underground has a constant buzz, rather than the peak time rush of weekdays, with shoppers and tourists and football supporters all maintaining the throng on the Tube. I walked with the flow of people, not hurrying to get past as I would normally, finding my way down to the Victoria line. The sign said the next train was still 6 minutes away and the platform had begun to fill up with expectant passengers, a religious scene of Twenty-First Century Londoners, heads bowed, faces aglow, praying to a divinity in their palms, and groups of happy pilgrims traversing the city to worship at some temple of shopping or other. I moved along towards the end of the platform in the hope of finding a quiet carriage.

There’s something about the shape of the roofs on Underground platforms, I find. That big arch above means that individual conversations get lifted up and over to the other side of the track rather than transported down the platform. Amongst the busy hubbub there is a degree of privacy, and though I could see lots of laughing faces I could not make out the humour.

Finally came the tell-tale draught of the approaching train, the glow of the lights in the tunnel, the clatter of wheels and screech of brakes as it careered into the station.

The doors slid open and I got on. A newspaper offhanded. A blur of tan tweed. Even shoulders. That short shaved hair. Striding, at pace, off down the platform toward the way out.

I froze, then shouted, ‘Wait … Dad!’ but the carriage doors closed on my shoulder, beeped aggressively as I instinctively drew back, and closed again. I pressed up against the glass as the train drew away, searching the station for the shadow of my father, subterranean sprite, but he was gone.

Dazed and distant, I stumbled through the carriage to a vacant seat. The tunnel was a blur through the glass as I gawped, unfocussed. I could hear the pulse in my ears, the sound of each breath in and out, the rustle of my jacket as I clutched the newspaper. The newspaper? I looked down at the paper in my hands, slightly dizzy, eyesight blurry. The headline came into focus: ‘Jumbo Jet Crashes Onto Lockerbie.’ I unfolded it to check the date: 22 December, 1988, the day after the disaster. Why would my father give me a newspaper from the day the world heard about the Lockerbie bombing? It was pristine, as if it had just been bought from a newsstand on the station concourse, with no hint that it was almost thirty years old.

I slowly turned the pages, and something half-fell from the newspaper, the corner lodged on top of my leg. Sandwiched between pages eight and nine was a loose photograph. I took it and held it up. It was a picture of my mother, from the waist up, from the same set of studio photographs as the ones on the table in her lounge, but one that I had never seen before: her clothes the same, her hair the same, but a different, more pensive, more melancholy expression. Similarly the photograph had no signs of ageing — no sun bleaching or colour fade, no brown edges. Flawless. There was still several stops until I had to get off, and I stared at that photograph of my mother the whole way. I think, for the first time in twenty-nine years, it was the first time I had really, truly looked at my mother, and not just seen her. I was particularly struck by the remarkable poise she held in the pose, developed through those years of dancing and teaching ballet before pregnancy pressed pause.

…

When I arrived home, Rebecca was still out. She had said she needed to spend the morning in the office finishing her preparation for Monday’s hearing and must have overrun, as she often did in her diligence. We had both ignored the remains of last night’s dinner with James and Toby when we left early this morning, so I ran a bowl of hot soapy water for the dishes and set to clearing up. I gathered the glasses — had we really drunk that many different things last night? — and glanced at the photo of my mother each time I passed it. The photograph had captured the delicate hint of rose in her skin, which would turn the pink of one of her ballet slippers at the first sight of sun.

The most wonderful day on the beach I think I have ever had was also the day she got terribly sunburnt. It was May bank holiday, the one we used to call Whit Monday, when I suppose I must have been seven, because it was the year before Jane was born. We had gone to stay for the long weekend with friends who had a brand new cottage in Devon, at Woolacombe. Dad was determined to spend the entire day on the beach with us boys and had vowed to build the biggest sandcastle ever known to humanity. Greg and I woke the adults up early with our excited shrieking. A hasty picnic was packed and bags loaded with everything we needed for a day on the beach, and off we trundled through the village and down onto the endless sands of Woolacombe Bay. Before lunch, Dad and Uncle David (back then, every adult friend of my parents was always Uncle or Aunty Whoever) wanted to go off to body-surf in the waves so Mum took me and Greg crabbing in the rocks. I can picture so clearly the way she picked her way over the rocks, holding my hand, the ballerina’s particularity as she placed her feet, the rose skin of her limbs as she pivoted and dipped, crouched and pointed, looking deeply into another rock pool for crabs, anemones and fish. I see that skin especially clearly because in her carefree eagerness to run off rock-pooling with me she had forgotten to put on a shirt. It was a perfect beach day: constant sunshine; a generous lunch, with Devon cider for adults, cloudy apple juice for children, and that unforgettable grittiness of sand in sandwiches; laughs and smiles from dawn to dusk; and an award-winning sandcastle, presented by Aunty Ruth, Queen of Woolacombe. That night, of course, the degree of my mother’s sunburn became apparent — the sharp intakes of breath whenever Father put his arm around her; the smell of the camphor from the moisturiser she layered on. She laughed, stoically, through it all, but hardly slept that night.

I had stood there, photograph in my hand, for a good ten minutes, remembering. The washing-up water was uselessly lukewarm and nothing had been washed. I ran a new bowl, quickly finished cleaning and went for a run to clear my head.

…

Too much in my head to run. I found a park bench and called Greg.

‘Hey, Ben Wassup?.’

‘Ok, thanks, Greg. You?’

‘Yeah, bit tired, bro. Got in late after the gig last night. What day is it?’ he yawned. A sound engineer’s late finishes meant Greg sometimes lost whole days asleep.

‘Saturday. Afternoon. Evening, almost. You still got the legs for this nocturnal life? You’re the wrong side of 30 now, old. Give it up for the younger kids. You know they’re better at it than you are.’

‘Screw you.’ He hung up. I called him back.

I told Greg everything, about seeing Dad, seeing Mum, the newspaper and the photograph. He listened as I gave him a stream-of-consciousness account until I ran out of words. ‘Mate, you need to see a shrink, or start smoking something, or … I dunno. But you need some help or something.’ he said. ‘And … you need to sort things out with Mum. When was the last time you went to visit her?’

‘Well, I was there today.’

‘Other than today, eejit. When was the last time you really saw her, instead of making up some lame excuse for leaving? When did you last go and stay? She sees straight through you, you know. You’ve barely spent one Christmas with her in the last ten.’

‘That’s not true!’ I cut in, wounded.

‘You know it’s true. You know it is, Ben.’

…

Talking with Greg had hurt. I sprinted home fuming with him, running carelessly across roads, knocking people as a I shot past. I was livid. But I was angry mostly because I knew he was right.

I arrived home, panting hard, hot. No sign of Rebecca still, no message on the phone. I showered, shaved, dressed, then went into the lounge, grabbed the newspaper and photo and slumped onto the sofa.

I leafed through the paper. The explosion had only happened a few hours before going to press, and the paper had very little to say. The confusion about what had happened was evident in the brevity of the articles, the sparing speculation on causes, the initial suggestions of a bomb. I can remember the tears but not the shock or horror of that first day. It must have been terrifying for my mother. Was it a painful way to die? Did he feel anything? Her soul’s companion, her closest friend, the other part of her, gone forever. And suddenly, in a mere moment, she was confronted with a life alone, raising three young children by herself. A life set travelling in one direction was instantly thrown in a completely different one.

Rebecca had still not returned. I fumbled for my phone — nothing. A sudden panic hit my chest, my breath caught. What if … ? And then, as if on cue, the phone buzzed in my hand. ‘Just finished, finally. Sorry! Back in 20. Take away and a film?’

I picked up the photo again. My mother was a very beautiful woman. Her hair in the photo was in those Farrah Fawcett layers she favoured for a decade or more. She had the earliest signs of creases beside her slight lips and tea-green eyes that betrayed how quickly she smiled, she laughed, but all I can recall from those first few years was tears. Sometimes they would shake her whole body, especially at first. At other times, they would just slip out of her eyes and drip down her face. Mostly, though, she was just silent. Then came the fierce courage and the resolve as the routines of normality returned and she determined to get on. It was years until we heard my mother’s laughter, proper laughter, back in the home, but it did come back.

…

Monday. I have arranged to meet with my mother next weekend, to stay this time, just me and her. After Greg’s pointed rebuke I knew I had to, of course. When Rebecca came home on Saturday she found me still sitting on the sofa, almost catatonic. I had written down a list of feeble excuses I had created over the years for not spending time with my mother. I was onto a third page.

After university I had joined a decent-standard local rugby club — I’d been rather a useful left wing — and for quite a few years the weekend matches and evening training had been a very useful excuse. Three concussions in two seasons brought any future in rugby to a swift end, but that conveniently dovetailed with burgeoning opportunities at work, and business social events and then work trips oversees became the excuse du jour. I often phoned her from beige hotel rooms or indistinguishable glass-and-steel airports in far-flung cities, promising to go down when I returned but forgetting when I got back and never actually doing so.

I would make sure I was there for the major events — her birthday, Dad’s, their wedding anniversary, the anniversary of Dad’s death, that sort of thing. At the very least, I would speak to her on the phone. But the calls and visits were often short, pop in, pop out affairs — an hour, two at most.

My addiction to running has became the new reason. With my fortieth decade upon me, my passion for rugby has been transmogrified into an obsession for distance running, which is time consuming, and when you’ve done one of the Big Five marathons you’ve gotta complete the set, right? With the training, my work and Rebecca’s work, it’s all too easy to find a reason to leave.

It’s not really the details of village scandal, I know, although that is so exasperating and I stop listening almost straight away. I want to leave so quickly because I don’t want to think about it all again, but being in that home where she has made a new life without him, with those photographs, that furniture, I can’t avoid it. I don’t want to think about what we’ve lost, what she’s lost, what I’ve lost. Those years of tears were enough. I don’t want any more. I don’t want to open the wounds again. Hearing her memories of Dad and what she’s lost hurts too much. I can’t listen to it. I don’t know what to say, what to do. I don’t like tears, I don’t like crying. I’ve had enough pain. I don’t want any more. I can’t carry any more. I can’t take any more.

…

I left before sunrise to make sure I was with her for breakfast. It was one of those classic English late spring mornings, the orange-blue sky ripping and slashing the clouds as the sun came up, mist over the fields that blurred the landscape into an Impressionist version of the Sussex countryside, which thinned then vanished as the air warmed.

When I arrived the dogs were loose in the garden. They chased up beside the car, tails wagging and barking wildly to announce my arrival as I stepped out. I grabbed my holdall and shopping bags from the boot.

‘Hello, dear Ben! So lovely to see you again,’ my mother called from the front door. ‘How was the journey?’ She was dressed impeccably, as she always did, in white jeans and white shirt, an amethyst cashmere cardigan draped over her shoulders, rolled together at the sleeves, and a neck scarf with a delicate Art Deco floral print with inflections of the same tea-green as her eyes. I realised how little effort I had put into what I was wearing.

‘Very easy, thanks. I’ve brought some things for dinner this evening,’ I said, waving the shopping bags aloft.

‘Oh, you needn’t have, love. That’s kind of you.’

I dropped my holdall in the wide hallway, hung my coat in the downstairs lavatory-cum-cloakroom and carried the shopping through into the kitchen where the coffee percolator was already burbling. ‘Thanks for having me down again so soon, Mum,’ I said, taking a seat on a bar stool by the counter and watching as she put the ingredients into a heavy-bottomed pan for her own special-recipe porridge. Coffee, honeyed porridge and the morning sun streaming through the huge windows, accenting the remaining caramel traces in my mother’s hair — we could have walked through time into the kitchen in those first few years after dad died, when the routine seemed to be the sole thing keeping us together.

‘It’s lovely to have you, Ben, and I’m so glad you’re able to stay. I thought we could go for a walk later on, take the dogs out for a good stomp on the Downs.’

‘Actually, Mum, I was wondering how you would feel about going to visit Dad’s grave? Well, the stone. It’s been so long since I last went, and I’d really hoped we could go together. I hired a car. I thought I could drive us there.’

‘That sounds nice. Yes, I’d like that, dear,’ said my mother, softly. We listened to the porridge purr and puff for a minute or two. Her elegant, fluid hands moved languidly as she spooned two bowlfuls and brought them to the counter. I added some dried fruit and an extra drizzle of honey to mine, she some nuts and seeds.

‘I’m guessing you’ve come because you’re wanting to talk about your father, Ben, after what you told me last weekend? Have you thought about why … ’

‘Mum, it’s not Dad I want to talk about so much. It’s you. And me,’ I interjected, and took her hand.

…

I know everyone finds it hard to admit they are wrong, that they have done wrong, but actually saying the words to my mother is maybe the most painful thing I have ever done. I had a lump in my throat before I even began.

‘Mum, I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh Ben … ‘

‘I’ve neglected you, Mum. I’ve been so selfish. After Dad died I wanted to hide away, just get on with life and not talk about stuff. It was too painful. I was so sad, so sad.’

‘Oh my dear boy.’

‘But I know I withdrew from you, too. Not looked after you. Kept my distance.’

She took me in her arms, hugged me close, pressed her head to my shoulder. I buried my head in her soft hair and kept telling her I was deeply, truly sorry. And then I wept; I wept like I was eight years old again. And we cried together.

During the weekend we talked about our memories and our feelings from those first days and weeks after the bombing. She told me how she had felt numb, that she’d stopped thinking because if she thought at all then she would have been paralysed by the tears, petrified by how small and alone she felt before the vastness of the world she was now forced to live in. I told her I had soon hated hearing about it because I could never find the words to express how I felt.

In the afternoon on Saturday we drove the thirty miles to the cemetery. The sun stayed out all afternoon, only dipping behind a cloud occasionally, as we cleaned the stone of the worst of the lichens, trimmed the grass around it and planted a new ornamental sage bush. When it was all tidied, we stood and hugged, and both said a quiet word to Dad. He’s not there, of course — it’s just a stone with his name on — but I still needed to say something to him.

We both woke late on Sunday; Mum had coffee percolating when I came downstairs. As we moved from the kitchen to the lounge to the garden, we talked about happier memories of family life, memories from before Dad died and things that had happened since. Jane had been so young when he died and the funny things she did as an innocent toddler had often made us laugh together quite unexpectedly in those most painful first few years. And we remembered those many dear friends who had made sure we were fed and nurtured for years and years afterwards, like dear Maggie Watts who had steadfastly dropped in with a rhubarb pie every 21 December for a decade or more.

There is still so much to talk about, of course. Wrong things are not made right again in a weekend. No single conversation, even a long one, can heal old wounds and reverse deep habits but it can turn the key in a locked door. I still need courage, I know, to push the door ajar, to walk across the threshold and find my mother on the other side.

We have taken a first step, at least. Mum’s going to come and stay in London with us later this month and we will go together to Covent Garden to see the Royal Ballet dance Giselle, a story about a love that transcends death.

…

On the Underground on the way to work today I caught a glimpse of my father. I got on a train at Victoria Tube station and miraculously found a spare seat. I stared out of the window ahead of me at the train on the other platform and there, through the dirty glass, looking right back at me, was my father. That close-cut hair, the clean-shaven chin, the tweed jacket on those even shoulders. He nodded to me and slowly smiled. I heard a distant beep-beeping, and then his train pulled out of the station and he was gone.