I became aware of the voice coming from the speaker.
I recognised it subconsciously at first, I think, the familiarity of it, and it drew me partway out of my thoughts. The words were muffled, however, and a low-priority message filtered through to the edge of my consciousness – they were playing one of his old recordings on the radio again: an interview, or an old battlefield report. I didn’t exactly try to hear what was being said, and as a result, barely caught anything but the last few words.
‘. . . Why knocks an angel in Bethlehem?’
There was a brief pause, and then his voice said:
‘Are you there, Tom?’
My head snapped up.
What?
I dropped Cupid’s Engine, loose pages spilling out all over the bathroom floor.
What?
Cu-clunk. Buuuuuuuuuuuuurrr.
Pants still around my ankles, I raced across the hallway towards the living room.
The other person has cleared.
The other person has cleared.
The other person has cleared.
I pushed the door open and stood in the doorway, heart thumping, staring at the phone.
The other person has cleared.
My father had been dead for almost seven years.
4
Analogue
You have no new messages.
You have no new messages.
You have no new m—
You have no—
You have. One. Saved message. From. 11 May . . .
‘Hey, it’s me . . . Me, Imogen . . . your wife. Are you there? . . . Are you there? . . . No? All right, fine. I hope you haven’t forgotten to eat and died. Love you. Call you later. Love—’
Message saved.
1 4 7 1
You were called yesterday at. Fourteen. Thirty—
1 0 0
‘Hello. Operator.’
‘Hi, yeah. Could you tell me the last time someone called this number, please?’
‘Yes – the last call made to this line was at 2.36, yesterday afternoon. Would you like the caller’s number?’
‘No, that’s all right. It was, er, a PPI bot or something. And there’s been nothing else after that?’
‘That’s correct, sir.’
‘Only, the phone was just ringing.’
‘Oh. Well, there’s nothing showing up on the system.’
‘Okay. So—’
‘You probably had a crossed line.’
‘A crossed line?’
‘That’s right, sir. You do still get them from time to time. Would you like me to put you through to the BT helpdesk? They can test the—’
‘No, it’s okay. Thanks.’
‘All right sir, thank you.’
[Clunk]
You have no new messages.
You have no new messages.
o
The whisky rolled around the tumbler, and I stared out of the window at the old church spire rising from the oranges and yellows of the tree canopy on the far side of the park.
It’s strange to get an honest peek inside yourself, to have some event come along and – for the briefest of moments – knock the lid off and allow the light to shine down inside. A few hours ago, I’d heard a muffled voice coming from the answerphone in the other room, and not only was I instantly convinced that this voice was my dead father’s, but also, that he’d been trying to tell me something. It only took a single word for me to jump to this impossible conclusion. Tom. A word that, in the cold light of day, was probably another word altogether – something half-heard and through two walls, a hallway and a living-room door. Nevertheless, I’d been so certain in the heat of the moment that I’d gone racing across the flat, chasing after that voice with my trousers around my ankles.
When you get right down to it, what do we really know about ourselves? All those years apart from my father, the resentment, the distance, the funeral in Spain that I didn’t attend and the graveside I’ve never seen, even though I kept telling myself I’d
