Free Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth Page A

without understanding them. I tried to glance at road signs and away, but it was always too late: to see words was to understand them. I sensed a loss there. (Later, Emily Dickinson would confirm it:
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words
…). Meaning was everywhere. And once you started with meaning, well, you got a taste for it.
    In Los Nachos, Guinness in hand, my dad said: ‘Lately I’ve had this feeling that as a species we’re on the brink of something; something that redefines everything. Like when they discovered the world was round instead of flat.’
    ‘They’re closing in on the God particle …’
    He grimaced. ‘The
Higgs boson
, you mean. Maybe it’s that at the back of my mind. Although it doesn’t feel that specific, it’s more a general feeling of …’
    ‘Vertigo?’
    He looked at me. Swigged his pint and grimaced again. Mel said he had mouth ulcers. ‘Yes.’
    We ferried the drinks to the rest of them and then went back over to the bar, just the two of us. I said: ‘This brink, Dad. Don’t you think every generation has thought the same thing?’
    He cleared his throat. Sipped his drink and swallowed hard. ‘Laura, I’ve been alive for the equivalent of two and half generations now and this is the first time I’ve felt it.’
    I did think he was being sincere even though the harder part of me thought:
Dad, you’re shit-scared, that’s all this renaissance talk is. You need to feel something mind-blowing might happen before … Before the curtain’s pulled back and you see the man with the megaphone. Or worse still: the great big Fuck All that’s there, waiting, just behind the Irony.
    And of course I’d heard him, hadn’t I. At his outer limits. Hedging his bets. It was six months since he’d found out (five months since he’d told me and Mel, on Mum’s insistence, two days before his operation).
    A grey day. The world in ugly molecular detail. Stones in the driveway. Dust in the air of the house. I went upstairs to use the bathroom while Mum and Mel sat downstairs not drinking tea out of matching floral mugs. Mel kept saying,
I can’t believe we couldn’t tell
– as though our ignorance was more horrifying for her than the fact of the cancer itself. I heard him as I got near to the bathroom, whispering at first and then a shout breaking through on certain syllables. At first I thought he was on the phone. I crept closer.
    You cunt. You fucking cunt. You waited until I’d retired, didn’t you?
    I stood rigid on the landing, knowing how mortified he’d be to know I’d heard him.
    Just give me ten more years. Ten more years and then you can do what the fuck you want with me.
    We sat down to eat. I ordered a rare steak and a salad and another glass of wine. The waiter took my dad’s order next.
    ‘I’ll have the beef fajitas.’
    ‘No, he won’t,’ said my mum.
    ‘Yes, I will.’
    ‘Four more months and you can eat all the red meat you want, that’s what Dr Grayling said. Now behave.’
    The waiter looked to Mel. ‘Salmon, please,’ she said.
    My dad leaned towards me. ‘I had a bacon sandwich yesterday. Slipped through me like a greased otter.’
    ‘Bill!’
    He turned to my mum. ‘I need iron, woman!’
    ‘Have some greens!’
    ‘I’m not a pet bleeding rabbit.’
    ‘Oh, just let him have the fajitas, Mum,’ I said.
    She looked at me. ‘You haven’t been up with him all night when he can’t sleep with cramps. You haven’t washed your bedding five times in twenty-four hours. Mel saw what it was like when she stayed …’
    My dad looked at me. The blotches on his cheeks had joined up with rage. ‘Grayling said he’d never seen someone hold on to so much hair. I walked six miles on Sunday without stopping.’ I nodded. ‘All right, then. I’ll have the grilled chicken and a side salad. With blue cheese dressing.’
    My mum waited until the waitress had gone and turned to me. ‘So where are you