Free Coming Home by Annabel Kantaria Page A

appraisingly as I squeezed the brakes and imagined myself riding it. Dad had been tall but it was still a manageable size. I stared down at my hands on the handlebars Dad would have gripped and thought,
Could I?
    Although the bike was veiled in tragedy, I liked the continuity of me riding it. The bike was a connection to Dad and I really needed that right now. I’d been unable to say goodbye to him and my hopes of us becoming close again had been obliterated overnight. What little I’d ever had of my father was slipping away from me. Like the sky needs the stars, I needed to feel close to him; the ache was almost physical. But what would Mum say? The accident had been twenty years ago and the bike was nondescript, black; maybe she’d even forgotten what it had looked like. If I got it down without her seeing, could I pass it off as a friend’s? I wheeled it carefully towards the attic door then turned back. What next?

C HAPTER 18
    ‘S o how are things with your dad?’ Miss Dawson asked. Today she’d brought sweets and I sucked on a sticky Drumstick, softening it up before I bit into it, while I thought about what to say. Graham wasn’t the only person I’d lost in the summer
.
    ‘He doesn’t play Mastermind with me any more,’ I said
.
    ‘Oh? Is that something you used to do a lot?’
    ‘Yep. He stopped reading with me as well.’ I thought about the books we used to read together at bedtime. The way he did the silly voices
.
    ‘Have you tried to speak to him? Properly?’ Miss Dawson’s voice was gentle
.
    ‘He’s never home. He’s away on lecture tours. It’s “very important” for his “career”.’ I mimicked the way Dad said it
.
    The truth was, Mum and I hardly saw Dad these days. He worked long hours and started going away on lecture tours a lot of the time
.
    ‘Why won’t he speak to me?’ I said, a sob catching in my throat. ‘I’m still here. It’s like he thinks I’m dead, too.’
    ‘He must be at home sometimes?’
    ‘He locks himself in his study.’
    ‘Working?’
    ‘Huh.’ Usually he was writing papers and books and whatever else historians did, but sometimes—and I knew this because I’d peeped around the door—Dad just sat with his head in his hands. ‘He’s really busy with work,’ I said. ‘He’s really famous. He’s in the papers, magazines and everything. Once he was on the radio. And the telly.’
    ‘Wonderful. You must be proud of him. What does he do?’
    I knew she knew. ‘He’s a historian. He writes papers. And books, and he’s made TV shows and everything. He’s just finished a series of books for children. He’s been on TV.’
    People talked about how my dad managed to make history ‘come alive’ for children. Mum’s friends stopped mentioning Graham when they came to the house; they stopped asking how we were. All they wanted to do was meet Dad; you could see it in the way they looked past me and Mum. Everyone talked about the way Dad could ‘connect’ with his students. I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded nice. I wished he could ‘connect’ with me
.
    ‘I just want him to notice me again,’ I said. ‘I want it to be how it was before.’
    ‘Oh, Evie. It will get better. Everyone deals with tragedies differently. Your dad lost his son. It’ll take time.’
    ‘But I’m still here,’ I said. ‘Can’t he see that? I’m still here.’

C HAPTER 19
    I t wasn’t easy getting the bike down from the attic but, somehow, I managed. I was keen to do it before Mum got back and, somehow, after a struggle that broke two of my nails, gouged out a small section of wallpaper and left a smear of oil on the paint of the attic door, both the bike and I were on the landing. I bumped it down the stairs and into the kitchen, where I examined it more thoroughly, remembering the do-it-yourself tutorials Dad had given Graham and me in this very room; the reluctant (on my part) Sunday afternoons spent learning how to oil our chains, flip off