Free Death in Disguise by Caroline Graham Page A

concentration. Thin arms arched high over the keyboard, her shining brown silky little girl’s hair was caught back from her face in a velvet-covered slide. She had been wearing a blue and white striped dress with a large white collar and bow that had fluttery, dark blue streamers. All these things appeared to Guy with such vivid and dazzling clarity that he might only that second have been awarded the gift of sight. And then, before he could become even slightly familiar with this almost hallucinogenic prospect, a second and even stranger thing occurred.
    He became overwhelmed by a torrent of extraordinary emotion. Drowning in it, swept away, he gripped the mantelpiece, deeply alarmed. He thought he was ill so violently did his body react. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed, his guts looped and tangled. And more, and worse. For when this wave of feeling ebbed away it left behind a terrible residue. It left him with the gift of understanding.
    He received and appreciated, compressed into the briefest space of time, all of his daughter’s despair, her aloneness, her desperate hunger for love. And then knew an immediate agony of protective tenderness towards her. The newness and strength of this pain, that any father could have told him was par for the course, pierced him like a knife. He drank in her downbent serious face and realised how rarely he had seen her smile. (How could he not have noticed that?) He felt unbearably moved at this revelation of her sadness and then consumed by a desperate need to make amends. To offer all his love.
    Yes—he recognised the emotion, even though he had never received any himself, for what it was. He vowed to give her everything. Find time to do all sorts of things, to make up for the lost years. When the music faltered and, after a few more hesitant notes, stopped entirely, he applauded, striking his hands together too loudly. Felicity stared, amused and disbelieving.
    â€˜That was very good, Sylvie. Marvellous, darling! You’re coming on really well.’ He was surprised how naturally the words sprang from his mouth. He, who never praised a living soul. He waited for her response, indulging in a little fatherly contemplation, imagining her pleasure at this enthusiasm. She closed the piano lid gently, got up from her stool and left the room. Felicity laughed.
    Guy had pursued his daughter from that moment on. He took her away from boarding school so he could see her every day. Each weekend he devised outings that he thought might please and entertain. He poured presents into her lap or hid them in her room or rolled them up in the napkin by her plate, sick with apprehension lest they should not find favour. She rejected all these attempts at gaining her affection not harshly or vigorously—he could have handled that, there would have been an opening to build on—but simply turning from them with an air of quiet, well-mannered resignation. Occasionally she would look at him and her eyes were like pale blue stones.
    Only once did she respond with any show of emotion and that was when, in a renewal of remorse at the years of neglect, Guy had struggled one day during an outing at the zoo to put his shame and regret into words. To unload perhaps, however unfairly, a fraction of the guilt. He had hardly started to speak when she turned on him shouting: ‘Stop it, stop it! I don’t care .’
    He had desisted of course and they had spent the rest of the afternoon silent and apart although, he reflected painfully, no more apart than usual. Everywhere he looked that day there seemed to be fathers holding their children by the hand or carrying toddlers shoulder-high. One boy who looked no more than sixteen wore a canvas sling cradling a tiny baby. It was asleep, its scarlet crumpled profile resting on the boy’s hollow chest. I could have done that, thought Guy, looking down in anguish at the narrow parting of his daughter’s hair. Christ—I