Free A is for Angelica by Iain Broome Page A

in there.’
    We’d sit in the living room and talk like we did when we were young. He’d tell me about his wife that barely was and we’d laugh about it together. They were the same stories
he’d been telling me for thirty years. The same characters with the same punch lines. And I didn’t mind listening, because it was better than being on my own. Occasionally, Don would
try to talk about Georgina. He’d ask me how I was coping and if I’d thought about taking a break, going somewhere nice, speaking to my mother and father. I’d change the subject or
pretend I didn’t understand what he was getting at.
    Mostly I didn’t mind him asking, but sometimes my frustration got the better of me. My anger at what had happened. At the speed of Georgina’s progress. Don would try to reassure me
that things would eventually get better, but that would only make things worse. I’d tell him not to be so patronising. Not to pretend that things weren’t as bad as they were. He
absorbed my words again and again. He would always understand. He would never complain. I don’t know what I would have done without him.

Inkling
    It rained on our wedding day. Georgina ran from the taxi to the church. Her dress dragged across the floor, her heels flicked dirty water up her back. She looked beautiful. My
parents and Georgina’s mother sat behind us on the front row. My father wore a grey cardigan with pink stripes across the chest and a pink shirt underneath. Georgina told him he
couldn’t wear a suit because he always wore a suit. She said pink was the theme. He wasn’t happy about it, although the cardigan wrapped nicely round his arm, which he’d broken
falling from his lorry the week before.
    We had the reception at the community centre, the same place we’d said goodbye to Georgina’s father, just two years previous. It was almost identical. The same people and the same
drinks. The same music by the same DJ. Only the buffet was different. My mother prepared it herself. She put the tables up and the food out. No-one was allowed to go near. She knew where everything
needed to be, right down to the last sausage on a stick. My father tried to steal a slice of quiche before the buffet opened. But she’d been watching like a hawk and punched him in the ribs
before his fingers reached the plate.
    Georgina sat on my knee in the corner of the room. She had her arm around my neck and her hand on my cheek. We watched her mother with the DJ again, dragging him to the floor and forcing him to
dance with her. She grabbed the back of his head and hauled him close, jammed it between her neck and her shoulder. Georgina laughed out loud. ‘Look at her,’ she said. ‘I wish my
Dad could see her now.’ And she pointed to her mother’s hands as they worked their way down the DJ’s back and clawed his buttocks.
    The music stopped at midnight. I watched my mother and father from the car park as I loaded the boot with wedding gifts and uneaten sandwiches. They were slow dancing to Frank Sinatra, the last
song of the night. Georgina was clearing up plates and thanking the bar staff. She’d taken off her dress and hung it over a radiator. It was still damp at the bottom but she’d packed a
pair of trousers, just in case. I listened to the song fade out and watched my mother kiss my father on the cheek. She helped him put his cardigan on. Then he walked to the fire exit, opened the
door and lit a cigarette. I held my hand up and waved to him.
    ‘All right, Son?’ he said, stepping down from the doorway into darkness. He disappeared until I caught the orange glow of his cigarette. His outline against the trees.
    ‘Thanks for today, Dad.’
    ‘Don’t thank me, thank your wife. You’re lucky someone will have you.’
    We both laughed. He turned and sat on the bonnet of the car. He took a long drag of his cigarette. It glowed bright again. Then he threw it on the floor and stamped it out. He walked over to
me.
    ‘I’m sorry