Loss

The house smells of stale smoke and strangers. The police left a little while ago, Bill shortly after. He asked if I needed him to stay, bless him. He looked so relieved when I said no. Now it's just me, sitting in the dark in the empty parlour.
I get up to make a drink, pick up his mug from the draining board, pour milk into it before I even realise what I'm doing. I can't seem to put it back on the shelf, but finishing the job, making his milky tea and leaving it to cool in the mug seems even worse. I can't go on and I can't go back.
Instead, I sit at the kitchen table, in his chair. Looking at the world from his point of view, seeing what he saw. The scarred table top looks like the surface of the moon; Old burn marks for craters, the criss cross marks of the bread knife, jagged teeth tearing deeply into the old teak. I lie my hands on the raw wood and stare at them for an hour. Maybe I fall asleep. Maybe not. The hour passes. My hands age. The skin tightens, the knuckles swell and thicken as the fingers lose their nimble dexterity. It doesn't show on the outside. I stare at them untill my eyes sting, but I don't see it. No-one could. But with every hour that passes - every minute and second - we get closer to the end. To the last walk into the night.
Mustn't dwell on it. Got to keep thinking positive thoughts. They don't know for certain. Think it through: They only found his jacket. The Legion is nowhere near the canal. There's no need for him to go anywhere near it. There was only a little blood. Dad was in the army. Old soldiers don't just fall into the canal.
I know; He was attacked on his way to The Legion. Someone attacked him, they fought and dad got a black eye and a bloody nose and lost his coat. His attacker ran away with it, went down to the canal to rifle through the pockets and throw anything incriminating into the water. Any moment now, dad will come staggering through the front door, singing his awful old songs, shivering in his shirtsleeves, wiping his nose on a scrap of bloody tissue and trying to roll a cigarette with one hand. He'll shout at me for sitting in his chair, and if he ever finds out that Bill sat in the parlour holding my hand then I'll really be for it, and it would all be worth it just to hear his voice. Even if he lapsed into German, which just makes him ever more angry because I don't understand it...
Except it's almost three O'clock and dad would never stay out later than midnight, even on a weekend. The Legion closes at half past eleven, and even in his worst states, it would never take him half an hour to make his way home. It's not like he's got any friends to visit. I don't think he ever did, even back in Germany.
I notice that a couple of my fingernails are starting to bleed. I've been scratching the table top; there are tiny splinters in my fingertips, under the nails. I can't feel them, but I can see them. Everything's numb. I bet I could take the bread knife and...
I see where the thought is heading and push my chair away from the table, legs scraping on the bare quarry tiles, screeching loudly in the silent night. I stand and head back into the parlour. The policeman smoked those terrible liquorice paper cheroots. The room reeks of them, the wet, twisted butts sitting in the ashtray look like miniature dog poops. I think of tiny poodles walking around the glass dish, doing their business, and I can't hold my laughter in any longer. After a good five minutes I realize that it wasn't laughter. I look up and find that I'm kneeling on the hearth rug, my face wet from tears which have soaked the seat of dad's armchair. I stood here, on this same spot, when I was a little girl, clinging to his trouser leg, listening to his stories. I didn't understand a fraction of what he was trying to tell me. Now I never will.
Back then, when I looked up at him, I saw a giant, his head in the clouds, with a booming voice and great rough hands that would scoop me up and lift me into the smoky nimbus which hung around his shoulders. We were in a different world up there. I can still smell the strange home mixed tobacco he bought from the old woman in Cooper Street. Sometimes there was a trace of cherrywood, sometimes something more like tar, sweet and rich or thick and black, all tangled up with the smell of his hair oil, the axle grease ground into his hands and the occasional nip of whiskey on his breath.
I crawl up onto the armchair, close my eyes and press my face against the worn material, breathing deeply. I can almost believe that he's still here. I can smell him, feel his warmth. I press myself into the indentation of his form on the cushions, trying not to think of the fact that it's a hollow, a negative space formed by his absence. For now it's enough to get me through the night.
I sleep, finally. The dreams respect my boundaries, for one night only. No silver stars, no burning fields, no steppenwolves or soldiers. Just oblivion. Peace. I sleep in the space carved out by my father's life, the echo of his arms around me, the ghost of his breath on my face. And then I wake to a new world.
The sun is rising and my father is dead.