Fanfiction: Spilling Over, Life on Mars
SPILLING OVER
Fandom: Life on Mars
Characters: OC, Sam, Annie, Gene
Pairing: Sam/Annie
For:
talkingtothesky
Prompt: Sam/Annie, parents, domesticity
Summary: Lucy Tyler learns.
Notes: Remember that LoM ficathon? Way back in October?
Yup.
A million, trillion apologies to
talkingtothesky and just as many thank-yous for her everlasting patience. ♥ Beta'd by the lovely
court.
Crossposted: Dreamwidth, Livejournal, AO3
---
1978. Lucy Tyler's first memory.
A red notebook, huge and heavy in her tiny hands. Lucy smoothes a palm over the leather cover, plays idly with the metal clasp.
Her second memory: Daddy rushes into the room and tugs it from her. He fiddles with it and then shoves it onto a high shelf.
He says, "No, Lucy. That's not for you."
---
1979. Mummy comes home from work and stays for good.
At first it's nice. Lucy's Gran-Gran was mean and strict and spanked her sometimes, but Mummy is kind. Mummy puts her hands over Lucy's as they roll out dough for a pie, kisses Lucy's face when she gets flour on her cheek. The pie comes out lopsided, but that's all right, Mummy says. Daddy will like it anyway.
Except Daddy doesn't like it. He stomps around like a bear, looks around at the walls like something caged.
"Was it Gene?" He asks. He fidgets with his keys while the pie sits ugly and cold on the table. "It was Gene, wasn't it? Never bloody listen to Gene."
Mummy stands with her hands on her hips. "Is it so hard to believe I can make my own decisions, Sam? Is it so wrong to spend more time with my daughter?"
"You can work too, you know," Daddy swallows and raps his fingers on the table. "Women can work and have a home life -- they can do what they want--"
"This is what I want! " Mummy shouts, and it's so loud that Lucy bites her lip and cries.
That's when they stop. That's when they come over and tell her everything's all right.
---
1982. Lucy's sixth birthday.
A few of the neighbourhood children appear at the door, holding their parents' hands before they rush in at the first sight of balloons and new toys. Lucy wears a blue dress Mummy made for her and gets scolded by Gran-Gran when she trips outside and smudges dirt on her knees.
"Not very lady-like!" Gran-Gran hisses, twisting her up by the arm. "When your mother and your auntie were your age, they would never."
Gran-Gran goes inside and talks loudly with Daddy. She uses the word "permissive."
Lucy sits on the back step with her scuffed knees clutched under her arms. A few minutes later, Daddy settles down beside her. He puts a hand on her back.
"It's my birthday," Lucy sniffles as she watches boys play tag in the garden. "It's not fair."
"Your Gran-Gran's a bit old-fashioned," Daddy says. After a moment, he adds, "Everyone is."
There's a sort of strain in his voice, a tired weight that Lucy sometimes hears but doesn't understand. He pulls her close and Lucy leans her head against him. He smells so clean, her daddy. Like fresh laundry and sunshine.
"How come I only have one Gran-Gran?" Lucy asks after a moment, hand tight and frustrated in his jacket. "Don't you have one? Is she nicer?"
Daddy doesn't answer. His skin creases tight between his eyebrows, eyes focused on something far away.
"Cake!" Mummy calls from the kitchen, and Lucy forgets all about it as she hops up and runs inside.
---
1986. Lucy realises her father is different.
Not at first. If anything, he's the only one who understands, always a bit less worried than Mum about Lucy's pop posters, her zig-zag skirts, her sudden taking to neon pink hair ties.
"It's the 80's," he says with a shrug, paging through the morning paper. "Everyone's gone a bit daft. Did you know Gene's taken to wine?"
"Red?" Mum asks. When Dad nods, she lets out a sigh. "Wonder he doesn't spill it."
"Explains the dark clothes," Dad mutters. "Once lost my best shirt to wine."
Lucy bites into her toast as Mum sits down and Dad flips back to the front page.
"January 28th." He frowns, then shakes his head and folds it closed. "Must not have happened yet."
"What hasn't happened?" Lucy pipes up. Before Dad can answer, Mum takes her wrist and gently tugs her toward the door.
"Not now, Lucy," she says, mouth strangely tight as they walk outside. "You musn't be late."
Lucy isn't late. She spends her morning lesson biting on the rubber-end of her pencil and wonders what it is that's going to take place. A sunny day, maybe? Dad is good at picking out which summers will be best for taking a football to the park.
But as the day wears on, nothing happens. Lucy returns home strangely disappointed, boots puddling up the entranceway as she sits down and pulls them off.
She pauses when she hears faint sounds from the telly in the living room and Mum's voice, hushed but strong.
"We've spoken about this. You can't say things like that -- you'll confuse her."
"Annie, you know that it... it's hard, sometimes--"
"And it isn't for the rest of us?"
Lucy scrambles up and bursts into the room. She finds that this often works, when her parents argue; it calms them down, or at least makes them pretend to.
"I'm here!" she nearly shouts, smiling. "I'm here, Mum, can we..."
She trails off when she sees a grainy video on the telly, the same small segment playing over and over. Smoke and debris falling from something black, white, and red, coming apart like a dust storm in the wind.
"It's strange, isn't it?" Dad says, distant. "Thatcher privatises the whole market this year, but this is the day I remember."
Mum's hand comes to rest on Lucy's shoulder.
"Suppose there's the Cup," Dad adds. He runs a hand through his hair, silver at the temples. "Bloody Argentina."
Mum's hand tightens, but Lucy's distracted by the telly.
"Challenger," the newsreader keeps saying.
---
1992. Lucy brings her boyfriend for dinner.
His name is Nick and he has a tattoo that says "RAZE," which Lucy urges him to hide under a long-sleeved shirt. "You said your Dad was alright," he whines between classes, and Lucy slaps his arm in response.
"He's a Chief Inspector," she hisses, like it hasn't scared off the last three boys.
That night, Lucy waits at the top of the staircase, make-up ready, hair sprayed up. Mum goes to answer the door when it rings and Nick stands there, hair combed down, nearly unrecognizable.
"Nick, is it?" Mum asks with a smile. "I've always thought that's a lovely name."
The hair and tattoo-hiding must work wonders, because Dad seems pleasant enough too, in his systematic sort of way. "Where are you from?" he starts as he carves his curry-spice beef. "What are your interests? Will you attend university? What kind of motor do you drive?"
"Dear," Mum laughs, "we're not at the station."
But Nick puts up with it better than Lucy's previous dates, and stays a proper, polite gentleman while he stomachs the spicy beef like a reigning champ. By dessert, Dad almost seems to like him.
"You play guitar, then?" Dad asks over the last crumbs of his pie. "You're not in a band, are you?"
"No," Nick says. "Though I play sometimes, on weekends."
"For an audience?" Mum stands up to pick up the plates and silverware, but Dad intercepts them first, as he often does, and begins to pile them in his arms as he heads off to do the dishes.
"There's a place that lets me play sometimes," Nick says to Mum as she sits back down. "Briarpatch Pub. I'd like to take Lucy sometime, if that's all right."
Something clatters in the kitchen.
Dad walks out, face sheet-white, some primeval horror etched in his eyes. He grabs Nick's wrist up from the table before Lucy can ask why, yanks his shirtsleeve up to show the ink on his skin.
A minute later, Nick stands dumbstruck on the front step as Dad shuts the door in his face. Lucy stands in the doorway, horrified, hands tight against her skirt.
"How could you do that?" she asks. "Dad, he was trying!"
"You'll learn," Dad mumbles as he turns from the door and marches back toward the kitchen. "Plenty of useless punks in the world, Lucy -- no need to waste your time with one of them."
The words stab Lucy like something poison, something permanent. Dad tries to get by the table, but Mum bars his way.
"Sam," she says like she always does in moments like this, calm and strong, strangely gentle as she searches his eyes with her own. "Sam, what's this all about?"
Dad breathes hard. He shuts his eyes and creases his brow in the way Lucy remembers from her childhood, harsher and deeper in his weathered skin, under receding, grey-brown hair.
"I can't--" he starts, but Lucy doesn't bother to listen as she runs up the stairs and slams her bedroom door behind her.
Dad retires that year and moves them out of the city. He doesn't quite explain why.
---
1993. Things change.
It's a night that starts average enough, not that Lucy's parents would know. As soon as Mum and Dad go to bed, she creeps down the staircase and past still-unpacked boxes into the night chill, her jacket pulled tight against her shoulders.
Nick's waiting down the road, just a stone's throw away. Lucy fits snugly on the back of his motorcycle and wraps her arms round his middle as they zip over tarmac to the city center, her real home. She's at the cusp of commencement and Nick's a year past her; they have a million years ahead of them and not the faintest how to use them.
"Policewoman," is what Lucy used to say of her future, but that was back when Mum and Dad and Uncle Gene were the only family she got on with, and now she's not so sure. She might want to do something daft -- Art History, maybe. She finds herself grabbing for things that will seem stupid and fickle in her father's strange and distant eyes.
The pub's already crowded when they walk in, alive and vibrant with the city's younger lot. Lucy kisses Nick good luck before he sets up to play under his "RAZE" banner, then heads to the bar for a drink. She's been a few times, so they don't bother to card her, but as she swings around with a glass of wine in hand, she knocks into the man behind her.
Red jumps out of her glass, spills over her hand, splatters all over the man's front. He staggers back, shirt stained with angry, pinkish red, and Lucy steps away, startled, as she slaps a hand to her mouth.
"Bloody--" the man hisses.
"Oh," Lucy stutters behind her palm, "oh, I am so terribly sorry--"
The man clutches the bottom hem of his shirt. His head snaps up toward the washroom and that's when Lucy sees it.
Her heart seizes in her chest. She can't breathe. For a moment, it's as if the ground has fallen out from under her. A million ill-fitting puzzle pieces built up like the sands of time suddenly fall into place, all at once, like a landslide.
She feels Nick's hand on her shoulder, hears his laugh.
"Oh -- blimey. Sorry, mate." Nick gestures like it's nothing at all. "Sam's a regular. Sam, my girl Lucy."
"This is my best -- God." The man slaps a hand to his face. "Shit."
"I know who he is," Lucy says, though she barely hears it.
The man rolls his eyes. "Good. You'll know where to send the check."
"Oi -- don't be a wanker," Nick shoots back, but as he lays a protective hand on Lucy's shoulder, she pushes it away.
"I have to go," she says.
"What?" Nick blinks, frowns. "Luce, I can pay--"
"I'm sorry. I have to." Lucy turns around, shaking, hand on her mouth as she pushes through the crowd and staggers, dizzy and sick, out the door.
---
1994. Mum comes up to her room.
"We're worried," she says. Lucy keeps her eyes on her pencil, scribbling an essay for university application. "You've been cooped up here for days."
"Been busy," Lucy says. She finishes a paragraph and starts on the next.
"Your friends... they haven't rang, lately." Lucy hears the slow creak of springs as Mum sits down on the edge of her bed. "Did something happen?"
Lucy shakes her head. She turns a page in her notebook. "Schoolwork. Loads of it. I'm fine, Mum."
"Are you sure?" Mum asks softly. "Could drive you to town if you'd like. If you need to see them."
"No need," Lucy says.
Mum stays there for a minute. Lucy can hear her breathing, feel her presence. Like tendrils of something warm and suffocating, holding her close, drawing the truth out of her, the life out of her.
For a moment, Lucy's pencil pauses above the paper. She thinks to stand up, run downstairs and out to the garden, to grab her father by his hands and ask him -- Did you?
Then Mum stands up. She sighs and smoothes out her pants.
"Well," she says, "come down to supper, at least. Your father says he's hardly seen you."
Lucy is accepted to four universities that year.
She picks London, which is the farthest.
---
1995. Lucy keeps busy.
She majors in law, buries herself in her studies, finds a part time position in the school office. Her friends hike on weekends and she goes with; she learns how to sew in her spare time. She kisses a girl named Julie and doesn't tell anyone.
Mum calls sometimes to see how she's faring and Lucy tells her she's fine. It's a shame, Mum says, that Lucy was sick for Christmas; Dad missed her very much.
"I'm sure he did," Lucy says, and then she asks Mum about the weather.
---
2003. The phone rings.
Lucy's juggling three things at the moment -- keys, groceries, and papers from the office. She winces when her paper bag hits the top of the counter too hard, then dodges her cat as the door swings closed.
"Vanessa -- Vanessa, could you get that?" she calls into the flat.
"What? Oh." Vanessa sets down her laptop in their cluttered living room, stuck in some remodeling purgatory. She paces over to the hall phone and picks it up with a click. "Tyler-Francis residence, who's calling, please?"
Fitz the cat rubs stubbornly against Lucy's leg as she kicks off her shoes, sets down her folders and begins to rifle through the contents of her bag. She shoves packaged meat in the refrigerator with the fierce control of someone with a thousand things on their list -- check one, check two, check three.
"I've got some roast chicken for dinner," she calls after a few moments of silence."Could warm up some peas and have it with pita -- what do you think?"
Fitz jumps up on the kitchen counter and Lucy snatches him off with a scowl. She carries him in her arms as she makes her way to the hall.
Vanessa intercepts her. "That's quite fine, Mr. Tyler," she says into the receiver. "Oh! Here she is."
Lucy can't quite explain the tension that draws up her spine, that situates itself in her shoulders and arms. She drops Fitz and snatches the receiver, too hard. "Hello?"
"Lucy," Dad's voice says in that scratched, soft way of his. "Lucy, how are you?"
"Fine," Lucy says. She turns back toward the kitchen so as not to waste time. "How's Mum?"
"Oh, you know, she's... well. You know, very well."
Lucy chances a pause, blip registered on her radar -- her father doesn't repeat himself unless something's wrong.
She adjusts the phone on her shoulder, reaches to extract the take-out box with the chicken. "Is something the matter?" she asks.
"No, no, I..." Dad stutters, and that's also unusual, and frightening, in a way. These days, Lucy finds herself a bit lost outside of pleasantries. "I was wondering if we might speak for a bit."
"You and I?" Lucy asks. It sounds cruel if she listens too hard.
Dad's quiet a moment.
"I know," he finally says, "that things haven't been the best between us, these past years."
"Oh, that's not true," Lucy says lightly. She pulls out plates, sets them on the counter. "You convinced Mum about Vanessa -- makes you all right in my book."
The line wouldn't fall flat in her fourth floor office, but it does here. She hears her father breathing, erratic, a bit like wheezing. She wonders if he's done that before.
"Lucy," he says, "I know what happened."
Lucy pulls open a drawer. Forks and knives clatter. "Oh?"
"That night. At the pub."
"What are you on about?" Lucy asks. She turns to grab some dinner napkins.
Dad doesn't answer for a few moments. When his voice comes through the receiver, it's fuzzy, cracked.
"You won't understand this now, but I want you to know I remember. That morning -- I remember, and I.... I want you to know you didn't have to. I should have been there for you, should have explained things to you, but I thought... I thought I could keep you safe. And I was wrong, and I'm sorry -- I'm so sorry."
Lucy stands there, stone-still, bare feet cold on the kitchen tile.
"Lucy," he breathes, "I want you to know I love you. You've nothing to blame yourself for. You're my daughter and I love you."
"Right, yeah," Lucy says, stunned. "I love you too."
Next week, Vanessa hands the phone to her again.
She doesn't smile this time.
---
2003. They bury Dad on a Saturday.
Mum clutches Lucy's hand even at the wake, when young constables and wiry old inspectors walk up and pay their respects. "A good copper," they say, "to the last." Some have names that Dad complained of all those years ago, as if even begrudging hatred couldn't temper their respect.
"Always said he'd outlive us, your dad," Uncle Gene rasps. He coughs into his hand, an ugly, hacking thing. "Doesn't he look like an idiot."
Lucy rubs his back, because calling her dad an idiot is Gene for "I miss the bloke."
"Should've known something was wrong," he mumbled, "when he up and left the force out of nowhere."
Lucy shakes her head. "That was years ago."
"And that's when cancer starts, innit?" Gene glances up at her, eyes old and red. "That's when you're supposed to tell someone, 'stead of keeping it to your own bloody self, letting it fester, eat you alive."
Something aches in Lucy, a hollow wound in her chest. She glances at her mum, sitting by the window, speaking with a weak smile to Vanessa.
"He must've known." Gene fidgets with a handkerchief in his stained fingertips. "He was too much a picky pain not to know."
Lucy wonders what would drive someone to do that, to lie to those they love, to hold them at arm's length when they're needed most.
She wonders.
---
2004. Things don't work out with Vanessa.
Lucy keeps the cat in their functioning divorce, moves into a one-bedroom flat. She swallows the cost of selling with the living room still unfinished and decorates her new place with the law books and briefs that Vanessa threatened to burn.
She makes a beeline every night from the office garage to her front door. She keeps to herself, but that's all right, she thinks. Dad was the only one okay with her life choices anyway.
---
2005. Lucy sorts through the attic.
It's Dad's things, mainly -- old books and rock-'n'-roll LP's that a policeman of his time shouldn't have been caught dead owning. "Sure liked anarchy for a fascist," Uncle Gene would probably quip, except he's gone now and Mum's not here to reminisce, laid up in hospital with a healing hip on account of the house's too-steep stairs.
Those stairs are the reason for the "SOLD" sign out front, and these boxes are the last ones to go. Lucy drops them to the hallway with the dull clatter of things once precious, beauty and value lost with their owner. One proves heavier than the rest and falls out of her arms before she can get it to the floor.
Papers and photo albums tumble out. Lucy huffs as she bends down to snatch them up in bunches -- it's already late and she goes back to work tomorrow. She has no intention of losing sleep over knick-knacks.
She drops a pile of looseleaf into the box and grabs for the next thing on the floor. It's a notebook, worn and red, small in her hands. Her thumb rests against the metal clasp.
Something hits her, sense-memory, sharp and deep. She sees in full colour for the first time in years, senses the crisp bite of dust in her nostrils, the cold air down her throat.
She opens the notebook with shaking hands and makes out her father's neat handwriting, scrawled on the front page, faded with age.
For you, Lucy.
That's when Lucy's vision blurs, when her throat gets dry and tight. She breaks down and cries without turning the page, because she knows what it's going to say.
---
2006. Lucy knocks on a door.
She clutches a paper in her hand, an address, a building code, a list of rules. She has it printed in her memory with law school repetition, but it vanishes like air when the door opens.
"Yes?" a man asks, squinting in the morning light. He's in his late thirties, clean-cut, adjusting his tie.
For a moment, Lucy stutters, mind swimming, heart taut in her chest. "H-hello," she finally manages.
The man's mouth twists in an impatient almost-scowl that sends Lucy reeling. "What's this about?"
"Oh," Lucy says. She swallows. "Oh, I..."
The man continues adjusting his tie, an undercurrent of nervous energy in self-assured authority, and -- god. He's so young.
"I'm looking for my father," she finally says.
The man pauses, looks over his shoulder and then back to her. "Did he used to live here?"
Lucy swallows. Her voice trembles. "My father... I was going to tell him I'm sorry, and that... that I understand."
The man pauses. He must see the wet sheen of her eyes, the unsteadiness of her footing.
His eyes soften a touch. He steps toward her, toward this stranger, toward an encounter so random that it must be filed away to long-term recollection, a sad, funny story of a girl on his doorstep that will be buried and nearly forgotten in the face of stranger things.
He puts a hand on her shoulder, less guarded, almost worried. "You all right?"
"Yes." Lucy smiles and draws in a breath.
He smells so clean. Like fresh laundry and sunshine.
Crossposted from hughes@dreamwidth.
Fandom: Life on Mars
Characters: OC, Sam, Annie, Gene
Pairing: Sam/Annie
For:
talkingtothesky
Prompt: Sam/Annie, parents, domesticity
Summary: Lucy Tyler learns.
Notes: Remember that LoM ficathon? Way back in October?
Yup.
A million, trillion apologies to
talkingtothesky and just as many thank-yous for her everlasting patience. ♥ Beta'd by the lovely
court.
Crossposted: Dreamwidth, Livejournal, AO3
---
1978. Lucy Tyler's first memory.
A red notebook, huge and heavy in her tiny hands. Lucy smoothes a palm over the leather cover, plays idly with the metal clasp.
Her second memory: Daddy rushes into the room and tugs it from her. He fiddles with it and then shoves it onto a high shelf.
He says, "No, Lucy. That's not for you."
---
1979. Mummy comes home from work and stays for good.
At first it's nice. Lucy's Gran-Gran was mean and strict and spanked her sometimes, but Mummy is kind. Mummy puts her hands over Lucy's as they roll out dough for a pie, kisses Lucy's face when she gets flour on her cheek. The pie comes out lopsided, but that's all right, Mummy says. Daddy will like it anyway.
Except Daddy doesn't like it. He stomps around like a bear, looks around at the walls like something caged.
"Was it Gene?" He asks. He fidgets with his keys while the pie sits ugly and cold on the table. "It was Gene, wasn't it? Never bloody listen to Gene."
Mummy stands with her hands on her hips. "Is it so hard to believe I can make my own decisions, Sam? Is it so wrong to spend more time with my daughter?"
"You can work too, you know," Daddy swallows and raps his fingers on the table. "Women can work and have a home life -- they can do what they want--"
"This is what I want! " Mummy shouts, and it's so loud that Lucy bites her lip and cries.
That's when they stop. That's when they come over and tell her everything's all right.
---
1982. Lucy's sixth birthday.
A few of the neighbourhood children appear at the door, holding their parents' hands before they rush in at the first sight of balloons and new toys. Lucy wears a blue dress Mummy made for her and gets scolded by Gran-Gran when she trips outside and smudges dirt on her knees.
"Not very lady-like!" Gran-Gran hisses, twisting her up by the arm. "When your mother and your auntie were your age, they would never."
Gran-Gran goes inside and talks loudly with Daddy. She uses the word "permissive."
Lucy sits on the back step with her scuffed knees clutched under her arms. A few minutes later, Daddy settles down beside her. He puts a hand on her back.
"It's my birthday," Lucy sniffles as she watches boys play tag in the garden. "It's not fair."
"Your Gran-Gran's a bit old-fashioned," Daddy says. After a moment, he adds, "Everyone is."
There's a sort of strain in his voice, a tired weight that Lucy sometimes hears but doesn't understand. He pulls her close and Lucy leans her head against him. He smells so clean, her daddy. Like fresh laundry and sunshine.
"How come I only have one Gran-Gran?" Lucy asks after a moment, hand tight and frustrated in his jacket. "Don't you have one? Is she nicer?"
Daddy doesn't answer. His skin creases tight between his eyebrows, eyes focused on something far away.
"Cake!" Mummy calls from the kitchen, and Lucy forgets all about it as she hops up and runs inside.
---
1986. Lucy realises her father is different.
Not at first. If anything, he's the only one who understands, always a bit less worried than Mum about Lucy's pop posters, her zig-zag skirts, her sudden taking to neon pink hair ties.
"It's the 80's," he says with a shrug, paging through the morning paper. "Everyone's gone a bit daft. Did you know Gene's taken to wine?"
"Red?" Mum asks. When Dad nods, she lets out a sigh. "Wonder he doesn't spill it."
"Explains the dark clothes," Dad mutters. "Once lost my best shirt to wine."
Lucy bites into her toast as Mum sits down and Dad flips back to the front page.
"January 28th." He frowns, then shakes his head and folds it closed. "Must not have happened yet."
"What hasn't happened?" Lucy pipes up. Before Dad can answer, Mum takes her wrist and gently tugs her toward the door.
"Not now, Lucy," she says, mouth strangely tight as they walk outside. "You musn't be late."
Lucy isn't late. She spends her morning lesson biting on the rubber-end of her pencil and wonders what it is that's going to take place. A sunny day, maybe? Dad is good at picking out which summers will be best for taking a football to the park.
But as the day wears on, nothing happens. Lucy returns home strangely disappointed, boots puddling up the entranceway as she sits down and pulls them off.
She pauses when she hears faint sounds from the telly in the living room and Mum's voice, hushed but strong.
"We've spoken about this. You can't say things like that -- you'll confuse her."
"Annie, you know that it... it's hard, sometimes--"
"And it isn't for the rest of us?"
Lucy scrambles up and bursts into the room. She finds that this often works, when her parents argue; it calms them down, or at least makes them pretend to.
"I'm here!" she nearly shouts, smiling. "I'm here, Mum, can we..."
She trails off when she sees a grainy video on the telly, the same small segment playing over and over. Smoke and debris falling from something black, white, and red, coming apart like a dust storm in the wind.
"It's strange, isn't it?" Dad says, distant. "Thatcher privatises the whole market this year, but this is the day I remember."
Mum's hand comes to rest on Lucy's shoulder.
"Suppose there's the Cup," Dad adds. He runs a hand through his hair, silver at the temples. "Bloody Argentina."
Mum's hand tightens, but Lucy's distracted by the telly.
"Challenger," the newsreader keeps saying.
---
1992. Lucy brings her boyfriend for dinner.
His name is Nick and he has a tattoo that says "RAZE," which Lucy urges him to hide under a long-sleeved shirt. "You said your Dad was alright," he whines between classes, and Lucy slaps his arm in response.
"He's a Chief Inspector," she hisses, like it hasn't scared off the last three boys.
That night, Lucy waits at the top of the staircase, make-up ready, hair sprayed up. Mum goes to answer the door when it rings and Nick stands there, hair combed down, nearly unrecognizable.
"Nick, is it?" Mum asks with a smile. "I've always thought that's a lovely name."
The hair and tattoo-hiding must work wonders, because Dad seems pleasant enough too, in his systematic sort of way. "Where are you from?" he starts as he carves his curry-spice beef. "What are your interests? Will you attend university? What kind of motor do you drive?"
"Dear," Mum laughs, "we're not at the station."
But Nick puts up with it better than Lucy's previous dates, and stays a proper, polite gentleman while he stomachs the spicy beef like a reigning champ. By dessert, Dad almost seems to like him.
"You play guitar, then?" Dad asks over the last crumbs of his pie. "You're not in a band, are you?"
"No," Nick says. "Though I play sometimes, on weekends."
"For an audience?" Mum stands up to pick up the plates and silverware, but Dad intercepts them first, as he often does, and begins to pile them in his arms as he heads off to do the dishes.
"There's a place that lets me play sometimes," Nick says to Mum as she sits back down. "Briarpatch Pub. I'd like to take Lucy sometime, if that's all right."
Something clatters in the kitchen.
Dad walks out, face sheet-white, some primeval horror etched in his eyes. He grabs Nick's wrist up from the table before Lucy can ask why, yanks his shirtsleeve up to show the ink on his skin.
A minute later, Nick stands dumbstruck on the front step as Dad shuts the door in his face. Lucy stands in the doorway, horrified, hands tight against her skirt.
"How could you do that?" she asks. "Dad, he was trying!"
"You'll learn," Dad mumbles as he turns from the door and marches back toward the kitchen. "Plenty of useless punks in the world, Lucy -- no need to waste your time with one of them."
The words stab Lucy like something poison, something permanent. Dad tries to get by the table, but Mum bars his way.
"Sam," she says like she always does in moments like this, calm and strong, strangely gentle as she searches his eyes with her own. "Sam, what's this all about?"
Dad breathes hard. He shuts his eyes and creases his brow in the way Lucy remembers from her childhood, harsher and deeper in his weathered skin, under receding, grey-brown hair.
"I can't--" he starts, but Lucy doesn't bother to listen as she runs up the stairs and slams her bedroom door behind her.
Dad retires that year and moves them out of the city. He doesn't quite explain why.
---
1993. Things change.
It's a night that starts average enough, not that Lucy's parents would know. As soon as Mum and Dad go to bed, she creeps down the staircase and past still-unpacked boxes into the night chill, her jacket pulled tight against her shoulders.
Nick's waiting down the road, just a stone's throw away. Lucy fits snugly on the back of his motorcycle and wraps her arms round his middle as they zip over tarmac to the city center, her real home. She's at the cusp of commencement and Nick's a year past her; they have a million years ahead of them and not the faintest how to use them.
"Policewoman," is what Lucy used to say of her future, but that was back when Mum and Dad and Uncle Gene were the only family she got on with, and now she's not so sure. She might want to do something daft -- Art History, maybe. She finds herself grabbing for things that will seem stupid and fickle in her father's strange and distant eyes.
The pub's already crowded when they walk in, alive and vibrant with the city's younger lot. Lucy kisses Nick good luck before he sets up to play under his "RAZE" banner, then heads to the bar for a drink. She's been a few times, so they don't bother to card her, but as she swings around with a glass of wine in hand, she knocks into the man behind her.
Red jumps out of her glass, spills over her hand, splatters all over the man's front. He staggers back, shirt stained with angry, pinkish red, and Lucy steps away, startled, as she slaps a hand to her mouth.
"Bloody--" the man hisses.
"Oh," Lucy stutters behind her palm, "oh, I am so terribly sorry--"
The man clutches the bottom hem of his shirt. His head snaps up toward the washroom and that's when Lucy sees it.
Her heart seizes in her chest. She can't breathe. For a moment, it's as if the ground has fallen out from under her. A million ill-fitting puzzle pieces built up like the sands of time suddenly fall into place, all at once, like a landslide.
She feels Nick's hand on her shoulder, hears his laugh.
"Oh -- blimey. Sorry, mate." Nick gestures like it's nothing at all. "Sam's a regular. Sam, my girl Lucy."
"This is my best -- God." The man slaps a hand to his face. "Shit."
"I know who he is," Lucy says, though she barely hears it.
The man rolls his eyes. "Good. You'll know where to send the check."
"Oi -- don't be a wanker," Nick shoots back, but as he lays a protective hand on Lucy's shoulder, she pushes it away.
"I have to go," she says.
"What?" Nick blinks, frowns. "Luce, I can pay--"
"I'm sorry. I have to." Lucy turns around, shaking, hand on her mouth as she pushes through the crowd and staggers, dizzy and sick, out the door.
---
1994. Mum comes up to her room.
"We're worried," she says. Lucy keeps her eyes on her pencil, scribbling an essay for university application. "You've been cooped up here for days."
"Been busy," Lucy says. She finishes a paragraph and starts on the next.
"Your friends... they haven't rang, lately." Lucy hears the slow creak of springs as Mum sits down on the edge of her bed. "Did something happen?"
Lucy shakes her head. She turns a page in her notebook. "Schoolwork. Loads of it. I'm fine, Mum."
"Are you sure?" Mum asks softly. "Could drive you to town if you'd like. If you need to see them."
"No need," Lucy says.
Mum stays there for a minute. Lucy can hear her breathing, feel her presence. Like tendrils of something warm and suffocating, holding her close, drawing the truth out of her, the life out of her.
For a moment, Lucy's pencil pauses above the paper. She thinks to stand up, run downstairs and out to the garden, to grab her father by his hands and ask him -- Did you?
Then Mum stands up. She sighs and smoothes out her pants.
"Well," she says, "come down to supper, at least. Your father says he's hardly seen you."
Lucy is accepted to four universities that year.
She picks London, which is the farthest.
---
1995. Lucy keeps busy.
She majors in law, buries herself in her studies, finds a part time position in the school office. Her friends hike on weekends and she goes with; she learns how to sew in her spare time. She kisses a girl named Julie and doesn't tell anyone.
Mum calls sometimes to see how she's faring and Lucy tells her she's fine. It's a shame, Mum says, that Lucy was sick for Christmas; Dad missed her very much.
"I'm sure he did," Lucy says, and then she asks Mum about the weather.
---
2003. The phone rings.
Lucy's juggling three things at the moment -- keys, groceries, and papers from the office. She winces when her paper bag hits the top of the counter too hard, then dodges her cat as the door swings closed.
"Vanessa -- Vanessa, could you get that?" she calls into the flat.
"What? Oh." Vanessa sets down her laptop in their cluttered living room, stuck in some remodeling purgatory. She paces over to the hall phone and picks it up with a click. "Tyler-Francis residence, who's calling, please?"
Fitz the cat rubs stubbornly against Lucy's leg as she kicks off her shoes, sets down her folders and begins to rifle through the contents of her bag. She shoves packaged meat in the refrigerator with the fierce control of someone with a thousand things on their list -- check one, check two, check three.
"I've got some roast chicken for dinner," she calls after a few moments of silence."Could warm up some peas and have it with pita -- what do you think?"
Fitz jumps up on the kitchen counter and Lucy snatches him off with a scowl. She carries him in her arms as she makes her way to the hall.
Vanessa intercepts her. "That's quite fine, Mr. Tyler," she says into the receiver. "Oh! Here she is."
Lucy can't quite explain the tension that draws up her spine, that situates itself in her shoulders and arms. She drops Fitz and snatches the receiver, too hard. "Hello?"
"Lucy," Dad's voice says in that scratched, soft way of his. "Lucy, how are you?"
"Fine," Lucy says. She turns back toward the kitchen so as not to waste time. "How's Mum?"
"Oh, you know, she's... well. You know, very well."
Lucy chances a pause, blip registered on her radar -- her father doesn't repeat himself unless something's wrong.
She adjusts the phone on her shoulder, reaches to extract the take-out box with the chicken. "Is something the matter?" she asks.
"No, no, I..." Dad stutters, and that's also unusual, and frightening, in a way. These days, Lucy finds herself a bit lost outside of pleasantries. "I was wondering if we might speak for a bit."
"You and I?" Lucy asks. It sounds cruel if she listens too hard.
Dad's quiet a moment.
"I know," he finally says, "that things haven't been the best between us, these past years."
"Oh, that's not true," Lucy says lightly. She pulls out plates, sets them on the counter. "You convinced Mum about Vanessa -- makes you all right in my book."
The line wouldn't fall flat in her fourth floor office, but it does here. She hears her father breathing, erratic, a bit like wheezing. She wonders if he's done that before.
"Lucy," he says, "I know what happened."
Lucy pulls open a drawer. Forks and knives clatter. "Oh?"
"That night. At the pub."
"What are you on about?" Lucy asks. She turns to grab some dinner napkins.
Dad doesn't answer for a few moments. When his voice comes through the receiver, it's fuzzy, cracked.
"You won't understand this now, but I want you to know I remember. That morning -- I remember, and I.... I want you to know you didn't have to. I should have been there for you, should have explained things to you, but I thought... I thought I could keep you safe. And I was wrong, and I'm sorry -- I'm so sorry."
Lucy stands there, stone-still, bare feet cold on the kitchen tile.
"Lucy," he breathes, "I want you to know I love you. You've nothing to blame yourself for. You're my daughter and I love you."
"Right, yeah," Lucy says, stunned. "I love you too."
Next week, Vanessa hands the phone to her again.
She doesn't smile this time.
---
2003. They bury Dad on a Saturday.
Mum clutches Lucy's hand even at the wake, when young constables and wiry old inspectors walk up and pay their respects. "A good copper," they say, "to the last." Some have names that Dad complained of all those years ago, as if even begrudging hatred couldn't temper their respect.
"Always said he'd outlive us, your dad," Uncle Gene rasps. He coughs into his hand, an ugly, hacking thing. "Doesn't he look like an idiot."
Lucy rubs his back, because calling her dad an idiot is Gene for "I miss the bloke."
"Should've known something was wrong," he mumbled, "when he up and left the force out of nowhere."
Lucy shakes her head. "That was years ago."
"And that's when cancer starts, innit?" Gene glances up at her, eyes old and red. "That's when you're supposed to tell someone, 'stead of keeping it to your own bloody self, letting it fester, eat you alive."
Something aches in Lucy, a hollow wound in her chest. She glances at her mum, sitting by the window, speaking with a weak smile to Vanessa.
"He must've known." Gene fidgets with a handkerchief in his stained fingertips. "He was too much a picky pain not to know."
Lucy wonders what would drive someone to do that, to lie to those they love, to hold them at arm's length when they're needed most.
She wonders.
---
2004. Things don't work out with Vanessa.
Lucy keeps the cat in their functioning divorce, moves into a one-bedroom flat. She swallows the cost of selling with the living room still unfinished and decorates her new place with the law books and briefs that Vanessa threatened to burn.
She makes a beeline every night from the office garage to her front door. She keeps to herself, but that's all right, she thinks. Dad was the only one okay with her life choices anyway.
---
2005. Lucy sorts through the attic.
It's Dad's things, mainly -- old books and rock-'n'-roll LP's that a policeman of his time shouldn't have been caught dead owning. "Sure liked anarchy for a fascist," Uncle Gene would probably quip, except he's gone now and Mum's not here to reminisce, laid up in hospital with a healing hip on account of the house's too-steep stairs.
Those stairs are the reason for the "SOLD" sign out front, and these boxes are the last ones to go. Lucy drops them to the hallway with the dull clatter of things once precious, beauty and value lost with their owner. One proves heavier than the rest and falls out of her arms before she can get it to the floor.
Papers and photo albums tumble out. Lucy huffs as she bends down to snatch them up in bunches -- it's already late and she goes back to work tomorrow. She has no intention of losing sleep over knick-knacks.
She drops a pile of looseleaf into the box and grabs for the next thing on the floor. It's a notebook, worn and red, small in her hands. Her thumb rests against the metal clasp.
Something hits her, sense-memory, sharp and deep. She sees in full colour for the first time in years, senses the crisp bite of dust in her nostrils, the cold air down her throat.
She opens the notebook with shaking hands and makes out her father's neat handwriting, scrawled on the front page, faded with age.
For you, Lucy.
That's when Lucy's vision blurs, when her throat gets dry and tight. She breaks down and cries without turning the page, because she knows what it's going to say.
---
2006. Lucy knocks on a door.
She clutches a paper in her hand, an address, a building code, a list of rules. She has it printed in her memory with law school repetition, but it vanishes like air when the door opens.
"Yes?" a man asks, squinting in the morning light. He's in his late thirties, clean-cut, adjusting his tie.
For a moment, Lucy stutters, mind swimming, heart taut in her chest. "H-hello," she finally manages.
The man's mouth twists in an impatient almost-scowl that sends Lucy reeling. "What's this about?"
"Oh," Lucy says. She swallows. "Oh, I..."
The man continues adjusting his tie, an undercurrent of nervous energy in self-assured authority, and -- god. He's so young.
"I'm looking for my father," she finally says.
The man pauses, looks over his shoulder and then back to her. "Did he used to live here?"
Lucy swallows. Her voice trembles. "My father... I was going to tell him I'm sorry, and that... that I understand."
The man pauses. He must see the wet sheen of her eyes, the unsteadiness of her footing.
His eyes soften a touch. He steps toward her, toward this stranger, toward an encounter so random that it must be filed away to long-term recollection, a sad, funny story of a girl on his doorstep that will be buried and nearly forgotten in the face of stranger things.
He puts a hand on her shoulder, less guarded, almost worried. "You all right?"
"Yes." Lucy smiles and draws in a breath.
He smells so clean. Like fresh laundry and sunshine.
Crossposted from hughes@dreamwidth.