by JP Relph
When the Queen died, Daddy put on his for-best suit, with the anniversary cufflinks and stiff black shoes, then wouldn’t take it off. Even as it crumpled and creased, as the shirt yellowed and the shoes scuffed. He worked in it, ate in it, slept in it. People commented on his dishevelled state, his smothering negativity, the smell. A doctor came, signed him off work, gave him pills that never left the bathroom cabinet. Eventually, Daddy just lay on the couch like a road-killed magpie. I hung out in the kitchen, avoiding his sweating sadness. I couldn’t understand his despair; he was no royalist. Mum made me cupcakes, sat down with a big coffee, said she’d explain what was going on with Daddy – that he wasn’t sad about the Queen really. It was another woman who died. A long time ago.
*
She went by Lizzie, had hair black as winter nights and eyes one shade bluer than Daddy’s. They lived in hotels and hostels, ate burgers or mass cooked mince, slept in over-washed sheets. Sometimes he had a TV, sometimes it was just picture books and ratty comics. He had a scraggy lion for a while, but it got left behind in one bed or another. In one town or another.
Lizzie would go out just after dinner, give him the remote, make sure he had snacks. She had rules: no hot water, in bed by ten, and he must never leave the room. When she returned after sunup, smudged and sallow, cigarettes and sour musk on her skin, she brought money and something sweet and still hot from a bakery. She’d shower until the water ran cold, then they’d breakfast in bed, crumbs be damned, and she’d tell him about the next town they’d go to – how it would have a park with grown-up swings and dogs playing, and they’d have a whole flat with a yellow kitchen and his bedroom would have dinosaur wallpaper and a shelf for all the books he’d get. He’d smile, lips sugar-frosted, imagining it all while knowing it wouldn’t happen. Not this time anyway.
Then one night Lizzie left him, wet kiss on his cheek, Milky Bar melting in his hand, Disney on the tiny TV, and never came back. She wasn’t there kicking off her battered heels when he woke, finding a smile for him through smeared lipstick. She wasn’t waving a paper bag puffing sugar. She wasn’t emerging from a steam-filled bathroom, bright pink, hair like inky tentacles smelling of coconut. She wasn’t there when dinnertime came and he ate cereal alone and didn’t think not to drink the last of the milk, when he climbed into bed and cried into his pillow like a baby, not the big boy she loved more than the sun and the moon.
When he’d eaten all the food, drank all the pop and ran out of clean pants. When fear crawled over his skin and into his fusty hair like lice, he broke a rule. Stepped out of the room into hazy sunlight, told a maid he was hungry. She scooped him up and her fleshy arms and neck smelled of soap powder as she sped him to the staff room. The other maids worried over him like grey-aproned birds, offering buttered toast with mushed banana, so much hot chocolate his teeth creaked. They washed his face and combed his hair, found pants and a t-shirt in a closet marked “Guest Unclaimed”. Mouth full of chocolatey-banana-bread, he asked if Lizzie was stuck in there and the bird maids gasped, hugged him too hard until a policewoman came, all soft face, starched uniform and strained smile and his life was never the same again.
*
Daddy stayed in the suit for weeks in the end. Mourning someone the nation never knew or cared about. Then Mum had enough, took him in the bathroom and they talked and talked. The shower running couldn’t cover the sound of Daddy wailing. I rubbed away my own tears, put the lasagne back in the oven to stay hot. I’d ask about Lizzie some time, but not tonight, tonight it would be enough if Daddy smiled.
JP Relph is a writer from Northwest England, hindered by three cats. Tea helps, milk first. She searches charity shops for haunted objects. JP writes about apocalypses a lot (despite not having the knees for one) including her short fiction collection, Know That We Held. She got a zombie story on the Wigleaf longlist, which may be the best thing ever.
