Dot (Araminta Hall)

imprint of that last hug, the smell of the top of your head from that last moment, the sight of your eyes as I walked away?
Dot, I have laid all my cards on the table. I deserve nothing but contempt from you. I know that. But I am asking for your forgiveness. One of the things that I learnt when I took Adam to see my parents when he was first born was that being a parent does not give you some mystical inner knowledge. We have more training when we start a new job than when we have a baby and yet it is the most important, scary and difficult thing we’ll ever do in our lives. As I watched my mother hold my son I realised that she was nothing more than a guessing, fallible human. That she had made mistakes because that is what humans do. I made a huge, grotesque mistake which I have been repeating every day of my life for sixteen years. I’ve paid a large personal price for this and so, no doubt, have you. I am truly sorry and, whatever else comes from this, I hope you will always remember that. My leaving had nothing to do with you. You were, and I am sure are, an amazing, special and beautiful young lady. I have this dream that you will come and visit and we will sit round our kitchen table: you, me, Silver, Adam and Jake. That I will cook us dinner and we will all laugh at something and for a brief second it will feel normal. Although maybe the beauty of it will be in the fact that it isn’t normal, that our family will have been hard won. I am here waiting for you, we are all here waiting for you, and I hang on to this image so hard it sometimes feels like it has been branded onto my brain.
Enough. It is now 4:49 a.m. and I am going to get into my car and drive this letter to your house and post it through your front door. I have just been upstairs and told Silver this and she hugged me and told me she was proud. I peeked in on Adam and Jake, sleeping peacefully, and hope they will know their sister soon.
Dot, I love you. What happens now is up to you.
Dad xxx

21 … Kindness
    Dot woke into a suspension. She momentarily forgot where she was and panicked at the sparse surroundings of the B and B, but then she remembered her journey the night before and the reason why she was there. She reached out for her phone but it had turned itself off. She pressed the green button and it sang itself awake like a mechanical bird. It was 10.05 a.m. which meant she’d slept through her alarm – if it had even gone off – and now she’d probably have to queue for hours at Charles House. She dialled Mavis’s number in an attempt to quell her rising anxiety, but even after three attempts she couldn’t make the connection. She got out of bed and showered quickly in the tiny cubicle in the corner of her room and then dressed hurriedly. Something was wrong. Dot stood still for a moment, trying to work out what, but no answers came. There seemed to be a silence, as though time had trapped her in a bubble and she no longer existed.
    The front desk was empty when she got downstairs and the front door open. She could see the lady who had checked her in the evening before standing on the steps, slippers on her feet and a gaggle of people around her. They were smoking cigarettes and pointing up the road. Dot hoisted her bag further up her shoulder and stepped into the sunshine.
    ‘Excuse me,’ she said to the lady, who turned to reveal a tear-stained face. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I just wanted to pay my bill.’ The others turned round as well at this and Dot saw they were all crying, their faces grey, so that Dot wondered what reality she’d landed in.
    The woman waved her away. ‘Don’t worry.’
    ‘But I stayed here last night.’
    ‘It’s all over anyway. Doubt I’ll have a business this time next week. Doubt any of us will.’
    Dot tried to make sense of what she was hearing, but the group of people closed around her landlady again, leaving Dot to wonder if she actually existed. She looked down the road and saw five police cars parked across it at right angles and a crowd of people jostling to see over them. There were more women weeping on the pavements and children seemed to have vanished from the world. A shoe and a briefcase were pathetically discarded in the middle of the road. Then the noise exploded into her ears: the sirens peeling through the air, cutting and shattering normality. And the smell: acrid smoke and a choking sickness.
    Dot left the crying group and walked towards the cars. Halfway there she saw a