The
first night he had been genuinely angry.
As
always the two girls had gone up to bed together, and not since infancy any
antagonism between them over that, but then presently and for the first time he
had heard them calling between their open doors across the landing
Sister:
Goodnight.
ache1
before she became ache1: Goodnight.
Sister:
Goodnight.
ache1
before she became ache1: Goodnight.
Sister:
Goodnight.
ache1
before she became ache1: Goodnight.
Sister:
Goodnight.
ache1
before she became ache1: Goodnight.
Sister:
Goodnight.
incessant
until he had leapt from his chair and yanked the sitting room door open to
bellow
Father:
SHUT UP!
which
albeit giggling they had done.
The
second night not even bothering to rise, he had simply leaned far back in his armchair
to work the door-handle with the very tips of his fingers, calling from where
he was
Father:
SHUT UP!
in
a voice from which the previous night’s rage was absent.
The
third consecutive night of
Sister:
Goodnight.
ache1
before she became ache1: Goodnight.
Sister:
Goodnight.
ache1
before she became ache1: Goodnight.
and
he and his wife had exchanged a broad smile. He would let them go at it a
little back and forth before again reaching back to pull open the door enough
to let his
Father
(almost singing): SHUT UP!
render
them silent.
It
had quickly become an unspoken family ritual, mentioned neither the following
mornings at breakfast nor even as the girls goodnighted their parents prior to
heading upstairs.
Finally,
he one night had indulged his wife’s curiosity to
Mother:
Let them have their time. Just... Don’t shout at them, just let them... Okay
okay, if they keep it up for five minutes
holding
up her hand with the fingers splayed
Mother:
you get out there and raise the roof. I bet they don’t though.
and
she had been right. It took less than one minute to dry both girls into a
silence of boredom and fatigue, although the youngest daughter had called out
ache1
before she became ache1: Goodnight?... Goodnight?...
a
few times without reply, in vain hope she might sustain her sister’s insolence
a little longer.
It
is to this he immediately returns when things begin to fall apart in the
aftermath of this youngest daughter’s failure to come home one day after
school, and again later in responding to a local police request he attempted to
sift from out the packets of recent family photographs that single image as
would best represent her, her smiles and daft faces now in awful contrast to
the continuing actual blank of her absence.
