Lifesaving for Beginners

better form now because she’s had a good rest in the hospital and when Dad brought her back this morning he made her poached eggs on toast, which happens to be her favourite breakfast.
    Dad is wearing the apron I got him and making a lamb vindaloo, because a nurse in the hospital told Celia that a hot curry and a glass of full-bodied red wine might do the trick. Dad says, ‘I’ve got a lovely bottle of red in the cellar. It’s nearly eighty years old. Worth a fair bit now, I’d say.’
    That’s when Ant and Adrian put on their jackets and the scarves I got them and say they are going out.
    I don’t have the lamb vindaloo for dinner. It’s not because it’s too spicy for me. It’s just that there’s loads of chilli leftover from yesterday and I have that instead cos it’s my favourite. Nobody mentions the turkey with all the feathers hanging on the hook in the pantry.
    I’m watching Pirates of the Caribbean when the doorbell rings. Faith is texting Rob. They’ve been texting all day. I don’t know why they don’t just phone each other. I really don’t.
    Celia is sitting in the rocking chair with her feet in one of those foot massager things.
    The doorbell rings again.
    Faith says, ‘Milo, will you get the door?’
    I say, ‘I’m watching the movie.’
    ‘You’ve seen it a million times.’
    ‘It’s the really good bit.’
    ‘Milo.’
    I get up and step into the hall. The front door is made of coloured glass and through the glass I see her. The woman. She has long dark hair, like Faith’s. She’s wearing a purple coat. I’ve seen the coat before. In a photograph in Ed’s house. I’m pretty sure about that. I’m nearly positive.
    I stop walking. I say, ‘Faith?’
    She says, ‘What?’
    ‘I think it’s for you.’
    ‘What’s for me?’
    ‘The door. I think it’s for you.’
    ‘How could it be for me?’
    ‘Just come out here, will you?’
    I hear her sighing, putting her phone on the table beside the couch, getting up. She walks into the hall, looks at the woman on the other side of the door, then looks at me.
    She says, ‘Why don’t you answer the door?’
    I don’t say anything and she shakes her head and tousles my hair as she walks past me. She says, ‘You can be so weird sometimes, you know that?’ and she goes right ahead and opens the door.
    I make myself scarce.

 
    I end up saying, ‘I should have called first.’ After all the time I’ve had to think of something to say, that’s what I come up with. Hours I have spent, waiting on stand-by at Gatwick airport for planes to Edinburgh that never arrived, or got delayed or cancelled, while the snow fell and fell until you couldn’t see the runways anymore and the airport could do nothing but declare itself closed and people wept and roared at airport staff as if they had personally cancelled Christmas. I spent the night on a red plastic chair and finally managed to squeeze myself onto a flight to Glasgow. The airport at Edinburgh was closed because of the snow that kept falling and falling as if it would never stop. From Glasgow, I got a train to Edinburgh and a taxi to the address that Jack scribbled on the back of an envelope. I could not give an accurate or even approximate account of what thoughts rose and fell in my head in all that time. Which is disgraceful when you think that I could have spent at least some of those long, dreary hours coming up with something better to say at this door than, ‘I should have called first.’
    Even as I press the bell at the imposing door of the large, modern house in Edinburgh’s leafy suburbs, I haven’t yet come up with that killer line. I’m still rummaging around for something brilliant to say.
    ‘I should have called first.’ I think I say it because it’s Faith herself who answers the door and this throws me. When I see her face, I get a sensation of being picked up and hurled against something solid. A brick wall. I don’t know how I can be this unprepared. I’ve had nothing but time to think about everything. Surely, I should be more prepared. But I’m not. She looks like me. She looks like my daughter. If we walked down the street together, people would know. People would say, ‘She’s cut out of that woman.’ I wouldn’t have to say a thing.
    ‘I should have called first.’ My mouth is dry. For the first time since it began to snow, I feel the cold. It’s digging into me like a spade.
    Faith says, ‘Yes, you should have.’ She is wearing jeans,