A Father's Advice

There’s nothing quite as satisfying as smelling your dinner being prepared and cooked in the kitchen when you’re so desperately hungry you would eat anything put in front of you, only to have it placed on your lap still steaming from the oven. In this case it was a plate of shepherd’s pie with peas and broccoli on the side with an enormous Yorkshire pudding. The smell of freshly cooked lamb mince, Lea & Perrin’s and gravy filled my nostrils.

“Thank you.” I said, not even bothering to look up at my wife. I started to blow on the food knowing full well that the mash potato contained almost as much latent heat as a small geyser.

Knock, knock. I looked at my wife and she looked at me.

“Who’s that dad?” Asked my youngest daughter Abigail.

“I don’t know, I’ll find out when I answer the door.”

I placed my plate on the windowsill and gave the sleeping dog in front of the fire a warning look. She glanced at me and went back to sleep; the warning having been noted.

When I opened the door, for some reason my gaze was cast downward. The first thing I noticed was the highly polished toe caps of black boots and as I looked up, combat trousers with a crease sewn into the legs. I had a feeling I knew who these people were but confusion as to why they were at my door stopped me from having a moment of clarity. Their faces were serious and as one of them removed a notebook from his jacket pocket and looked down at it, the other quickly interjected and asked:

“Mr Chadwick?”

I nodded, then finding my voice “Yes”

“May we come in?”

I stood to one side and as they stepped over the threshold, they removed their caps. I led them to the living room door and their large frames filled the opening.

“Do you want me to take the girls upstairs?” Asked my wife, Lisa.

“Probably for the best ma’am” replied on of the officers.

I couldn’t really take much in after that. There was a game we used to play in secondary school, not a very nice one I recall. It was a trend that emerged from a fizzy drink advert on the TV where an unsuspecting person would have another person’s hands clapped around both ears, as though they were having their head squashed between two big brass cymbals. The sudden pressure on the ear drums would cause a kind of temporary deafness, ringing and tinnitus. Then the other person would shout “tango’d!” That’s exactly how I felt when the officers told me my father had been killed crossing the road earlier that same evening.

The funeral was a few days later, the wake was held at my parent’s house – an ex-council owned terrace in need of a lick of paint. My three sisters were helping my mother in the kitchen, clearing plates and cups as the last of the friends and extended family departed for the day. I sat there on the sofa in stunned silence. My head was full of emotion but also numb at the same time. It was as if what happened that day happened to someone else. My whole family and I were merely spectators. Lisa had taken the girls back home; said I could do with “spending time with the family”.

“Whiskey?” Asked Joe, my younger brother.

I’d slunk back into the chair with my eyes closed without even realising it. I could smell the sweet aroma of a single malt near my face. I opened one eye to see a glass of amber coloured liquid in by brother’s outstretched hand.

“You wasted no time.” I chided.

“Always gave the old lad violent hiccups this stuff. Remember?”

“Yes,” hissed Ray (my older brother) knowingly. “I bought him this for his sixtieth, took one sip and couldn’t stop for about 20 minutes.”

We all smiled at the memory. I sat up and propped my elbows on my knees to lean forward whilst I nursed the glass.

Suddenly the melancholy silence was broken by a loud bang. My mother had dumped a large cardboard box in the middle of the floor. The clatter of the contents inside the box made quite a noise and shook all three of us.

“Before you all get drunk on your old dad’s whiskey, have a look through that lot.” My mother said to the three of us.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Open it and see.”

Inside it was full of letters and keepsakes, all if it worthless in terms of monetary value but priceless in sentimentality. Then amongst the Citizen watches and gold fountain pens was a small black book. It was like a small pocket notebook that could be held in one hand with hard covers. On the front was a yellow sticky note with my name “Ken” and held in place with an elastic band wrapped three times round the book. I picked it up and attempted to unwrap the elastic band. It was that old and worn it snapped and fell apart in my hand. I flipped the book open and attempted to make sense of what was written on the first page.

“What’s all this about mam?” I asked.

“How am I supposed to know? Your dad had this box of old odds and ends and said I was to give it to you lads after his day. I never asked what he was up to. He just kept clearing stuff out and this is what he kept hold of.”

“Do the lasses get one too?”

“Yeah, they’ve got theirs in the kitchen now”

“Why, what’s in the book Ken?” Asked Joe.

“Here, see if you can make sense of it.” I said as I handed him the book.

Inside the book on the first page was yesterday’s date “Wednesday 15th November 2017” and six numbers. Lottery numbers maybe? Didn’t make sense to Joe and I, especially as my dad never played. Always said it was “a tax on people who are bad at maths”. Whatever it all meant the book was little more than gibberish. Further down the page was a simple line that said: “fix the socket”. Joe handed it back to me and I stuffed it into my suit jacket pocket.

The little I remember of that evening was that the three of us brothers finished that bottle of single malt and I awoke on the sofa the following morning covered by a blanket my mother must have draped over me whilst I passed out.

In the weeks that followed I forgot all about the black notebook. It must have slipped out of my pocket when I returned home and found itself lodged between the sofa arm and the cushion. I was stretching back on the sofa when I felt it digging into my back. I yanked it out of the gap and looked through it again when it fell open to a page headed “Monday 11th December 2017.” Why on earth, if my father wrote in this book, was he writing about dates and times in the future? Suddenly I was interested. I looked down at the page then at my watch, the late ITV news was just starting on the TV in the background. The familiar music started, and I could hear the presenter talking – I wasn’t paying much attention. The page was dated today and simply said underneath the heading “NY, 3, 7:20.” I had no idea what it meant at all. When I looked up at the TV, remote in hand ready to change the channel – I froze. The news broadcaster was reporting a story about a suicide bomber in New York who attempted to detonate a pipe bomb at around 7:20 during the rush hour and how it killed 3 people.

I looked at the book and back at the TV. I rewound the TV just to make sure I heard it correctly. I felt the colour and warmth drain from my face. A chill crept up my spine and a pounding in the base of my skull emerged. I took a large sip of whiskey from my glass on the windowsill and gulped it down. I mimed a swear word in stunned silence.

Two days later I was on my way home from work and as I reversed the car into a space on the main street near the shops, I already knew what I was going for. Almost on auto-pilot I’d decided to treat the girls to some sweets. I locked the car from the key fob and as I nonchalantly dropped the keys into my jacket pocket, I heard them ‘thud’ against something else in there. I recalled when I first read the notebook at my parent’s house how the first entry looked like lottery numbers. I had passed off Monday’s events as just a fluke, so it was with a smile on my face when I retrieved the book and opened it to a page dated Wednesday 13th December 2017. Sure enough, there were six numbers (the last one worn and faded) written beneath the date separated by commas. ‘What harm can it do?’ I thought. I completely ignored the little letters “FTS” written at the bottom of the page and walked into the McColl’s newsagents and put all six numbers on a lottery ticket, bought some chocolate bars then drove home.

I clear forgot all about the lottery ticket until during the school run the following morning the local radio station was abuzz with news that a local news agent had sold a winning lottery ticket last night and as yet had been unclaimed.

“Do you think it’s us Dad?” Asked my eldest daughter Sophie.

“I doubt it darlin’. Remember what your granddad always used to say? It’s just a tax on those who are bad at maths.”

We laughed it off.

The months that followed were a whirlwind. We were living in the same house debt free. All of the numbers I could read came up, just the last one I had to guess at didn’t. I felt my father had left me a gift in giving me that little black notebook and try as I might to explain any of it – I simply couldn’t. We won just over twenty-grand and although it was more money than I was ever likely to see again in my lifetime it certainly wouldn’t buy us a new house. Various rooms in the house were undergoing renovation and decoration. My wife and I lounged back into the new sofa stomachs full of takeaway food.

“Do you want to put a movie on?” She asked.

“OK, I’ll pour us another drink.”

The girls, Sophie and Abigail were asleep upstairs finally and as I looked down at my watch it was a little after nine thirty. As I heaved myself up from the sofa there was a crack and a thud from upstairs. My wife looked at me and I knew it was my turn.

“Get back in to bed you two.” I shouted up as I walked past the living room door.

No answer.

“Did you hear me?” I asked.

No answer.

With a deep sigh I turned back to the door and plodded upstairs. To my horror I found Sophie sat holding Abigail in stunned silence. Her hair was frizzy and smelled singed. Her little hands were black and a little white charging lead belonging to an iPad was still in her grasp, the bare wires burned where the plug ought to have been. Acrid black smoke was pouring from the wall socket, the wall socket that was off the wall and that should have been properly fixed months ago. Suddenly it all made sense, the first time I read the black notebook it said: “fix the socket” and in the pages that followed “FTS” an abbreviation of the same.