Dawn of the Dad
Today is Father’s Day, which seemed like a good time to share a short story I wrote earlier this year. It’s about a zombie apocalypse, with Dad jokes.
Be warned: there’s some rude language, and it’s quite violent in places.
The first sign of trouble came as we passed the Build-A-Bear Workshop.
At least, that was the first sign I noticed. I’ll admit that I wasn’t at my most observant; my six-month-old daughter was doing her best to ensure I never got more than five non-consecutive hours of sleep per day. They say being awake for 18 hours is the same as drinking four pints. I felt like I was drunk and hungover all at once.
But I was also trying to be a good husband. I might have been exhausted, but my wife was dead on her feet. We needed more onesies, and she needed some time to herself, so here I was: trudging around a shopping mall like an extra in a zombie movie. I was just grateful my Dad had offered to come along with me, even if it felt a bit like babysitting two people instead of one. My mum had offered to try and make the house look less like an active warzone while I was gone, and she insisted I take Dad as well to prevent him from trying to help.
Still, as anyone who’s seen a zombie movie will tell you, a shopping mall is the last place you want to find yourself when the world comes to an end.
As we passed the front of the store, a lanky youth with a skull on his t-shirt and a black fringe covering his face was trying valiantly to ignore the large man jabbing him in the ribs.
“Hey, son - why’re you being so grizzly?”
The son’s eyes rolled skywards.
“For God’s sake, Dad!” he hissed through gritted teeth, as the father began to guffaw. “Can you not?” The fringe flopped over his eyes as he stared down at his phone.
For a moment, the older man’s face contorted with anger - eyes flashing, nostrils flaring. Then his expression softened, and his hands dropped to his sides. “Sorry, son,” he muttered quietly, “you’re right.”
There was a long pause, punctuated only by the staccato tapping of the son’s thumbs on his phone screen. Then a beefy arm snaked its way around his son’s slim shoulders, as a smile slid over his face.
“I’ve been pretty un-BEAR-able, haven't I?!”
The man roared with laughter, his pudgy face turning crimson as he pulled his unwilling son into a tight, one-handed embrace.
My dad shook his head and smiled as we walked away. “That’ll be you one day, just you wait,” he said with a knowing smile. I shook my head.
“The day I start making jokes like that, I’ll ask her to put me out of my misery,” I said, pointing at the tiny figure in the stroller I was pushing.
Dad didn’t reply. I turned around to find he’d stopped following me and was starting back at the Build-A-Bear Workshop. The red-faced father was continuing to guffaw, but his grip on his son’s shoulders had changed. As they both began to bend at the waist, I saw that he had the younger man in what looked like a painfully tight headlock. As they struggled, both the father’s laughter and the son’s protests grew louder and louder.
“Dad, what are you doing?” the boy grunted, his face turning redder and redder. “For fuck’s sake, get off!” His fists beat uselessly against his father’s bulging arm. The father’s face was still contorted in a rictus grin, but with every passing moment, the noises coming from his mouth sounded less like laughter. Less human.
“Always so bloody embarrassed by me, aren’t you?” he growled, the corners of his mouth foaming with spittle. “Always trying to get away from me. Well, you can’t get away now, can you, you little shit?”
My chest tightened as I looked around for a security guard.
“We should find some help,” I said quietly. “Dad, see if you can — wait, what are you doing?”
But Dad was already striding towards the pair, his face set in that thin-lipped expression he always got right before he gave someone a Jolly Good Talking To.
“Right, come on now,” he said briskly, reaching forward and attempting to prise the son out of his father’s viselike grip. “Let’s just calm down, alright mate? No need to lose your head…”
The man turned his chartreuse face towards my father, his too-wide grin never faltering. The arm clenched around his son’s neck tightened by another few notches, while the fingers of his free hand slowly curved into a fist. Before I could even draw breath to shout a warning the man’s fist collided with Dad’s stomach and sent him flying backwards. He landed with a thump and skidded across the floor until his head bounced off a nearby bin. My cry finally found its way out of my mouth, and any heads that weren’t already looking swivelled in our direction.
The boy was gasping for air now; his fingers tugged pathetically at his father’s sleeve while his feet scrabbled for purchase on the polished floor.
“Dad…” he whispered. “Don’t… please…”
The father lifted his free hand and slowly caressed his son’s cheek. Then he placed his palm on his son’s head and slowly began to turn. The son’s eyes bulged and streamed with tears as his face disappeared from view. There was a brief moment of resistance, but the father just readjusted his grip and kept going.
Even standing 20 feet away, I heard the cracks of the boy’s vertebrae snapping.
The father kept on twisting.
Tendons strained and skin stretched to breaking point, until all at once, head and body separated with a wet crunch. The father held his son’s head aloft like a trophy as the rest of the boy slumped to the floor, staring into eyes that were still wide with fear even as the light began to fade from them.
There was silence all around us, save the burbling of a nearby fountain and the tinny refrains of Ed Sheeran.
The father opened his mouth, and spoke in a guttural, inhuman rasp:
“No need to lose your head, son.”
Then he turned on his heel and lumbered into the Build-A-Bear Workshop, the severed head at his side leaving a trail of blood in his wake.
I don’t know who screamed first. It might have been me. I was too busy hauling my father to his feet. We were immediately swallowed in the lemming-like throng of terrified shoppers searching for the nearest exit. I shoved the stroller through the mass of screaming people. As we ran, a gang of seven or eight men — all middle-aged — poured out of a kitchenware store called Boys and Grills, brandishing bloodstained knives and spatulas. One had a gore-covered apron reading “Kiss the Cook.”
I heard a yell to my right and turned just in time to see a young woman flying through the window of a sporting goods shop in a shower of broken glass. A pot-bellied man in a red polo shirt stepped through the hole he’d just made, a bent titanium golf club swung over one shoulder. Even from a distance, I could see that the head of the club was covered in blood and shards of bone.
The golfer looked at me, standing next to my dazed-looking Dad with one hand holding. He raised the bloodstained driver in a kind of mock salute.
“Come on, pal — join the club!” he cackled, advancing towards the young woman trying to get back to her feet. I pushed Dad in the small of the back.
“We have to keep going,” I urged him.
“But what about her?” he gasped, trying to turn around and look at the wounded woman on the floor. “We can’t just leave —”
“Move, Dad!”
I wrestled the pushchair onwards. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the woman raise a hand to us.
“Please…” she shouted as the golfer advanced on her. “I’m bleeding…”
The golfer raised the club in both hands again.
“Hi, Bleeding,” he shouted. “I’m Dad!”
Neither of us saw him bring the club back down. But we both heard the dull thud it made.
We rounded a corner and suddenly, there was the exit. A stream of people was bolting through the door and into the car park, dodging around a bottleneck of cars inching their way towards the exits. The sound of screeching tyres and irate horns grew louder and louder — until the roar of a nearby motor drowned everything else out.
I wrenched to a stop, shoes skidding on the polished floor. Standing in the doorway of a lawnmower repair shop called Flymo to the Moon was a mountain of a man in a Hawaiian shirt, revving a cordless mower.
“Time to kick some grass!” he cried. Then he gunned the lawnmower and ran straight towards the throng of people trying to get through the doors.
I wrenched the pushchair around. Behind me, the air was thick with the smell of blood and grass clippings. As I looked for a way through the crowds, I realised I had lost sight of Dad. Just as I was about to call out for him, I faintly heard his voice call my name. I turned and saw him standing outside another storefront. A sign across the window read CLOSED FOR HOLIDAY. The door next to it was wide open.
My heart pounded and my lungs burned as I heaved the pushchair towards the shop.
The door was twenty metres away.
Then ten.
Then five.
Then my ears were filled with roaring, and I saw my father’s mouth open in a silent scream.
I jerked my head around and watched as the spinning blades of the lawnmower passed inches from my face. The man holding the other end stumbled as he completed his arc, then turned to face me. Both the mower and the man’s Hawaiian shirt were crimson. Neither had been that colour originally.
“Watch out, son!” said Lawnmower Man, his voice a strangled croak. “I almost clipped you!” He heaved the mower above his head with both hands, the veins in his arms bulging with the effort.
Before I could even think, I took a step forward and kicked Lawnmower Man’s belly as hard as I could. His eyes widened as the wind left his lungs with a grunt. His arms wobbled, then buckled entirely as he let go of the mower.
There was a wet crunching sound like a watermelon being thrown into a woodchipper. For one surreal moment, he continued to stand upright: a man in a Hawaiian shirt with a lawnmower where his head should be. Then his knees buckled. I didn’t see him hit the floor — I had already pushed the stroller through the open door and dived in after it. Dad slammed it shut behind me as I looked around for something to keep it closed. A metal coffee table sat nearby; magazines scattered as I dragged it over and wedged it against the doorframe, praying it would hold.
For a few seconds, all I could hear were the screams of the crowds outside. Then the whole door rattled as someone outside tried the handle. There was a thump, then another, as someone threw their weight against it. Was it one of them, or someone trying to escape?
I glanced at my father. He very slowly shook his head, a trembling finger pressed tightly to his lips. His other hand was clamped tightly over my daughter’s mouth, muffling her cries. There was one more thud, then we heard footsteps as the figure on the other side of the door moved on.
Finally, after an eternity of waiting, the noises of panic outside faded away to nothing, leaving the three of us in silence. I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding. The room was dark, but as my eyes adjusted, I took in my surroundings for the first time. Three chairs stood in a row in front of a low counter covered in scissors and straight razors, facing a mirror that ran the width of one wall. A small fridge sat in the corner under a small desk, on which sat a heavy old-fashioned cash register. On the other side was a tall shelf, lined with jars of pomade and bottles of shampoo.
We were back in the barber’s shop — Chop Suey, it was called. The owners had a sense of humour and a thing for heavy metal.
“That was close,” I muttered, taking a deep breath. I checked the entrance. Our makeshift barricade looked like it would hold, and the tinted windows were covered by wrought-iron bars as part of the industrial aesthetic. It seemed an odd choice for a barbershop, but right now I wasn’t complaining. I grabbed one of the bars and gave it an experimental tug. It held. Unless the men outside could find a blowtorch or an angle grinder, they weren’t getting in. Thank God the new hardware store, Tough as Nails, wasn’t due to open for another month and a half.
Christ, why do so many of the stores here have really bad puns in their names?
I shook the thought out of my head, dug my phone out of my pocket and held it up. No bars.
“Have you got any signal?” I turned to him. “My phone’s not… Dad, what are you doing?!”
My dad hadn’t been paying attention to a single word I said. He was still kneeling in front of the pushchair. And his hand was still clamped firmly over my daughter’s mouth.
I leapt across the room, grabbed his wrist and pulled as hard as I could, but his hand refused to move. His eyes were wide, and his body was shaking, but the edges of his mouth were curved in what looked almost like a sneer.
“Dad, stop!”
In an instant, the spell broke. My dad’s eyes fluttered and refocused. He looked at me with confusion, then down at his hand. With a yelp, he yanked it away from my daughter’s mouth as if he had been burned.
“Oh God,” he moaned, stepping away. “Son, I’m so sorry, I just… I was trying to make sure she didn’t make too much noise, and…”
“It’s fine, Dad.” I unbuckled the straps around the baby and pulled her into my arms. Her eyes were wide and questioning, though the red marks around her mouth from my father’s long fingers were already starting to fade. She whimpered quietly as she nuzzled into my chest.
“She’s OK,” I said aloud. Across the room, Dad let out a shuddering breath and collapsed into one of the spinning chairs.
“Thank God… thank God…”
I went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Dad, it’s OK.” I squeezed his shoulder. He turned his eyes to me. “You were scared. You were trying to protect her.” He nodded and wiped his eyes. “But we have to get out of here,” I continued, delicately setting the baby back into the pushchair. Does your phone have any bars?”
Dad pulled out his phone and stared at the screen. Then he put on his glasses. Then he spent a full minute moving his hand back and forth as though playing an imaginary trombone.
“No,” he said eventually, even though I’d already looked over his shoulder to find out for myself.
“OK. Let’s think this through… It sounds pretty quiet out there, but we should stay put for a while. There’s bottled water in that mini fridge for us, and we’ve got formula, so we should be able to wait for a few hours.” I pulled the bottles out of my bag and stuffed them into the fridge. “Then we’ll check and see if the coast is clear and make a break for the exit.”
Dad looked nervously towards the doors.
“And if it’s not?”
I sank into the chair next to his and looked down at the baby. Miraculously, she had fallen asleep. I watched her tiny chest writhe and fall for a moment.
“We can’t stay here forever,” I said, turning to Dad. “We need to get home to her mother.”
“And your mother,” Dad snapped. “Don’t forget about her.”
“I wasn’t, Dad,” I said quietly. “Are you OK?”
His expression softened. “Sorry son,” he muttered. “My head’s killing me. Probably just the adrenaline wearing off, or something.”
I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and passed it to him. He took it gratefully, drained half in one go and passed the rest to me. We sat for a moment in silence, watching the baby as she slept.
“How’d you know the door was open?” I asked, to fill the silence.
Dad shrugged. “I was just trying everything. I got lucky.”
“Well, good thing you did, or that bloke with the lawnmower would’ve…”
“Clipped you,” Dad said. He shook his head. “What a stupid bloody joke.”
I sat for a moment, turning his words over in my mind. It hadn’t just been Lawnmower Man, had it? The man who’d ripped his son’s head off outside the Build-A-Bear Workshop – I tried not to examine that thought too closely – had been making awful bear puns right before he turned. And then there was the man with the golf club. His words echoed in my head:
Hi, Bleeding… I’m Dad!
“They were all making Dad jokes.” I looked up at Dad, who was staring at me in confusion. “All the people out there, the ones who went crazy… they were all making fucking dad jokes.”
“Language, son,” he muttered.
I ignored him. “And they were all men. All old enough to be…”
I suddenly realized that I was trapped inside a very small room with a man who was about the same age as the ones currently murdering everything in sight.
Then I looked back over at the tiny body dozing helplessly in the corner. My blood ran cold.
“We have to get away from her, Dad.”
Dad leaned over and put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s OK, son, she’s fine, neither of us are – "
“We’re not right now, but what if – "
“You saw how quickly it came over them all. One minute they were fine and the next…” Dad’s voice trailed off. “The point is, we’re still fine. I don’t feel any homicidal urges, do you?” he added, forcing a chuckle.
“No, but…” I started. Dad looked at me closely.
“But what, son?”
For a moment, I couldn’t finish the sentence. Shame gripped my throat as I clenched and unclenched my fists. But I felt the words I wanted to say bubbling up from the pit of my stomach and catching in my throat. If I didn’t get them out, I would choke on them. I swallowed the bile in my mouth and spat them out.
“Sometimes I feel like I could kill her.”
Dad said nothing. He just looked at me calmly, waiting for me to say more. I ran a hand through my hair and took a deep breath.
“Last week… we were both so tired, and it was my turn to stay awake with her. She wouldn’t stop crying. I tried everything. She wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, her nappy was clean, but she just kept screaming. And I could see myself wrapping my hands around her little neck and just…” My voice trailed off as my free hand squeezed my coffee cup harder and harder.
I finally risked a glance at Dad’s face. I expected him to look at me with disgust or try and snatch his grandchild out of my arms. Instead, he took another drink from the water bottle and gave me a small, sad smile.
“When you were about a year old, we took you on the ferry to France. It was the first time we’d tried taking you so far away from home and we were struggling. We were tired, we kept snapping at each other — sound familiar?”
I nodded. Dad smiled again and carried on. “I must have spent about an hour walking around and around the top deck of the ferry trying to get you to settle. At one point I was standing by the rail of the ship, feeling horribly seasick, and I thought to myself: what if I just dropped him in?” He took a long, shuddering breath. “And as soon as I’d said it, I felt like the worst human being who’d ever lived. It took me years to realise that every new father has those thoughts at some point. Every single one.”
He looked at the bundle in my arms and reached over to tickle her. She ignored him and carried on draining the bottle.
“That’s the thing about being a father,” he said. “You’d do anything for your children. You’d die for them. You’d even kill for them. And sometimes, you want to squeeze the life out of them.” He put a hand on my shoulder and stared into my eyes. “Trust me. It’s perfectly normal.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Dad.”
We sat for a long moment in the semi-comfortable silence that always develops when we were alone. I almost forgot about the hordes of rampaging patriarchs outside.
“It’s a shame that the barber’s closed,” I muttered, running my hands through my hair. “I really could’ve used a haircut.”
“Which one?” Dad said, chuckling.
I rolled my eyes. I’d been hearing that joke since I was twelve, and time had not made it any wittier. It obviously tickled him, though, because his chuckle soon turned into a full-throated guffaw. He tipped his head back and laughed louder, the sound echoing around the small room. I looked at the baby, who squirmed in her sleep, then back towards the door.
“Hey, come on, not so loud Dad. She’s sleeping and we don’t —”
I couldn’t finish the sentence, because a fist collided with the side of my head.
For a second, I saw only white. The world spun around me as the swivel chair carried me in a complete revolution. When I came round again, I saw my father standing over me, his right hand still balled into a fist. I clutched my now-throbbing ear and stared at my father.
“Jesus Christ, why is everything about that fucking baby?!” he snarled. “Everything your mother and I have done for you, everything we’ve sacrificed, and as soon as that little thing came along it’s like we didn’t exist anymore!”
I stared uncomprehendingly at my father. Just a couple of hours ago he had been the epitome of calm, holding the baby close to his chest in the car park while I struggled to unfold her pushchair. But as he stared at her now, his eyes were filled with something I didn’t think he was even capable of feeling: pure, burning rage.
“Dad, listen to yourself!” I cried, feeling my own eyes begin to prickle with tears. “She’s just a baby, she’s your granddaughter…”
“She’s a fucking liability is what she is. If it wasn’t for her and that fucking pushchair, we’d be home and safe, instead of sitting here in the dark like fucking fish in a fucking barrel!” His eyes darted around the moment and flashed as they alighted on something on the countertop. He reached down and snatched it up before I could see what it was. Then he locked eyes with mine again, and his grin widened slowly as he unfolded it.
The blade of a straight razor gleamed in the low light of the shop.
“Dad —”
I tried rising from my seat, but before I could stand, he shoved me in the chest and sent me sprawling back down. He looked at the blade, then down at me, smiling again.
“Let’s cut her loose, shall we? Shave ourselves some trouble?” he said, turning slowly to the sleeping figure in the pushchair.
I could barely catch my breath. My ear was still ringing. But as Dad drew closer to his granddaughter, blade in hand, something surged within me. I’d read all the stories about new parents, high on adrenaline, lifting entire cars with one hand to save a child. Turns out it wasn’t bullshit after all.
“Leave her alone!” I roared, hurling myself out of the chair. I collided with his waist and we both fell to the floor. His leg kicked out at the pushchair as he tumbled, and it fell the other way. As I landed on top of him he grunted. The razor clattered away across the room. From under the stroller came a startled wailing — the fall had woken the baby.
I scrambled to my feet, but before I could take more than a step towards the pushchair, a pair of hands gripped my shoulders and turned me around. My father’s bloodshot eyes were inches from my own. This close to him, I could see the flecks of foam at the corner of his mouth and the small patch under his chin that he always seemed to miss when he shaved.
“I’m very disappointed in you, son,” he whispered, spraying me with flecks of spit. His eyes flickered to a point over my shoulder for a fraction of a second, and he broke into another shark-like smile. “I think you need to reflect on your actions…”
I went flying backwards. Both my feet left the ground, and I slammed into the wall. I heard a crunch of breaking glass and realised I’d been thrown into the mirror.
Reflect on your actions…
He was making Dad jokes, too.
I was hauled to my feet and shoved against the counter. I felt hands close around my throat, and this time I knew they weren’t just trying to keep me quiet. I looked into the eyes of my father, and a rabid animal stared back at me.
My hands scrabbled across the wooden counter, desperately seeking something I could use as a weapon. My fingers curled around something hard and spherical, and I flung it towards my father’s head. With inhuman speed, he whipped one of his own hands away from my neck and snatched the object away. We both stared at the spray bottle before he erupted into a fit of giggles. They sounded like noises a hyena would make, not a man in his mid-sixties.
“Come on, son,” he laughed. “Say it, don’t spray it!”
He aimed the gun at my face and squeezed the trigger. Cold water splashed into my eyes just seconds before I squeezed them shut. I blindly lashed out with a leg and felt my foot make heavy contact with Dad’s groin. He groaned and loosened his grip on my throat. I managed to take a shuddering breath, but then my vision turned white again as the thing that had once been my father cracked the spray bottle across my forehead with enough force to crack the plastic. Blood trickled from a gash on my forehead, diluted by the water on my face. Through bleary eyes, I saw a figure in a sensible shirt and slacks loom over me.
“Oh dear, son,” said my Not-Dad, voice dripping with mock concern. “I’m not getting through to you, am I?” He reached out with his free hand and grabbed something I couldn’t see off the desk. “Let me dry another tactic,” he added. I felt something small and tough wrap itself around my neck. Blinking away blood droplets, I could see Dad was holding onto the cord of some appliance or other. Probably a hairdryer, I found myself thinking, given his choice of words.
It was getting harder to breathe. Harder to concentrate. My limbs felt slow and heavy, and my vision was getting darker.
Maybe you should just sleep, I thought. This is obviously a horrible nightmare. Just relax and let go, and soon you’ll wake up in your own bed with your wife and child and your father won’t be trying to kill you anymore.
I felt myself slipping away. Then a piercing cry stabbed through my brain, jolting me back into reality.
The baby. She was still trapped in the pushchair.
“SHUT UP!” shouted the thing that looked like Dad. The sound of his voice fragments of our conversation earlier floating to the front of my brain.
That’s the thing about being a father.
You’d do anything for your children.
You’d die for them.
You’d even kill for them.
My fingers scrabbled once more, the tips brushing the end of something else. It was cold, metallic, and just out of reach.
Ruth bawled again.
“SHUT UP YOU LITTLE SHIT!” Dad bellowed, turning slightly. And as he turned, his grip on the cord around my neck loosened by a fraction. I stretched the extra inch I had been afforded, feeling my shoulder threaten to pop out of its socket. My fingers finally closed around the piece of metal, and before I could think I thrust it up and into Dad’s face.
His arms dropped to his sides. The cord — which I now saw was indeed connected to a hairdryer — went slack. Sweet air rushed back down my windpipe as I wrestled it from my neck. Dad lifted a shaking hand to his head, where a pair of scissors jutted out from just below his earlobe. He clapped a hand over the wound, blood spurting from between his fingers.
Then the man who raised me — who taught me to shave and ride a bike, who stood next to me at my wedding and cried when he first held his granddaughter — toppled to the floor, face against the tile, and lay still.
I staggered to the mewling pushchair, wiping the tears and blood from my eyes. I gingerly turned it over. The baby’s face was crimson, but otherwise she seemed completely unharmed. I unclipped her harness with shaking hands and clasped her tightly to my chest.
“It’s OK, baby girl,” I muttered as I bounced her up and down. “It’s going to be OK.”
I didn’t believe it. It seemed she didn’t either, given that she didn’t stop crying. But it felt like the kind of thing a father should say to his child when the world was ending around them. The bruise on my temple began to pound again, throbbing in time with her wails.
Christ, how could I make it stop?
Suddenly, I remembered the bottles of formula. I grabbed one out of the fridge, trying to ignore the bloody fingerprints I left on the side of the bottle, and held it to the baby’s mouth. She took a few tentative suckles, then broke her latch and continued to bawl.
“Sorry sweetheart,” I told her, readjusting my grip on the bottle. “I know you’re used to having it warm, but there’s no kettle in here and I can’t exactly pop out to a café and ask for someone to microwave it for me…” I guided the teat back towards Ruth’s mouth, but she squirmed out of its way and kept on screeching.
“Oh for God’s sake, will you stop being such a fucking princess and take the fucking bottle?!”
The words hung bitterly in the air, and it took me a few moments to realise they’d come out of my mouth. I looked down and saw that the fingers of my left hand were gripping her shoulders tightly — uncomfortably close to her throat. I willed them to relax, then gently tried the bottle again. This time she took it, gulping happily away like nothing was wrong. I lowered myself heavily in the chair with a sigh.
As I tried to get comfortable, I nudged something with my foot. I looked down: the tip of my shoe rested gently on my Dad’s cheek. The pair of scissors stood straight up out of the pockmarked surface of his face, like a flag left behind by the world’s most violent astronaut.
Something clicked in my head at the sight of those shears, and a chuckle forced its way up and out of my throat. Then another. And another. Before I knew what was happening, I found myself sitting in a barricaded barbershop, my father’s blood congealing on the sole of my trainer, roaring with laughter while tears ran down my cheeks.
As I finally managed to catch my breath and wipe my eyes, something else built up inside me. It was an itch in my brain, and a churning in the pit of my stomach; twin specks of grit around which a single idea coalesced like a pearl stuck in my throat. If I didn’t get it out, I might choke on it.
I looked down at my darling daughter and smiled as I said it aloud.
“Talk about a clip round the ear, eh sweetheart?”