Track List:
Honestly?, American Football
The Spoils, Massive Attack
Miss Misery (Early Version), Elliott Smith
Brutal Ardour, Brian Eno
Into My Arms, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Break My Heart Right, James Bay
~
May, 2018
The linoleum floor of Heathrow airport reflects the fluorescent lights, a green-tinged back and forth that Ray wants to shut her eyes to. She'd planned to get the red-eye flight back from New York, but there had been last minute changes and instead of sleeping as they crossed the Atlantic, she was awake the whole seven hours - not to count the time through security and baggage collection. As she traipses through arrivals, Ray is struck by the peculiar wistfulness and nostalgia that infects all travellers upon returning home; the sense of unchanging surroundings while oneself feels altered, the comfort of familiarity which is seen, as if for the first time, with new eyes, and the almost unbearable romanticism of travelling alone while being surrounded by strangers seeking out their own loved ones. It's into the crowd of the arrivals that Ray searches for her father. She'd last spoken to him in the business class lounge at JFK, agreeing what time to meet back in Heathrow. And now, here she is, greeted by the sight of her father curiously absent.
Never in her life has her father failed to show up when required. Gerard has fastidiously and precisely attended every parents evening and school play, remaining silently proud of his only child - the exact same feeling whether she was a five-year-old ballet dancer staring out from under stage lights or a quietly studious eleven year old requesting a biography of Ada Lovelace for her birthday. And Ray has always felt the presence of this paternal fidelity, so she has never in all her twenty-eight years wondered what she might do on the day her father failed her. Such a thing is anathema to her, as hard to imagine as the day two Suns rise at dawn or a dog standing up on its legs and speaking in English. But the arrivals hall remains empty of her father, his weathered face objectionably missing from the blur of people around her. It takes her a full minute to realise that in the first instance, she should call him. Perhaps he's simply stuck in a queue in the car-park, after all, and will spend the drive to Battersea bemoaning the state of motorists in the city, a perverse and warped enjoyment shared between them and derived from his ongoing rant. The line rings once, twice, three times before Gerard picks up.
"Ray, hello, is that you?" Her dad's voice crackles on the other end, pitching up with emotion in a way she's never heard before.
"Hi Daddy, it's me. Where are you? I'm at arrivals."
Gerard swears, a brief barking noise that sends fear skittering down her spine. Ray's father is a stoic of the old tradition, a man who prides himself on being in complete control of his emotions at all times. She learnt her remarkable ability to compartmentalise and intellectualise at his feet, studied the way he could relax his features and body away from any particular clues and level his voice out to a calm pitch.
"Daddy?" Her voice sounds small and child-like in her ears.
"It's alright, sweetheart, but I won't be able to come get you. I'm so sorry, so sorry, but I'm in the hospital right now."
YOU ARE READING
𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐈𝐬 𝐀 𝐋𝐨𝐰. ⁽⁽⁽ᵐᵃᵗᵗʸ ʰᵉᵃˡʸ⁾⁾⁾
FanfictionMatty can't stand Ray, he knows that much. But he admires her. And he finds her devastatingly attractive. And she surprises him at every turn. And he feels an inexplicable urge to catch her when she falls. And, in his moments of weakness, she even b...
