Nobody’s daddy
If I’d known it was him I wouldn’t have smiled so warmly. But he looked like any other middle-aged man taking a Sunday stroll. It’s funny what time can erase. The passing years had stripped away the parts of him that had once made him distinctly mine.
But the body remembers. As he said my name, the hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. A bee sting disguised as a honey-coated whisper.
Behind him was a little girl. Rapunzel-gold locks blowing in the breeze. She was trying to keep up on a pink bike that looked a little too big for her. He always had walked two strides ahead. My mother would tell me to find a man who was willing to match your pace. I sometimes wished I’d listened.
It was his hat that disarmed me, turning him into a generic stranger. When he took it off to release those familiar fawn curls, he became that someone I used to know. My stomach flipped a little as he ran his fingers through his hair, revealing a little grey at the roots. I could still remember the woody scent of his shampoo.
Our stilted small talk was interrupted by cries of “Daddy! Daddy!” Shrill and whiny, the words were like a punch to the bridge of the nose. A final blow upon hundreds of slaps, every time I heard an excuse for why he had changed his mind about becoming a dad. I tried to stop my face from collapsing but he registered it. That pain was always simmering under my skin.
He told me the girl wasn’t biologically his; she was his partner’s child. I recognised his tone. Defensive. Like when he used to explain that the latest female name to appear on his phone was just someone from work. There was so much to say the air between us couldn’t hold the weight of it all. I was afraid that if I spoke, I’d spit in his face.
So I walked on. My stride was powered by a rage I had finally given permission to release. Leaves crumpled into dust under my soles. It was him, not me. I glanced back over my shoulder. He was still walking ahead of the girl who was pedalling desperately to keep up, crying out a name he refused to claim.
Claire Simpson is a writer based in Dunfermline, Fife who works as a Marketing Manager for Bookspeed and has had non-fiction football writing published in Nutmeg magazine.