The Family Remains(101)

‘She’s the nicest person in the world, Phin. And I know you weren’t a fan of the baby thing, I get that. Babies are fucking terrifying. But look at her. She’s not a baby any more. She’s a grown woman with a home and a job and a boyfriend and she doesn’t need a dad. She doesn’t need you. But fuck’s sake, Phin.’ Henry pauses for a moment and turns off his phone, stares at Phin and says, ‘Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you might need her? Come home, Phin. Come and see her.’

Phin closes his eyes. Then he opens them again. He looks at Henry and from somewhere deep inside him comes a wave of certainty, a wave of love. He pulls Henry to him and for a long, drawn-out moment, they hold each other hard.

When they finally come apart, Phin says to Henry, ‘OK. I’ll come. I promise. I’ll come. This year. Maybe August. Just promise me, in the meantime, you won’t tell anyone you’ve seen me.’

Henry looks up at Phin and smiles and says, ‘I swear on my life. I won’t tell a soul.’





Epilogue




Eight months later


‘Can I help you, sir?’

Henry checks his reflection quickly in the plate glass of the showroom window. He tousles his dark, ropey curls and runs his fingertips over the rough three-day stubble on his chin. Then he turns to the hovering salesman and hits him with a personable smile.

‘Hi,’ says Henry. ‘Yes. Thank you. I’m looking for a Gold Wing? Your website said you had some in stock, but I can’t see any?’

‘Beautiful!’ The salesman’s eyes light up and he clicks his fingers. ‘Follow me, sir, right this way.’

Henry follows the young man across the showroom and towards a display in another area off the main reception. His skin turns to goosebumps at the sight of the huge bikes, four of them lined up diagonally on pedestals, hit from all angles with halogen beams.

‘Wow,’ he says.

‘Yes,’ says the salesman. ‘Wow indeed. Were you looking for a particular model?’

‘Er, yes. The GL1500.’

The salesman smiles and waves his hand towards a red and black bike.

It’s the one.

It’s exactly the same.

Henry’s stomach lurches.

‘It’s a 1998 model,’ the salesman says. ‘Virtually immaculate. Only fifteen hundred miles on the clock. Spent most of its long life under tarpaulin. And is now ready and raring to get on with the rest of its life, hopefully on the road. Want to climb on board?’

Henry nods. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘That’d be awesome.’

The salesman presses a button on the wall and the pedestal sinks into the floor until the bike is flush with the ground.

Henry hitches his leg over the bike and is instantly transported back to the heady streets of Chicago. He runs his hands over the controls, the handlebars.

‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’ says the salesman.

Henry nods, but says nothing. The oneness he has felt with the world since he returned from Chicago, since he and Phin made their peace, since the big family reunion in Lucy’s new house, has started to fray at the edges. For months he has embraced being Henry Lamb. The idea that Justin had sacrificed his life not for the glamorous refurbished version of Henry Lamb, but for the original slightly crappy version, has filled his soul with rightness and substance. Henry Lamb was enough, he’d thought, he didn’t need to be anybody else. But recently his beautiful apartment has started to feel empty again, and he is aware once more of his aloneness in this world, his strangeness, his otherness. Once he had let his hair grow back to its natural dead ash, let his lip fillers deflate, his cheek fillers disintegrate, once he saw the old Henry staring back at him from the mirror again, he panicked. He no longer wanted to be Phin, but he did not, he knew with a sickening certainty, want to be dull old Uncle Henry either. And his thoughts kept returning, over the weeks and months that followed, to the last time he’d felt anything, the last time he had not felt numb. To the last human being he had met who was worthy of imitation.

‘Oh,’ says the salesman. ‘My name’s Theo, by the way.’

‘Hi, Theo,’ says Henry, tossing his dark hair out of his dark eyes and giving Theo his hand to shake. ‘My name’s Kris. Kris Doll.’

‘Lovely to meet you, Kris,’ says Theo. ‘You have awesome taste in bikes.’