'Jesus Christ, Lucy! What are you doing? Is this a joke? What's wrong with you?' I was so flustered now, so discombobulated; I was definitely trying to get a grip here, get back some sort of inner balance, some sort of control. 'You're trying to make light of this?'
'No. Sorry, Daddy.' I noticed the subtle difference in her speech. She called me 'Daddy' as opposed to 'Dad'. She'd end up calling me 'Daddy' all the time, once I started balling her on a regular basis, but before that happy state of affairs came to pass, she hadn't called me by that name for years.
We sat mostly in silence, eating our food, or trying to; neither of us knowing exactly what to say. The atmosphere seemed tense, strained. The weight of it all was pressing down on us, certainly on me. I would occasionally glimpse
