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now, while your mind is still hazy from the evening and
Robbie's laughter at "eat your veg, Ted, brush your
bicuspids" is still lolling about your ears. So you sit, and
you cross your arms, and you gather up all the defiance
you can muster, and you stare at him right back.

You're expecting a lecture about the horrible nature of
drugs, how cannabis will set you down the wrong path,
how choices, once made, cannot be taken back. You're
surprised when instead he shrugs off his cardigan, not
even bothering to fold it before he drapes it over the back
of the chair, then reaches to undo his wristwatch, the
leather strap hanging limply in the air for a moment, still
formed to the curve of his bones, before he tosses it on the
table.

There's the flick of buttons; one, two, then rolling his
sleeve up and up and up, and it's the strangest thing
you've ever seen, because he doesn't even wash dishes with
his sleeves rolled up like a normal person.

You try to remember ever having seen his arms before,
but in your entire existence you cannot recall your father
in anything but sleeves, even in the summers, even on
holiday, even in the middle of the night when you were
small and climbed into his bed for your nightmares. You
haven't even seen his wrists, him having always worn his
wristwatch over his cuff, and it never struck you as odd,
just like you never thought it odd that Da never
unbuttoned the very top button of his modest, stiffly-
collared shirts. That was just how he was. You used to
joke to Robbie that the only way he'd ever had sex with
your mum to make you was by pulling his prick through
his flies, but you were too young to remember even if he
used to be different. You think it unlikely he ever was. He
was born thirty-eight with thinning hair, the last bastion
of British national pride, taking tea at four every
afternoon like he expected Her-bloody-Majesty the Queen

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