A Miracle on Hope Street: The most heartwarming Christmas romance of 2018!. Emma Heatherington

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СКАЧАТЬ to open his presents, so I carried on his tradition today, opening the carefully wrapped gift for him and then gave him a generous spray of the cologne. Not that he knows if it’s Christmas or if it’s spring or summer or autumn or winter. But it’s definitely very much winter outside. It’s dropping down dark on the other side of the window and I sit back and relax in the bliss of it all – just me, my dad, the smell of new cologne, Christmas around the corner and some good old Poirot on the telly.

      ‘This is nice,’ I mutter, but he doesn’t respond of course. Instead, he just smiles and stares at the screen and that’s quite enough for me right now.

      We are both totally fixated once again with what is going on in the old-school detective TV show on the small telly in my father’s tiny bedroom, my hand now automatically reaching in and out of a supersize bag of crisps to find my mouth which subsequently chews and crunches and the feeling of contentment I had before the aftershave smell brought me back in time returns and I relax again.

      It’s my favourite time of the day on my favourite day of the week and I have thirty whole minutes left before I go back into the rat race of my other life which consists of everything from deadlines at my desk in my home office, to hair and makeup appointments and fake smiling for the cameras, plus everything else that being a ‘celebrity agony aunt’ for the city’s biggest newspaper brings, so I wrap my new fuzzy cardigan around me a little tighter, then reach up and pull the curtains, taking just a moment to notice the dark, crisp December afternoon that lies on the other side of the world from where I am right now.

      I reflect on how I somehow lead a double life in many ways. There’s the public Ruth Ryans, the well-known half-Italian, half-Irish thirty-something agony aunt for Today newspaper’s weekly magazine, who is invited to every event in town with a new man for every season on her arm and a new outfit to boot. A curvy and cuddly brunette, average size in height, warm in the face and just pleasant enough on the eye to be relatable to every man, woman and sometimes child who put pen to paper to tell me their biggest fears and problems in this big bad world with a guaranteed reply to everyone who takes the time.

      Then there’s the private Ruth Ryans – the quiet, single one of the family, the one who never settled down despite being proposed to twice, the caring one, the soft one, the one who everyone loves to see for a laugh and the craic and then watch on in wonder from afar when she’s gone – the one who takes after her deep-thinking father with her wise words and advice; the one who likes to hide behind the persona that made her a household name; and the one who never, ever mentions the mother who left forever without warning one Sunday all those years ago.

      I delete the thought of my mother, Elena, immediately, just as I’ve trained my mind to do so if she dares to make an appearance in my head and I focus on the present which is my father; the one who never, ever left us and who deserves every moment of my attention. I’ve learned, as the years rolled by, to live in the present, even though it’s desperately hard to let go of the past.

       Focus, Ruth. Focus on the here and now. The great job in the public eye, the home to die for that has so much potential, the father you adore, the sister you idolise, the opportunities you frequent, the places you go, the people you meet, the independence, the empowerment. Focus.

      The places I go. . . I used to travel the world, but now my world is here in this dark little room my father calls home or in the empty and silent rooms of the place we all used to call home. I decorated this cosy room in the nursing home to reflect the beautiful house on the tree-lined Beech Row that he worked so hard for my sister and I to grow up in, despite his pain at being left on his own to raise us. The house that I now live in alone, watching it grow stiller and stiller around me, suffocating me, not only with the memories that my father worked so hard to create, but with flashbacks of childhood memories that are separated into life before her and life after her like a line that is drawn down through everything I do and everything I am.

      I’ve tried to awaken my dad’s full senses in this room with family photos of days gone by, moments of great pride captured in press clippings from his lengthy career as a highly regarded university lecturer, memories of my graduation day when he grinned nonstop from ear to ear, pictures from my sister Ally’s wedding as he walked her proudly down the aisle, snaps of my little nephews on the many stages of their young lives and posters of Dad’s favourite movies such as Gone With the Wind and Casablanca. His banjo hangs on the wall and an old flute that he once played with such pride lies polished and proud on a shelf by the window, where a potted plant sits waiting on the morning sun and a CD player, with all his old familiar songs stacked beside it, plays constantly on low in the background.

      I have softly lit lamps, a little fluffy rug and a bookshelf filled with novels and autobiographies that he once used to devour but can no longer understand. It is heart-breaking yet soothing to see his things scattered round this room, haunting shadows of the man he used to be, and who I believe, still is inside.

      This may not be his ‘real’ home, but I’ve made it the best than it can be. It’s a place where he is looked after in a way that I no longer can and it’s like an alternate universe where the most important things are stripped back and carried out in a regimental routine every day. I feel safe here, close to the nest of familiarity, if you like, even though it’s only been just under a year since my sister and I made the decision to have our darling father cared for, far away from the cosy townhouse existence where he lived with me, when he was well enough to do the everyday things we took for granted.

      ‘Can I get you a drink, Dad?’ I ask and he nods a bit. A reply of sorts, most welcome in this foggy existence where he struggles with the answer to the simplest of questions.

      This place is good for him, I keep telling myself. It is warm, it is safe, it feels familiar by now and most of all it gives him a steady routine that I really couldn’t devote to him at home which is empty and dark and silent without his wise words, philosophical ways, eclectic taste in music and hearty laughter.

      My dad loves routine and I love it too. I cling to it like a security blanket, safe in the knowledge of knowing what I am going to do when I wake to face each day.

      Tuesdays like today mean an early morning walk around the block before breakfast, then three hours picking through problems sent from the general public to me to give advice in my daily agony aunt online blog, lunchtime here with Dad and a quick dash home for more admin and work for my weekly city magazine column, then back here where I help supervise bingo night for the residents before tucking my dad in for the night. When he’s settled, I set off home where I’ll squeeze in another few hours at my desk, solving more of the city people’s personal problems and file my daily copy to my editor before bedtime.

      Most nights of the week are routine like that, minus the Tuesday bingo which is replaced on every other evening with my ‘other life’ of nonstop list of product launch events, movie premieres, dinner dates and other necessary ‘profile building’ occasions that my newspaper publisher and manager, the infamous Margo Taylor, insists I partake in to keep the problems pouring in from readers who are convinced I can help change their world with my wise words.

      In the snug of this room, a sense of routine is as regular as clockwork and worlds away from the life I lead outside, so I cherish these moments with my one true hero, my dad, whose life was once like mine with not enough hours in the day, juggling his commitments to his university day job and the students he helped to advise, with looking after my sister and I, whether that be our own education or cooking and washing for us, always making sure we had everything we needed.

      I go back to Poirot and my crisps and wait for Dad to tell me to ‘stop munching’ like he used to do, but of course he doesn’t notice if I’m making noise any more. His mind is mostly now only a muddle of faces, faraway places and a whirlwind of random thoughts which he expresses through pigeon speech that СКАЧАТЬ