Love is a Laserquest - Alex Turner/Arctic Monkeys Fan Fiction

Let it Be

2014

I'm still staying at Dad's days after his death. I've taken off work until after the funeral in order to sort his things, make the arrangements, and find an agent to sell the house. Matt and Bree offered to stay in the spare room, and Rosie offered to use her sick days to stay in Sheffield until I come back to London, but I told them all I'd rather they didn't. And it's the truth. I want to be alone in the house I shared with Dad, the place he made home for us for over a decade– alone to cry, and to mourn, and to wrap my head around this new reality.

Except I don't do that. I don't cry. I don't mourn. Autopilot switched on as soon as the doctor finished speaking in hospital. I became a machine of sorting, arranging, planning. I've been all business for nearly 72 hours. I don't sleep except by accident, sitting up on the couch, organizing bills. I don't listen to music except when it comes on the telly, which I leave on at all times. When people reach out to me– and my phone has been inundated with messages and phone calls of support and condolences– I don't even look at who they're from, or read what they say. I send a perfunctory, nondescript text message response back and get on with my business.

I call all of Dad's friends and our remaining relatives personally though. I sit through their grief, listening to colleagues cry, friends go absolutely silent, relatives bring up past, happy times. I accept their apologies for my loss, their tears for me, their offers of help and support and food, and I feel absolutely numb, closed off to any feeling at all.

I have lost the best person I have ever known, and my brain has not been able to understand it.

After finalizing the details for the funeral, I drive home in Dad's car and sit alone on the sofa. I look around the room, at the photos of myself all over the walls and mantle, the blanket I used to wrap around myself when home sick from school, Dad's shoes sitting by the front door, and my whole body hurts. I feel the sadness edging forward like a fog, and I know that once it hits me, it won't let up. So I do something instead– something I've been putting off since that day in the hospital.

I call my mum.

I got her number from my Aunt Judith when I called her to give her the news. I asked her to let me be the one to tell Mum, even though I haven't spoken to her in over ten years. So when Mum answers she sounds as if it's any number she doesn't recognize calling– like it could be a bill collector, or a doctor's office.

"Mum," is all I say in return.

The other end of the phone goes silent, and I know I've taken her off guard. I wonder if she's shocked that it's me, or just trying to work out if it's the wrong number.

"Lily?"

It's strange how much her voice is exactly the same as I remember it– how she sounds like she's just walked into our London kitchen after work, and I'm sat at the table doing my homework. Even more bizarre is how much it bloody hurts to hear her voice after all this time, how much I didn't realize its absence has wounded me after a decade.

"How are you, darling?" she asks, and the anger that blots out my vision astounds me. I could spit, could very seriously chuck my mobile phone against the wall, could tear her eyes out if she were sitting right in front of me. Darling, she calls me, as if she has any right, while Dad is at a funeral directors' being prepared for burial.

"Dad's gone," I snap. "He had a heart attack."

She goes quiet again, and I let the anger settle into place, let it take over the sadness from her absence and Dad's death.

"He's dead."

I hear her take a sharp breath.

"I'm sorry," she finally says, her voice sounding strangled and sad, but it doesn't make me feel bad for her. She chose to leave us– to leave me, to have nothing to do with the life we were living– Dad didn't. The supreme unfairness of it all isn't lost on me, and I grip my mobile harshly, gritting my teeth. "I'm so sorry."