Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert

think that’s what he meant. His wife doesn’t know about me, anyway. He wrote back and said he wasn’t sure how to tell her yet. I thought that meant he was going to, but I don’t know now.
    Joseph held the wheel steady while Alice fitted the tyre again. When that was done she said:
    – I brought you a picture anyway.
    – Of your Dad?
    – Yeah, well. You were asking, so I thought you might like to see him.
    She went over to her bag and dug it out for him. Joseph thought he was getting a doctor in a shirt and tie, but it was an old picture, in a little plastic pocket. There were a few of them on the photo, her mum’s friends at university. All of them with the same hair, long and in need of washing, the blokes too. Sat with their backs up against a wall, the steps of someone’s back door, Joseph thought it was the squat maybe. Bare feet in the long grass in front of them, a couple of wine bottles open, leant up against their knees. Alice pointed to him, one along from her mum.
    – I’ve always wondered if I look like him. People say I’m like my Gran, but I’m not really. Same hair, same colour eyes, but that’s as far as it goes. And I don’t look a bit like my Mum.
    Joseph looked at her mother’s face in the picture and thought Alice was right: her mum was all dark and round. He looked at her dad, and Alice laughed.
    – No, you can’t tell from that.
    He was a student, all scraggy beard and glasses, so much on his face you couldn’t get past it. He did look young, but Joseph didn’t want to say that, in case it sounded like he was making excuses for him. The same age his parents were when they had him. It wasn’t getting her mum pregnant that Alice was upset about anyway, as far as he could tell. The guy wasn’t too young to be her dad now: that was the problem.
    – I sent him a photo of me. Should have waited before I did that, probably, but I wanted to push him, you know?I thought he might send me one back, but he never wrote again after that.
    Alice put the picture away in her bag again.
    – When did you send it?
    – A year ago, a bit more than. It was after Gran got ill.
    She was trying not to sound too sad, and Joseph couldn’t understand that. He thought she should have been angry, like she was before she started writing, and he kept waiting, couldn’t believe she wasn’t going to say any more about it. Wasn’t expecting her to shout or cry exactly, but something. Thought if she asked him, he would have to say her dad was a coward. The way Alice talked, made it sound like it was her fault the letters stopped coming, and it didn’t make sense to him. He didn’t want to upset his wife, Joseph could see that part: first you have to say you’ve got a daughter, then you have to explain why you’ve never told her. But her dad never even sent Alice a picture, he couldn’t even get it together to do that much for her.
    Alice didn’t ask Joseph what he thought, she just said:
    – I’ve never told anyone that before.
    He could remember standing next to her in the hallway and how she spun the wheel of her bike a few times, like she was checking if it was on straight, even though she’d done that already. He’d been angry about her dad, but she just looked relieved. Glad to have said all that to someone, maybe. And Joseph thought it was better not to have said anything about her father, not then anyway, because that would have spoilt it for her.
    Friday night, he went to his parents’, didn’t tell them he was coming. Drove there straight from work, bought a bottle of wine on the way, some cans for his father, and some flowers for his mum. From a garage, so they weren’t up to much, but it was the only place he found open. Eve had got their mum used to much better over the years, but she laughed when he apologised for them.
    – I’m always happy to get flowers, Joey. Especially when my son comes with them.
    His dad was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes, and he grumbled about having to do