Our Father Who Are Out There...Somewhere by AJ Taft

“He’s a spineless bastard, and he owes you an apology at the very least. If the Salvation Army can find him, I’m damned sure we can. What the fuck made you pick them?”
    “There are not exactly thousands of people out there queuing up to help reunite you with your birth family, you know. It was either them or Cilla and ‘Surprise, Sur-bloody-prise’. Their motto is blood and fire.” She shrugs. “I thought it sounded good.”
    She sits back down on the edge of the bed settee. “I’ve tried to find him. I got the bus to Skipton, that’s where Aunt Edie said he lives, well she thinks. I went to the library and read about a million old copies of the local paper, I went back over ten years, nothing. I looked in births, marriages and deaths, everywhere. I spent all day there, ’til I went bog eyed.”
    “Did you try the phone book?”
    They look at each other. Lily opens her mouth to speak but no words come out. They both burst out laughing. Lily laughs so hard she worries she may choke.

Chapter 8
     
    Two men are chasing Lily; one is wearing a trilby hat and a long dark raincoat, the other is dressed in jeans and a black bomber jacket. Lily knows him from somewhere but she can’t remember where. She runs down a dark side street, her lungs screaming at the effort. She’s halfway down the street before she realises it’s a dead end. She starts trying to climb the wall, but the man in the bomber jacket reaches her and grabs her ankles.
    Lily sits up with a jolt, as a police car passes the house with its sirens screeching. Sweat makes her T-shirt stick to her skin. The pile of duvet next to her moves, making her jump. Then she remembers. She takes a few deep breaths and then lays back down, smiling up at the ceiling.
    Jo lifts her head an inch off the pillow. “What you grinning like that for? God, my head hurts. Roll me a fag and stop smiling.”
    Lily absent-mindedly sticks two cigarette papers together. Then she realises what she’s doing and looks across at Jo. “Don’t let ’em go to waste,” says Jo, flinging her the dope tin.
    “You know, it’s Saturday,” says Jo thoughtfully, as she inhales the last of Lily’s spliff. “The library probably closes early. We should get going, we can clear up later.”
    Lily has never been to Accrington library. The lady at the desk directs them upstairs, to a shelf that bows under the weight of a complete set of phone directories.
    “I can’t believe you’ve spent all this time wondering where he is and never once picked up a phonebook.” Jo scans the shelf for the Skipton edition. “I mean, Winterbottom. It’s not exactly John Smith.”
    Lily starts to rearrange the poetry section, starting with shades of red. “Hey, so I’ve not been thinking straight. I never knew they kept phone directories in libraries.”
    Jo pulls out a directory, slings it on the table and flicks through the pages. “Here we are,” says Jo, “David Winterbottom. There’s only one.”
    Lily grabs the directory from Jo. “Let me see.”
    “Have you got a pen on you?” asks Jo.
    Lily shakes her head. “There’s seven other Winterbottoms. They might be my relatives too. What if I have a massive family out there?”
    Jo glances around the room and then carefully rips the page from the telephone book. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
    They go to the pub across the road, and despite the drizzle, sit outside. “We could just ring him. Ask him if he used to be married to your mum.”
    Lily smokes in silence. She’s spent nineteen years imagining meeting her father; she can’t help experiencing a feeling of anticlimax.
    “Or, we could pretend to be solicitors, trying to track him down because he’s inherited something.”
    The drizzle turns to raindrops. The majority of them bounce down on the green umbrella fixed to the table. A few hit Lily’s back. They drink in silence. Lily lights another cigarette from the butt of her first. “He’s going to be suspicious.