Second Fiddle by Siobhan Parkinson Page B

handsome and manly?” Like Tim, I was thinking. Also, since his name was practically a poem, I thought he’d have to be something special.
    â€œWell … tall, yes, tall.”
    I wrote tall under the name Brendan Regan on my sheet of paper.
    â€œAnd does he tell you wonderful stories? About the war?”
    â€œThe war ?”
    â€œOh, sorry, no, that’s grandfathers. Well then, about hippies.”
    â€œHippies?”
    Gillian didn’t seem to know about anything that happened before about ten years ago.
    â€œAbout rock ’n’ roll,” I explained, “and how he went to Woodstock and sat-in in the library at college and played Leonard Cohen songs on his guitar and went to Marrakesh in the summers and campaigned to free Nelson Mandela?”
    â€œLeonard who?”
    â€œGillian, what sort of a life did your father have? Didn’t he do any of that cool stuff?”
    â€œHe was … he is a Web site designer,” Gillian said. “He has, you know, clients? And he goes to meetings with a briefcase, and he writes down what they want and then he sends them stuff by e-mail.”
    â€œOh. That makes him younger, I suppose.”
    â€œThan what? Younger than what?”
    â€œWell, younger than other people’s fathers. Mine, for example.”
    â€œI don’t know how old he is.” Really, she’s hopeless, Gillian. “I never asked. It didn’t seem important.”
    â€œIt’s not, except for the description,” I explained. “When we ask the guards to help us find him, you’ll need to be able to say ‘midthirties’ or ‘late forties’ or whatever, so they’ll know what they’re looking for.”
    I wrote youngish for a dad under tall.
    â€œThe guards! ” squeaked Gillian. “We don’t need to go to the police, do we?”
    â€œWell, it depends whether we find him or not by ourselves. When did you last see him?”
    â€œOn Thursday.”
    â€œOn Thursday! ” I was taken aback, but I wrote it down dutifully all the same.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with that?” asked Gillian huffishly.
    â€œI thought he was missing. I thought we had to look for him.”
    â€œHe is missing,” insisted Gillian. “I don’t know where he lives. I haven’t got his phone number. He’s not in the phone book, by the way. I did think of that. So, I don’t know how to find him. I call that missing.”
    â€œBut he’s not really missing,” I said. “Not if you saw him on Thursday. I mean, he hasn’t disappeared off the face of the earth or been taken hostage by terrorists or anything like that, has he?” I looked at the pile of phone books and railway timetables. Maybe I’d overdone it. “Unless he was abducted by aliens on Friday, maybe?” I added, though I didn’t hold out much hope.
    â€œThere’s no need to sound so disappointed,” said Gillian sulkily. “I think he’s living in Ballymore now. He said something about moving to be nearer to us, but I think it’s because the rents are cheaper than in Dublin—that’s where he was before.”
    â€œWhen did you have this conversation?”
    Gillian thought for a moment. “About six weeks ago. Maybe two months.”
    â€œThat explains why he’s not in the phone book,” I said. “He hasn’t been there long enough. Why don’t you just ask your mother how to contact him? If you saw him on Thursday, she must be in touch with him. She probably has his phone number.”
    â€œMy mother …,” said Gillian. She turned her hands out, palms up and gave an exaggerated shrug. At the time, I thought she just meant, You know how hopeless my mother is, but now I think she meant, Back off, don’t ask too many questions.
    â€œOK,” I said. “You don’t want to involve her, right? We could just look in her address