**Where It’s Quieter**
When Alex opened the door, his father stood on the doorstep.
“Hello,” he said, eyes dropping. His voice sounded distant—quiet, strained, as if he’d practised the word the whole way here and still missed the right tone.
Nine years had passed. Alex didn’t recognise him at first. There was something familiar—the jaw, the brow, the slope of his shoulders. But the voice felt foreign. Low, rough at the edges. His hands were calloused, nails bitten to the quick. His jacket was worn, like it had seen several winters. Dark circles under his eyes, the kind that come from too many sleepless nights. He carried a strange scent—tobacco, road dust, and something unplaceable.
“Can I come in?” His father hunched slightly, as if already bracing for refusal.
Alex stepped aside without a word. He didn’t know what to say. No script, no reaction. He just watched—like someone who walked into the wrong film but stayed anyway because, somehow, the story was still about him.
His father left when Alex was eleven. Just packed a bag and said, “I’ll explain later.” The explanation never came. Not in a week, not in a year. No letters, no calls. His disappearance wasn’t a storm—just a draft stealing through an open door. The air changed. Mum barely spoke of him. Only once, when Alex broke a mug, she sighed, “Gone like a lad in the wind,” and that was it. Never mentioned again.
Then came Simon—with his moustache, aftershave, and the habit of jangling his keys by sound. Then someone else whose name Alex forgot. Then cancer. Six months, hospice, silence so thick even the corridor radio couldn’t pierce it. The funeral. Short speeches. Coffins. Earth. And Alex—alone. Seventeen, with two photos, her handkerchief, and a room where no one said his name anymore.
He worked as a courier, rented a room, enrolled part-time. He delivered food, building supplies, documents—whatever paid. Rain or snow, no days off. By twenty, he was on his feet. Shaky, but his own. Owning nothing, owing no one. The wage was small, but it covered rent and food. He asked for nothing more.
Life was quiet. No tragedies, no triumphs. Days passed like tap water—monotonous. Wake, dress, leave. Return, eat, sleep. He didn’t complain. Didn’t hope either. Lived by inertia, sparing with words, feelings, even breath. Sometimes he went to the cinema, just to remember other lives existed. But stepping outside, he was invisible again.
His father walked silently to the kitchen, shrugged off his jacket. Hung it neatly, like a guest. Sat carefully, as if afraid to drop something—not on the table, but in the space between them.
“I don’t drink,” he said, voice wavering before he pressed his lips thin, as if regretting speaking too soon.
Alex nodded. Sat opposite, hands on his knees.
“Where’ve you been?”
His father exhaled, long. Like a man who’d rehearsed this question for nine years and still had no answer. Eyes flicked to the floor, then the window, searching for cues.
“Up north. Construction. Then inside. Then a village. Then back to building. Then I decided I wanted to see you. Took a while to choose.”
He didn’t look up. Just at his hands. A fresh, jagged scar crossed his palm—glass-cut rough. Alex stared at it, unsure how to react. Like a stranger had walked in with a story that forgot to mention him, trying to slot him into the final chapters as if nothing was missing.
They drank tea. Basic, bagged. No biscuits, no sugar. Words seemed scarce, to be spent only when needed. Spoons didn’t clink. Steam curled up, vanished. The clock on the wall ticked louder than usual.
“Anyone in your life?” His father asked, blunt, not glancing up.
“No.”
“Live alone?”
“Yeah.”
“So do I.”
Then silence. And in that pause, it became clear: they were alike. Not in face or voice. In quietness. In how they couldn’t speak of what mattered. In how they kept things inside, as if words would only ruin them. The tea, cooling, felt warmer than their conversation—yet this evening was closer than most he’d had in years.
An hour later, his father stood. Slowly, like his body resisted leaving the first place he’d been listened to in ages.
“I’m not asking anything,” he said, voice steady until the last word, where something fragile cracked. “Just wanted you to know. I’m alive. And—I’m sorry. Don’t know another way. Maybe never did.”
He dug into his pocket, pulled out a folded sheet, smoothed it, and handed it over.
“That’s the address. If… well, if you ever want. I’m not waiting. Just… in case.”
He left. No hug. No grand words. No promises. Just the click of the door.
Alex sat a while. Then stood, washed both mugs. Placed the note on the fridge under a magnet.
A month later, he went. No call, no warning. Stood outside an old wooden house on the outskirts. His father sat on the step, in slippers, reading. Saw him—didn’t seem surprised.
“Fancy a cuppa?” he asked.
Alex nodded.
And that was the start. No shouting. No forgiveness. No fresh slate. Just—quieter. Where breath came easier. Where someone was there again.
