Babs sat on the sofa, her hands clasped between her knees. She was upset – although the man standing opposite, mouthing words we couldn’t understand, wouldn’t know that. Behind him, the light from the bay window illuminated his form, so he was more silhouette than human. He was trying to explain something, but his meaning eluded us – it was both mercurial and complex, an algorithm we couldn’t fathom.

 

1985 he was saying – and each time, he brought his clenched fist down onto his right palm, as if that would help us understand. He had come back from 1985.

 

Eventually, Babs’s eyes flickered towards me and I raised my eyebrows – the unspoken question of sisterhood; a language we’d shared since pre-infancy, when we’d curled tightly inside our mother’s womb, separate yet unified.

 

‘I’ve come so far to be here,’ the man was saying. And, yes, I could see that – he had unravelled the thread of the past, grabbed the end and pulled himself into the present. Our present – Babs and me. But we didn’t care. Babs gave a small shake of her head, and I knew it was time.

 

‘We want you to leave,’ I said, getting to my feet.

 

The man stopped talking. He was old, I could see that now – his past-self barely visible.

 

All those wasted years, I thought.  A man who’d lost the right to call himself ‘father’ the day he walked out.

 

‘Time can’t just be turned back,’ I said. And we watched him leave our future.