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was still. I can still hear the sound of it now. That sickening crack of bone on stone.
    I knew he was dead. Instantly. I knew.
    Do you see what I mean now, about
The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes
? If I’d never been given it for my birthday, if I’d never read it, then I’d never have fallen in love with murder mysteries. And if I’d never fallen in love with murder mysteries then I wouldn’t have been watching
Inspector Morse
on the television. And if I hadn’t been watching
Inspector Morse
on the television, Dad wouldn’t have been sitting there shouting ‘
Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is
!’ like a madman and I wouldn’t have got annoyed and I wouldn’t have told him to shut up and he wouldn’t have tried to cave my head in and I wouldn’t have shoved him in the back and he wouldn’t have hit his head against the fireplace and died.
    The thing is, though ... the thing is, if you look at it that way, if you follow that line of reasoning, then it was all his fault in the first place. If he hadn’t been my father, you know, if he hadn’t impregnated Mum, then I would never have been born. I wouldn’t have existed. And he would still be alive. It was
his
fault that I existed. He made me. I never
asked
to be born, did I? It was nothing to do with me.
    But then again, it wasn’t
his
fault that
he
was born, was it?
    I don’t know.
    Does there have to be a reason for everything?
    I knew he was dead. I could feel it. The air, the flatness, the lifelessness.
    I stood motionless for a minute. Just stood there, staring, my mind blank, my heart beating hard. It’s strange, the lack of emotion, the absence of drama in reality. When things happen in real life, extraordinary things, there’s no music, there’s no
dah-dah-daaahhs
. There’s no close-ups. No dramatic camera angles. Nothing happens. Nothing stops, the rest of the world goes on. As I was standing there in the front room, looking down at the awkwardness of Dad’s dead body lying on the hearth, the television just carried on jabbering away in the background. Adverts. Happy families dancing around a kitchen table:
I feel like chicken tonight, I feel like chicken tonight
... I leaned down and switched it off. The silence was cold and deathly.
    â€˜Christ,’ I whispered.
    I had to check. Even though I knew he was dead, I had to make sure. I stepped over to the fireplace and squatted down beside him. An ugly dark wound cut into the bone just above his eye. There wasn’t much blood. A crimson scrape on the fireplace wall, a smear on the hearth that was already drying. I looked closer. A thin red ribbon meandered down from the corner of his mouth and lost itself in the dark stubble of his chin. I looked into his lifeless face. You can tell. Even if you’ve never seen a dead body before, you can tell. The appearance of death cannot be mistaken for unconsciousness. That grey-white pallor. Flat and toneless. Without essence. The skin sheenless and somehow shrunken, as if whatever it is that
is
life – the spirit, the soul – has been stripped away and all that’s left is an empty sack. I looked into his glassy black eyes and they stared blindly back at me.
    â€˜You stupid bastard,’ I said quietly.
    I lightly placed a finger on his neck. Nothing. No pulse. Then I loosened buttons on his shirt and lowered my ear to his chest, listening, without hope, for the sound of his heart. There was no sound.
    I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t I ring 999, call out the emergency services? They could have revived him. Just because someone’s stopped breathing, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re dead, does it? Why didn’t you give him artificial respiration? You studied first aid, didn’t you? Why didn’t you try to save his life?
    I don’t know.
    Why didn’t I try to save his life?
    I don’t know. I just didn’t.
    All