Holidaying With Dad During the Divorce

Jessica Traynor

His car is a nervous breakdown, scattering chrome along the motorway. He gasps through panic attacks in tunnels and medieval towers. The falconry display goes on regardless and eejits in velour have a crack at each other with plywood lances.

I'm in fugue state, headphones glued to me as mum calls to accuse him of kidnapping. Come for a drink, he says.

No. Retreat to the Travelodge, dry my one pair of decent flares rancid from days of rain, in the mysterious trouser press. My anger flits and shifts like a clot of starlings. He presses into my hands some Gunter Grass, and Sylvia Plath –time-capsule messages in a language we don't share, and the evening heaves with the bellow of cows taken from their calves.