Liza and Poppy fixed him with a stare. They didn’t reply and headed out of the hut without waiting for him.
Mitchell reluctantly followed them. He wondered what Anita would make of Poppy sleeping on the ground of a forest. There might be earwigs, and were scorpions ever found in the North Yorkshire countryside? However, he suspected she might have shared Poppy’s excitement.
A couple of hours later, after Jean had given them a tour of her house and recording studio, Mitchell found himself sitting on a tree stump around a small fire with Liza, Poppy and a straggly group of young musicians.
The evening sky was still denim blue and the air was thick and hot, so he wasn’t sure why a fire was necessary in this weather. However, tinfoil-covered potatoes baking on the end of sticks, poking into the fire, made his stomach groan with hunger. The paltry scones felt like ages ago.
“This is the life,” Poppy said, peeling off her socks. She wriggled her toes in the soil on the ground.
“You’re getting your feet mucky,” Mitchell scolded. “You have a smear of dirt on your cheek, too.”
“Try it, Dad.” Poppy giggled. “It tickles your toes.”
Jean stood up. She had changed into a short black dress with tassels around the hem. “And now, what you’re all here for...our musical jamboree! Each musician will perform a song they’ve been working on. Be fearless and have fun. Let’s welcome Delilah first. Come on up, sweet pea.”
Mitchell fought the desire to get into his sleeping bag and zip it up over his head. Anita had loved going to the theater and any kind of performance, but creativity and putting yourself on display were not his type of thing.
A pointy-faced girl sporting a cream night slip and peacock feather earrings waved her arm. The guitar sitting on her lap was almost as big as she was.
“Just listen, Dad,” Poppy whispered to him. “You might enjoy it.”
Delilah crooned a song about her boyfriend leaving her for a forty-year-old woman. It went on for around five minutes and felt much longer. The best way Mitchell could describe it was experimental.
“Astonishing.” Jean clapped her hands together. “Delicious. Next up, let’s bang our drums for Ian.”
Ian wore a hat with bunny ears attached to it. He strummed a ukulele and sang out of tune about never finding true love, even though he looked to be in his early twenties.
“Maybe if he wore a different hat...” Mitchell whispered to Poppy.
She hiccuped a laugh. “Shhh, Dad.”
After each subsequent song about unrequited love, or relationships that had gone terribly wrong, there was clapping and whooping, and shouts of, “Nailed that!” and “Awesome!”
Poppy sat cross-legged, swaying to the music. She cupped her hands to her mouth and cheered. Mitchell relished watching her. Nine was such a bittersweet age. She was still so young, his little girl. Last year, she could still convince herself the Tooth Fairy existed, but he increasingly saw glimpses of the young woman she was going to become. Her youth felt like sand slipping through his fingers.
The sky turned dusky pink and then sapphire, and the next turn fell upon Poppy.
“You don’t have to do it,” Mitchell assured her.
Sometimes she retreated into herself, her body shrinking like a wool sweater in a hot wash. In her last school pantomime, she’d hidden behind all the other kids onstage.
Delilah held out her guitar. Poppy gnawed her bottom lip and Mitchell felt sure she’d refuse it. However, her eyes became determined and she set the instrument on her knee. When she strummed it, an out-of-tune note rung around the forest and Poppy smiled apologetically. After putting the instrument back down, she sang without it.
Her song was about how flowers in a garden need sunshine and water to make them grow. She stumbled with her words, but somehow it was innocently beautiful.
When she’d finished, rapturous applause rippled around the fire and she swooped her arm across her middle and bent into a shy bow.
Mitchell clapped his hands furiously. “Encore,” he said, as she returned to his side. “I’ve never heard that one before.”
“I made it up.” She shrugged.
He stared at her, not sure if she was kidding. “Really?”
“Yep. We had to write songs at school ages ago. I remembered some of it.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“I sang it in a concert, before Mum...” She looked away, her face in the shadows. “She was there.”
He frowned, trying to remember. “When?”
“I don’t know. You were probably in work anyway.”
“Oh, Pops, I’m sorry,” he started. His body deflated, as he wondered what else he might have missed while he worked and lived in the city. He imagined Anita sitting proudly in the school audience as Poppy performed her song, and himself staring at his computer screen, calculating dimensions and measurements for the new bridge instead. Regret was a heavy burden to bear.
“She said you were busy.” Poppy sniffed, as if trying to show she didn’t care. “Anyway, it’s your turn next.”
“But I want to talk about—”
She interrupted his words. “I don’t.”
Jean stood up in front of them and waved her hand in his direction. “And now,” she said, her voice full of drama. “All the way from Upchester city, for one night only, we have Mr. Mitchell Fisher.”
Mitchell just wanted to wrap his arms around Poppy and apologize again for not being there to hear her song at school. “Move on to the next person,” he told Jean. “I’m not musical.”
Poppy gave him a small smile and Mitchell couldn’t tell if she was angry or sad with him. “Go on, Dad,” she said.
Everyone started to chant his name, and he couldn’t think how to wriggle out of joining in. He took a deep breath, and held his hands up to refuse again, but someone shoved a guitar into his arms.
He gulped and tried to think of a song that he wouldn’t totally murder. The only time he’d ever sung was to Poppy when she was smaller, or to Anita if he was trying to tell her about a song on the radio.
Finally, he settled on an old favorite, the first one that came to mind and probably older than most of the people around the campfire, “Yesterday” by The Beatles. He placed the guitar on the ground—he didn’t know how to play—and started to sing softly, not thinking of how the words might resonate with him personally.
At first it was just an old song to him, and he sang about troubles, and someone saying goodbye, and a shadow hanging over him, and not being the man he once was. An image of him holding Anita’s hand in the hospital and whispering goodbye to her dropped into his mind and wouldn’t leave. It stayed there like a footprint in setting concrete.