Play with pops of colour

Contrasting accessories are an easy way to pep up same-shade separates

2020-04-26 -

Like most of the nation, when the coronavirus pandemic hit, I began to clean. One afternoon, sitting on the floor underneath my home desk, I picked up an old notebook. As I flicked through the pages, a card fell out. Opening it, I knew in an instant that the handwriting belonged to my father.

Occasionally traces of him appear in my life, like finding tiny specks of spilt tea on a white wall months after you thought you’d cleaned it all off. And when they do, I freeze. I feel as though I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t. Sadness and guilt crawl up my skin. My limbs tense up, my cheeks flush. His words aren’t always helpful but still he sends them. Which is more than I do. My silence remains like an iron gate, impenetrable and unmoving. We haven’t spoken for nearly ten years.

Yet this time something else happened: I began to wonder how he is; if he has coronavirus; whether he would survive if he did; if he had enough food; if he was lonely. Paul McCartney’s ‘We All Stand Together’ floated into my head after I’d read that morning that Lauren Laverne had played it on the radio. I thought of neighbours doing more for my dad than his own daughter. I imagined how happy he would be to hear from me. I imagined sending an email until I realised I didn’t have his details. I wondered whether now, in the midst of all this chaos, is the time to change things. I closed the card and tucked it inside another notebook – one I don’t intend to throw away.

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I didn’t know that would be the last time I saw him. I hadn’t made a conscious decision not to see him again but I think I had realised, even if on some undetectable level, that there are only so many times you can be let down by a parent, there are only so many times a parent can reject you. I was in my mid-20s, feeling more independent than ever. Society had