Tarmac Dreams from the collection Between Stations & Other Small Deaths available HERE.
The first thing I ever fixed that stayed fixed was Sarah’s bicycle chain. It was morning—half-grey, half-warm—and I was down in the garage, knees on yesterday’s newspaper, the newsprint ghosting itself onto my jeans. The chain lay there, a limp centipede in a pool of grit. Grease under my fingernails felt wet though it was dry. My daughter was sitting on an upturned paint bucket, chewing through an apple so slowly I could hear the squelch of each bite.
“You’ll wreck it,” she said.
I’d wrecked other things. The kitchen sink, for instance—still dripping a slow, sullen drip from the elbow joint where I swore I’d tightened the seal. The screen door, too—out of plumb since I “adjusted” it with a hammer and an offhand prayer. And my marriage, I supposed. That vague, chronic breakage that no man intends but ends up presiding over.
But that morning the chain went back on. Not all at once, not heroically. One tooth at a time, with the slow confidence of something learning its purpose. The wheel spun. No crunch, no skip. The gears hummed like they knew what they were doing. Sarah dropped her apple core onto the floor with a casual flick and rode a wide, slow arc down the drive, wobbling slightly, then straighter, freer. I stood with my hands black to the wrist, and watched her loop the cul-de-sac like a ribbon threading air.
At work I started keeping score. Not officially—just little tallies in my head, pencil marks on the wall of my quiet self. Monday: I helped Ettie Garland, who smelled a little of boiled wool and something old, figure out her Tesco points. Tuesday: remembered to water the plant in the break-room before it turned the colour of stained paper. Wednesday: made it through my whole shift without dropping a single parcel.
“You seem different lately,” my supervisor said, tea in one hand, a custard cream in the other. “More focused.”
I shrugged. It was easier than answering. But inside something shifted. It was like finding a door you always thought was a cupboard, and realizing there was a stairwell behind it. The air smelled slightly fresher. You took one step. Then two.
The fifty pounds turned up folded in the breast pocket of a corduroy jacket I hadn’t worn since the spring Sarah cracked her first molar. The pocket felt soft and secret—like a rabbit hole in fabric. I pulled the note free, crisp still, scented gently with whatever soap we used before everything went unscented and mild.
We walked to the bike shop on the High Street, her hand in mine, her trainers slapping the pavement. She picked the streamers herself—purple, with silver tinsel that caught light and flared. I nodded and paid and said nothing as she insisted they made her bike “faster.” There was enough left over for two tickets to the Odeon’s Saturday matinee, where the seats still carried the faint itch of old velour.
We shared a bag of popcorn and Sarah watched the film—something loud and shiny, robots learning how to love—with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head drifting slowly towards my arm. Midway through the second act, her breathing evened. Her fingers, flecked with salt and soft with heat, rested lightly on the crook of my elbow.
Later, under streetlights that buzzed lightly and held halos, she said, “Dad, remember when you used to get cross all the time?”
I waited a moment. “Yeah.”
“You don’t so much anymore.”
I thought of my list—scraps of pride piled like receipts in the quiet corners of the day. Changed a bulb. Paid the council tax before the warning came. Bought milk, full-fat, before the bottle ran dry and we had to scramble eggs with water.
They weren’t accomplishments. But they accreted. Like lichen. Like pennies in a jar that, somehow, tipped the balance.
I began seeing more. The horse chestnut outside our building—how it turned, not in a blaze, but leaf by leaf, the way you might change your mind. The corner shop bloke aligning every bar of chocolate on his shelves with surgeon-like precision. Sarah humming as she drew pictures, a faint tune threading the quiet like a distant radio left on in another room.
One night, I called her mother. Just that. No expectation, no edge in my tone. I told her Sarah got an A on her science project—solar panels made from tinfoil and dreams. She said oh, and that’s good, and I said yeah, and then I hung up. There was something clean in it, like fresh sheets.
A month later, the chain slipped again. She didn’t shout or fuss. Just brought it round, wheeling the bike through the house like it belonged there.
“You can fix it,” she said. Not a question this time.
And I could. My hands remembered. The spanner fit without clumsiness, the chain threaded into place with the snug logic of something doing what it was made to do. When it was done, she hugged me. The side of her shirt smeared black. We both noticed. Neither of us minded.
That night, the dream was different. No dead ends or endless cloverleafs. No backtracking or loops that trapped you like thoughts on repeat. Just long stretches of motorway unfurling beneath me, clean and endless, the sky wide above, full of light that didn’t glare. I didn’t know where it went. It didn’t matter. The going was enough.
I began taking new turns on my way to work. Detours, side streets, back routes that smelled of toast and bin lorries. One Wednesday I found a café tucked beside a dry cleaners. It was run by a woman with grey dreadlocks and eyes that had seen things. She took my order once—builder’s tea, no sugar—and the next time I walked in, it was already steeping when I sat. There was something holy in that. Recognition without fuss.
At the office, the plant by the window, the one I nearly let die back in March, sprouted three new leaves in a week. They were glossy and bright, like they’d been waxed. Ettie Garland brought me a tin of biscuits with a gingham ribbon round it. Ginger snaps that tasted slightly of clove. My supervisor, eyes soft from some good news of her own, called me into her cubicle and handed me a slip of paper.
“Small raise,” she said. “You’re reliable. We need reliable.”
Reliable. The word sat strange in my chest, warm and unfamiliar. Like trying on a jumper that wasn’t yours and finding it fit. Me. Reliable. A word I used to dodge. Now it stuck. Like sunrise. Or gravity. Or the way Sarah’s hair smelled like strawberries after a shower.
Saturday, we took our bikes out again. Just the two of us. Her legs were longer now, her movements sure. The streamers hung faded and windless, but she’d kept them on. We rode without agenda, ended up in a park neither of us remembered being there. It was quiet. Ducks left widening trails through the pond’s skin, and a bench offered itself beneath a tilted oak.
We shared a sandwich—egg mayo, too much mustard. Sarah fed crusts to the ducks in methodical flicks.
“Mum says you’re doing better,” she said, gaze on the water.
“Yeah?” I watched the ripples slide across each other like silk. “Guess I am.”
“How come?”
I thought about the list, the invisible ledger I kept. Notebooks in my mind where I wrote down things like paid council tax on time and didn’t snap at the bloke who cut the queue. But that wasn’t what this was. Not entirely.
“I just started noticing things,” I said.
She nodded like she got it. Maybe she did. Maybe she noticed, too.
We walked our bikes back through the lengthening gold of the afternoon. There was a building site on the corner, all scaffolding and shouting, but the path had been freshly laid. Black tarmac, still warm, gleaming in the light. No marks yet. Not one boot print.
Sarah pointed. “Looks like the beginning of something.”
That night I wrote it down: Had a good day with Sarah. No fireworks. Just another small win. One more square on the map I didn’t know I was drawing.
