Chapter Text
Rain was pelting down against the windowpanes. Because nothing screamed springtime like a good downpour.
Paul moved slowly through his kitchen, hands tucked into the sleeves of a navy cardigan he’d pulled on soon as he was out of bed. The air still carried last night’s chill, making the whole place feel cold and damp, smelling faintly of toast crumbs, weed and tea. His favourite sort of breakfast before a weekend with the kids.
The house was quiet. That unnerving kind of silence that always seemed to slip in through the cracks whenever he was left alone to his own devices. The kind of silence that drowned everything else out – his footfalls, his breaths, his life.
He thought about putting the radio on but quickly dismissed the idea. It had been temperamental for months, more static than song, and he hadn’t had the heart to fix it or hand it to someone who could. Besides, music was work, and Paul was resolutely not working. The dust on his upright piano by the window proved as much. There were several crumbled pieces of paper strewn around it, a single sheet of manuscript lying on top of the yellowing keys with only a few bars of melody scratched on it. The script was more than a month old. The closest he’d come to actually putting any music on paper and even that had stalled halfway.
He leaned a hip against the counter, his gaze engaged by the kettle and the tiny ghosts of condensation it breathed onto his kitchen windows. Outside, the garden was all grey mud and bare branches. Somewhere far off, a crow shouted once, then stopped.
Paul had grown used to the silence. At least that’s what he kept telling himself. If you can’t fight them, join them - wasn’t that something the young ones said? He wasn’t sure how it applied to silence, but it comforted him to pretend it did. The silence embraced every room of his house and since he couldn’t chase it out, he embraced it back. And despite the slow, constant, sense of suffocation he got from it, it almost felt nice. Liberating.
In the silence of his house – with his wife and children safely tucked in another home away from him – Paul finally felt like he was allowed to stop existing. At least momentarily.
He didn’t notice the ring of the phone at first. It rarely rang these days, and the shrill noise seemed to fold itself into the background constant clatter of the rain, polite and distant, like an afterthought.
It rang again.
And then a third time.
He turned his head, frowning a little. The sound came from the hallway – Linda had insisted he install another phone in the kitchen, but he hadn’t bothered. He glanced toward the empty hallway, hesitating momentarily. He wasn’t expecting anyone, not really. And certainly not at this hour.
Still, the ringing went on.
Thinking that it could be Mike, or maybe even Linda, with some last minute reschedule he did not really know if he could stomach, he pushed off the counter and made his way down the narrow hall, his slippers catching faintly on the rug.
He picked up the receiver, half expecting a dial tone. He had taken his sweet time getting there, after all.
“Hello?”
A breath came through the other line, and for some reason it made his stomach curl inwards, the hair on his nape standing up. It was a ridiculous thought, really, considering he hadn’t even heard a whisper, but he was certain he recognized that breath.
Only it was impossible.
“’Bout bloody time you answered, Macca. Thought you’d slipped in the bathroom and cracked your head.”
Paul froze, the cadence of the voice cursing through his body, reaching all the way to his toes. The wind and the rain against his windows disappeared, and for a heartbeat the whole world went still.
“Hello?” the voice repeated, a chuckle under the word. “You there, love? We’ve got ten minutes before Georgie starts sulking, and nobody wants that, yeah?”
This was a prank.
It had to be.
A horrible, terrible, cruel prank. Someone was having him on, laughing on the expense of his tragedy and the dread in Paul’s stomach swiftly turned into fire at the thought. Who would be so bloody heartless? Who would be so incredibly –
“You alive, McCartney?” The teasing travelled through the receiver, soft and fond, in John’s special way. “Were you out all night again? I don’t remember you getting home before I crashed… Thought we said we’d save the hangovers for after the session.”
The kettle whistled from the kitchen, a long, rising wail that echoed through the desolated house.
Paul didn’t move. He wasn’t sure he could. His body had gone rigid, feet planted, fingers wrapped around the handset so tightly the plastic strained audibly.
The line crackled faintly. Somewhere in the background he could hear the shuffle of chairs, a snare being tested, someone tapping a rhythm.
Paul’s chest ceased his mind spinning around itself.
This is a prank, this is a prank, this is a prank –
“Come on, sunshine,” John’s unmistakable voice floated to him, achingly familiar, and so, so dear. There was a challenging lilt in his tone, an undercurrent of a challenge, the kind that appeared when he was gearing up for a fight. “Don’t pull a disappearance act on me. You forgot we’re making a record or something?”
Paul’s grip on the phone tightened. His heart clenched enough to hurt. He could see the grin behind John’s words, the tilt of his head, the cigarette between his fingers.
His pulse thrummed in the pads of his fingers.
“Can you even hear me?”
Paul’s throat worked, constricting around nothing. His brain was screaming at him to say something, say anything, demand an answer, plead with him – but nothing came out.
“God, you’re useless when you’re half asleep,” John sighed. “Alright, tell you what – I’ll tell Martin you’re on your way. Don’t make me come drag you out myself, yeah? See you in ten.”
Paul was half a second too late at realizing what was going to happen.
“Wait –” the words ripped out of his lips, but the line had already clicked.
Silence.
The dial tone hummed in his ear, flat and endless.
Paul stayed where he was, the receiver pressed to his cheek, listening like it might change back. His reflection wavered faintly in the allway mirror; pale, unshaven, eyes too wide. The sound in his ear felt like it was drilling through his skull.
He stood like that for a long time before his mind remembered the kettle. He padded to the kitchen, as if in walking in a dream. The water had boiled over, hissing down the sides, leaving a thin puddle that clung to the metal. The flame had gone out because of it, but the gas was still on. He carefully turned it off, and wiped the excess water away. After numbingly cleaning up, Paul’s feet took him back to the hallway.
The phone looked at it, mocking him from its place on the wall. He reached for it again, lifted the handset. Drew a deep breath before bringing it to his ear.
The dial tone greeted him. Loud. Irritating.
Paul swallowed hard. His throat ached. He realized his grip had gone white-knuckled again around the receiver, but he couldn’t seem to loosen it. He tried to draw a deep breath, felt his chest squeeze painfully, punching the air straight out of his lungs. The silence pressed in closer, until he thought he could hear his own heartbeat in it. He blinked, slow and unsteady, and it felt like the world had shrunk around him.
He didn’t know how long he stood there like that. Looking at nothing. Hearing the static of the phone despite the handset resting uselessly in his hand. Feeling his heart picking up and losing tempo again, with every new thought flashing through his mind.
It was a prank.
But it was John’s voice.
Someone’s laughing at you. Probably a journalist or –
Don’t you think I’d recognize John’s bloody voice?!
And then – there was the sound of a key turning in the lock. It broke through the stillness of the house like a chord cutting through feedback.
Voices followed, footsteps – shoes against the floor. His children spoke one over the other, a voice raising here and there, a burst of laughter. The door slammed close and Linda’s voice floated down the hallway.
“Paul? You home?”
He didn’t answer. Simply stood there, phone in hand, blinking.
She appeared in the doorway, coat half-on, cheeks pink from the cold, her boots leaving wet, muddy prints on the floor. The kids darted around her, a blur of movement and sound. She smiled but it didn’t quiet reach her eyes.
“I’ll pick them up from school Monday,” she reminded him, like he could ever forget. She set their bags down by the wall. “I’ve got all of their things in here,” she said motioning with her chin to the bags. “Shouldn’t be any trouble.”
He nodded because he knew it was what he was supposed to do. Linda reflexively nodded back, and turned to leave. But then she spun back around, blue eyes scanning his face, studying him.
Her voice softened. “Paul? Are you alright?”
He blinked once, then twice, as though slowly coming out of a bad trip. His senses still felt dulled, but he knew he was standing in the middle of his hallway, with Linda in front of him, and his children somewhere in the living room.
“Hey,” she said again, and there was apprehension laced in her tone. “What’s going on?”
Paul opened his mouth, his eyes falling on the handset still gripped in his hand. He tried to force his voice, but it wouldn’t come, and his eyes desperately sought out Linda’s again – pleading, bewildered.
“Did someone call?”
His lips parted again, the words almost formed on his tongue, but they died before they ever made it out. Linda stepped closer, careful, as if approaching a wounded animal.
“It’s alright. You don’t have to –”
“He called me,” Paul whispered, the words broken, almost swallowed.
Linda frowned. “Who did?”
Paul’s eyes found hers – familiar, steady, lovely Linda – and he chocked on something. Air probably. There was a recognizable sting in his eyes, and he blinked hard, refusing to cry.
“John.”
He saw the moment the name registered in her brain. The tiny flicker of shock that crossed her face. The hitch in her breath. The small step she took away from him, her eyes imperceptibly widening.
He let out a shaky breath, glanced toward the receiver. “He rang,” he murmured. “Swear to God, he rang. Said he was at the studio. I –“his fingers twitched around the plastic “- I could hear them all.”
Linda reached out, covering his hand with hers. Her skin felt incredibly warm against his own.
“Paul,” she started, gently.
Paul’s stomach sunk to his feet. She didn’t have to speak for him to know what she was going to say next.
“There was probably a mix up –”
“You don’t believe me?” he hadn’t meant for the question to sound quiet so sharp. It’s not like he believed himself any more than Linda did.
“No, no,” she refused quickly, minimizing the distance she’d put between them. “I’m sure you think you heard him. I’m only saying –”
“I think I’d recognize his voice, Lin.”
“I never said you wouldn’t.”
“It was him.” His voice cracked toward the end. “It was.”
Linda didn’t argue. She just stood there, her hand still over his, while the children’s voices drifted down the hallway and the light outside dimmed into the late-afternoon grey.
“Come, sit down with me,” she said finally, prying the handset from his grips with a gentleness that hurt. “Let me make you a cuppa, yeah?”
Paul drew a breath. Rolled his shoulders. Watched her put the phone back on the hook, her movements careful, steady as always. Her fingers flexed nervously against her thigh when she turned back to him, and he hated that he could see her worry. Hated that he put it there.
This – this - was why he’d insisted she and the kids move out until he could manage himself again. Until the weight stopped crushing everyone around him. Or at the very least, until pushing it down enough it became bearable. And here he was, after they’d finally found a rhythm, ruining it all. Again.
This simply wouldn’t do. If Paul was having a mental breakdown, or some crazy person messing with him, then this would have to be something he’d go through alone.
His cross to bear.
He made quick work of smoothing his face, his expression rearranging into something lighter, practiced. Less broken. Less Paul. A smile, small and safe, the kind he used on public appearances made its way on his lips.
“I’m fine, Lin,” he said. “Really. Just… I’m sorry for snapping at you. I didn’t mean that.”
“I know, Paul –”
“And I’m sorry for talking crazy,” he added, speaking over her. “I probably just… nodded off for a second. Dreamt something odd, that’s all.”
Linda opened her mouth to speak, but then she pulled her lips tight together. Her eyes burned on his face, searching for honesty and finding none. She never believed his public persona, always knew better than to fall for his bullshit. But she didn’t press.
After a long moment, she nodded. “Alright,” she agreed. “You nodded off.”
“I did.”
“And you dreamt something odd.”
“That’s right.”
Linda chewed on her cheek, eyes still searching. She nodded again. “Alright… You- you should eat something. You’ve gone pale.”
He smiled, softer now, the closest he could come to an apology. “Yeah, I will.”
Linda didn’t move for a few seconds. The house was quiet again – too quiet, after the noise of the kids spilling in earlier. She studied him once more, her brow drawn tight, then turned toward the door.
“I’ll call tomorrow.”
“I’ll be expecting you.”
And that was that. She left. The door closed, her footsteps fading down the path.
Paul stayed where he was. The smile slipped the second she was gone. He rubbed his hands over his face, slow, like he could scrub the moment off his skin.
Two minutes passed. Maybe three.
“Dad?”
James stood in the hallway, socks half off, hair sticking up at odd angles. “Thes girls won’t let me watch telly.”
Paul blinked, finally lowering his hands.
“Oh yeah? That so?”
James nodded, small and indignant.
Paul glance at the phone one last time, its stillness almost taunting. Then he forced his voice to soften, his face to rearrange.
“Alright then. Let’s sort it out.”
The next morning the sun peaked behind heavy looking clouds for the first time in days, weak, watery pushing through the thick grey.
Out the window, the staff Paul had hired were already crossing the yard, heads bent against the breeze. One of them spotted him through the glass and waved. Paul lifted a hand in acknowledgment.
The familiar pinch of failure settled low in his chest. He used to do all that on his own, the feeding of the animals, the mucking-out, the little rituals that made the place feel like home. Now he watched someone else do it, standing uselessly in his kitchen. But the truth of the matter was that the farm was simply too much work for Paul in his current state, no matter how much he loathed to admit it.
He tried to busy himself with his children, pushing the thought away and briefly wondering just how many ugly thoughts he could push to the back of his mind.
“No, Daddy, you’ve got to go faster!” James exclaimed, brow furrowed. He was sitting on the countertop next to where Paul was standing, his short legs kicking back and forth, watching with the gravity of a seasoned chef. “Like this!” He made vigorous circles in the air with a wooden spoon.
“Aye, faster, that’s the ticket,” Paul agreed with an easy grin, playing along. “But what happens if me arm falls off, eh?”
James considered this, then shrugged. “Then you’ll have to use the other one.”
Heather – all grown up, and looking so much like her mother that Paul sometimes couldn’t stop staring – sighed dramatically from the other side of the counter, buttering toast with great ceremony. “You’re both a disaster. That bowl is going to explode.”
“Aye, but that’s the fun of it, love,” Paul said, dodging a fleck of batter that jumped from the bowl.
At the table, Stella and Mary were deep in conversation, their voices overlapping. Something about a birthday party next week, who was invited, what they were going to wear, whether they’d be allowed to stay past seven.
“See, Heather, I told you, Mary says I can borrow her skirt,” Stella announced triumphant.
Mary gasped. “I did not!”
Paul met Heather’s eyes, and they shared a smile, before glancing over his shoulder. “Well, it sounds like you two are off to an awful good start.”
They both groaned at him, and he turned back to the stove, still smiling. He flipped the pan, guided James’ small hands as they stirred, listened to Heather’s mock scolding as she tried to keep everyone on task. When he caught himself glancing toward the doorway – just for a second, a reflex – he shook it off, cracked another egg and smiled down at James.
“Alright, Chef,” he said. “What’s next?”
James tapped his chin, thinking hard. “We need salt.”
Paul snorted. “Right you are.”
From the table came another chorus of bickering, Stella insisting she was old enough to pour her own orange juice, Mary threatening to tell on her when she spilled it.
Paul leaned over and ruffled James’ fair hair. “You hear that? That’s the sound of chaos. That’s how you know you’ve done something right.”
James giggle, leaning into his side. “You’re silly.”
“Might be, but I make good eggs,” Paul said, sliding the pan off the heat.
He set the plates out, and for a bright and beautiful moment the kitchen felt full and perfect. He caught his reflection in one of the windows as he moved to take a seat; sleeves rolled up, hair a bit wild, James’ tiny fingers resting on his bicep. The picture of a man who had it almost together.
The phone rang.
It cut through the family’s noise, sharp and insistent, but not enough to stop the chatter. Stella kept right on insisting that actually she had been invited first, and Mary was just tagging along.
The phone rang again.
Paul did not freeze. His breath didn’t stutter. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and pushed his chair back. James blinked up at him, already shifting his weight to climb down.
“I’ll be back in a second, Chef,” he reassured, patting the boy’s back.
James’ eyes followed him all the way to the hallway.
“Hello?”
There was a pause, a soft exhale on the other end. “Hello, darling.”
Linda.
Paul smiled automatically, though she couldn’t see it. “Hey. You alright?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just checking in. Wanted to make sure you were okay after yesterday.”
He leaned against the wall, rubbing his thumb slowly along the cord. “Course. We’re all fine over here. Just finished making breakfast, James was actually very helpful.”
Linda huffed a quiet laugh. “Oh, he was, was he?”
“Yeah. He’s making sure my cooking is up to his standards.”
Another laugh, another small pause. “Good,” she muttered, finally. “That’s good.”
Paul’s eyes drifted to the kitchen doorway – James had twisted around on his seat to talk to his sisters, while Mary and Stella could be heard arguing over their toast.
“Yeah, it is…”
“Alright,” Linda said after a moment. “I’ll let you go. Give them my love.”
“Will do. Thanks, Lin.”
When the line clicked and the hum of the dial tone returned, Paul stayed there for a second longer, the receiver still warm against his ear. Then he put it back, shook out his shoulders, and turned toward the kitchen again.
“Right,” he announced, sliding back into his seat. “What’d I miss?”
“Stella spilled the juice!” Heather said immediately.
“Did not!”
Paul laughed. And it was almost easy.
After breakfast, the kitchen smelled faintly of food and soap, and the windows were bright with late-morning sun. He bundled them all into the car, dropped Heather in town to meet her friends, grumbling fondly when he reminded her for the third time about her curfew. Stella and Mary protested loudly about also wanting to stay in town until Paul promised to take them to the lake and they quieted down.
The roads were quiet, fields blurring green and gold on either side. Mary pushed one of her cassettes into the radio, something loud from a band Paul couldn’t name. She and Stella immediately started singing along at the top of their lungs, almost deliberately off-key. James kept kicking the back of Paul’s seat until he pretended to threaten turning the car around, which only made him laugh harder.
“Oi, you’ll knock us straight into a ditch.”
James squealed with laughter and soon the girls joined in. Paul smiled to himself, tried to hide it unsuccessfully.
Before long the car came to a stop near the lake. The kids spilled out of the car, running to the sore, their shoes immediately getting wet. Paul stood with his back against the car for a moment, teeth biting on the spot under his nail.
“Dad ,” James screeched, and he startled slightly. “The girls are – throwing water on me!”
“No we aren't!” Stella and Mary yelled back, simultaneously and is if on cue, James let another scream.
Paul shook himself. Ran his hand through his hair and jogged up to his children. They spent some time skipping stones, and then he spent several minutes chasing them around and almost tripping on stones risking to meet his inevitable end. After a while, chest heaving and breaths coming out too short, Paul suggested they use some stale bread he had in the trunk of his car to feed the ducks.
Naturally, they stayed at the lake longer than Paul meant to.
The light grew soft and slanted, turning the water into a shifting pane of pink and silver. The breeze picked up just enough to raise goosebumps along his arms, carrying the smell of damp earth.
Stella was clinging to his coat sleeve, trying to wedge her cold feet between his boots and his ankles like he was a walking radiator.
“Daddy, I’m freezing,” she whined, throwing her head back and looking up at him with wide, blue eyes.
“You’d be warmer if you kept your socks on,” Paul pointed out, nudging her with his hip.
She pulled a face. “They got wet.”
“That’s because you walked in the lake.”
“You told me to.”
“I did no such thing.”
She grinned at him, gap-toothed and smug, because she had successfully annoyed him and that was apparently the goal of the day. Without thinking about it twice, Paul scooped her up and she let a surprised, but delighted squeal. He pretended to drop her straight into the lake, and Stella screamed, clutching to his shirt, and then dissolving into helpless laughter.
It was Mary, surprisingly, who checked the time then and loudly said that if they wanted to make it back in time for dinner, they should be leaving. Paul herded them all toward the car, after a round of negotiations about who got the passenger seat — the answer was no one, “But why can Heather do it?” a question that had become the refrain of their home — they finally started back.
Mary put another cassette in the radio, this one quieter, all jangly guitars and warm harmonies. Another band he hadn’t heard off, probably a breakthrough act from the past year. Their melody had a sweetness to it that made Paul think of long tours and far-off hotel rooms and two microphones standing across each other.
He pushed the thought away before it took shape, and concentrated on Mary’s soft humming. On the way Stella leaned against her shoulder, eyelids already sleep-heavy. On the way James kept tapping his fingers against the paneling of the door, inventing a rhythm only he understood.
By the time they turned onto the long, narrow road leading home, the sun had slipped below the tree line and the world had gone cool again, a faint mist curling over the pastures.
Heather arrived back exactly on time, and they had dinner in front of the telly, because it was Saturday, and because Paul tried to be the fun parent when he remembered how. Scrambled eggs with chips and a bit of salad, Doctor Who reruns flickering blue light across the room.
It was around nine o’clock when Paul turned the main light off. James had fallen asleep after barely finishing his diner, and the girls hadn’t lasted much longer. Heather was still awake, Paul knew, but she had retreated to her room — not before quietly taking the upstairs phone, the old rotary extension Linda had insisted they keep for emergencies. Paul pretended not to notice.
He moved through the ground floor quietly, picking up cups, shoes, dolls, socks, a jumper James had abandoned on the stairs. Normal things. Ordinary things. The kind of clutter that vanished along with the kids on Monday morning, only to reappear on Friday noon, when Linda would drop them off.
It was a process.
He washed the last mug, set it on the rack. The rain had picked up again, tapping on his windows like annoying pebbles. He stood in the middle of his kitchen for a moment, taking it in. Breathing. It was easier in the darkness. He let the quiet settle on his shoulders, refamiliarized himself with it, let it seep through his pores the way it did when he was the only one in the house.
He was about to head for the staircase, when the phone rang.
One sharp jolt of sound in the darkened hall.
He huffed a breath but let it be. It was probably for Heather anyway. He climbed the first few steps. The phone rang again.
And again.
And again.
He strained his ears, tried to pick up any other noise from the second floor. He had half the mind to yell Heather’s name, ask her to pick up the phone before it woke up her siblings. But there was no sound coming from upstairs, and the phone was still ringing.
With a sigh, already shaping his voice into something polite for whatever friend of Heather’s thought it sensible to call at this hour, he crossed the hall and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
There was static.
A familiar breath.
“Paulie.”