"Of course, that probably seems like a lifetime ago for you, I mean you're almost a young woman now. I hope I still have a place in your memories, even if I'm a little blurry or a little faded around the edges, but I hope you remember the me that you and your mother made, the happiest, luckiest man there could be, and not the me that cancer made because that was never really me anyway, it was just a sickness and...what was it they were saying back then..."Fuck cancer" and all that. Don't tell your Mum I swore...and don't you swear either."
Sophie and her friends walked along, taking in the sights of the stalls and the rides, dissecting their visit to Madam Kondazian's Chamber of Summoning (Halloween Special: 2 for 1 Palm Reading and Aura Realignment), arguing if their pooled resources would be better spent on the ghost train or on trying to convince someone older to buy them pumpkin beer from the bar-stall manned by a decidedly sombre looking clown. She was being drawn back into their conversation and if she had ever heard him at all she was hearing him less now and that was fine because he understood how movement could make one tune out. That was fine because his daughter was young and she was out with her friends on a Halloween night and now that he remembered, now that she had woken him, he would never lose her again.
"Anyway, I'm going to go look in on Maggie now, your Mum that is. I'm very excited to see her again. You and your friends have a nice night. Perhaps stick to the ghost train rather than the beer and, I'm sorry to be an interfering Dad here, but you might stay away from that Devil Boy Tommy and give the Wolf Boy a chance, I think he's a sounder bet."
He stopped walking with her then and stayed behind, watching them move along the pier and just as they began to mingle into the dwindling late night crowd Wolf Boy (who had pulled his mask down over his face) made some sort of joke and when Sophie, laughing, snorting actually, looked at the boy he thought he saw a glimmer of the favour she had been bestowing on Tommy earlier.
There was hope for all of them yet.
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