Lily squats at the edge of the pond poking her stick at the frogspawn, a wobble of tiny, black, jelly-clad commas. On another day they might make Richard think of his pancreas. But watching Lily fills him with a glow, like he has swallowed the sun. Richard is Lily’s father. One day soon he will blow away, a dandelion seed in the breeze. This is how he’d like to tell it to Lily, soon, when he has to – that she will see him in the fields, a seed on the breeze, rising, watching over her. Dandelion is one of the words. A tiny movement pierces the water’s surface and flippers away, down into the reedy dark. She stirs the water with her stick. ‘Where’s it gone?’ ‘It’s a newt,’ he says. ‘Newt?’ she pouts the word. On her lips, words sparkle. Newt is another one of the words on the list. A few months ago, Rich received some crow-black news that has steadily pecked at him. It was around then that something else was bothering him. Words were dropping out of books, of heads, of use; becoming obsolete. Acorn, gone. And Bluebell: the overnight spread of purple, like a tide. Apparently, no-one says these words. Can this be true? Conker. Imagine a childhood without Conker? And Starling. And Wren: tiny virtuoso soprano, pluckiest of creatures with its tail pointing at the sun. Wren, for God’s sake! He is incensed, splenetic, pancreatic. Ha. He is also galvanised. Words. What you can’t say you can’t picture, and what you can’t picture you can’t love. Lily Lily Lily. Trapped in her indoor life. You could say it was an epiphany – the call to fatherhood exploding inside him for the first time; a firework in the chest, almost but not quite too late. Fatherhood, father, Dad. He hasn’t been much of one. He hasn’t been one at all. Now he has a clear purpose. Before he goes, he must get his daughter to look up; she needs to know what she won’t have words for. Lily’s mother had chosen Rich hoping he might live up to his name. Ha. And because he had no desire for offspring. She seduced and discarded him almost twelve years ago, kept the child to herself until the summer of the girl’s ninth year, when she had things to do and announced it was time for Rich to make his appearance. Once a month these past two years, Rich and Lily have sat side by side in dark cinemas; across from each other in pizza places, strings of cheese swinging from their lips in lieu of conversation. What did he know of children? Leaky, howling, insatiable creatures. And now, stranger still, a poised mini-woman with black-rimmed eyes and sparkling nails; polished, impermeable. How will he get through? Little white stumps of earphones poke from her ears; she sings tunelessly, alarmingly, of “Sweet slow kisses from my baby”, and is always looking down. On a Saturday in early February, he drives her up to Beacon Hill under a moody sky. Windscreen wipers bat at the drizzle. He glances at her in the passenger seat. Her shoes resemble ballet slippers; a tiny striped bag sits in her lap covered with inexplicable multicoloured zips. ‘There’s an awesome view up here,’ Rich says, his voice bright. Lily nods and unzips a zip, then another, pulls out her earphones. ‘Top of the world,’ he says, gripping the wheel. They park near the top. He’d planned a longer walk but he’s losing his nerve. And she doesn’t have appropriate footwear. They make their small ascent side by side on spiky ground. Mercifully, the rain has stopped. He wants to take her hand. He can hear her humming – faint atonal peeps from under her hood. Should he ask about the music? He strides on. He must show her, he must. If he could, he would have waited for primroses, the evening scream of swifts, an orange sunset. Instead, they stand beside the thick, grey obelisk in tufts of colourless grass. Brown fields tumble away in front of them, criss-crossed with hedges in dark clumps. At the bottom, the city sprawl nestles low against mushrooming clouds. To his left, a line of yew trees scratch down the hillside; two large, black birds crouch in the branches. He fills his lungs and looks around but Lily has strayed from his side. On a flat patch of ground below she’s jumping from side to side. The birds take flight, a sudden spray of black against the lumpy grey. He runs over to join her, ready with his spiel. She’s looking at her feet, practising something. ‘They’re ravens,’ he points, and without meaning to, starts reeling off the words. ‘Fern, bramble, lark,’ he pauses. ‘Magpie! We saw one on the way here.’ She takes a step backwards while he carries on, his pitch rising. ‘And heather. Hang on, I’ll find you some.’ He scans the ground; they’re not high enough. ‘Heather’s in my class,’ she says. She takes an earphone out, looks up at the sky, takes the other one out. ‘She has to have a special teacher.’ Rich waves this away as a gust of panic rises in his throat. ‘Heather’s one of the words,’ he flings out his arms. ‘You need all this! It could save your life!’ She stares up at him, blank-faced. ‘Words are vanishing, Lily.’ His arms drop to his sides and his voice slides back to normal. ‘I don’t want all this lost to you.’ ‘All what?’ she says, wrinkling her nose. ‘What words?’ She shivers. Any minute now she will stomp off to the car. He longs for her to stay with him here on the hill, to open her eyes in wonder. ‘Words to name the world,’ he says. Lily frowns. ‘Is that what you’re sad about?’ ‘Huh? No.’ What was he saying? It was urgent but it’s gone. Her dark-rimmed eyes look steadily into his, giving nothing of her world away. He opens his mouth to a tendril of smoky breath but no words. He feels suddenly weak and squats down. She’s taller than him now. Is that what you’re sad about? ‘There’s too many words anyway,’ Lily says, airily. What? Rich may have to lie down. Something is being pulled from him, unravelling his insides. She shrugs. ‘And there’s always new ones.’ ‘New ones,’ he repeats. He’s lost his grip. Words. He was trying to open her eyes. He pats the ground behind him – too wet to sit. ‘Like Hashtag,’ Lily says, with her head on one side making him think of a robin. ‘Blog,’ she switches sides, ‘Twitter.’ He feels like he is balanced on a ledge: he mustn’t look down. His knees start to ache. ‘What I wanted,’ he starts slowly, putting a hand on the ground in front to steady him, ‘was for you to–’ But Lily’s heading back down the hill, away from him. With great effort, Rich unfurls himself and heads after her. Almost at the car, he finds her hunkered down, picking something. She turns and holds up a clutch of pointy leaves. ‘For next door’s rabbit,’ she says. With her free hand she rips another fistful. ‘He loves dandelions.’ Dandelion is on the list. Inside his chest hope flaps in great beats, like a heron rising from a lake. After he takes Lily home, he goes to his friend’s cottage by the sea. Standing on the rocks he allows himself to by hypnotised by the swish and suck, the raking crackle of the tide going out. He understands the sea. His rage builds, roars, spits, then drops away. There’s too many words anyway. He smiles at the wisdom in this despite the grammar. Yet on his slow walk back to the cottage, salt in his nostrils, his own new words jab at him in sharp pricks: ductal, histopathology, metastasize. Palliative. Next month, they sit across from each other at his kitchen table. Rich taps his laptop for inspiration while Lily swipes her small, pink-cased screen. The day outside the window is dank and mocking. Bingo. He turns the laptop to face her. She looks up from her ’phone. ‘Smoke,’ she says, unimpressed. He shakes his head. ‘Birds,’ he says, making an upward spiral motion with his finger. Lily leans in. ‘It’s smoke,’ she says. ‘What’s burning?’ He laughs. ‘Seriously, it’s starlings, thousands of them. I’ve seen them do it.’ ‘If you say so.’ She goes back to her phone. He feels like a squashed bug. He leaves a long pause. ‘What would you like to do?’ he says finally, trying to keep his voice level. Then like a kingfisher flash, he’s lit with an idea. He slaps both palms on the table. ‘Let’s go to the sea.’ Lily picks her way, a careful stick insect, down the knobbly path: mud and stones flanked by a high hedge either side. The short walk takes forever. When the hedge drops, the wind rises up and batters them. And there is it, the March sea, wide and grey and seething. A gull like a small plane sweeps by, too close. Lily stumbles back and shrieks. ‘Come on!’ He grips her hand and leads her further out. They hop over the rocks together. Gusted to a standstill at the craggy point, she clings to his arm. ‘Look!’ he points at a gannet bobbing in the waves. Lily follows his gaze; the bird dips down and vanishes. The sky brightens, the sea swells, the wind whisks and buffets. ‘Going to die?’ Lily shouts, still clutching his arm. He turns sharply. She says something else but the wind snatches her words. Is she asking him? A crag of silver outlines the cloud, then disappears. Rich can’t decide where to look or what to say. The gannet pops up again. ‘He’s alive!’ Lily smiles up at him with relief. A wave leaps up and covers their feet. Lily squeals, looks murderously at the sea, then at her shoes. She lets go of his arm and retreats in a series of balletic jumps, back to the beach. ‘They’re soaked!’ she screams from a flat rock. ‘Suede’s not supposed to get wet!’ With the last shrill word, the wind whips her hair right over her face. She sits down on the rock hugging her knees. She might be crying. He goes to her and kneels down. ‘The sea’s a menace, isn’t it?’ He sits right beside her so she can lean on him. She doesn’t move away. ‘It’s full of treasure though.’ She gives him a stern look and sniffs. ‘I used to swim in this, you know,’ he says, remembering with a jolt of grief the tingling zing of icy water on skin, almost painful. ‘In winter?’ she says, wide-eyed. ‘In winter,’ he says. Then adds, ‘Mostly in a wetsuit.’ He thinks how alien his life must seem to her. ‘What kind of treasure?’ she says, rubbing her shoes with her sleeve. ‘Everything you can imagine. I was thinking of the wildlife kind.’ He checks he hasn’t lost her, but she’s waiting. ‘All manner of miracles. For instance, somewhere in the ocean, there’s a fish that can give itself a sex-change.’ He mimes with a weaving hand. ‘It swims under a rock, male, and ta-da!,’ he does jazz hands, ‘out the next morning, female.’ ‘No way!’ Her mouth drops open, he can see her back teeth, gleaming. ‘Fact,’ he says. ‘I saw it in a documentary.’ Lily takes this in. ‘At least it comes out a girl,’ she says with a sly smile. ‘Ha! At least. That is indeed a bonus.’ The wind drops. Lily picks up a pebble and taps it on the rock, leaving little chalk marks. ‘I’ve got two fish,’ she mumbles to the rock. ‘Wibble and Wobble.’ She scratches a ‘W’ carelessly, flicking at the stone. ‘I know they’re crap names.’ She throws the pebble away. ‘They’re goldfish. Mum’s boyfriend won them at Downsfest. I keep hoping they’ll die so I can get a rabbit.’ Rich waits until he’s sure she’s finished. ‘We could bring them here?’ he says. Then he grins. ‘Feed them to the gannets.’ She puts a hand over her mouth to cover a smile. It is all he can do to stop himself lunging at her with open arms. He keeps talking. ‘Stick them in a plastic bag, filled with water.’ ‘Or a Tupperware,’ Lily says. ‘Tupperware, genius!’ he almost bellows. ‘They won’t know anything, they’re not the brightest.’ ‘They might like it better,’ Lily says. ‘More space.’ ‘They might.’ His throat is thick. He takes her in, perched on a rock, hair blowing about her face, knees to her chest. My daughter. ‘They might make some new friends.’ The sea churns away in front of them, all the way to the horizon. The spring air grows warmer. Rich asks for an overnight contact, is surprised when Lily agrees. She must know something. He pitches the tent, though they may not sleep in it. He’ll take her home if she changes her mind. They lie on their backs and gaze up into a patch of winking, ink-black sky. ‘All the way out there, all the iron in your blood, that’s where it was made.’ ‘Stop telling me things,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’ ‘Shhh,’ she says, ‘I’m looking.’ Then after a short while, ‘I’m freezing.’ The stars disappear. They light a fire and stare into the leaping flames. ‘What did you want to be?’ she asks. ‘Hmm?’ ‘When you were twelve. What did you want to be?’ Her face flickers pink and orange. A thrill shoots through him: she really wants to know. Then a tumbling panic. The answer is forensic pathologist. He can’t speak here of dead bodies, of scraping under fingernails. He needs something poetic, impressive. ‘An inventor,’ he says. A spark jumps out and lands beside her foot, pulses and fades. ‘I wanted to invent a time machine,’ he says, believing it now himself. ‘I think someone’s already doing that,’ Lily says. Ludicrously, he is put out. ‘Who?’ he scowls. ‘Someone at NASA,’ she says. And after a pause ‘I want to be a choreographer, but Vanessa says I won’t make it because I’m still not on points. Basically, I only want to do Street and Rockjam, so it doesn’t matter.’ This huge, incomprehensible speech is sublime to Rich, though Vanessa’s clearly a fuckwit. ‘You’ll be a fantastic choreographer,’ he says, wishing he was young and hip. Lily shrugs. ‘I don’t think Dance is in the options at Moorland Green anyway.’ ‘Dance is always an option,’ he says. A whispery hoot comes from the woods. He cocks his head to listen. Lily doesn’t notice. She stands up, fumbles in her pockets and pops her earphones in. The fire crackles, there’s another hoot. He checks to see if Lily heard it, but she’s bobbing her head to her music. He’ll take her to the pond next; there might be tadpoles. He leans in to place another log and savours the heat, almost burning his face and warm across his chest. She mouths words he can’t make out. Her shoulders start to rise in small, rhythmic movements: left shrug, right shrug, left, right. Now she lifts her legs, one at a time, now her arms fan out and she makes a wave with her whole body. He’s careful to keep his eyes on the fire and watches her from the corners. She doesn’t seem to mind him being there while she dances in the firelight. Shrug, shrug, step, step, arms wide, wave. It is just the two of them in the corner of a field; a tiny glow in the night. Another hoot comes from the woods. Calling to him. To them. His whole life is here: flapping, sweet, perilous.