When I went in, he had a mask over his mouth and a tube going into his arm. The constant bleep of the heart monitor was the only noise apart from his laboured breath. I sat down by his bedside and gently squeezed his hand. The bleeping changed rhythm slightly and Pa opened his eyes and looked at me. His eyes were smiling at me, as they always had.

"Hello Pa," I said. His hand moved slowly to the mask and pulled it down over his chin. He managed a weak smile. I don't know why, but suddenly I blurted out, "Do you remember the floozie game?"

He looked right at me and laughed. The laugh rapidly degenerated into a coughing fit and the rhythm of the bleeping jumped around alarmingly for a few seconds. "You remember that, after all these years?" he finally managed to wheeze. "Yes, it was a good game, even though you seemed too serious about it sometimes." He regarded me with a frown rippling across his forehead, adding even more lines to the permanent ones already there. "What made you think of that?"

"I don't know." I paused, hardly daring to ask, not wanting to upset him, but I had to know the truth. "Paaa," I said, reverting to my childhood habit of dragging out the sound of the vowel, "tell me something."

"Of course, anything for my little girl."

"When I was about thirteen, you had a black clam-shell phone. Where did it come from?"

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