Richard Dyson's Tax Return

'Schloss Milkel in Moonlight' by Carl Gustav Carus ca. 1833-35

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I can’t listen to the radio anymore. There is something insultingly normal about it.

I drive in silence instead, my hands gripping the wheel too tightly, the road ahead an endless blur of unlived possibility. My thoughts fragment, skimming over the surface like a stone skipping across water. I have the overwhelming sense that I’m not really here. I’m somewhere else.

Somewhere that feels like nothing and everything all at once.

I move through the drive on autopilot, navigating turns and bends, half aware, half numb, until the edges of the world begin to close in on me again. I’ll remember, just for a second, where I am and what I’m doing.

Then, just as quickly, I fall back into the void.

I make it another fifty yards down the lane before I have to stop and put the handbrake on, my eyes welling up like a dam about to burst.

Then I scream.

Until my lungs feel like they're on fire.

That night, I can't sleep.

I prayed for you to heal

and now you're dead.

Why didn't He listen to me?

Why didn't He save you?

Why the fuckety fuck is this happening?

WHY?

WHY?

WHY?

I turn on the bedside radio. It starts playing Adagio for Strings. Fucking great, I mutter to myself. But I don’t bother to turn it off.

I sit on the edge of the bed and think about the Richard Dyson letter I found. I thought it was lost forever.

We were always happiest at home — the fire roaring, the curtains drawn, a glass of red in hand, playing cards, pieces of MIA Jenga strewn across the floor.

One evening like this, for some unknown reason, I was boring him with cultural trivia about Richard Branson’s island nearly burning down.

“How did he get all his money anyway?” I ask without taking my eyes off the cards in my hand, trying to cheat by glimpsing his — which he has learned to keep close to his chest.

“No idea,” comes his disinterested reply, before playing his favourite seven.

I let out an exasperated sigh and pick up the mountain of cards that has accumulated between us.

“Was it vacuums?” I ask. “Didn’t he invent a special type of vacuum?”

“No, you’re thinking of someone else,” he says, still disinterested.

He plays his penultimate card — an ace. I shake my head but offer a wry smile. He looks at me with that twinkle in his eyes and does the inevitable, turning over his last card and whipping it into the empty space on the floor between us.

“It’s still 3–2, my love. I win,” I say, scooping up the card debris, ever the sore loser.

“No!” he says sternly, looking genuinely offended. “I won the first one.”

“You bloody didn’t, you fibber! You had loads of…” I stop when I see that devilish smile I’ve never been able to resist. God, he always knows how to reel me in.

I give him a playful whack on the arm. “You nearly had me there!”

“Ow! That hurt,” he says, his bottom lip losing its centre of gravity as he mimics a wounded animal.

I look at him knowingly, and he wrestles me gently to the ground, pinning my arms beside my head. I smile at him, and raise my eyebrows. He leans down and kisses me.

We both make that noise.

Whilst I’m ready to keep making that noise, he pulls away and just stares at me, that way he always did.

God, I love him, I think to myself. There were too many I love yous that I kept to myself. Too many to count. All now weighing me down, entombing me in my own regret.

“So, you’re telling me that Richard Branson is not the bloke that got rich making vacuum cleaners?” I ask.

“He does make them now, but that’s not how he made his money.” He rests back on his heels and pulls me up to a sitting position in front of the fire, stroking my messy hair out of my face.

“So who am I thinking of then?” I say. I am now very confused.

“Dyson, I think. No idea what his first name is. James maybe?”

“Hang on! Are you telling me that Richard Branson is not responsible for the Dyson vacuum cleaner?!”

He laughs warmly. “No, love. That would be the bloke called Dyson.” He chuckles again and kisses me on the forehead. “You’re so cute.”

He gets up and wanders into the kitchen. I hear glass chinking, the snack drawer opening.

“Do you think he knows?” I call out.

“Who?” he says, wandering back into the room, his arms full of midnight treats.

“Do you think Richard knows? That he’s not James Dyson?”

He bursts out laughing. “I don’t know, love. I bloody hope so. Otherwise his tax return will be a fucking nightmare.”

We both laugh, and I think that thing again — the thing I should have made into real words. Every. Damn. Time.

“We should write to him and tell him,” I declare, reaching for the smoking box.

“Do you know what?” he says. “We probably should. Maybe this will be the life-changing moment that makes everything make sense for him.”

He reaches for the paper and pens we’d been using earlier to draw portraits of each other.

“Right then,” he says. “Where shall we start?”

“Dear Richard Dyson…”

I’m snapped out of the memory by the dog’s incessant scratching. She’s filthy and needs a bath. I think I should make that the thing I do today, but I know I won’t.

The cat is clawing at the washing basket in the hallway, his sole purpose seemingly to test the limits of my empathy and sanity.

An owl hoots somewhere in the darkness outside, and I wonder if it’s the same owl that came to warn me.

I get up, stare at the cold side of the bed, and put on my slippers in the dark, walking downstairs without turning on the lights, guided only by familiarity. I go into the living room, and switch on the reading lamp, reaching for my purse resting next to it.

I rummage through receipts of memories, and find a half-used book of stamps. I stick one onto a blank white envelope from my writing desk, and write on the front:

FAO: Richard Dyson

And lay it to rest beside the kettle.