We were talking, Dad and I, the only people in a moderately-sized, well-lit, white-walled room, both seated at a small square table. We weren’t opposite each other; rather, on two neighbouring sides. He was dressed quite neatly: a business suit and tie.
He slid a small hardback black book without a dust jacket over towards me, a slight smile on his face. “Take a look at this” he said. It had the name “J.R.R. Tolkien” on the side in fancy gold script, and the title was something I’d never heard of before: ”Hobbit Tales”.
Apparently it had only ever had a small print run; he opened it and showed a few typical pages – short stories for young children, with illustrations at the start of each tale. He said he’d recently found it in a second-hand bookshop, and bought it for a few pounds out of curiosity, without realising how rare it was.
He asked me to guess what the book was worth and after a bit of back-and-forth, I gave up: “Tell me, Dad. What’s the market price?” It turned out that there wasn’t one – you couldn’t find the book on sale anywhere nowadays, although it had been available at one point, not so long ago, relatively cheaply. But nowadays it was, I suppose, literally priceless.
I was wondering why I was so glad to see him, and why I was enjoying this conversation so much; and then I realised: it was because Dad was dead, had been dead for nearly a year, and I had thought that I was never going to see him again. I told him I loved him, and he acknowledged with a smile; then I felt such a deep sadness, and darkness swallowed everything up – and all of a sudden I was wide awake in bed and it was the middle of the night.
Saturday 21 March, 2026