The Goldfish | Short Story

Kia ora guys! So I just got back from a choir competition thing and it was so amazing, maybe I'll write a post about it a bit later, but for now, here's a story I wrote for my friend because she asked me what I was reading and she thought I said 'The Goldfish' instead of 'The Goldfinch' and then she said it would have been better if it was about a goldfish so I decided to write this for her. 

Murphy Grey owns a goldfish.
        It swims around in small circles in its little bowl, its orange tail glinting in the reflecting water.  Murphy's father gave her the small goldfish when he left on her seventeenth birthday, so that she'd remember him fondly.  He didn't want to leave her, but he had no choice.  He had been enlisted and he had to do his duty to king and country.  Three years later he was missing in action and Murphy lived alone in her flat with the shimmering goldfish that only swam in circles, her mother having passed away the previous year.  The little fish continued to circle in his bowl when the letter about her father came, it was oblivious to Murphy's shattering reality.  It was comforting really.  At least, to Murphy it was.  The idea that there was someone- something -who was happy, no matter her predicament.
        A loud, insistent thudding woke Murphy from a fitful sleep on a grey morning, the only colour coming from the tiny goldfish in its bowl.  Murphy rolled out of her bed and wrapped a thick cardigan around her body, making her way through her dark flat to the door.  She pulled the door open and came face to face with a heavily bearded man, maybe in his late fifties.
        "Murphy." He croaked.  Murphy pulled back slightly from his foul breath, but she rushed to his side when he collapsed on her doorstep.  She efficiently checked for a pulse.  It was there and fairly strong, if a little too fast.  He appeared to be in no fit state to do her any harm so she got his arm around her shoulders and hauled him up, practically dragging him to the small couch by the table where the goldfish was still swimming in circles.
        The strange man groaned and cracked his eyes open a sliver, slowly taking in the small goldfish, its tail still glinting in the dim light of the candle that Murphy had just lit.  Murphy watched as his eyes began to glisten in the candlelight, his face crumpling as he croaked, "You still have the goldfish."
        With that one sentence, Murphy knew that this strange man on her couch with the thick beard and foul breath was her father.  She ran over to him and burst into floods of tears as he grasped her to him so tightly she thought she might break, but she never wanted him to let go again.
        The little goldfish continued swimming in his little circles, tail glinting, still oblivious to the bittersweet world around him.
        Murphy Grey still owns a goldfish.