Bel woke later than usual, tired and jumpy from a fitful sleep. Dressing slowly, reluctant to start the new day and face her father, she found her heart beating uncomfortably fast as soon as she stuck her nose outside her bedroom. The place was silent. Her father, she hoped, was still sound asleep. He had consumed more than enough whisky before their spat, and God knew how much he had drunk after she had gone to bed.
She crept along to the kitchen, where she turned on the light. The kettle sounded like the start of the Third World War in the quiet early-morning flat, and she winced, certain it would wake her father – he would already be in a bad mood from his hangover. I am not going to apologize, she decided staunchly. But her curdling guts told her otherwise as she waited in trepidation for the inevitable confrontation.
As she sipped her coffee and glanced through yesterday’s newspaper, her attention was caught by a movement in the corridor. She looked up, preparing herself, but was surprised to see a woman standing framed in the doorway.
‘Oh, hi,’ Bel said, confused.
The woman grinned. ‘Just off,’ she said, as she bent to pull on a pair of black suede ankle boots she’d left just inside the kitchen. She must have been about Bel’s age, slim, with dyed black hair pulled into an untidy knot on top of her head and a pale face, made paler in contrast to the heavy black lashes fixed to her upper lids. She wore a frilly white blouse that showed off ample cleavage under a black leather jacket and a knee-length black skirt. ‘I’m Pauline, by the way,’ she added, when she straightened, her face flushed from the effort.
‘Bel,’ Bel said, stretching out her hand in welcome. She had no idea who the woman was, appearing at the kitchen door at that hour of the morning.
Pauline moved forward and they clasped hands. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, with a smile, but offering no explanation.
‘Umm, do you want a coffee or anything?’ Bel asked. ‘I’ve just made some.’
Pauline shook her head. ‘Should get going. I have to be at the office later and I can’t go in like this.’ She laughed without any apparent embarrassment. ‘Bye, then,’ she said, hefting a capacious leather bag onto her shoulder, which had been hanging on the back of a kitchen chair, unnoticed by Bel.
Bel frowned. But before she’d had a chance to think, Pauline was back, her hand clutching a pile of letters, which she placed on the table, in front of Bel. ‘Didn’t want to tread on them,’ she said, with a grin.
Then she was gone again, the front door closing quietly behind her.
Bemused, Bel thought back. He’s never mentioned a Pauline. He’d had various women friends over the years since Agnes had died. None had stayed the course, but then he’d never appeared keen they should.
Marcia, a wine buyer at Waitrose, was the most long-standing. Bel had liked her, with her bubbly red curls and snorting laugh, her ridiculous heels. Two years into the relationship, however, when Marcia was spending most of her time at the flat and Bel had assumed she would actually move in, she had suddenly stopped coming. When Bel – still living at home after her accident – asked her father what had happened, he refused to comment. ‘None of your business, girl,’ he’d said. So Bel never knew who had dumped whom although, looking back, she suspected her father had lost his temper with Marcia once too often, or said something demeaning, and she had decided to quit.
Now the uncomfortable certainty that Pauline had come round for a night of sex made Bel shudder with distaste. She knew it was unfair. Dennis had every right to do as he pleased. But she couldn’t help unfortunate images of her ageing father in flagrante with Pauline flashing before her eyes. In spite of Bel considering herself mature and broad-minded, and even though her father had been single since his forties – and she hadn’t heard a thing last night – she wished she had never encountered his woman friend.
So absorbed was Bel in her thoughts, she didn’t immediately notice him standing in the doorway, stock still, as if waiting for permission to enter. When she looked up, he gave her a decidedly sheepish nod, then scuffed into the kitchen, head lowered. He was dressed in his day clothes – T-shirt, jeans, slippers – and had shaved, but his face looked pinched and tired. Still processing her encounter with Pauline, Bel almost forgot the row they’d had last night. But now, seeing the shifty glance he shot her as he reached for the coffee pot and held his hand to the glass to test its warmth, she realized that he had not.
‘So, I met Pauline this morning,’ Bel jumped in, trying to keep her voice cool. ‘She seems nice.’
Dennis raised one eyebrow at her, as if trying to gauge what she was thinking. ‘She is. Very.’ He put the coffee pot down, disappointed. It must have been only lukewarm. ‘Not someone I’d take to dinner, obviously,’ he added, by way of explanation.
‘Meaning?’ Bel asked, with feigned innocence, although she knew perfectly well what he meant.
Her father smiled as he turned and went over to the kettle, which he filled and switched on silently. Bel waited. For the next few minutes Dennis fussed over the cafetière, emptying the grounds from the coffee she’d made earlier and swilling out the jug, then sloppily spooning more into the base, pouring on the boiled water and fixing the plunger in place. He came back to the table with his favourite white bone-china cup – the saucer lost or broken long ago – and sat down with a grunt. ‘There are women you take to dinner, sweetheart, and there are women you take to bed,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘And occasionally there is a woman with whom you do both – your dear mother being an example.’ He paused to press the plunger on his coffee. ‘Pauline’s a dear. I’m very fond of her. But I doubt I’ll be inviting her to meet my friends or share a cosy supper at Wilton’s.’
Prickling with disgust, Bel stared at him.
‘Don’t look at me like that. A chap has his needs … not that we’re allowed to say that, these days, of course.’
When Bel didn’t reply, worried she would start shouting at her father and mindful of what had happened over backgammon last night, he went on, ‘Take Louis, for instance. Doesn’t his behaviour with that French piece entirely prove my point?’
His thoughtless use of Louis as an example broke Bel. ‘Dad, stop it, please,’ she begged. ‘You sound like some Neanderthal who drags women from the cave by their hair. This is just bluster. You don’t really believe what you’re saying.’ She reached across the table and patted his hand. ‘You’re not like that.’ By insisting on her father’s integrity, Bel wanted to make it true.
Dennis blinked, clearly surprised to have the wind taken out of his sails.
‘Mum would roll in her grave if she heard you say those things,’ Bel added, mustering a wan smile, aware she was using her father’s own tactics to bring him round, reminding him of the bond that would always bind them.
Her father looked momentarily irritated, then gave in to a chastened laugh. ‘Your mother had a tongue on her whenever I stepped too far over the line. I always knew when to hold up my hands.’ He eyed Bel intently. ‘You remind me of her in that respect, sweetheart. You may be a pushover with the likes of Louis, but you know fundamentally what’s what.’
Bel wasn’t sure if she should take that as a compliment or as yet another reminder of her father’s ability to damn with faint praise.
Conversation clearly over, as far as Dennis was concerned, he sat up straighter, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. ‘Shall we get some breakfast on? I could eat a horse.’
Bel rose from her seat and obediently went to fetch bacon from the fridge, feeling flattened by the recent skirmish. She loved her father, wanted desperately to respect him, but sometimes it was just too hard. She had a sudden vision of these moments being played out endlessly between them, like a song on repeat. Over and over for years to come, until one of them died. I must reply to Bruno’s email, she thought, as the rashers began to sizzle in the frying pan.