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‘We’re so pleased for you.’ The woman is clasping my dad’s hand. She’s doing the sympathetic head tilt that I’ve had most of my life to get used to. ‘We worried that you might not find anyone after ...’ Her voice tails off. There’s no need to finish. She means after my mum, but nobody ever mentions her. They just tilt their heads and let the unsaid words hang there in the silence.
The doorbell rings. I yell that I’ll get it and make my escape. The party is suffocating. I’m handing out nibbles and smiling politely, but all the time I’m wondering why nobody else is horrified. It’s like the emperor’s new clothes. Everyone must be thinking that this is crazy, but nobody wants to deal with the social awkwardness of being the one to point it out.
I open the door. Finally a friendly face. Dom. Professor Dominic Collins. I put my arms around his neck and kiss him quickly on the lips. He keeps his arms around my waist.
‘How’s your dad?’
He sighs. ‘Still in hospital, but out of immediate danger, they say.’
‘It’s his heart again?’
Dom nods. ‘And he’s still refusing to talk about surgery. According to him it’s a fuss about nothing.’ He smiles at me. ‘Sorry. Anyway I’m here. What’s tonight in aid of?’
I haven’t told Dom the story of the cocktail whore. I started to on the phone last night, but he was on his mobile at his mum’s house and I could hear her in the background muttering about him frying his brain with that infernal gizmo.
He takes his coat off and hangs it in the hallway. He’s wearing the traditional pre-middle aged academic uniform of trousers and shirt, but no tie or jacket. It’s a look that implies that he is really wearing a jacket, but he’s just taken it off at the moment. Dom’s tall. He used to row when he was younger. He’s still got big broad shoulders under his plain clothes. I like that. It makes him feel solid. He turns back to me. ‘So?’
I try to form the words, but my brain has moved through anger and seems to be trying denial. In the end I shake my head. ‘You’ll see. Come on.’
He follows me into the kitchen, and I find him a beer, and pour another glass of wine for myself. ‘We’d better go through.’
Dom arrived late, so the soiree is already in full swing. The living room is full of Dad’s friends, most of them current or former colleagues, standing in huddles and chit-chatting like the sky hasn’t just fallen in. They don’t understand. To them he’s just the boss, but to me, he’s Dad. It’s me and him. It’s always been me and him, ever since Mum ... I slam the door that’s twitching open in my head hard shut ... ever since Mum went away.
My dad’s doing the rounds shaking hands, engaging in small talk, making introductions. I watch him for a second before I turn my attention to Her. Tania Highpole. Dad’s surprise from Verona. She’s tanned. I have no idea what the weather is like in Verona in January, but I’m telling myself it’s fake. Her hair’s a sort of golden blonde, which can’t be natural either. She might have been a real blonde once, but not any more. I’m not even sure how old she is. Younger than Dad, but I bet she’s nowhere near as young as she’d like everyone to think.
Dominic leans forward. ‘Who’s the woman with your dad?’
I still can’t say it. If I say it, it will be as if I’m accepting that she’s here and that all the stuff she said last night, while she was sitting in our kitchen, drinking our coffee, is actually happening.
Dad glances over and catches sight of Dom. Dad approves terribly of Dom, although I’ve never really been out with anyone he disapproved of. They’re coming over. Dad shakes Dom by the hand. ‘Thank you for coming. Let me introduce you.’
She’s already waiting at his side, arm linked through Dad’s, like he belongs to her now.
‘Dominic. I’d like you to meet Tania. My fiancée.’
Dom splutters his drink, but rallies. ‘Your?’
Dad laughs. She smiles. Everyone’s so bloody happy. Dad’s stroking her arm. I don’t want to see that, but I can’t look away. ‘My fiancée.’
She holds her free hand out to display the diamond that’s weighing down her ring finger.
‘Right. Well congratulations.’ I wrap my arm through Dom’s. We can all play the perfect couple game. Dom rallies from the shock enough to make a sentence. He’s doing better than me. ‘So, er, how did you get together?’
She giggles. ‘Well, I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar.’
Dom laughs. I dig my fingers into his arm. ‘Really?’
‘Oh yes. That much is true.’ Another giggle. ‘Sadly that isn’t where we met. Actually we met because I got fired from the cocktail bar. Theo found me crying on the pavement outside the cocktail bar.’
‘A real-life damsel in distress,’ my dad chips in.
‘I was! Anyway, I was sitting on the kerb, in a foreign country, crying my little eyes out, when this voice asked whether I was feeling subjugated by the patriarchy?’
‘What?’
Dad shrugs. ‘I’d just come out of a two hour seminar on radical feminism and the redefining of historical paradigms from a female perspective.’
‘You’d just come out of a bar.’
He nods. ‘But the seminar straight before that.’
‘And after that, I don’t think you saw much of the conference, did you?’
Dad’s gazing at her. It turns my stomach. ‘Love at first sight. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but ...’
My fingers tense around Dom’s arm. I look at Tania. ‘And you dropped everything and came back to England with Dad!’
She nods. ‘Pretty much.’
Something about that doesn’t add up. People have commitments. Families. Homes. Normal people have ties that take more than a few days to undo.
Dom glances at me and shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry. This was at the conference? You met in Verona? You were only out there for two weeks.’
Finally, somebody’s going to say something beyond platitudes about how happy they seem.
‘I know. We met eight days ago.’
‘Wow. Erm ... wow. Well, congratulations.’ Dom shakes Dad’s hand again and leans forward to kiss her cheek. I let go of his arm. I’m not going to be supportive of all the good wishes and cheek kissing.
‘Excuse me.’ I walk away. The kitchen is as good a place to hide as any. Another glass of wine. That’s what I need. With a bit of luck it’ll help me sleep tonight as well.
‘Are you okay?’
Dom’s followed me into the kitchen. We’ve been dating for nearly a year. We have a routine. I stay at his house three times a week; that’s most Fridays and Saturdays and one night during the week. At work we maintain a friendly distance. I think Dom still feels weird about dating his boss’s daughter. A year. Can you be ‘just dating’ for more than a year? Somewhere in the background there’s a clock ticking on our relationship. I take a sip from my wine. Right now it’s not my own relationship that’s my main concern.
I point back towards the living room, towards the smiling, loved-up craziness. ‘It’s a phase.’
‘I’m not sure sixty year old men have phases.’
‘Well this is one.’ Another sip. ‘It’s a mid-life crisis or something.’
‘Maybe.’
‘What do you mean “maybe”? People who are acting rationally do not come home from holiday with a cocktail waitress in tow. He doesn’t know anything about her. He can’t marry her.’
Dom leans against the wall. ‘Well, it’s not really up to us, is it?’
Logically he’s right, but logic isn’t helping me at the moment. ‘She’s not right for him.’
‘Tania?’ He shrugs. ‘I’m sure she’ll be fine when you get to know her.’
I shake my head. I have no intention of getting to know her. If I have anything to do with it, she won’t be here long enough anyway.