‘Now, do you think we need this many peanuts?’
I stared at my father from behind the enormous red trolley, already jam-packed with more food and drink than any assembly of humans would ever be able to consume.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘People love peanuts.’
With an unintelligible grunt, he wedged a jar of peanuts as big as a carry-on suitcase into the trolley.
Nothing said love like a father–daughter excursion to the cash and carry on a Sunday afternoon.
‘Your mum loves peanuts,’ Dad reasoned as he dragged the trolley onwards. ‘I want to make sure we have enough.’
My plan had been to stay in bed with Patrick until I lost the use of my legs and yet, here I was, traipsing around the Croydon Costco (not the closest Costco but Dad’s favourite Costco), buying up the entire store in preparation for their vow renewal. I’d had a panicked call from my mother first thing this morning, asking me to accompany Dad on his shopping trip while she took one for the team and went to visit my nan who had apparently been ‘causing trouble’ at the nursing home and had her phone confiscated. Again.
‘I don’t think she’s going to spend the entire day shovelling KP Dry Roasted down her throat,’ I said while he considered a family-sized tub of wasabi peas. ‘Aren’t there other things to organize first?’
‘Such as?’
‘Venue, invitations, music, flowers, decorations, favours,’ I replied, counting off on my fingers. ‘And I’m assuming you’ve got something to wear.’
‘I’m wearing my suit.’ He swapped the wasabi peas for a giant box of Bombay Mix, then pointed at the label. ‘Can you still call it that?’
‘I think so,’ I said, even though I wasn’t actually sure. He shrugged and dumped it in the trolley. ‘You don’t mean your old grey suit?’
‘It’s a perfectly good suit.’
My dad was a man of few words and even fewer clothes. He wore his jeans until they fell apart and then he had Mum hem them into regrettable denim shorts which wore until the crotch split in two. And the less said about that particular family holiday to Lanzarote, the better.
‘It’s just, Mum’s gone all out on the dress so you might want to think about getting a new one,’ I suggested as I took in his stripy polo shirt and cargo trousers, each and every pocket filled to bursting with some sort of dad essential. ‘And you’ve had that one for a while, could be time to invest in a new one.’
He considered this, stroking his unshaven chin as we walked. Sunday was the only day my dad did not shave. It was a treat he held sacrosanct, along with his Chelsea bun from the village bakery and forty-five unquestioned minutes, in the toilet, with the newspaper.
‘It was good enough for your graduation,’ he said, turning his blue eyes on me. I had Dad’s hair but Mum’s eyes. Alan Reynolds had been blessed with dark brown hair and blue eyes, a startling combo he’d passed on to his youngest daughter, leaving me with Mum’s dark brown peepers. I knew they hadn’t done it on purpose but still, it was very genetically selfish.
‘And I graduated eleven years ago,’ I reminded him, the strain of doing the maths showing on his face. ‘Maybe it’s time for a refresher.’
‘Maybe I’ll see what they’ve got in Debenhams,’ he relented as he reached for a forty-eight pack of Mini Cheddars. ‘How’s work going?’
‘Good,’ I said, pushing the trolley on ahead. ‘It’s going well.’
‘You think you’ll stick this one out then, do you?’
My dad had worked the same job since the day he left school. Literally, he finished his last exam and went directly to my granddad’s shop and started training as a plumber. From there, he started to specialize in fitting kitchens and bathrooms and eventually opened his own bathroom design company, Reynolds’ Bathrooms. It wasn’t the most creative name since the dawn of time but it did what it said on the tin. I knew he was still half heartbroken that I hadn’t followed him into the family business but what could I say? Low flush toilets left me cold. And I couldn’t really see Jo leaving Cambridge with a degree in physics to join him on a January jolly to the Kitchens, Bedrooms and Bathrooms Expo in Cologne.
‘I think it’s very romantic, you know,’ I told him as we trundled around the corner and up the chocolate aisle. I lingered in front of a plastic pyramid of Ferrero Rocher.
‘What is?’ Dad asked, distracted by what claimed to be the world’s largest tin of Quality Street.
‘The second wedding.’
‘Oh. Hmm.’
When we were growing up, Dad wasn’t around very much. I’d never really thought about it until Mum’s changing-room confessional because, at the time, it didn’t seem that strange. I knew everything about my friends’ mums but I knew next to nothing about anyone’s dad. Some mums worked, some mums didn’t, but all of them took the lead with their kids. Dads went to work, dads came home and dads were, for the most part, not to be disturbed. Mums were there to answer questions and help with projects while dads were tired and only available to drive you to the ice rink on Saturdays if they really had to. When my mum was told she’d have to have a caesarean with Jo, I vividly recalled a long and involved debate between my parents as to whether or not I’d have to go and live with my nan for a few weeks, since Mum would be unable to take care of me. I’d made a very vocal case at the time, about how I was fourteen and hardly needed a babysitter, but that was how hands-off my dad was. Sure, he was occasionally around to crack a joke, give a girl a piggyback or destroy my burgeoning sense of self with a casual comment about how my Doc Martens would make all the boys think I was a lesbian, but we really didn’t know each other that well.
But I was tenacious and, apparently, a miracle worker. If I could get Patrick Parker back in my life, I could get a two-way conversation out of a middle-aged man in Costco on a Sunday morning.
‘Dad?’
‘Rosalind?’
‘How did you know Mum was the one?’
He stopped in the middle of the aisle and pulled his glasses up off his nose, resting them on the top of his head.
‘Any reason in particular you’re asking this right now?’ he asked. ‘Is there something we should know about the young man who sent you those flowers?’
‘No,’ I replied, respecting his attempt to deflect my question. ‘I genuinely want to know.’
‘You’ve heard the story of how we met a thousand times,’ he said, dragging the trolley forwards, and me with it. ‘Now, booze. Do you think just wine and beer or do we need spirits as well?’
‘Spirits as well,’ I replied without hesitation. ‘And I’m not asking how you met, I know that.’ At the chip shop where they argued over the last battered sausage. A love story for the ages. ‘I’m asking how you knew she was the woman you wanted to marry.’
‘Well, it’s just what you did in those days,’ Dad wandered on, plopping his glasses back down on his face to inspect the price of a jug of gin. ‘As soon as your mum got pregnant, I had to propose.’
I looked down and saw my knuckles turning white against the bright red of the trolley’s plastic-coated bar. I opened my mouth but the words got stuck on the first attempt.
‘Can I interest either of you in a cheese puff?’
‘No!’ I yelped at a kindly-looking woman holding out a plate full of sample snacks. She shrank back into her tabard, slowly lowering the puff. ‘I mean, no thank you,’ I corrected. Clearing my throat, I turned back to Dad and tried again. ‘What do you mean, when Mum got pregnant?’
‘You know your mum was pregnant when we got engaged,’ Dad said, sliding the gin in next to the peanuts, the Bombay Mix and a giant box of Walkers crisps. ‘I’m sure we’ve talked about this before.’
‘We definitely haven’t,’ I croaked. But why hadn’t we? Mum had never, ever, ever mentioned it. Was the baby planned? Was it a boy or a girl? If they’d had that baby, would they have still had me? These were not the kind of existential thoughts I wanted to entertain in a Costco.
‘What happened?’
‘She lost the baby, obviously, but by that time, the wedding was all arranged. Besides, I was fairly sure I was going to ask her anyway so we went ahead with it,’ Dad said, clucking his tongue as he considered two different kinds of whisky. As though he hadn’t just delivered the biggest family truth bomb I’d heard in, well, a week. I grabbed my phone and opened a message to my sister while Dad kept right on talking.
Did you know mum and dad only got engaged because she was pregnant and then she had a miscarriage?
‘I got to thinking about it when we were at Simon and Sheila’s party. It wasn’t exactly the wedding of your mum’s dreams and she deserves something special. That’s why I wanted to do the whole renewal thing, not just some party. We both missed out on a lot when I was working every hour god sent and she was up to her eyeballs in you and your sister. I have to say, it’s been a nice discovery, getting to spend so much time together since Jo left home. Like getting to know each other all over again.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Even with you back.’
‘Right.’ I was very ready to change the subject before he mentioned the sushi incident. ‘So, what sort of wine were you thinking about?’
But it was too late. Dad had turned into one of the giant cans of Pringles in our trolley. He had been popped and he could not stop.
‘People think having a gifted child is a blessing,’ he went on, folding his arms and shaking his head at the ceiling. A man with a trolley chockfull of Blu-Ray players waited patiently for him to move before giving up and attempting to manoeuvre around. ‘And of course we’re proud of your sister, she really got a double dose of brains, that one, but it was a lot. All those extra classes, all those extra activities. You must remember how she was when she got kicked out of the Brownies, or had you left for university by then? That tantrum lasted a full week. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, screamed all day long, from sun-up to sun-down. According to your mother, that is, I was in Switzerland looking at a prototype for a tap that produced boiling hot, filtered water at the time. Ground-breaking, it was. Back then, anyway; everyone’s got it now. You can make tea, right out the tap, you know?’
‘I’ve seen them, yeah,’ I replied, still somewhat struggling to get past the bombshell.
‘It’s a lot of maintenance,’ he shook his head. ‘You’ve got to get the filter changed every couple of months, take the whole thing to pieces if it breaks. No, it’s not worth it. Not when you’ve got a fast-boil kettle. Anyway, back to your sister.’
‘You know, this all looks lovely,’ I interrupted him and nodded at everything in the trolley. ‘But given how much you want to make the renewal extra special, maybe we should get a caterer to do all the food? And drink? Maybe we just get an event planner to do the entire thing?’
Dad considered this for a moment.
‘You want me to get an event planner and a new suit?’
I nodded.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
Without a word, I grabbed a two-litre bottle of vodka from the shelf and placed it in the trolley.
‘Come on, Rosalind,’ he said, immediately putting it back. ‘You know better than that. Vodka is for Russians, alcoholics and students.’
Three groups of people he held in equal contempt.
‘Everything all right with the shed?’ Dad asked, making a wide left into the baked goods aisle.
‘I think there might be a leak in the roof,’ I said, eyeing a twenty-four pack of chocolate chip muffins. ‘Every time you hilariously hit it with the hosepipe at six a.m., I get dripped on.’
He chuckled softly to himself, missing my sarcasm completely. ‘There’s no leak,’ he replied decidedly. ‘Must be condensation. We’ll get you a dehumidifier.’
My phone vibrated against my hip with a message from my sister.
So?
Oh to be eighteen and not give a fuck. A second message buzzed through before I could turn it off.
1 in 4 pregnancies result in miscarriage. It’s more common than you think.
Jo hadn’t even started her first semester and she was already well into the ‘I know everything and you are deeply stupid’ phase of studenthood. I remembered it fondly. The wonderful day I sat Mum and Dad down and explained the horrors of the dairy industry all while Dad enjoyed a Mini Milk.
btw can you ask m+d if I can bring my gf to the wedding? She wants to meet u all, idk y
Jo had a girlfriend and expected me to tell our parents.
So, that’s how my day could get worse.