“I hate suits,” Dad mumbles under his breath. I scan the room through the slightly open door. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, half a glass of red wine and a dog-eared copy of Shantaram on his bedside table. An empty wine glass sits on Mum’s table, next to a well-thumbed copy of How to Get What You Want and Get It Now; her Prada reading glasses lie among the pages of this week’s Nature. Dad fiddles with his silver cufflinks, light bouncing off them and dancing on the ceiling.
The alarm clock flashes 20:17 in red retro digits. I hear Mum in the bathroom, fixing her face, flossing her teeth, washing the purple wine tint from her lips.
“You need help?” I ask Dad, going in to fasten his cuffs. “Where you off to?”
“Oh, some prize-giving thing for Mum’s paper. They’re up for Newspaper of the Year.” He doesn’t seem too happy about spending the evening with Mum’s schmoozy colleagues. Networking, they call it in the business. Being tossers, we say in the real world.
“Yeah? Cool. Free fizz and nibbles. What’s not to like?”
“Hmm.” Dad sighs. I finish the cufflinks. “Thanks,” he says.
“It’s Georgia’s birthday thing tonight.”
“OK, love. Are you staying over?”
“Probably.”
“Well, take your key in case you change your mind. We won’t be back until late.”
“OK.”
“You’ve been in a better mood this week. Have you attracted a following of impossibly handsome suitors? Made it onto the gym team?”
I shrug, trying to act casual, but can’t hold back a smile. I’m chirpy as a bird on a blue-sky morning. My head is filled with Finn, Finn, Finn…
“You know you have, Carla, dancing about the place like a loon. I saw you knee-slide on the kitchen floor to some ‘song’, and I say ‘song’ in its loosest sense. It was more of a dook-chooka, boom boom.” Dad attempts to beatbox in a cripplingly embarrassing manner, for what is quite possibly the most excruciating eight seconds of my life thus far. “Bleepety-bleep, umcha, umcha, doof doof doooo—”
“Please stop that.”
“I’m not complaining. Just wondering what’s brought about this miraculous transformation.”
“Oh, nothing really. I’m my usual melancholy self inside. I promise.”
“If you say so.” Dad gives me a nudge, and a look that says, I know this is about a bloke. He won’t push it though. Plus, telling him would mean telling Mum and sparking the whole focusing-on-my-studies talk. Ugh… I’m not up for that. I have a night to prep for. A date with fate – hot boy, pills, music – I’ll take that over fizz, nibbles and networking any day.