My parents were respectable people, of course. Pillars of the community. But once the door was shut and the curtains were closed, my father was an altogether different man. You could never say he was lazy. He put a lot of effort into creating just the right level of menace and fear. Of course, it’s all water under the bridge now. I explained how I felt as clearly as possible just before I turned fourteen and that was that. It’s surprising how even the worst of situations can be turned around in a moment.
‘I’ve never missed Nathan’s birthday before. I just fogot. Work was crazy,’ Stephen says, picking up his phone and reading something, which doesn’t help to convey particularly strong remorse. I feel my inner ratchet click two teeth tighter.
‘Oh, you should’ve said. I thought it was something selfish and superficial. I mean, Nathan worships the ground you walk on, but if youforgot...’ I grab his phone and slap it down on the table.
‘Look, I said I’m sorry.’ He stares at me, then his phone again. I sense guilt or an out-of-control Candy Crush habit.
‘Your mum called earlier to speak to Nathan, apparently. She said she’d tried you at work, and they said you’d left.’
‘What?’ he says, his tone a little high, like someone’s just stepped on his testicles.
‘Where were you?’
‘OK, look, I wasn’t working. My bad. I went straight to the gym after work. I should’ve said. I always go on a Friday. It was just habit.’
‘Your son sat staring out of the window for two hours, asking if every car was yours.’
‘I’m a selfish idiot. I’ll make it up to him.’
‘Is this still about your dad?’ I ask. He misses his dad, of course, but you have to grieve quickly, or it’s bound to depress you. ‘Or it is your mum? Is she pressuring you to leave me orsomething?’ I put my hand on Stephen’s arm. I hope he finds it comforting, because if he looks up he will see my eyes are burning and not with desire.
‘She’s still grieving.’
‘Or is she just using the opportunity to get her claws into you again?’
‘She’s lost her husband, Lalla. They were married for forty-three years.’
‘I know, and it seems she wants you to take his place.’
‘Don’t be crude, it’s not nice. She’s just lonely,’ he says. ‘And anyway, she likes you.’
‘Rubbish. She only ever liked Georgie,’ I say, a reference to his former fiancée, a lithe golden-haired product of Anglo-Saxon breeding and elite girls’ schools that Madeleine Rook hand-picked as her son’s helpmeet since she was the daughter of a baronet, no less.
‘I don’t want to go there, Lalla.’ He pulls his arm away, slips his phone into his pocket, then places his hands on his knees to avoid any further sympathetic gestures.
‘Me neither, darling, but sometimes you have to put your hand in the water to clean the U-bend. Listening to James Blunt doesn’t equal introspection. It’s fine to indulge male myths, but let’s not confuse them with thought.’
‘Oh, fuck it,’ he says, and drops his fork. It clatters onto his plate. I am slightly concerned that he might’ve chipped the china, and peer over his hand. Stephen doesn’t swear except in the bedroom, so this strikes me as important. I head towards the red wine.
‘There’s nothing we can’t do together, you know that,’ I say, as I pour him a generous glass. He sips his wine and stares into space as I massage his shoulder and take the opportunity to tick off one of my to-dos.
‘The gym’s working wonders. Your shoulders are so strong,’ I say, which is entirely untrue – he’s been going to the gym for a year and I don’t think he’s gained an ounce of muscle. ‘Would you like a rub-down?’
He shrugs my hands away and makes a low growling sound.
‘Or a quick blow job instead, if you’re too busy?’ He doesn’t crack a smile. He might be about to tell me that he’s dying or that he’s scuffed the alloys on his beloved BMW. I simply can’t measure the magnitude of the man’s misery.
‘It’s just a work thing. I fucked up on a deal, again. That’s why I went to the gym. I know how much you want me to make partner,’ he says.
‘I want it for us, for the children, not for me. I’d be happy living in a hut together, wearing second-hand clothes.’ He nods. Bless him, simple creature.
‘It’s just that there’s a lot – holidays, mortgage, your clothes, the cars, ballet, piano, Mandarin, the nanny, the cleaner, the gardener... It feels like the more I earn, the less I have. Does that make sense?’
‘If you make partner, Stephen, those pressures will evaporate. Your salary doubles and you get a share of the executive bonus. It’s just a short-term investment of your time and energy, but the benefits are extraordinary.’
He has to understand that his role is to earn money so that we can live in the manner I prefer. In return, he gets to be married to one of the most beautiful and brilliant of wives who never looks anything but her best, while offering scintillating companionship and indulging enthusiastically in his rather workaday lovemaking.
‘I always wanted my dad’s approval,’ he says, sipping his wine. ‘At school, I only got good marks because he would call me his “smart boy”. And now he’s gone, I don’t know why I’m doing it. You work your whole life, and then you die. What’s the point?’
