‘Well, no, but I’m asking you. I think it’d be a nice thing to do.’
‘I might have things on,’ she says airily.
‘C’mon,’ I chide her. ‘You can spare one afternoon, surely.’
She sighs and squirts a second load of ketchup onto her plate. Despite what her Instagram might suggest – that everything she ingests is raw and sprinkled with seeds – she virtually falls upon anything crumb-coated when Miles isn’t around, and requested chicken nuggets and oven chips when she came round tonight. ‘Why d’you even want me there?’ she asks.
‘Because I’ve been seeingLaurenfor quite a while now,’ I start, ‘and I’d like you to meet her. That’s all.’ She continues to shovel in nuggets as if stoking a furnace. ‘D’you feel … all right about me seeing her?’ I prompt her.
‘Yeah, of course! Why wouldn’t I? God, Dad, you don’t have to clear things withme…’ Bit of an over-reaction, I’m thinking. I only asked. Dinner finished, Esther traipsesthrough to the living room where she flumps onto the sofa, as if the process of eating has exhausted her.
I settle at the other end of it, wondering whether it’s worth going all out to persuade her to come to this lunch. I’m certainly not going to make her. I’m not going to beg or make a great scene about it. If she won’t come, then fine. Bloody great. We’ll probably cancel it because the whole point was for her and Lauren to meet.
No, no, wewon’tcancel, I decide, irritation building in me now. The world does not revolve around Esther who’s currently lying there, allowing me approximately one foot of sofa while she jabs at her phone. It’s actually not like her to be so arsey when she visits. Generally, we get along fine. In fact I often suspect she enjoys a bit of respite from Miles with his joyless food and that terrible art in his kitchen that reminds me of a burst wound.
Not tonight, though. Tonight she’s in a stinker of a mood and I have no idea why.
Finally, she places her phone on the floor, still within arm’s reach in case she needs to grab at it. ‘I’ve been asked to write this thing,’ she announces.
‘What thing?’
‘For the jewellery brand I’m working with, y’know?’
‘Oh, really?’ I say. ‘What do they want?’
‘Something for their website in my own words.’
‘Right. Well, that’s okay, isn’t it?’ I know she used to enjoy creative writing at school before the reality show took over her life.
‘Not really, Dad. I’ve got to write an essay about how wearing their jewellery fits in with my ethos, and how it matters to me that it’s all responsibly sourced and ethically produced,’ she blurts out, looking quite distressed as if it’ll require significant research and many hours of labour.
‘Whatisyour ethos?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know!’ She rests a hand over her eyes as if to shield herself from the awfulness of it all.
‘Well … can you get one?’ I ask vaguely.
‘Get one? We’re talking about a personal philosophy. Not a tattoo.’
Yes, I do know what an ethos is.‘I mean, can’t you drum up something that sounds good?’
She splutters. ‘You don’t just drum one up, Dad! This is going to take a huge amount of work and I really don’t have time for it.’
I exhale slowly, trying to remain patient. ‘How long have they given you to write it?’
‘Three weeks.’
‘And how long does it have to be?’
‘Two hundred words.’
‘You mean two thousand,’ I suggest.
‘No, two hundred.’
‘Two hundred words?’ I exclaim. ‘That’s not much, Est. You could write that sitting on the loo—’
‘Oh, thanks, Dad,’ she barks. ‘Thanks for belittling what I have to do.’ After that, there’s no point in discussing it, and she heads home soon afterwards leaving a waft of disgruntlement in her wake. I still find it hard to think of Miles’s bat cave as her home.
