CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ESTHER
Esther couldn’t believe her dad had gone to Corsica on his own. ‘What’s he going to do there for two weeks?’ she’d asked her boyfriend as he’d flipped from show to show on TV. A cookery thing, with someone demonstrating how to create a wavy edge effect on a pie. Then something with tractors and a terrible daytime soap. Esther isn’t fond of channel flipping – or the TV being on in the day. It feels depressing but then, this is Miles’s flat they’re living in. So she doesn’t make the rules.
‘Dunno babe,’ he’d replied, eyes fixed on the screen. ‘Are there ancient ruins to look at? Does he like that kind of thing?’
‘Guess so.’ In fact Esther knows her dad is interested in archaeology. When she was little he’d taken her to archaeological digs. It was a bit like going on treasure hunts – they’d found shards of pottery and ancient coins – and for a while it had been one of their favourite things to do together. But she didn’t mention this because Miles wouldn’t have been interested. He’d have just done that glazing-over thing.
Anyway, her dad hadn’t been looking at ancient ruins in Corsica. He’d been far too busy for that. He’d met a woman – anactual woman– and fallen in love with her! Esther would have been no more shocked if he’d come home with a neck tattoo.
Her dad never dated anyone (apart from Polly, who’d seemed nice enough despite her terribly ugly sandals and had suddenly disappeared to South America). Generally, Esther had always assumed he was far too busy with his work. But not now. Now he’s seeing this Lauren person and seems all sparky and happy and different, somehow. This change in him, when he’s always been so solid and dependable, always there for her … well, it’s unsettling to say the least. And now he wants Esther to not onlymeethis new love, but go to her house, somewhere way out in the countryside!
A lunch is being put on. Some big fancy lunch so they can be formally introduced. This is sending out warning signals about this Lauren person. Esther is trying not to judge the woman before she’s even met her, but it’s hard not to when she’s being pressurised like this.
After all, they could have kept it simple and just had a quick coffee at her dad’s place. No big deal; it could have all been over and done with in twenty minutes. But for some reason Lauren couldn’t do that. Nope, it had to be a big showy-offy occasion, taking up half of Esther’s weekend. She has only agreed (begrudgingly) to go because she loves her dad and it obviously means a lot to him, for her to be there.
Now Esther has learnt that Lauren has a teenage son. Apparently he’s going to be at this lunch too. ‘Of course he is,’ her dad had said, tetchily, when she’d quizzed him on this. ‘It’s his house, Est. It’s where he lives.’
‘What’s he like?’ she asked.
‘Really nice. Quite studious and a bit shy,’ he told her.
Well, this was going to be a load of laughs. ‘It’s only lunch,’ her dad keeps reminding her. If it’s that insignificant then why are Lauren’s best friend and her husband coming along too? A whole fucking gang! If her dad had said this at the start – that half the village would be coming along for a gawp – then she’d never have agreed to go.
Esther goes rigid with anxiety every time she thinks about it. What if she doesn’t like Lauren? Or Lauren doesn’t like her? How awkward is that going to be, when her dad’s so obviously smitten? People think, because of the kind of industry Esther works in, that she’s super-confident and never fazed by social events. They’re wrong, though. She’s fine in work situations because she’s developed ‘the tools’ to deal with them, as Chrissie, her therapist, would put it. She’s created coping mechanisms and a persona she can slip into: shiny, sparkly Esther. But ‘being Esther Burton’ won’t work when she meets Lauren, not with her dad being there – because he knows her better than anyone else. It would feel ridiculous, being professional Esther in front of him. Trouble is, she’s relied so heavily on this version of herself, which she pulls on like a costume, that she can’t remember how to just be her normal self.
Meeting this Lauren person and the bookish son seems so fraught with potential disaster that, three days before the big event, Esther calls Chrissie and insists she fit her in.
Esther doesn’t think she’s a qualified psychotherapist exactly, but when she tried to check out her credentials and found basically nothing, her friend Lily, who’d recommended her (she’s Miles’s friend really) said it’s not about framed certificates on the wall. Just as well because therearen’t any. They are sitting in what Chrissie calls her therapy suite, which is a glorified garden shed. She hands Esther a glass mug of chamomile tea. Esther would rather have a coffee, a big jolt of caffeine to sharpen her up.
‘I can understand why this is alarming for you,’ Chrissie says. ‘The thought of all these new people is making you feel unsafe.’
Lily was right. Qualifications don’t really matter. As she pours everything out in Chrissie’s shed, Esther starts to feel a whole lot better.
Chrissie understands that she only agreed to go to support her dad, and because she’s still harbouring a residue of guilt over not going to Corsica with him. ‘But then, if you had gone, he wouldn’t have met Lauren and be so happy now,’ Chrissie offers.
That makes Esther feel better immediately. ‘I’d never thought of it like that. So, d’you think I shouldn’t go to this lunch?’
‘What do you want to do,’ Chrissie asks, ‘in your heart?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How is the situation making you feel?’
She considers this. ‘Kind of like … being tricked into something,’ she explains.
Chrissie nods understandingly. She knows that Esther and her dad don’t always see eye to eye; that he’d made a big fuss about how many suitcases she’d been planning to take to Corsica, and then went on about her coat, calling it ‘a carpet’. (Charming!) Now Esther is explaining how this whole meeting Lauren scenario is reminding her of the time he’d made her walk part of the Southern Western Coastal Path, or whatever it’s called, near St Ives in Cornwall, where the two of them had gone on holiday when Esther was fourteen. He’d bought her some terrible walking boots that weighed about a ton each, which Estherhad refused to wear – because it was like having bricks strapped to her feet.
‘You’renotdoing the walk in flip-flops,’ her dad had said, as if she was six years old.
‘They’re sandals, not flip-flops,’ she’d corrected him. He knew absolutely nothing about fashion.
‘Whatever they are, they have no supporting structure.’ Who even talks like that? Her dad is obsessed with footwear offering ‘support’ to the foot and ankle as if she was one of those people who hikes up mountains with spiky sticks. So she’d worn her flip-flops –sandals– and after about half an hour she was in agony and crying and they’d had to turn back. But it wasn’t her fault. It was a misleading description thing. Coastal Path? It wasn’t a path, it wasboulders.
‘You’re worried that he’s misleading you about this lunch with Lauren?’ Chrissie prompts her now.
‘Yeah. I mean, Lauren’s invited all her friends along—’
