“Let’s not think about that tonight. You’re safe. Everything that needs to be done is being done. Let’s just pretend that nothing else is the matter.”
“Dad!” The word was enough to put me on high alert, never mind the volume. “Can you bring my suitcase up?”
“Why don’t you come and get it?”
Her head stuck round at the top of the stairs. “It’s too heavy.”
“Should’ve thought about that before you packed it.” I picked the case up and took it to her, hearing Simone laughing.
There wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to make these two women happy.
In fact, I’d do anything.
* * *
Simone cookedwhile I browsed through various shit on the internet that I shouldn’t waste my time on and Lauren caught up on her friends’ social media lives even though she’d seen them in the flesh just hours ago. It was normal, a weird kind of normal that I didn’t think I’d ever had.
“This party isn’t some drink-fest, Dad.”
“No.”
“But you haven’t even heard the details….”
I knew she was pouting without even looking up.
“I know the important details: you’re fifteen; you shouldn’t be drinking and you definitely shouldn’t be hanging out at parties with boys who are at university. They’re too old for you.”
She made a noise of disgust that reminded me of Rebecca. I hid a smirk; it was a sound that had always amused me.
“Boys my age are much worse than university men, Dad. Don’t you remember what it was like to be fifteen.”
Simone choked.
“Then we have a simple solution. No parties until you’re eighteen.”
“What?” Her phone was actually out of her hand.
“If the boys your age are thinking with only their dicks then no parties until you’re mature enough to go out with older ones.”
“Dad!”
I figured she was cringing at the fact that I knew what fifteen-year-old boys were like.
“In fact, I’m pretty sure there’s an all-girls school we could look at. That would solve the problem of parties…”
“Simone! Tell him!”
Simone looked from me to Lauren and back to the pasta she was making. “I think she should be allowed to go to the party. On the condition that she promises not to drink any alcohol and you pick her up at ten pm. That’s a compromise. You could also have a safe sex talk with her.”
“We could.” I pointed my finger at Lauren. “If a boy so much as touches you, I’ll bury him under the Thames. Done.”
Simone rolled her eyes. Lauren pulled a face.
“What’s the song you were dancing to earlier?”
It would’ve been an abrupt change of topic but for the change of music that was being piped through the speakers. It was the song Lauren had been dancing to, practicing some elaborate move for the show that was coming up.
“This is it. Can you still dance?” She looked at Simone.
