‘What are you doing here?’ I squawked as Joe slid past me into the house, carrying an overnight bag in each hand. ‘And where do you think you’re going?’
‘Hello, Sophie, nice to see you again, Sophie,’ he replied cheerily. ‘Nice PJs, very sexy. Think you missed a button.’
‘They’re not meant to be sexy, they’re meant to be comfortable,’ I said, heat rising in my semi-visible chest. ‘Not that I care what you think. I happen to love these pyjamas.’
But I did care. As soon as I saw him, it all came flooding back: the red walls of the karaoke room, the hot, sweaty air that made it so hard to breathe, his face coming closer to mine until my lips prickled at their proximity.
‘Something else that isn’t for me,’ he grinned as I fastened my missed button. ‘Don’t worry, I get it.’
‘Where’s the birthday boy?’
A voice boomed down the hallway and a tall, tanned man, who looked to be somewhere in his sixties despitehis neon yellow Air Force 1s and ultra-distressed jeans, strolled in like he owned the place. Without thinking about it, I took a safety step backwards. His energy was off. I couldn’t put a finger on it but there was something I didn’t like about his extremely shiny white teeth and even shinier diamond earring, and it was only when he pulled off his enormous sunglasses to hit me with the full force of his piercing blue eyes I realised who it was. Gregory Brent. Dad’s favourite frenemy and, I realised when the two of them stood side by side, Joe’s dad.
‘Little Sophie Taylor, is that you?’ Gregory asked, failing to notice my extreme discomfort as he launched himself at me in a slightly too long hug. ‘I haven’t seen you since you were in knee-high socks.’
‘Gregory, hi.’ I pushed him away and took another, much bigger step backwards. How much aftershave could one man wear? He was more potent than a Lush store and didn’t even come with the possibility of a bath bomb to ease my suffering.
‘Lucky you for getting the lion’s share of your mother’s genes,’ he said with a leer. ‘Bet you could still pull off those knee socks.’
‘You’re Joe’s dad,’ I stated, ignoring the deeply unpleasant implication.
There was no denying a fact. Same blue eyes, same square shoulders, almost the same height. They even had the same dark, dark brown hair but where Joe’s was glossy and full of life, Gregory’s was flat and matte. A tell-tale sign of the overzealous application of Just For Men.
‘For my sins,’ Gregory guffawed before slapping his son on the back so hard that Joe stumbled forward and rattled the umbrella stand with one of the weekendbags. Both were made of leather, one shiny, black and covered in debossed designer logos, the other one almost as dark brown and weathered as his dad.
‘Surely you don’t remember Joseph? You were tiny the last time the two of you met. But that’s a Brent man for you, we’ve always known how to make an impression on the ladies.’
‘Quite,’ I agreed. ‘So it’s Joseph Brent, not Joe Walsh.’
‘No one calls me Joseph except for Dad,’ Joe explained as his father began picking up everything within touching distance in the hallway. My dad was going to go spare when he saw his fingerprints all over his framed letter from JRR Tolkien. ‘Walsh is my mum’s name. I changed it when—’
‘When she fucked off to America and took him with her.’
From the way Joe closed his eyes and shook his head, I had to assume that wasn’t exactly how he would have put it. It made perfect sense for noted cad and bounder, Joe Walsh, to be the devil spawn of Gregory Brent but why hadn’t he told me yesterday?
‘Where is everyone?’ Gregory asked, picking up then putting down a photograph of my parents in the 1980s and striding past me down the hall and into the kitchen. ‘Isn’t this supposed to be a party? Pandora, my angel, what have you got there? It looks like a giant pile of shit.’
Joe and I hung back by the bottom of the stairs and, for the first time since we’d met, he seemed to be struggling to meet my eyes.
‘You’re Gregory Brent’s son,’ I said accusingly, crossing my arms and adding a silent ‘well, well, well’ to my sentence. ‘Isn’t that interesting?’
His reply was tight and tense. ‘No more interesting than you being Hugh and Pandora Taylor’s daughter. Whoever my dad is or isn’t has no bearing on who I am.’
‘Probably has a bit of bearing on what you do though, doesn’t it?’ I suggested with just the tiniest touch of smugness. ‘Or did you get your fancy creative director job by bravely soldiering on through the trenches of publishing, succeeding solely on your own merits and keeping your family connections quiet?’
‘You’re one to talk.’
When he looked up, I saw the beginnings of a smile playing on his lips and the sound of distant alarm bells rang in my ears.
‘Joseph! Get your arse in here and say hello to Pandy!’
‘Please excuse me,’ Joe replied. ‘I need to get my arse in there to say hello to Pandy. We’ll pick this up later.’
‘No, we won’t,’ I said, both hot and bothered. ‘And Mum hates being called Pandy so if you don’t want her to spit in your coffee, I’d think twice about saying it to her face if I were you.’
He backed off down the hallway, his grin growing bigger by the second until he turned to disappear into the kitchen, leaving me pressed up against the wall, breathing heavily. Joe Walsh was in my house. Joe Walsh who definitely hadn’t appeared in one of my weird, restless night dreams, along with a desert island, a carton of Ben & Jerry’s and, for some reason, my Great-Aunt Maeve’s toby jug collection. I pressed a hand against my clammy forehead and stared up at the ceiling. It would take more than a tub of Ben & Jerry’s to cool me down now.
‘Sophie?’
