“I have no doubt about it.”
“She has an inclination towards unreliable guys and compulsive liars who generally disappear within a couple of weeks.”
“Do they leave because of her?”
There! I knew that his bitchiness would come out eventually.
“Could be.”
I bite my tongue to avoid storming in to make a scene. Dad! What are you saying?
“Our daughter has never been the easiest woman to deal with. Carly and I know that, because it’s partly our fault since we raised her in this way. She’s impulsive and spontaneous and when she takes a certain direction, she pursues it without looking around. She trusts people immediately and unconditionally, but her trust is often misplaced.”
“It’s not a mystery that we’re very different, and our families aren’t much alike, either,” Ashford replies, vaguely.
“There is not one person like another in the world, but our past doesn’t matter, as long as we build our future with the right person, that’s what makes a true couple. Looking back to where you came from is the best way to prevent yourself from seeing where you’re going, and you risk ending up crashing into a wall. Carly and I had no apparent future. I’m saying this heart to heart: when I met her, Carly was fed up with a life of formality and with the demands of her family, yet she didn’t know how to escape the expectations that everyone had of her since childhood. I can’t deny that we had ups and downs, and it wasn’t always a bed of roses, but, in the end, Carly made her choice. Living in the past, tied to the conventions of her family, or making her own way. I was a labourer and spent my nights playing with my band in a garage, what I could offer a Mayfair girl?”
“A good concert,” Ashford replies humorously.
“Aye. That’s what I did. I see that you understand me?”
“I’m not sure I do,” Ashford replies uncertainly.
“Maybe not now, but you will understand in a few years. If you married Jemma so quickly, it means that this kind of awareness is already inside you, you only need time to find it.”
“I hope I’ll have this privilege.”
“Let me tell you something as her dad, now: if you ever make Jemma suffer, you will pay. You see where we live, right? I know a lot of people who would beat you up for free. At best, they’d find you in a container of canned tuna. It would be quite a number of cans, if you do the maths.”
“It’s not my intention,” Ashford defends himself.
“It’s nobody’s intention, at the beginning.”
I decide that the conversation has lasted long enough and I go back to the living room. “Have you missed me?”
“You’re the woman of a lifetime, of course we’ve missed you,” Ashford replies with a dazzling smile. What a dick. If he weren’t so damn fake, one could even believe him.
“Then? Did Dad show you his record collection?” I say, trying to digress, so that they don’t realise I’ve been eavesdropping.
“Records?” Asks Ashford.
More than you can listen to in a lifetime.” My dad stands up and we follow him to the loft, where he stores several crates containing vinyl records. “Look. All the best of the music ever played on Earth.”
“There must be hundreds.” Ashford looks around in amazement.
“Three thousand, four hundred and seventy-two,” I say. “Seventy-three,” my dad corrects me. “Last week I put my hands on this bairn,” he says, showing off Bowie’sSpace Oddity. “It’s the single withWild Eyed Boy.”
Before I can take it, Ashford grabs it. “This is impossible!” He turns it in his hands, looking at it front and back. “The version with the original cover is extremely rare.”
“It still has one hell of a sound.” My dad says proudly as he rummages through the crates. “I see you like this stuff. What about this?” And he hands him one of his Holy Grails.
“Tinkerbells Fairydust.” Ashford is even more astonished. “From 1969! But it has never been officially released!”
“Aye. I had a lot of idle friends hanging out at Decca and its archives were a gold mine, back then.”
“Astounding.” And so Ashford bends over my father’s record crates.
“Dessert’s ready!” My mother calls from the living room. When we’re back to our places, she has already cut a slice of tart for everyone.
