While I give my dad the tablets to swallow, my mother shakes her head in disappointment. “You’ve been bad tempered all day, I don’t understand what’s wrong with you.”
“I’ve told you already, but apparently you don’t want to understand: I think Ashford has got bored of having you in his house. You’ve been here almost a month, he welcomed you with a happy face and all, but, at dinner, he told me again that he ‘wants to have tea with you’ tomorrow.”
“But it’s just afternoon tea, honey!” My mother objects.
“Mum, read between the lines: it’s just a way to kick you out!”
“It isn’t,” my dad mumbles.
“What?” Mum and I ask in unison.
“It’s not like that, Jemma,” he goes on muttering.
“What isn’t, Dad?” I draw nearer to him.
“We were invited here,” he continues. “Ashford came to London personally.”
“Vance!” My mother exclaims in a strangely warning tone.
“No, Carly, let me talk. Ashford knew you were worried about us, so he came to London without telling you, and proposed we settle here at Denby. He didn’t give us any deadlines or terms.”
Dad’s words ring in my head like a bell and I struggle to make sense of them. “You just said that A… Ashford did that?”
My mother sits on the bed next to me. “Ashford didn’t want you to know it was his idea, so he asked us not to tell you and to show up here by surprise, as if we were just visiting you.”
I’m lost for words.
“Stop worrying about that tea,” she comforts me. “I feel that you’re still kind of in awe of Ashford, which is understandable, as you haven’t been married for long. You will discover each other over time, and you will also become familiar with all his ways to show you he loves you, even if he doesn’t say it out loud.”
*
After they told me that, I didn’t sleep at all, neither that night nor the following one. I feel I should thank him, at least, but I don’t know how.
46
Ashford’s Version
Harring and I are in the club changing rooms after a fierce squash match.
“So, what present shall I give you, this year?” He asks me.
“Present?”
“Your birthday is next week, Parker!”
“You always remember!”
“Your birthday falls between late July and early August, in the Grand Prix summer break, it’s impossible to forget about it. If you ask me what day it is, I don’t know exactly, but, roughly, I would say it’s next week.”
“I appreciate it.” I accept Haz with his virtues and, above all, his flaws.
“Okay then, what will it be? A box of limited edition Montecristo Sublimes? Every drag is like a breath of Cuba.”
“Cigars? I’m not Winston Churchill!”
“Then a Cuban babe, maybe?”
“A new golf set, if you really care,” I suggest.
