A few more long, painful seconds.
You’ll have to wait until Thursday to find out.
* * *
“How did it go today?”I ask my daughter as soon as she opens the car door.
“Same as always. He spent an hour talking about things I’ll never understand then gave me some homework.”
“How dare he…?” I comment, amused, as I pull out of the school car park.
I stop at the crossing to let my daughter’s tutor past on his bike. He lifts his hand towards our car in greeting, and my daughter looks away huffily. I feel obliged to wave instead.
At least this time there was no middle finger.
We’re making good progress.
I pull out into the road heading home, and try to launch myself into my fatherly role.
“Maybe you should give him a chance.”
She turns towards me.
“You know, get to know him better.”
I can feel her deathly gaze piercing me.
“You could invite him home.”
“You didnotjust say that.”
“We could tell you our opinion of him. Me, your grandparents – maybe even Aunt Rian.”
“Why would you do that?”
“To help you understand him. Maybe you could…I don’t know, meet him halfway.”
“What makes you think I care about that?”
“I don’t know whether you care or not. I just thought it could be a good idea.”
“I don’t see why I should.”
I decide I have to be honest with my daughter – avoiding the truth with her all this time has never caused anything but trouble. It’s alienated me from my family and left me alone.
“When I was your age – to be honest, even when I was older – I never gave people a chance.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I used to keep a distance between myself and anyone I thought was different from me.”
“Different in what way?”
I’m not proud of it, but I tell her anyway. “Anyone I thought wasn’t at my level. I never realised that, usually, it was actually the other way around.”
“So you thought you were better than them?”
I sigh. “Exactly. But I was…scared that I wasn’t enough, so I hid behind stupid, immature excuses – like deciding that they weren’t cool enough to be my friend.”
