“Hey! What’s with all the questions?”
“If you want, I can shut up.”
That sounds like an intelligent form of blackmail; I give in.
“We had nothing in common – a little like now, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re very different. She’s intelligent and hard-working. She was top of the class for everything.”
“A nerd?”
I smile. “Kind of. But a sexy one.”
“What about you?”
I glance at her from the corner of my eye, her sudden interest in my life moving something inside me.
“I was only good at sport.”
“Does that mean you didn’t study?”
“No. I was too stupid to study, and I realised then that I was also too stupid to be good at anything else.”
“So you stopped trying.”
“Exactly.”
“Did you like her?”
I pull up in front of my parents’ house and switch off the engine. I smile at my daughter and decide to tell her the truth – a truth which, until a few days ago, I thought I could ignore.
“Yes.”
“But she didn’t like you?”
“No.”
“And now you’re trying to make up for lost time? To make her fall in love with you?”
“Let’s not get carried away. I wasn’t in love with her. She was just something I wanted, but could never have – that’s all.”
“If you say so.”
She opens the passenger door and gets out of the car. I follow her and we stop in the driveway, watching my father talk to some of the workers at the side of the farmhouse.
“If I never discovered sport, I’d have been doing that, too.”
“You’d have been a farmer?”
“Your granddad isn’t just a farmer. This is an entire business, now.”
“Do you think you’d have liked it? If you weren’t a sportsman.”
“I’ve never asked myself that, because I had no other option. I’d have had to do it anyway.”
“Okay,” she says, shrugging and heading towards the front door. “Anyway, I think you should give it a shot.” She turns to look at me. “I think you might have a chance with her.”
