‘Audrey,’ he says, picking up the pub’s branded coaster and tapping it on the table while he chooses his words, before setting it down flat and meeting my gaze. ‘I can’t get your music out of my head.’
43
FRASER
It takes Rachael and Parker about five minutes to cook up a scheme that we drive an hour away to hike Pigeon House Mountain.
Parker and I love hiking. Rachael prefers an airconditioned gym but appears to be undergoing a personality transformation, and after her bombshell Ireland announcement, this feels like one of our family ‘lasts’.
And that, there, is the problem. This feels exactly like a family.
The whole car ride, the two of them prattle on about TV shows I’ve never seen, podcasts and viral reels on social media, and it occurs to me that Rachael speaks fluent ‘teen’. Or perhaps it’s that she speaks fluent ‘Parker’—that fluency having crept up on me, along with so many other things, it seems.
‘You know this one, Dad!’ Parker says, playing a snippet from a song on her phone, which has apparently inspired some weird viral dance.
‘No?’
‘How can you not? It’s everywhere!’
‘I don’t listen to the top forty.’
‘Parker, your father doesn’t listen to the top four thousand. You should have seen him the night the three of us met! Absolutely no idea who either me or Audrey was dressed as—’
‘Tell me the story again!’ Parker says, delighted. ‘Especially the bit about the ice bucket!’
Rachael smiles, the memory no doubt sinking in of when her best friend came to her rescue. She and I have talked about this before, about how helpless we’ve always felt that we couldn’t rescue Audrey right back when she needed it.
‘Well, the party was nineties themed—’ she begins, swivelling in the passenger seat so she can look at Parker while she recounts the evening.
‘As in the late nineteen hundreds? So you were all, like, wearing antique clothes?’
‘Gosh, Parker. Yes. Last century. And let’s go with the term “retro” rather than “antique”, shall we?’ Rach says, indignantly.
‘Technically the industry term isvintage,’ I add. ‘For anything thirty-plus years old.’
Rachael thumps me on the arm. ‘Anyway, your stepmum went as Britney Spears. You know, “… Baby One More Time”?’
There’s a blank look from the back seat.
‘“Oops! … I Did It Again”?’
‘Did what again?’ Parker asks.
‘No, that’s a song title. Anyway, your dad was as clueless as you are about who she was—’
‘But you were alive last century, Dad.’
‘Parker, will you stop referring to the nineties as if we’re talking about the Middle Ages?’ I order her, laughing.
‘Youaremiddle-aged. The Bookies think you’re having a midlife crisis!’
Rachael laughs off this suggestion and forges on. ‘Audrey was dressed as Britney. Your dad as David Beckham.’
‘Oh my GOD. Why were you dressed as Brooklyn Beckham’sdad? He’sancient.’
Rachael and I explode now.
‘Who did you go as, Rach?’ she asks.
