“He was my great-uncle, actually.” I lean back against the wall. “There was some argument in the family, but it was way before I was born. I think my mum was around but she was very little.”
“So why don’t you ask her?” caws Mabel.
“I can’t. She died when I was eleven.”
There’s a bump of silence.
Archie pulls Hulk and Iron Man out of his pockets and stands them up on his plate.
“How did she die?” Mabel asks, a little more gently.
Theo takes off his glasses and puts them away. “You know, you don’t have to talk about this, Ads. Not if you don’t want to.”
“No, no, it’s fine. It was a long time ago now.” I turn back to the kids. “She was hit by a car.”
“Did she walk across the road without looking?” asks Archie, glancing up from the fight between his figures.
I give a stiff smile. “Something like that, yeah.”
“Dad says I should always look before I cross the road,” Archie comments. And with that, he lifts up Hulk and makes him punch Iron Man so hard he falls back onto the tablecloth.
“He’s right,” I comment.
“What about your dad?” asks Callum. “Is he dead too?”
“No, he’s alive. I just don’t speak to him very much. We’re not close.” That’s an understatement. I haven’t even replied to the text he sent when I was on my way to the airport. Just reading it made me feel worked up and triggered.
“Does he not like you being gay?” Callum says, bluntly.
For a moment I’m not sure how to answer that. As a child, Ididthink my dad didn’t like me being gay—or coming across as gay would be a better way of putting it, seeing as I was so young. And that hurt and tormented me, a hurt and torment I still haven’tbeen able to shake off. That’s probably because, as an adult, we haven’t really discussed it. Although I came out to Auntie Julie at eighteen—and she was fine, having fully expected it, her reassurances long-rehearsed—I never properly came out to Dad: I think I was too scared. Instead, I just fudged it. When I was writing him an email, I casually mentioned going on a night out in the Gay Village. In my next email, I dropped the name of some man I was dating, but in a way that was so vague he could have been a friend. But Dad fudged it, too, by declining to respond to either comment. He did meet one or two of my exes, at a party for his sixtieth birthday and the wedding of one of my stepbrothers. But their status in my life was never openly acknowledged: I just introduced them by name and no questions were asked. So it wouldn’t be strictly accurate to say that’s why he and I aren’t close—or his text made me feel triggered. Or at least it’s not the whole story. It’s more complicated than that.
Luckily, the waitress reappears and Callum loses interest in his own question. Once she’s offloaded our drinks and taken our food order, he asks her for the Wi-Fi password. Then he and Mabel promptly switch off from their surroundings and disappear into their phones.
For once, Theo doesn’t mention his rule of no phones at the table—presumably overriding it because they’ve gone without Wi-Fi for so long. I don’t say anything as it’s good to be able to chat to him. But, when the food arrives, Theo does tell the kids to put their phones away.
Seconds later, his own phone rings. He angles the screen towards me so I can see it’s Kate. “Perfect timing,” he mutters under his breath.
“Gang,” he says to the kids, “your mum’s on the phone.”
Theo greets her, then hands the phone to Archie.
“I’ve got a pizza!” Archie says, through a mouthful. “Cheese and tomato … yeah. … I like it here. … It’s a big house. … Yeah. … We went to the castle. … Yeah. …” He looks at Theo. “Dad, what was that animal called? The one we saw on the first night?”
Theo stabs into a roast potato. “A wild boar.”
“A wild boar,” Archie repeats to his mum. “It was a mummy with a baby. But it didn’t attack us. It was nice.”
He rests Theo’s phone on the table and crams more pizza into his mouth.
Callum snatches up the handset and thrusts it back at him. “Archie, say goodbye to Mum. I want to speak to her.”
“Bye, Mum!” Archie shouts, his words barely audible through a wall of pizza.
Callum lifts the phone to his ear. “Mum, I’ve got to be quick. I’m starving and my pizza’s just arrived.”
But that’s all I catch, because he stands up and walks away from the table.
“How’s your pizza, Mabel?” Theo asks.
