Nicole came to my rescue. ‘He is not well, the tree,’ she announced gravely. ‘His pins are descending.’
‘Eh?’ said Luc.
‘The needles are dropping off,’ I explained. ‘I’m afraid it’s a case of terminal alopecia.’
Everyone laughed.
‘Well, thanks for getting one anyway,’ Luc said to me.
‘Oh, the tree wasn’t really my doing,’ I began, only to be distracted by Emma Mandeville, who was rapidly unloading one of the carrier bags, disgorging a box of Christmas crackers – ‘No snaps. Security made us take them out at check-in’ – followed by three large tins of Heinz mulligatawny soup. I hadn’t seen mulligatawny soup since I was a small child and my mother used to buy it in what was then the NAAFI for my grandfather when he came to stay. I was amazed it still existed. Emma saw me looking at the tins.
‘For my grandmother,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘Gran’s crazy about mulligatawny soup. In fact, aside from steak burnt to a cinder, it’s pretty much the only thing she’ll eat. But, like, whatever keeps her happy.’ She turned to Nicole. ‘Come on, Nic. Show me this sick tree.’ Her eyes slid sideways at her father. ‘And before you start in on me, Dad, with one of your endless lectures about using slang, I meant “sick” in the literal sense of the word.’ Scooping up carrier bags, the two young women disappeared, chattering together.
Luc watched them go then looked at me. ‘I suppose I do give her a bit of a hard time. But I don’t understand why an intelligent, educated young woman wants to sound like someone out ofLove Island.’
‘You don’t watchLove Island?’ I exclaimed, astonished out of my shyness.
‘Purely for research purposes,’ he said with dignity. Then he blushed. ‘Okay, I find it horribly fascinating.’
I smiled at him. ‘Me too.’ I hesitated. ‘But you do know, don’t you, that the more you react to your daughterusing slang, the more she will use it?’
He sighed. ‘Yeah, I do know, but I can’t seem to stop myself. I’m prissy about language anyway, for reasons I won’t bore you with.’
He looked so downcast I wanted to cheer him up. ‘Well, your daughter’s lovely,’ I said, meaning it. Emma Mandeville was slim and tall, nearly as tall as me. When she and Nicole had embraced, she had dwarfed the petite French girl. With a shock of tawny hair in fashionable disarray, her face, with its clear blue eyes and defined, almost masculine features, was arresting, especially when she smiled. You might not describe her as pretty exactly, but you’d certainly notice her in a crowd. ‘And she’s astonishingly like you.’
‘Poor girl,’ Luc said, but he looked happier. ‘I suppose she does take after me physically. However, fortunately, she has inherited her mother’s nature. I wouldn’t wish my utterly bloody nature on anybody.’
‘You’re all right,’ I said gruffly and then, embarrassed by what I had said, quickly qualified this. ‘I mean, you must be if you watchLove Island.’
‘Oh, don’t spoil it.’
There was a pause as we smiled at each other. ‘Sorry for dumping everything on you,’ he said. ‘I meant to phone actually, to see how you were getting on.’
‘That’s okay. I expect you’ve been busy.’
‘Yes, I have, but it wasn’t that.’ He hesitated. ‘I have been busy sorting things out on my father’s estate. But it wasn’t that.’ He considered me for a second. ‘The truth is, I didn’t know quite what to say to you.’
‘About what?’
Before he could reply, Emma bounced back into the room. ‘You’ve gotta come and see this tree, Dad,’ she said, seizing her father’s arm. ‘It’s, like, atwig. Gran’s going to goape.’
I spent the next hour or so finishing off the prep for dinner that evening. Emma disappeared upstairs to unpack while her father went to watch television in the gallery. Around five, I made tea for everyone, which Emma insisted on having in the kitchen.
‘We’ll eat in here tonight as well,’ she announced. ‘And you and Nic must join me and Dad.’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘Nicole’s gone to the mosque. She won’t be back till quite late.’
Luc looked up from breaking apart a brownie. ‘Has she?’ He seemed put out. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We agreed she’d keep away from the mosque, at least for the time being.’
This baffled me all over again. What was going on here? But before I could ask, Emma cut in.
‘Dad, leave her be. It’s her religion, herfaith. Leave her be.’
Luc looked thoughtfully at his daughter but said nothing. Emma chattered blithely on.
‘It’ll be the same with Josh tomorrow. Josh is my friend from school,’ she explained to me. ‘We came out on the same flight, although Joshy was stuck back in economy, poor sod. His parents live here part of the time, but he’d spent most of the dosh his dad gave him for a decent ticket out.’ She giggled. ‘Josh is Jewish, so Christmas doesn’t mean a thing to him.’
‘Is he coming tomorrow?’ asked Luc.
