Australia, I had said, in a warm room with Chinese food and green eyes watching me eat. A postgrad course, a halfway decent man, a life that belonged to me. I guess that's a joke now, my father isn't letting me go anywhere.
I close my eyes and I breathe.
I won't cry. I am done, for tonight, with crying.
* * *
The cameras flash before we have even reached the entrance. My father's back straightens and his face changes into the version that exists exclusively for public consumption, warm, assured and faintly humble.
His hand finds mine and holds it as he turns us slightly so the angle is better. I let him control me because it is easier than the alternative.
I look at the cameras and I feel nothing in particular.
This is new. A month ago the cameras would have produced the familiar cocktail of anxiety and performance, the urgent need to get it right, to reflect well, to be a child he could point to without embarrassment. Now I stand in my white dress in my shoes and I look at the lenses and I think about nothing and the nothing is almost restful.
It's been one week since my return as a captive and my father is anxious to put me to work for his campaign.
Behind me, I can feel Alana and her father arranging themselves in the frame. Alana has been watching me for a week, waiting for a breakdown she can report back on, and I have been disappointing her consistently. I give her nothing, no words or action.
"You're not smiling," she says, from the corner of her mouth, as we go inside. "What is wrong with you? Are you throwing a tantrum right now?"
I take a glass of champagne from a passing tray and I move away from her. She is easier to manage at a distance and I stand near the window and look at the room and I drink.
The venue is the kind that my father favors for these things, old money and good lighting, and the particular acoustics of a space designed to make powerful men feel the appropriate size. There are perhaps a hundred people here. Donors on the left. Press on the right. Political colleagues in the center pretending not to be calculating everything.
"Nathalie."
My father appears at my elbow with two people I don't know. An older man and a younger one. His voice when he says my name has the particular warmth he produces on command for situations that have witnesses.
"This is Senator Hartley," he says, presenting the older man who is huge and white-haired and looking at me as if inspecting a property he is considering acquiring. "And his son, James."
James Hartley looks at me. He is devilishly handsome with striking features that I find a bit too perfect. Plastic surgery perhaps?
I feel the energy of his look and I don't particularly enjoy it.
I glance sideways to find Alana directly behind me, and I see her eyes move to James Hartley. I see desire ignite in her expression that she immediately dampens down.
Interesting.
"Well," Senator Hartley says, "she is a beauty, Phillip."
My father puts his hand on the small of my back. "She is my pride and joy," he says. "She takes after her mother. They both own my heart."
I look at the champagne in my glass.
Senator Hartley laughs. "Let's leave the young ones to get acquainted," he says. Then he turns back to me and his voice shifts. "I'm pleased with you already, my dear. So it's safe to say welcome to the family."
My father laughs as they move away.
James Hartley extends his hand toward me. "James," he says. "It's a pleasure."
"I'll pass," I reply, and I walk away.
I hear Alana behind me, her voice dropping into an apologetic register.
"I'm so sorry, she's been unwell, please don't take it personally, she's usually?—"
I stop hearing it. I find a position near the far wall and I drink my champagne and I watch.
