Ailish glanced at Rhonda, willing her to object. This couldn’t be safe. It was crazy. Impulsive. Dangerous.
Rhonda got the message.
‘Gwen, there’s nothing else I’d rather do…’ she said, voice full of regret. Ailish was about to expel a sigh of relief when Rhonda immediately switched it up and squealed, ‘So if you’ll give me two secs, I’ll just get on my phone and cancel my blind date with a bloke with twenty-four-inch biceps.’
Half of the battle won, Gwen turned to a stunned Ailish, her eyes pleading. ‘What about you, Ails? Are you in?’
6
EMMY
‘Dad, are you drunk?’ Emmy blurted, as she stared at him, still too sleepy to process what was actually happening here.
‘No, I’m not drunk. How could you think that at this time in the morning?’ he shot back, offended, as if that was some shocking stain on his character. Strange. Her outrage that he’d been unfaithful to Mum and was banging a thirty-four-year-old seemed to roll right off his back, but suddenly he was touchy about insinuations that he may have indulged in a shandy or two.
Wordlessly, Emmy took a step back to allow him to come past her and he charged right down the hall into the kitchen. For a joyous moment, she thought about pretending he wasn’t there and just going to the shower to hide, but the problem would still be there when she got out.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love her father. For twenty-seven years he’d been a lovely, fun, supportive, caring guy. It was just that she didn’t recognise this current incarnation of the man who shared her DNA, and the truth was, she was still angry on her mum’s behalf. Not because they’d split up, but because of the lies and the affair and the way he’d almost broken Mum. Maybeone day she’d get over that, but right now she was still finding it almost impossible to forgive him.
Her gran, Minnie, had struggled with that too, and she just kept telling Emmy that she had every right to her feelings and the time for forgiveness would come when it was right. Emmy wasn’t so sure.
‘Okay, Dad, I’m due at work at eleven, and I need to get ready and get to the hospital, so you have exactly ten minutes to tell me what’s going on.’
He was pacing up and down. There would be a hole in her white oak laminate at this rate.
‘I’ve fucked up. And sorry, darling, I don’t usually use that kind of language in front of you, but there’s no other word for it.’
Again, slight confusion on the things that would alter her perception of him, but she went with it anyway.
‘I’m scarred for life at hearing such words,’ she answered drily, filling a glass of water from the tap, before taking a large slug, thinking she was going to need more than water to get through this. ‘In what way have you effed up?’ she asked him, going for the PG version and thinking she already knew the answer. He’d messed up in oh so many ways she didn’t have long enough to list them.
‘I’ve been a complete fool. I should never have left your mum. What was I thinking? It was the most stupid thing I’ve ever done. I realised it this morning when the divorce papers dropped through the door…’
That was news to Emmy. She wondered if her mum had received them too, then decided she probably hadn’t because she’d have called to let Emmy know. Or maybe not. Maybe she didn’t want to discuss it. Emmy thought about phoning her, but decided against it – Mum would talk to her about it when she was ready. All of those thoughts ran through her mind as her dad wittered on…
‘Actually, that’s not true,’ he corrected himself. ‘I realised it at Christmas. Fuck… sorry… but, fuck, it was awful. Excruciating. Donna and I…’
‘I don’t want to hear about her, Dad,’ she warned him.
When he’d brought his girlfriend to Gran’s house on Christmas Day, Emmy had almost choked on Minnie’s sherry. In the two years that love’s young dream had been together, Emmy had maintained a strict no-contact rule when it came to the woman who’d knowingly inserted herself in her parents’ marriage. Not that she was trying to deflect the blame. No, that all lay with the man that was standing in her kitchen right now. He was the one that had broken his vows and trashed their family, caused the sale of their family home, then moved into a swanky city-centre penthouse he’d rented for him and his lover. She hadn’t thought for a second that he’d have the audacity to formally introduce his mistress into her life on Christmas Day, in the presence of others, so Emmy would have to sit there and make polite conversation. Ho fricking ho ho ho.
‘Of course. I understand. But the thing is, I only brought her because she said I couldn’t leave her alone on Christmas night, and I desperately wanted to be with the rest of my family, so it seemed like… Another fuck-up, right?’
‘Without a shred of doubt.’ She let that one sit with him for a minute. ‘The thing is, Dad, you can’t be with the rest of your family, because the rest of your family includes Mum. She’s always been the biggest part of it. At the heart of everything we do, every time we’re together.’
He was still pacing. Hands on the hips of his undoubtedly expensive trousers, right underneath what she saw now was a Hermès belt. Not his usual style. Donna must have been very generous with his credit card at Christmas.
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I want your mum back. I told Donna it was over last night and we’ve split up. Actually,strictly speaking, I’ve moved out. She threw half my clothes out the window and took a screwdriver to my tyres. I had to get a taxi here. I dropped my bags off at a hotel on the way here.’
Emmy was well aware that her jaw had dropped, but she’d apparently lost the capacity to close her mouth. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. No way was her dad standing in her kitchen, telling her that his life had descended into the kind of stuff people posted online after they’d secretly filmed their neighbours having a domestic.
Summoning all her strength, she somehow recovered her power of speech and also her anxiety about her time schedule. ‘Okay, Dad, this is all too much for me right now and I really am going to be late for work, so I tell you what. You stop pacing, make a coffee, try to process your thoughts, and I’ll go get ready, then you can come with me while I drive to work, and we can talk on the way. You can jump in a taxi at the hospital to get back to your hotel. There are always loads at the rank outside the main entrance.’
‘Okay. Sounds like a plan.’
Satisfied that she’d distracted him and talked him down for the moment, she made for the door. She’d take the win, however temporary.
Taking two stairs at a time, she raced up to the en-suite bathroom, tied her mass of red waves back into a bun and jumped into the shower, careful to keep her hair out of the spray. She didn’t have time to wrestle with hairdryers and straighteners this morning.
