“You could do with a couple,” she told me. “Maybe crack a smile even.”
I gave her a tight, close-lipped smile and she sighed.
“Aren’t you happy, darling?” It’s bizarre, but coming from my mother that felt like a very personal question. My parents were not the type of people who encouraged open discussion of feelings and, as such, rarely asked after my emotional state. It was the first time I realised how deeply having a son suffer with severe depression had affected them, especially given Mum’s history. I swear she hugged Kim for a full five minutes earlier, such was her relief at this evidence of Henry’s recovery.
“I’m fine, Mum.”
She stared at me for moment before hiccupping and leaning heavily onto the granite kitchen counter.
“It’s Kira, isn’t it?”
My eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“Kira. I know you miss her, darling. You never talk about her anymore, since she moved out. Did you have a fight?”
“It’s nothing to do with Kira, Mum,” I bit out, annoyed with Mum, Dad, Henry, the other MPs – in fact all the bastards crowding into my kitchen were pissing me off. None of them added colour. None of them made me feel like celebrating. I’d had a text from her (via Mark’s phone obviously) earlier just afterQuestion Timehad aired on the BBC:
Well done. You smashed all those cockwombles (fist emoji, British flag emoji, firework emoji). The other panellists be like (cry-face emoji).
I’d smiledthen. Reading that text, I’d smiled for the first time in days. My chest still ached thinking about it. It was so like Kira to rise above everything that had happened and wish me well in my moment of triumph. My reply had been so bloody formal I’d wanted to smash my new phone all over again. The added element of Mark reading it didn’t make for very open discourse.
“What’s that about Kira?” Dad asked as he drew up next to Mum.
“Nothing. Mum’s just had too much champagne.”
“You’re not . . . well . . . involved with her anymore?”
I took my own full champagne glass, downed it in one and glared at my father. “No, Dad, we’re not involved. And if you say ‘I told you so’, I swear to God –”
“Why would I say that?” Dad asked, his bushy grey eyebrows going up.
“Well, I don’t know?” There was an edge to my voice now. “Encouraging Henry to go public wasn’t exactly ideal. Nor were all the antics that followed.”
“Seems to have worked out though, doesn’t it?” he said, and it was my eyebrows that shot up.
“What?”
“For Henry,” Dad explained. “He seems to be much better since he came out with it all, and it hasn’t done your profile any harm either. Should have known really – just look what shaking hands with the blighters did for Princess Diana, and you’ve got one in the family.”
“What?!” There was so much wrong with what Dad had said I didn’t really know where to start.
“Your approval ratingshavegone up since The Big Reveal, old bean,” put in Martin, my press officer, who’d come over to fill up his champagne glass.
“They like her too,” Mum said.
“Mum–”
“I didn’t realise she’d set up a charity, darling. You didn’t tell us that. And she’s nearly an NHS consultant, not some funny sexpert. Did you know she and her mother are friends with Bunty? Bunty and I have been on The Hurlingham Club committee together forever. She told meallabout the Murphys at the last meeting.”
“And there is the small matter of her saving my life,” Dad put in, holding out his hand like the small scar on its back was proof of his brush with death. I knew very well that basal cell carcinomas were not deadly.
“She didn’t save your life, Dad. Christ, I never realised quite what a drama queen you are.”
“Car-ci-no-ma,” Dad said, over-enunciating every syllable. “Does that sound benign to you?”
I rolled my eyes.
“And anyway, I watched her save another life the other day so it’s not just me she’s sorting out, is it?”
