‘Or say, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick, I’m not in catering…’
‘My end of the stick is sex toys. Fancy another latte?’
‘You’re just dodging it.’
I stick out my tongue at her. I’m dodging a potential bullet to my heart. When you suffer heartbreak in the humiliating way that I did, then the heart becomes a tentative, fragile thing.
I sit down, pretending to pick up a piece of paper on my desk and read it. ‘It’s just too complicated to navigate, Michelle. I have so much going on…’
‘You don’t really. You work here, you go home, you put on a hoodie and watch a lot of telly.’
‘That’s a burn.’
‘That’s the truth. You have an actual relationship with some of those hoodies.’
‘Because they’re warm, comforting and have never let me down.’
She comes over with one of the last doughnuts on a napkin, shaking her head. ‘I think there’s a spark there. You can tell from the way your face glows when you say his name. Your parents started that way. I don’t think they thought they’d find love in the way that they did. But they had spark from day one, that was undeniable. No one made your mum laugh like your dad. And it was little things, you used to see it, the way they’d smile at each other from across a room…’
I know better than to ask what was going on in the room at the time, but I get what she means. They still do that thing in the kitchen in the morning, a gaze that replaces words, that lifts them both. It’s sweet, if depressingly sickening, to see as their daughter. I never delve into precisely how they met and their past canon of work – I will quite happily go to my grave not ever needing to know that detail. But was the spark felt when they were mid-shot? Or afterwards when they were getting changed and shaking hands?
‘And, your mum and dad had their fair share of drama at the beginning,’ Michelle tells me. ‘Did they ever tell you about that?’
‘I hear the romanticised version. I suspect they leave out details.’
‘Your nan didn’t know your dad was in porn. She thought he was an actual plumber. He kept that charade going for an age, read books about the subject. The running joke used to be he was good with pipes, leaks, massive ballcock…’
I chuckle. This I did not know. It may explain why Dad is good at fixing dripping taps, though.
‘Then he got with your mum and brought her home to meet your nan and they told her your mum was an airline stewardess and they had to keep that going. The lie just grew and grew. Your mother borrowed an outfit from set and had to bulk-buy Toblerones and pretend she’d got them in duty-free.’
‘How did it end?’
‘Your mum got pregnant, didn’t she?’
I open my eyes in shock. I did not know any of this. At all. I knew I came along before they married but wasn’t wholly aware of the timeline.
Michelle senses my shock. ‘Oh, you weren’t an accident. They’d been together a while and were living together, but then they had to tell your nan.’
‘I’m sure that was a bit lively…’
‘She was the one who told them both they needed to get out of the game because you were coming. They needed to build a half-normal life for you.’
I look around the warehouse office in which I sit. Half-normal at least. Either way, they both came out the other side and they’re still together, against all odds.
‘I tell you what, though, there were some mighty dicks in our industry,’ she continues.
‘I have no doubt.’
She shakes her head at me. ‘But your dad wasn’t one of them. He used to look after your mum in little ways, a jacket to her shoulders, he’d switch places with her if she were traffic side on the pavement. He’d wait by the door with an umbrella if it was raining. It was kind. It was all those little things you don’t see in those films we used to make.’
He still does that now twenty or more years down the line.
‘It was nice to see your dad take care of your mum, to make her feel loved. Up to that point, I was consumed by the industry – seeing their relationship helped me separate love from sex and it helped me understand them as two very different things.’
‘It’s one of the great love stories of our time,’ I say, jokingly.
‘If you leave out the bit where they met because he came on—’
