The Family Remains(74)

Her father arrived first, clutching a bouquet of lilies and a bottle of champagne.

She hugged him and felt that there was less of him inside her embrace and then she took his coat and thought he looked thin, and she said, ‘You’ve lost weight.’

‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

She looked at him and saw something pass across his face. It looked like pain. Her blood chilled. ‘Are you OK, Dad? Are you ill?’

‘No. God, darling, no. I’m fine. I am absolutely fine. Get this in the fridge now, let it chill.’ He passed her the champagne and she glanced at the label and saw that it was not in fact champagne but that it was a sparkling wine from Spain and even though Rachel liked sparkling wine from Spain very much, she had never once, in all her thirty-four years, known her father to bring anything other than proper champagne to a party or a meal.

‘What’s with the cava?’ she asked.

‘Oh. Ha!’ He gave a small nervous laugh. ‘A nice lady at the supermarket told me I should get it. Said it was better than champagne and half the price. I didn’t want to argue with her.’

She unwrapped the lilies from their plastic packaging in the kitchen. Normally her father bought all his flowers from the florist on St John’s Wood High Street that charged eight pounds for a single hydrangea bloom, but these were from Tesco.

‘Did she tell you to buy your flowers from there too?’ she asked teasingly.

‘Oh. No. That was me. I just thought they were rather lovely.’

‘Well, they are rather lovely. And thank you so much.’

‘My pleasure, darling. Always. You look well.’

‘Thank you.’ She glanced at him as she fanned the flowers out in the vase. ‘Is everything OK, Dad? You seem a little …?’

‘I told you. I’m fine. Maybe a little tired. That’s all. What’s for dinner?’

She talked him through the menu, and he made all the right noises and pretended he was starving but Rachel could tell he wasn’t starving; she could tell he had no appetite at all. She gave him crisps to put into bowls and asked him to put out some wine glasses and she watched him as he moved and she was sure, certain in fact, that her father was not well, that he was ill, and at the thought of her father being ill she felt a stab of anxiety in her gut. If her father died, she would have no one.

‘Oh,’ he said, turning from the dining table towards her. ‘By the way – and I hate to bring this up, but Michael, has he – since the time he appeared at Liberty – has he bothered you at all?’

‘No, actually. No, he hasn’t. I haven’t heard a thing from him. I get bits of gossip from Dom from time to time. He’s still going out with Ella.’

‘Ella?’

‘Remember? The girl I told you about who was flirting with Michael at Dom’s party two Christmases ago, and then snapped him up the minute I was gone?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘Apparently he’s been splashing the cash again. Wining and dining. Mayfair restaurants. All of that.’

Her father caught his breath sharply. ‘Oh, darling.’

‘Yup. It’s fucking gross. He’s gross. Everything about him is gross. And God knows where he’s getting the money from. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘It’s disgusting that he’s spending all that money on another woman when you think how he treated you. It’s absolutely disgusting.’

Rachel glanced up at her father in surprise. His voice broke as he spoke, and she saw now that there were tears in his eyes. ‘Oh, Dad,’ she said, going to him and placing an arm around his shoulders. ‘Please don’t cry, you silly bugger. It’s not that bad. It’s fine. Whatever money he’s spending on her, I can assure she will be paying for it, somehow or other.’

‘I know. I know. But still. When I think of how he treated you. How bad he made you feel. How he lied to you about everything. And now he’s out and about, gallivanting with another woman. It just sickens me, Rachel. It really sickens me.’

Rachel gazed at him. He appeared overwrought, his eyes blinking against unspilled tears. ‘Dad?’

‘Oh. It’s fine. It’s all fine. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me exciting things. Tell me about the business. How’s it going?’

Rachel wanted to push back into the previous conversation. There was a sub-text, a backstory, something behind her father’s extreme emotional reaction, but she knew it would be a waste of time to pursue it. So she replied with news about the latest sales figures, about a special commission that had come in that morning via her website for a woman who was married to an Oscar-winning film star and she chopped and stirred and drank more wine and then at 8 p.m. the intercom buzzed and Paige arrived bearing a small bottle of tequila and a cactus. Then came the three goldsmiths, bearing four-packs of beer and a small chocolate cake. She watched her father as the evening unfolded, the sweet pleasure that always suffused him when in the company of younger people. For a while Rachel could believe that she’d completely imagined the early moments of the evening, the sadness behind his eyes, the diminished form of him, the brittle anger, the sense that he was sick in some way. For a while she could believe that she wasn’t missing something vital.

‘I’m thinking of putting the house on the market.’