chapter seventy-five
Vid’s house was full of people and music and the smell of good food, which was what he liked, what he loved. What was the point in having a big house like this unless you filled it with people?
The occasion was no occasion. What did you need an occasion for? You didn’t! It was spur of the moment. He’d made some phone calls and now the house was full. It was still raining, of course, but that didn’t mean all the fun had to stop, they were warm and dry in here, the rain would not stop them from living their lives! They should do this more often! They should do it every weekend!
All four of his daughters were here tonight, and at this point they were all talking to him, a rare and wonderful event. Of course his older girls all wanted something from him but so be it. That was parenting.
Adrianna wanted him to agree to do a choreographed father and daughter dance at her wedding. It would be filmed and then she’d post it on YouTube. It was her dream to go viral. He would do this, of course, although he was pretending he hated the idea. (He already had a few moves in mind.)
Eva and Elena wanted money, he assumed, and of course they would get it. He’d transfer it into their accounts tonight, after they left. All that was in question was how much. He would see how their negotiating skills were developing. Eva would get hysterical within seconds. He’d been trying to explain to her that hysteria was not an effective negotiating tactic ever since she was two years old.
His baby, Dakota, didn’t want anything. She was happy again, although he hadn’t realised just how sad the poor little angel had got. Tiffany’s idea of turning up at the cellist’s house had been excellent, even though they had never even offered them a drink. It had been wonderful to see little Ruby so happy and healthy after the terribleness of that night. It had been a giant weight off his back. He had walked out of that tiny cramped house feeling straighter and lighter (also thirsty).
Clementine and Sam had been silent and strange but they had invited Dakota to Holly’s birthday party! Hopefully they’d remember to feed their guests. He’d take some food along, just in case. He was hopeful they might all still be friends. Tiffany was not as hopeful as him. She said only Dakota was invited to the birthday party, not them. She said it was probably a ‘drop-off party’. He didn’t know what she was talking about. He would take meatballs, maybe. A case of champagne.
‘You having fun?’ said Tiffany, meeting him in the kitchen as they both collected more plates of food to pass around.
‘No! Why do we do this? I just wanted a quiet night at home and look! The house is filled with all these people wanting to be fed! How did this happen?’
‘I have no idea. It’s a mystery.’ Tiffany closed the fridge door with her hip and smiled up at him, both her hands filled with trays. ‘Apparently the sun is coming out tomorrow. We should invite everyone to stay the night and have a barbeque lunch tomorrow. Continue the party all weekend!’
‘Excellent idea,’ said Vid. He knew she was joking but he was wondering if this was a possibility.
He kissed her and stuck in his tongue just to make her say, ‘Vid!’ except she gave back as good as she got. She liked to surprise him. ‘Jesus, get a room,’ said his cousin, walking into the kitchen and straight out again.
Tiffany raised an eyebrow and sashayed off with an exaggerated swing of the hips just for him.
There was something else making Vid happy. To do with Tiffany. What was it? Was his mind losing its edge? No! His mind was a steel trap. Of course. That little matter of the dickhead. It was all under control. Yesterday she’d come home from Dakota’s new school and said that she’d run into the wife of that old client of hers and they weren’t coming to Saint Anastasias after all.
This was good because he knew she’d slept with that dickhead.
He knew it because of her left nostril.
Vid played poker once a month with a group of friends. His friend Raymond had told him years ago how poker players tried to work out each other’s ‘tells’: the little giveaways that showed when they were bluffing. Raymond said, ‘You, my friend, have about a dozen tells. You blink, you wink, you twitch, you virtually have a seizure, you are the worst bluffer in the world.’
Vid did okay at poker though, because he might have been the worst bluffer in the world but he had the best luck. He drew great hands. He’d always been lucky. He had great luck in business, he had many, many good friends, he’d married two gorgeous women, even if the first one had turned out to be a crazy-in-the-head bitch who’d tried to turn his daughters against him, but that was okay, because he’d got even luckier with his second wife. Walking Viagra and he loved her like crazy.
Tiffany was a great poker player. Not as lucky as him, but she could do a beautiful ‘poker face’. It worked on him for years but then one day he broke her code.
Tiffany had a show. Her left nostril. Whenever she lied or bluffed, her left nostril quivered. Just once. A teeny-tiny movement. Like a butterfly wing.
Vid had confirmed it by studying his wife on those occasions when he knew for a fact she wasn’t telling the truth. For example, when she answered Dakota’s questions about Santa Claus, or when she told her sisters that she was flying economy, when really she’d booked business class tickets. Her sisters had some strange problem with flying business class, as if it were somehow sinful.
It was conclusive. The nostril never lied. He never told Tiffany, of course, because it was very handy, his secret superpower to see straight through her poker face. (Sadly, she did not at all like the red lingerie he’d bought her for Christmas.)
So when he asked his wife, ‘Did you sleep with him?’ all he had to do was watch her nostril and there was the answer.
She said no but the answer was yes. Yes, she’d slept with him.
It was fine! It was no problem!
It was maybe a slight problem. Say Vid had been at a school concert and he’d seen this dickhead looking at his wife in a disrespectful way, he might have been tempted to hit him. Assault and battery that would be.
Or say he and this dickhead had ended up cooking at a sausage sizzle together (there were always sausage sizzles, even when you paid a million bucks in school fees) and the dickhead made some remark about Tiffany. It might even be an innocent remark, but say Vid took it the wrong way, because of what he knew, and say he went home and the thought got trapped in Vid’s head, like thoughts sometimes did, and say, in a moment of madness, he got on the phone to his friend Ivan and arranged to have the dickhead’s knees broken.
Ivan was always going on about how if Vid ever needed someone’s knees broken, then Ivan was his man. Tiffany said Ivan was joking. Ivan was not joking.
But! All was good because the dickhead was safely on his way to Dubai, with his knees intact. Vid would therefore not end up in jail. He’d never knowingly broken the law, but he could. The potential was there: maybe not to kill, but certainly to maim, and he did not want to go to jail. The food. The clothes. Vid shuddered at the thought.
And for now Vid was not in danger of breaking the law. It was lucky he was so lucky. That’s why he felt happy. And Dakota’s reputation at the school was safe. She could be school captain if she wanted. He was sure those people would love Dubai. Interesting place! He’d read an article just the other day about the Dubai Food Festival. They had something called ‘The Big Grill’. It sounded amazing.
‘Why do you look so happy?’ said Dakota. ‘And goofy?’
Vid regarded his daughter, who was now in the kitchen returning an empty tray. She dimpled up at him and she looked, at that moment, extremely pretty. Hail Mary, Mother of God, please don’t let her grow up as sexy as her mother.
‘Because I’m happy, you know,’ said Vid. He lifted Dakota up under her armpits and spun her around. He couldn’t spin his older daughters anymore. (Eva looked like she weighed as much as a small truck.) ‘Are you happy?’
‘Pretty much,’ said Dakota. She put her mouth to his ear. ‘How many more minutes before I can go and read my book in my room for just a little while?’
‘Thirty,’ said Vid.
‘Ten,’ said Dakota.
‘Twenty,’ said Vid. ‘Final offer.’
‘Deal.’ Dakota held out her hand.
They shook on it. He put her back on the floor. The volume of the music at the front of the house shot up to nightclub level. Someone called out ‘Whoa!’ in a scandalised tone that could only mean that Tiffany was dancing, while someone else shouted, ‘Where’s Vid?’
‘Here I come!’ bellowed Vid.
It was lucky that Harry from next door was resting in peace.