“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty…”
At first, I think the voice is part of my dream – but no part of my subconscious has ever called me “Sleeping Beauty”, mostly because it knows well enough it would get kicked in the head if it did. It’s too deep a voice to be Sam’s, and I don’t remember setting my radio alarm…
I open an eye.
Rodney.
What?
Why is Rodney next to my bed? And why do I have such a god-awful crick in my neck?
I’m not in bed, am I?
The thing I’m resting my head against, the thing that up until a moment ago I thought was my pillow, groans and shifts slightly – and everything comes flooding back.
Aidan. Pistachios under the table. Wigs and streetlights and lightning.
Aidan.
Which means…
I blink and straighten, only to see Rodney standing in front of me, his arms folded over his newspaper and the biggest shit-eating grin I have ever seen on his face.
“Morning, Lexi. And friend.”
“Morning?”
“Mmm-hmm. Your dad’s looking for you, young lady.”
“What time is it?”
“Seven thirty.”
“Thewhennow?”
I scramble to my feet, knocking into bleary-eyed Aidan and trying to ignore Rodney’s laughter. “Where is he?”
“The top room.”
“Right.” I sprint for the main door – unlocked at last – and risk one quick backwards glance at Aidan, sitting up and blinking in the bright sunshine pouring in through the glass roof. “I’ll find you later!”
In the corridor outside, the early risers among the traders are already making their way up from breakfast, ready to open their stalls for the last day of the convention. None of them seem particularly surprised to see me running past them – why would they be? Most of them are regulars, and have seen me racing past them in one direction or another for years. One of them – a woman from the biggest trading cards stall – even shouts “Morning, Lexi!” after me.
“Morning!” I take the grand staircase down to the hotel’s main lobby two stairs at a time and skid to a halt in front of the narrow cargo lift beside the reception desk. It’s the fastest way up to the meeting room at the very top of the hotel, half a dozen floors up. I hate this lift – it rattles and creaks and is generally crotchety and awful and crap – but it’s still faster than me trying to run up all those stairs right now. Besides, if Dad’s already looking for me, it means he actually wanted to see me ten minutes ago; he only ever starts looking for me when I haven’t magically appeared by his side fast enough.
Being a cargo lift, there are no mirrors in there – which means it feels even smaller than it is, a little like standing in a tiny metal coffin, and I have to attempt to make myself more presentable using guesswork alone. Nothing’s going to help the morning breath though; my mouth feels like someone came along and lined it with mouldy carpet during the night. And then the lift jerks to a halt and the doors rattle open, and there – against the backdrop of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the sea and the ruins of the West Pier with the observation tower holding up the sky above it all – is my father. He’s checking the water jugs and glasses for the Q&A session in here later, and even across the room I can tell how angry he is. It’s coming off him in waves.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Where’ve you been, Lexi?”
“The lift’s really slow, and—”
“Nobody saw you last night. Anywhere. You didn’t answer your phone, and Samira tells me you didn’t go back to your room.”
He noticed.
“You called me?”
“Sam did. When she didn’t get an answer, she called me.”
I should have known.
“Oh.”
“Well?”
“Funny story, actually.” I raise my hand to shield my eyes from the glare coming off the water. “Do we need to pull the curtains across, do you think?”
It’s not enough to distract him – but it was worth a try.
“Lexi. Where were you?”
There’s no point in trying to hide it. “I got locked in the convention centre.”
“All night?”
“All night.”
“How on earth…?”
“Haydn Swift thought he left his phone in panel room one. We went back to check, and Rodney locked us in.”
“Stop.” Dad holds up his hand. “Back to the beginning. Who?”
“Haydn Swift.”
“I know that name… Oh. The author?”
“Yes?” My voice is suddenly a five-year-old’s.
“You managed to get yourself locked in the convention space overnight with a male author who is several years older than you are?”
“He’s nineteen, Dad.”
“And you are seventeen. Which makes you not an adult.”
“It’s not like—”
“Ah. No.” He holds up a warning finger. “It is like.” Finger still raised, he rubs his face with the other hand. “What were you thinking? You don’t know him. Anything could have happened!”
“But—”
“Why didn’t you call? I could have let you out – Sam could have, anyone on the staff could have. Were you embarrassed? Was that it?” He’s started pacing up and down in front of the window. “I mean, if any of the traders find out, they’ll start asking about insurance – did anything get damaged?”
“No, Dad. We were really careful, I promise…”
He doesn’t seem to hear me. “There’s the artists in the art show, all the book traders, the collectible traders…” He stops dead in his tracks and spins to face me, narrowing his eyes. “Lexi Angelo. If I thought for one minute you had done this on purpose…”
“What? Why? Why would I do that?”
“To spend time with a…a boy…”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“Lexi…”
“I tried to call, okay? But my phone didn’t work in the panel room or anywhere else – there’s no reception. What was I supposed to do?”
It probably would have worked on the roof. If I’d tried…
“Use the fire exit.”
“Set off the alarms and get the whole hotel evacuated? Yeah, you’d have loved that, wouldn’t you?” I grumble.
At first, I don’t understand why I’m so annoyed; why everything he says grates against the inside of my head – and then I get it. It was Sam who noticed I was missing. It was Sam who told him. My own father, who tells me how indispensable I am during a convention, who tells me how much he loves me, who I’ve always been so desperate not to disappoint; he didn’t notice. And now he knows, his first response isn’t that something might have happened to me overnight, it’s that we might have broken something in the traders’ room.
“I don’t have time for this.” He’s stopped looking at me, and is now furiously straightening the already-straight pads and pencils at each space around the table. “I have a convention to run.”
“Like I hadn’t noticed. And as we all know, the conventions are what matter most, aren’t they? Never mind what anybody else needs. ‘What’s that, Lexi? You have an essay on Napoleon and a project on modern English drama due in on Monday? Well, instead of doing those, you can send all these emails! You need to talk to me? Sorry – banquet seating!’”
“Lexi…”
I ignore the warning in his voice. I don’t care. I don’t. What can he do to me? He’s already shown me how much he takes everything I do for granted; all the juggling, all the fitting everything – life, school, feelings, everything – around what he needs. Around what the conventions need. And now he has Bea, and that’s great…but where does it leave me? Who can I turn to? Sam? Nadiya? Bede? Who’s my Lexi? Who has my back? It’s supposed to be my dad. It’s supposed to be him – but it never has been, has it? And I’ve let him get away with it.
“What’s this about, Alexandra?” Dad bangs his hand on the table, and even though I’m watching him – even though I see him raise his palm and bring it down again – the sound still makes me jump.
“It’s not about anything,” I lie – and even to me, I sound petulant. Or maybe it’s only half a lie – it’s not about anything; it’s about everything. It’s about the fact I’ve spent my whole life fitting in with Dad’s plans, Dad’s life, Dad’s job, Dad’s conventions. That’s always been my world, whether I wanted it to be or not – I never got a choice. And right now, it feels like my entire relationship with my father revolves around whether the next hotel has enough space, or whether they’ve confirmed our banquet reservations or whatever.
The scary thing is, though, that I can’t really imagine my life being any other way. I’m not even sure who I am – what I am – when I’m not being “Max Angelo’s daughter”. It’s never really been an issue before – I thought everything would just carry on the way it always has for ever, and that was fine. Now, though? I can’t be as certain. Is that really what I want? To always stay the same? Same old Lexi, same old clipboard, for ever and ever.
This world is where I belong, and I know that. I’m good at it and I love it – but I don’t think I’ve ever really looked beyond it. I never wanted to, I guess, because I feel like here’s where I’m most me… But things are changing…with Dad and Bea…and now with Aidan…just the memory of the scent of him, the feel of his shoulder under my cheek, sets off fireworks underneath my skin. Suddenly it feels like everything has changed.
Dad sighs and shakes his head like I’m the worst daughter in the world. Maybe I am. How would I know? How would he? All I know is how to be this version of me – and this morning, me has had enough.
“Lexi, just so you know, I’ve never doubted you before, but this…episode is making me question your judgement.”
“Excuse me?”
“Try to see it from my point of view, hmm? You’ve never even been on a date, and now – this. What would you think if you were me? If you were Bea…?”
I can’t believe he’s brought her into it – not Mum, who would actually have a right to a point of view. “Talk about bad judgement,” I mutter – but not quietly enough.
His eyes narrow down to lasers, boring straight into me.
“Go to your room.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Your room. Go there, now – and stay there. I don’t want to see you on the convention floor this morning. Maybe some sleep will adjust your attitude.”
“But—”
“No.” He turns his back on me. “I’m not listening to another word. Room. Now.”
I think my dad just grounded me. In a hotel.
I make sure I stamp on every single stair on the way down to the floor my room is on. When I pass one of the hotel’s housekeeping staff admittedly I stomp a little less hard, because housekeeping are intimidating and once you’ve had to stand in a guest of honour’s trashed hotel room begging them not to charge you for the damages, you gain a certain level of respect for them. (The housekeeping staff, that is. Not the guest of honour. She’s been banned from every convention in Europe now; it’s quite an achievement.) But once he’s gone past, I carry on stomping just the same – and slam the door to my room for good measure. If my father is suddenly going to start treating me like a kid, I’m going to behave like one. That’ll show him.
While he’s three floors above me, unable to hear me or see me and probably not even thinking about me at all.
Umm.
But at least I won’t be there, running around at his beck and call, will I? And that’s down to him. I’m just doing what I’m told, for better or worse.
And that? That’ll really show him.
I try Sam’s mobile; it goes to voicemail. She probably wouldn’t have time to talk anyway – especially if I’m not allowed down to the convention floor this morning. Even though Sunday mornings are pretty quiet, she’ll still be picking up the slack, which means she’s going to be annoyed with me – and that means I’ll have to give her a minute-by-minute account of last night before she’ll let me whinge about Dad.
My fingers curl around my phone; I could try Mum. Maybe she’d listen…or maybe she’d agree with Dad. Not about the convention and the risk of damaging the traders’ room…but about getting myself locked in there with Aidan. And staying locked in there. I can even hear her voice in my mind, picture her shaking her head at Leonie across the room…
Besides, I already feel bad about that Bea comment – I just wasn’t expecting Dad to bring her into the conversation, especially after that dating comment. Like it’s any of her business. Like it’s any of his. It’s not that I’ve not wanted to go on a date, maybe even – gasp! – have a boyfriend…but I’ve not really met anyone who made me feel like they’d be worth the trouble, or worth spending the pitiful amount of precious spare time I actually have with. And that’s fine. Or at least it was until my own father decided to weaponize my choices…
No. I won’t call Mum.
But I will have that shower…
I don’t hear the phone when it rings the first time, mostly because I went to sleep with my head under both the hotel pillows and it’s a better version of the world under here. It’s like being eaten by a giant marshmallow, which is comforting because if I were to be eaten by a giant marshmallow then all my troubles would be over, and it feels like a fittingly ridiculous way to go out.
But apparently my phone has something important to tell me, because when I do hear it and drag it under Marshmallowpillow Mountain, there are a stack of missed calls from Sam. There’s been a crisis – of course there has. Even as I’m holding it, it rings again – although thankfully no one’s there to hear me squeak.
“Sam?”
“Sorry to wake you, Lex…”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“Oh. But your dad said…”
“I bet he said plenty.”
“Is everything okay? You sound all muffled.”
“I’m confined to quarters, so I’m under my pillow.”
“What? Why?”
“Why pillow, or why grounded?”
“Either.”
“Long story.”
“Oh.” She doesn’t seem to quite know what to do with this.
“It’s fine – I’ll be down later. What’s up?”
“It’s Aidan. He was looking for you.”
“Aidan?” I move so fast that the pillows bounce halfway to the door.
“Yeah, he was leaving and wanted to say goodbye, I think.”
“Leaving?” No. No, no, no. He can’t leave. Not yet. I was going to look for him. Why didn’t I try his mobile, see if he found it? Anything, rather than just flop around here? I’m an idiot. A pure-grade, solid gold idiot. Being eaten by a marshmallow is too good for me. “When? When is he going?”
“Soon? I don’t know – I saw him about five minutes ago.”
“Did he find his phone?”
“I don’t know, Lexi!”
“Stop him.”
“What?”
“Just…oh, staple yourself to his leg if you have to, but don’t let him leave!”
I can’t find my shoe. One is right where I left it, at the end of my bed. The other should be next to it.
It isn’t.
I hang off the mattress, scooping the shoe I can see up and peering underneath the bed. Nope. Not there. I can’t go down with only one shoe, can I?
Can I?
I could say it was some kind of cosplay?
No.
I hobble round the whole room – twice – one shoe on, the other off (obviously), looking under the bed, in the wardrobe, under the dressing table, everywhere – until I spot the very end of a trainer lace poking out from behind the bathroom door. I lunge for it, grab it…and the bathroom door swings all the way open, knocking my make-up bag off the edge of the sink with a crash, the contents scattering all over the tiled floor.
Aaaaaaaaargh.
I slam the door on the whole mess and half-hop, half-run to the end of the hall, slamming my thumb onto the lift button so hard it hurts – and it’s only as I hop into the lift, still doing up my second shoelace, that I remember I left my wallet, my key and my phone in my room. All I have is the clothes I’m wearing and my convention lanyard, tucked into the pocket where I stuck it after my shower.
Oh, arsebiscuits.
The lobby is full of people checking out of the hotel, milling about with their bags and saying goodbye to friends…but none of them is Aidan. Not one. Across the floor, Sam spots me and waves a hand above her head, pointing at the revolving door out onto the street. “He just left,” she yells over the burble of voices. “His train…”
Train.
Train.
Right.
I make the kind of dash that usually gets you a sportsperson of the year award and throw myself at the revolving door. Just before it spits me out onto the pavement, I hear Sam shouting, “Where are you going?”
I am going to the station, Samira.
If that’s where Aidan’s gone, it’s where I need to go too – even if it’s only to say goodbye. Because after last night, I can’t just let him go; I have to see him one more time. So I am going to the station.
Somehow.
As if by magic, a taxi pulls up at the entrance to the hotel and the door opens. It’s an elderly couple with a mountain of luggage. I try to make my shuffling from one foot to the other as discreet as possible and even help them with their bags – and as soon as they’re halfway up the steps, I throw myself into the back of the taxi.
“Station, please. And if you could, you know, be a bit brisk about it?”
The cabbie turns round in the seat and stares at me. “You what?”
“I need to get to the station. Now!”
“All right, love. Calm down.”
Every light is red. Every single light. Every junction is blocked by buses or cars or what appears to be a tricycle towing a small cart behind it.
“Shit.”
“Your mother know you talk like that?” He stops at yet another red light and turns around to grin at me, draping an arm around the back of his seat.
I’m so extraordinarily not in the mood.
“My mother’s a literature professor who lives in France with her girlfriend. I imagine the only comment she’d make about my language would be if I punctuated it badly.” While he’s been busy gawping at me, the light has turned green. Someone behind us hoots impatiently. “Can we go?”
He opens his mouth and closes it without a sound and before I know it, the station is directly ahead.
And I have no money.
It would have been great if I had thought of this before I got in the taxi.
“Five eighty, love.”
“Right. Small problem.”
His face shifts; he is no longer the chirpy, banter-loving cabbie of a minute ago. He’s now a heavy-set middle-aged guy I’ve just tried to rip off (as he sees it, anyway). “How small?” he asks, right after he locks all the doors.
“So, I have to catch someone before they get the train – will you wait?”
“I’ll charge you for it. And you pay upfront.”
“Umm.”
“Still a problem?”
I pat my pockets, just in case there’s a miraculous ten pound note in there (I live in hope). There isn’t – but there is my lanyard.
“This!” I wave it at him like it’s made of pure gold. “Take this…”
“I ain’t going to a convention.”
“No, no. It’s mine – and I need it.”
“No cash? No waiting.” He folds his arms and glares at me.
“Not even with collateral?”
“No.” He pauses – and for a second I think he’s about to change his mind. I look as lost and helpless as I possibly can, and then he says, “Five eighty. No waiting.”
Not changing his mind, then. Fine. I can walk back, but first, I have to get out of here.
“Okay. Okay. Right. I don’t have the cash, but if you go back to the hotel where you picked me up and ask for…” I skim through the list of Dad’s staff – there’s no point sending him to Sam, is there? – “Marie, she’ll sort you out. I swear.”
“I’m not—”
“It’s the best I can do! Please?”
“It’ll be a return fare,” he says reluctantly.
“Yes, yes.”
The doors unlock, and I’m out.
I have not thought this plan through. I don’t know where Aidan is, where he’s going, whether he’s still here. I don’t even know what I’m doing.
Departure board. Yes.
I scan the list of trains, looking for anything that might be the right thing. Most of them go to London. Would he be getting a London train? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t—
“Platform four for the train to Bristol Temple Meads. Will any passengers planning to travel to Bristol Temple Meads please board the train immediately, as it is ready to depart.”
Bristol.
I look up at the board.
Bath. I live in Bath.
The stop before Bristol Temple Meads is Bath.
The gates for the platform are almost directly ahead of me. I run for them, hearing the train’s engines rumble into life. The guard is pacing up and down the platform, waiting for the last stragglers to get on board…
And there he is. Halfway up the platform, walking away from me; grey T-shirt, jeans and a scruffy backpack. Hair like a thundercloud, and I would know that walk anywhere. I would know him anywhere, across the biggest room or in the biggest crowd, because I know him.
I can see him.
“Aidan!” I lean over the ticket gates, and I can’t tell if the ache under my ribs is from the gate digging into my stomach or from the thought of him leaving before I…what? Have the chance to say goodbye? I don’t know, but I need to see him. I need to leave some kind of mark on him, the way he’s left a mark on me. Because all I can think is that he has left his name tattooed across the inside of my head and I have to—
The last door slams and the guard blows his whistle, hopping onto the train at the very last moment.
With a rumble that grows to a roar, the train pulls out of the station and Aidan is gone.
Having served out my morning’s grounding, I spend the afternoon closing down registration and helping the traders pack up their stuff and cart it down to the hotel’s loading dock. It’s a relief not to be with Sam or Nadiya, not to have to listen to the chatter of a hall full of people or smile and give directions to this room, that room, the toilets, a coffee shop, somewhere-I-can-get-some-rock-as-a-souvenir. I even volunteer to help dismantle the art show, where the empty galleries are haunted by Aidan. He is everywhere I look, everywhere I turn.
Dismantling the art show keeps me out of everyone’s way until we’re officially closed – which is exactly what I want. By the time I come down from the gallery and head to the lobby with the last bag of rubbish, the hotel has started to take on a ghost-ship feel. As I’m on my way down the corridor, someone turns off the traders’ room lights and the cavernous space is left dark and deserted…except for one table, still draped in a white tablecloth and lit by evening sunlight fractured through the glass roof. If I look carefully enough, I wonder whether I’ll still see a handful of pistachio shells under there?
I drop the rubbish bag off with the hotel porter, who gives me a nod. “All done then?” he asks, disappearing the bag into his cupboard.
“All packed up. You can have your hotel back now.” I try and make the smile look real, but I think it probably misses by a long way.
“You say that, but we’ve got a political lot coming in tomorrow.” He rolls his eyes – whoever they are, they’re clearly not his political party of choice.
“Well, hopefully they’ll be more trouble than we were,” I say brightly – then stop. “I mean,” I try, “hopefully we’ll have been less trouble than…?”
He leans on the edge of his desk, eyebrows raised and clearly enjoying my ineptitude.
I give up. “I want you to like us best, okay?”
“Will do.” He gives me a mock salute as I turn towards the bar, where Dad and everybody else are sitting around a couple of the large booth tables in various states of exhaustion. Sam has her head down on one table and Nadiya and Bede are comparing notes on who had the worst problem to deal with. (From what I can tell, Bede’s was the more depressing – after spending two hours setting all the candles up in the banqueting hall for the gala dinner, he accidentally turned off the extra air-con. The room got so hot they melted and turned into A+ gothic dribbly candelabra – onto the white linen tablecloths and napkins.) Meanwhile their parents and the other staff all stare blankly into their drinks, knackered. Marie, sitting a few seats along from Dad and nursing a large rum and Coke, gives me a smile and slides my lanyard across the table at me.
“Sorry,” I say, sheepishly. “How much do I owe you?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Dad looks from Marie to me, and back to Marie. “Anything I need to know about?”
“No, Max,” she says firmly, and takes a sip of her drink. I love Marie a bit.
Dad pats the cushioned seat next to him. “Sit down, Lexi.”
I sit. But I do it in a grudging way – obviously.
“Did I ever tell you about my first convention?”
I don’t know what I was expecting; he’s not the kind of dad who carries on a bollocking he started giving you earlier – his attention span’s too short, for one thing. But the trip down memory lane is still a bit of a surprise.
“You held it in the back room of a pub in Waterloo and there were three—”
“Not that one,” he says, from behind the glass of wine he’s drinking. “My first convention. The first one I ever went to.”
This is new.
“No…?”
“It was a comic convention. Not like the ones today though.” He puts his glass down, and I don’t think he even knows I’m here any more. “Not much more than a couple of collectors in a village hall, with a few boxes of books. My father – your grandfather, but you never met him, he died before you were born – took me on a Saturday afternoon. I’ve always remembered the way it smelled, the feel of the comics and listening to those men talking about the stories in there and who had which issues…”
I’ve never heard this story before. Not in all the times I’ve heard him talk about how he got into conventions; he’s never talked about the first one he went to. He never talks about when he was growing up, not to me, not ever. Not until now.
“…and I’ve never forgotten how it made me feel. Like I was part of something, connected. Like I’d found another family – one that went beyond my flesh and blood. One that shared the things I loved, even if the people in it weren’t the people I’d have imagined I could be friends with. It made me happy. I walked home with my dad, and I felt like I was glowing inside. When he passed, that was what I remembered. We’d not seen eye to eye for years by then – even after we’d patched things up, it was never quite the same between us. But that convention – if you can call it that – he took me to that because I think he knew it would make me happy, and it did. And ever since then, I’ve wanted to make other people feel the same way. That’s why I started the conventions, in the back rooms of pubs. I was doing it for that feeling, for other people – and for me. They got bigger, and then bigger again, and then suddenly it was a business and it was what I did all the time. It went from being a part of my life to being my life.”
Now, that I can identify with.
He lowers his voice so it’s barely more than a whisper. “I didn’t realize the impact it was having on my relationship with your mother, the impact it was having on her. Not until it was too late.”
“You know I never blamed you for Mum leaving.”
He blinks at me as though I’ve surprised him. Then he smiles. “You don’t blame her either though, do you?”
“No.”
“I don’t. I loved your mother. Still do.”
“I know.”
“And in her way, she feels the same…”
“Ummm. That’s debatable.”
“But I won’t make the same mistake again.”
Bea. That’s what this is about. I should have known. He looks me right in the eye, as though he thinks he’ll be able to see whether I understand by peering into my eyes. All he’ll see is that I need a good night’s sleep, preferably starting before midnight.
“It’s okay, Dad.”
“I always thought that about me and your mum – thought it was okay. And then…” He shrugs. “I just don’t know where the time went. And now, with you, you’re almost grown up – and I still don’t know where it goes.”
“Here.” I tap the top of the table. “The time goes here. I can show you the paperwork to prove it.” I sigh, and pick at the edge of the table. “I didn’t want to let you down. I’m sorry if I did.”
There is the longest, longest pause, and I’m so afraid.
And then, at last…
“No, Lexi. I’m sorry.” He pushes the glass away from him, then slides it closer again, staring at a wet ring on the wooden surface. “I’ve never been the best parent, I know.”
“Daaaad…”
“No, let me say this. When you were little, I was away and I was working and I let your mother do it all – and then suddenly, she was gone and you weren’t a baby any more. You were a whole person, a person I didn’t know. And if I’m honest about it, I don’t think I ever really tried to work out what being a parent was. I was just me and I thought if I was me and you were you we’d muddle through somehow. Doing the conventions together, I hoped it would be our thing. It would bring us closer together, make us a team.”
“And they have. We are.”
“I thought so. But then you go and lock yourself in an empty convention hall with a boy and—”
“I said I was sorry! Anyway, I told you, we got locked in.”
“Lexi.” He gives me a withering look – the one he uses on suppliers who won’t cut a deal. “You and I both know that’s a lie. At least give me that, would you?”
“Mmmmphgffllfkkmaybe.” I doodle my finger through a puddle on the tabletop, only realizing I’m drawing a heart when I finish. And then wondering what, exactly, I’ve just stuck my finger in. I think it’s just condensation, but…I wipe my finger on the edge of the booth.
“This boy, then.”
“Aidan.”
“The writer.”
“Author.”
“He wrote that book, didn’t he?”
“Authors usually do.”
He laughs quietly. “You’re so like your mother.”
“Good.”
“And so like me.”
“Umm.”
“This Aidan. You like him?”
“I think so.”
“You think so? That doesn’t sound like my daughter. She’s usually so sure of herself, even when she shouldn’t be.”
“All right, all right. I like him, okay?”
“Would you like to invite him to the wedding?”
“What?”
“The wedding. Would you like him to come?”
“I can ask him? Really?”
“If you like him…”
“Thank you!” I throw my arms around him in an awkward sideways hug, and feel him hug me back. “Thank you! Are you sure? I mean…”
“It’s not me you should be thanking. It was Bea’s idea – she thought you might want to bring someone along. I spoke to her last night – before all this, I should add. I’m not sure I would have even considered it otherwise.”
It was Bea’s idea?
He must have felt me stiffen because he leans back and looks at me sternly. “I know you think… Look, Lexi, I know Bea and I haven’t been together that long, but this feels right. It is right. You should give her a chance.”
“I have. I mean, I am.”
“She makes me happy.”
“Good. I know.”
“And she’s very fond of you.”
“She hardly knows me, Dad. She hardly knows you.”
“She knows me perfectly, Lexi. She knows who I am – she sees me, for good and bad.” He pauses. “Maybe you should give her the chance to see who you are too?”
There’s no answer to that, is there? I stare at the edge of the table, feeling precisely eight years old.
This is clearly enough of a heart-to-heart for my father, who drums both hands smartly on the table. “We should be getting some dinner. Are you hungry? Marie and Paul were saying the fish and chip place down on the beach is pretty good if you fancy it?”
“I’ll just go change my top. Give me five minutes?”
He nods as I slide out of the booth – but when I reach the lobby, I stop and double back.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“I get it from you. Being sure of myself. I get it from you.”
He smiles – even though he tries to hide it by looking at his watch. “I thought you were getting changed?”
You’d have to know my dad as well as I do to hear that his voice cracks as he says it.