‘I won’t keep you. I just wanted to see if you and Tully might be free to have lunch. You know, just us girls?’
Rachel heard a knock at the door.
‘I thought it might be nice to get to know each other better.’
‘It would,’ Rachel said, getting to her feet. ‘But there’s actually someone at the door right now. Do you mind if I call you back?’
There was a short pause followed by a quick: ‘Sure. Of course.’ Then Heather hung up the phone, leaving Rachel to wrestle with her guilt.
There was another knock at the door. All right, all right. Rachel shoved the cash under the bed, and headed for the door. Before she could get there, there was a third knock. Seriously? Did people not know that she had just uncovered tens of thousands of dollars that her mother had potentially stolen and stashed in a hot-water bottle and she was trying to figure out what to do, while also trying to get off the phone from her soon-to-be stepmother, who was one year her junior? Rachel threw open the door, ready to tell whoever it was to take a hike. But it was Dad.
Of course it was.
When Mum got sick, he’d started coming around all the time. Three times a week he’d stop in, on his way to or from work, ostensibly to give her an update on Mum but more likely to have a conversation with someone who didn’t merely repeat the same question over and over again. Rachel enjoyed the visits, but she could never seem to instil in him the importance of calling ahead.
‘I run a business, Dad,’ she’d tell him, and he’d apologise then come in anyway. She knew that her cake business confused him, even if he made an effort to seem proud. Whenever he saw her he’d say, ‘So . . . er . . . how are things in the kitchen?’
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him now.
‘Do I need a reason to visit my equal favourite daughter?’ He kissed her forehead on the way inside, as sure as a child that his company would be a welcome delight.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But you might want to try calling first.’
‘Why, I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’ He paused, glancing around, as if expecting to find a lover hiding somewhere. Rachel wondered what he would do if he had interrupted something. Keel over and have a coronary, possibly.
Dad had never commented on her lack of a partner – not when she was younger and not now – but she knew he must wonder. Who wouldn’t? At fourteen she was dating a new guy every week, to the point that Dad refused to answer the landline because he couldn’t bear to listen to another stammering adolescent boy asking for Rachel. Then, at sixteen, she hung up her dating boots. It must have surprised him. She was certain he’d made some kind of pact with himself never to ask. Back when Mum was lucid, she used to ask often. ‘Why don’t you have anyone? Surely you could have your pick of the men!’ But Dad never said a word. She’d always been grateful for it, but suddenly she wondered why.
‘You interrupted me watching TV, actually,’ she said, closing the front door. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘What a good idea!’ he said, as if that hadn’t been his intention all along.
Rachel led the way to the kitchen, where Dad immediately settled himself at the round table and waited for her to produce a cup of tea. She should have found it insulting, the way he expected to be waited on, but he always seemed so happy when she handed over the tea that it was almost a delight to make it for him.
This was why men ruled the world.
‘Lemon cake?’
Dad grinned. ‘With cream, if you have it.’
Naturally, she did. She even had lemon-infused cream, made specially. She flicked on the kettle and cut them each a generous slice of cake, which she doused with cream. She placed a plate in front of Dad.
‘It was nice meeting Heather the other day,’ she said carefully. ‘She seemed . . . great.’
‘She can’t cook,’ he replied, spearing a piece of lemon cake. He was trying be brave, but Rachel could see he found this a little distressing.
‘Well,’ Rachel said, ‘lucky you already have a cook in the family.’
‘Indeed.’ His cheeks were bulging with cake. ‘I don’t suppose you offer cookery classes?’
‘For you, or for Heather?’
‘Both,’ he said diplomatically.
Dad wasn’t always diplomatic. The old Dad would have said, ‘Cooking? Me? I don’t think so,’ and Mum would have rolled her eyes and said, ‘Your father would struggle to make toast without me.’ Now he was considering cookery classes?