While I expect to see most people only every six months or so, often less frequently, I keep a logbook detailing who visits when, what I served （or what the caterers served）， who sat next to whom, to avoid the catastrophe of serving anyone the same thing twice. The level of organization clearly belying the casual “oh you must pop over for supper.”
On Tuesday we are expecting six guests. A female MP and her obliging, smiley, balding husband, and two clients of Daan’s who both are still with their first wives, conveniently. It will make for an easy group, which is good management, rather than good luck. Daan thinks about such things. No obvious faux pas on the horizon. I can guess the way they all voted at the last election. The clients’ wives will no doubt discover they have people in common, something to do with their children’s prep schools, most likely. I find I am looking forward to it. Possibly there will be an awkward moment when one of the women inevitably asks how old our children are. And I will explain that we don’t have any. Sometimes I add “yet” to ease the burden of embarrassment that might occur when people hear we are childless. Childfree. Depending on their viewpoint. Some plough on and ask, why not? Assuming a desire and ability. Others politely mumble, “Well, you are still young, there’s time yet.” Again, assuming a desire and an ability.
The more polite guests just turn the conversation; they ask how we met, because everyone has a meet-cute story, even if they don’t have offspring. It’s safe territory. Was it technology or chemistry? Swipe right or eyes across a crowded room. We still make such a big deal about the distinction. As though either method is any less random.
We are often called an adorable couple. We look good together. We’re frequently laughing. We do a lot of sport. We habitually urge the other one to finish a story.
“You tell it better!”
“No, you tell it!”
The story of how we met is always mine to tell, though, no debating. The beginning is always the sweetest bit. The forever, never-to-be-taken-back bit. The story that is subsequently shared with friends and family, that gleams and glistens despite the constant retelling. Perhaps it sparkles even brighter as though each time it is told it is being polished—which I suppose it is in a way.
Even ours. Despite everything.
“I miss us too,” I tell Daan.
10
Kai
Four years ago
The sun is shining. I mean, really unapologetically shining and it is only March, so we have no right or expectation of this. Normally the sun shining is an unequivocal joy to me, today it seems like a taunt. Shouldn’t it be raining? Shouldn’t it be gray and desolate? I can’t stay in the office, eating a sandwich, hunched over my desk as usual. I might as well make the most of the fine weather, allow the sun to soothe me. I need comfort. Work is punishing. Everything is punishing.
I have just heard my father is dead. I mean literally just heard, this morning. I can’t process it. I can’t imagine that he’s no longer on the planet. No longer anywhere. Freddie, the oldest of my three half brothers, called my work landline. I don’t know how he got my number. I can’t remember giving it to him. I do remember writing it down for my dad, along with my mobile and my home number, years ago. Opportunities to reach out, scribbled on a notepad near the telephone that sits in his hallway. Stiff, restrained. Like everything about my father. Was it possible that the notebook had remained in the same position for all these years and Freddie found it? Or had Dad transcribed the numbers into his address book? I don’t know and I find myself thinking about this gossamer-thin strand of longing, or hope, or something, stretching between us.
His death is unexpected. At least to me. I hadn’t known he was ill because we are going through one of our phases of estrangement which happen periodically throughout my life. Were going through. Happened. Past tense. Funny formal word, estranged. We throw ourselves into formality, don’t we? When we are ashamed, or sad or simply defeated. I don’t know when else that word is used except when families splinter: husbands and wives, parents and their children. People who should be closest become as strangers. My father and I have not seen one another for over a year. We spoke on his birthday, it went badly, as it often did between us since years of tension and resentment simmer under the surface of our relationship, always threatening to erupt. Until now, I suppose. No chance of an eruption now. Or a reconciliation. Or anything.
My father always liked to give the impression that he was trying, that I was difficult, resistant. The implication was that the disappointing thing about our relationship was that we hadn’t found a way to click, when in fact the disappointing thing about our relationship is that we don’t have a relationship. Didn’t. And now can’t. My father liked to give the illusion that he was a good father to me, fair, that I stand equal with his three sons. That he worked just as hard to please me as he did them—harder, in fact. That also hurt. Because the truth is, he never had to work hard with them—with them it was effortless.
We’ve exchanged only a handful of texts since that birthday call. This morning, when Freddie awkwardly passed on the news, my first thought naturally was I should have rung more often, because that is what people think in times like this. Regret is kneejerk. Apparently, the cancer was diagnosed eight months ago. Why didn’t Freddie contact me before now? Now is too late. But I don’t blame my blond-haired, blue-eyed brother. I never blamed any of them for coming after me, expanding into my space, inadvertently pushing me out of it. To blame takes a level of confidence and entitlement. I never had either thing when it came to my father.
What would I have said anyhow? Those never-happened calls would have been punctuated with long silences, awkward pauses, miscommunications. Recriminations. We have never found it easy to speak to one another, even at the best of times. Whenever they may have been.
I’m not much of a sharer. I don’t want to tell anyone at work my news. I know they will make a fuss. Kindness will lead to them insisting I go home but I don’t want to do that. Nor do I want to receive their sympathy when I’m unsure whether I’m entitled to it. I have often said that I hate my father—to his face, to my mother, to boyfriends when lying in bed, sheets soiled with fucking that couldn’t quite exorcise out the complexes. I did not hate my dad and I have never been more aware of that fact than in the moment that I know I can never tell him.
All morning I carry on at work as though nothing has changed. I’ve always had a great poker face and a developed ability to compartmentalize. I chair a meeting, send emails, make calls. Then someone cancels my first afternoon meeting, opening up a rare three-hour break in my schedule. The gap scares me. I want to keep busy, not to think. I have a mountain of emails to get through and a strategic midterm project that needs some thinking time, but I doubt my ability to concentrate on either, so I tell my PA that I am going to work off-site. My plan is to find a café with internet, surround myself with distracting strangers who I can watch and perhaps swap an unattached word or two with.
I wander along Piccadilly, trying to stay in the moment, trying not to give in to the grief that I can feel ballooning in my chest, making it hard to breathe steadily. I have cried a lot of tears over my father long before he died. Enough tears. Far too many. I don’t want to waste any more. I am glad of the sunshine; it has enticed people out of their offices and apartments and so the streets are heaving. I concentrate on weaving in between the hurrying pedestrians. Everyone else seems purposeful, determined. By contrast, I feel as though I am floating, directionless. I glance in coffee shop windows but my original plan of setting up camp in one has lost its appeal. I drift onward but my shoes are a little tight, and too high for walking in London streets. Suddenly, the heat is uncomfortable; there is a tidal wave of humanity on the pavements and I am a fish swimming in the wrong direction. I feel sick, a little faint. So I dip into the cool and calmer courtyard of the Royal Academy.