Smokeshow pulls up Daisy’s car outside De Vere Grand at the Connaught, and I open her door.
Mum throws an annual gala for one of the children’s hospitals here, she says it’s important to give back to the community. I know she’s just easing a guilty conscience.
Magnolia dressed me and Daisy for tonight. Me, I’m in the Slim-Fit Worsted Wool-Garbine suit jacket with the matching trousers, a white button shirt from Tom Ford, and some Oxfords from a brand that starts with B.
I duck my head a little to catch eyes with Daisy as I offer her my hand to pull her from the car.
As soon as she hits the door path, I’m floored.
I laugh some air out and she frowns, offended.
“What?” I glances down at the lime green dress Magnolia laid out for her. It came with a very specific set of instructions and a pre-approved bevy of accessories for Daisy to ‘make the outfit her own’.
“I just—” I shake my head at her. “I’m in love with you.”
“Oh.” She smiles, pleased with herself.
“Alright, no—” Jonah says walking up behind us, standing between. “I’m going to need all of this eye-batting love-bullshit to simmer down for the evening.”
“Where’s Taura?” Daisy glances around.
Jonah scoffs. Which is Hemmes for ‘I don’t want to talk about it’.
“Ménage à trois hiccups?” I ask him.
Daisy stares over at him, surprised.
“Are you dateless?” She asks.
“Course not.” He gives me a sly smile as he tosses an arm around my girlfriend, leading her over to our mum.
I give my mum a proud smile as I give her a hug.
“Barnesy.” I grin. “What a dress!”
She swats her hand at me, glancing down at the red and white dress she’s wearing. “Do you think? Magnolia sent it to me.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course she did.”
“You look good, Barnsey,” says a voice from behind and I freeze.
Jo and I catch eyes. Mum looks up, startled, then turns around to face her husband.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, quietly.
Dad shrugs a little vaguely. “This is the thing you talked about at breakfast the other day, isn’t it?”
She nods but says nothing.
“I came.” He shrugs again.
Her face falters a little. “But you never come to things.”
It hangs there, that statement, what it implies, what it’s meant for those of us he left behind when he couldn’t let go of the dead.
No one says anything, not me, not Jo.
“I like your suit!” Daisy says loudly.
Dad glances down at it, a little amused. “Thanks. It’s pretty old now.”
“Is that the Tom Ford?” Rebecca peers around at it. “I can’t believe it still fits—”
Dad looks down at himself, a bit self-conscious.
“Well, it does—” Daisy gestures to him. “And wow.”
She elbows me to say something but I say nothing. I don’t know what I’d say.
“Rebecca was just going to grab us all a drink—” Dais starts.
Jonah butts in. “There are waiters everywhere walkin—” Daisy shoots him a look.
“Maybe you could go help her!” She snatches Mum’s bag from her hands.
Mum gives her a despondent look as she cottons on and saunters off to the bar, Dad trailing behind her.
But then, here’s the thing… once they get to the bar, they face each other. They talk uncomfortably, like you do when you bump into an ex — in a way, they have. The didn’t break up, but I can tell you this, they sure as shit didn’t stay together.
“What are you playing at?” I ask my girlfriend, eyes pinched.
“Nothing!” she sings, craning her neck to watch them.
I eye her suspiciously. “Mmhmm.”
I stare over at them then shake my head. “Dais, it’s not going to work — there’s nothing left there.”
She flashes me a quick smile that I suspect will cause me a lot of grief over the course of my lifetime. “We’ll see.”
Eventually we all take our seats at our table.
Jonah’s pretty fucked and has some leggy Italian girl in a really sparkly dress sitting on his lap. He’s doing an Instagram live and she’s biting his ear, and Daisy’s trying to covertly wrestle the phone off him — I feel sad watching him, because he’s wrecked. Jo doesn’t get wrecked over girls. I’ve never seen it before. Best I feel I can do is lean into the live frame and kill the mood before it turns into a soft porn.
Uncle Callum joins our table with a young, blonde heiress who looks Daisy’s age. This impresses no one, least of all Daisy (who throws me a horrified face and I fight off a smile).
The heiress, she checks me out how she shouldn’t do to someone who clearly has a girlfriend, and how she shouldn’t when she’s with my uncle. Callum doesn’t share. If he’d seen that, he wouldn’t have taken it well.
I drape my arm over Daisy’s shoulders and kiss her cheek.
“Love you,” I tell her just because I can, and she flicks me eyes that say it without saying it.
Dad sits down next to Mum and Uncle Callum looks over at him, confused. “Jud.”
“Cal.” He nods.
Neither is pleased to see the other.
“What are you doing here?” Cal asks, taking a deep sip of his martini, eyeing him, making sure he doesn’t feel welcome.
They’ve always been tense.
Callum thinks Dad’s held Mum back. Dad thinks Callum’s a fuckwit, and I hate to say it but I think I’m on Dad’s side with this one.
“He decided to come!” Daisy jumps in. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
I squeeze her knee, pressing my mouth against her ear. “Relax.”
“Yes.” Callum nods without a smile. “Wonderful.”
They bring around our appetisers and the conversation is shit — everyone is wading through it and Daisy is carrying all the heavy weight.
Uncle Callum has his hands up the dress of the girl he’s with, so does Jo — to be honest, so do I, but at least me and Dais can keep up a conversation with other people while I’m feeling her up.
Daisy keeps ordering my parents drinks and all her attention goes into making sure Mum and Dad stay conversationally afloat.
“How did you two meet, then?” she asks, leaning in towards them chin in her hand, subtly smacking my hand away because it’s gone too far north to be appropriate.
I smirk and pull her onto my lap as the waiters clear our plates.
Mum and Dad hold eyes, thinking.
“We met at a pub,” Dad tells her, with a distant smile.
“Were you alone?” Daisy asks, waiting for more. (“It’s like making a stone bleed!” she whispered to me earlier about him) “Were you with friends—?”
“He was on a date, actually,” Mum says, barely smiling. But smiling. “I was there with my brother —” She glances over at Callum who’s whispering into the ear of his blonde, and he looks hungry.
“My other brother. Harvey—” She clarifies for me. “We were at the Covent Garden and we—”
“No, we weren’t,” Dad interrupts.
She gives him a look. “Yes, we were.”
He shakes his head.
Here we go. I shift uncomfortably, waiting for them to go back and forth for a bit and my Dad to just get up and walk away without another word for a decade.
“We weren’t,” Dad insists. “I know we weren’t.”
“You haven’t remembered anything for the last fifteen years, Jud. What makes you think you’ve got this?” Mum asks in this way that leaks our years of hurt and neglect and I feel this surge of anger towards him for treating her like that. She’s the best mum in the world, and when Rem died she didn’t only lose her daughter, she lost her husband too.
Dad gives her a long look. Like he’s confused and maybe a bit hurt.
“Barnsey, I couldn’t forget when I met you,” he tells her with a frown before looking over at Daisy. “We were at the Lamb and Flag—”
“Oh,” Mum says, her face going blank and I can tell immediately that she knows he was right. Her cheeks go pink.
She’s happy to be wrong.
It hangs there again, that silence.
“So you were on another date?” I ask and ignore the surprised look Daisy is giving me because relationships are like that and sometimes you just don’t need your girlfriend to be right about your age-old family feud.
“Yeah.” Dad glances over at me. “We’d been on a few dates, by then—”
“She was your girlfriend,” Mum interjects.
“She was.” Dad laughs. “And thank God she was, because it made for the perfect opener.”
My mum and dad stare at each other in a way they haven’t in fifteen years.
“What’d you say?” Daisy asks, smiling as she watches them.
“‘Hi, my name’s Jud and I just dumped my girlfriend for you,’” Mum says, not looking away from him.
Dad swallows heavy.
The servers place our mains down in front of us, these fancy little ribeye medallions, but unfortunately Dad eats his in two bites.
“That was delicious.” He nods, heartily. “When’s dinner?”
Mum eyes him, annoyed. “That was dinner.”
“Bit small—” He pulls a face, glancing at me for back-up, but I shake my head. I don’t want to be on Mum’s bad side.
“I mean—” Dad pauses when Daisy shoots him her ‘shut up’ look. “Perfectly portioned. Loved it.”
And do you know what, I can’t help but notice that Mum, who’s pretending to be pissed at Dad for the steak comment, still parades him about to all her friends. She looks happier than I’ve seen her in years—
“Odd if they’re not in love anymore, no?” Daisy elbows me conspicuously in the side, proud of herself.
“Calm down, Parent Trap.” I roll my eyes.
Once it’s over, we all trot down the steps at the venue, some of the last to leave but Dad ahead of us all. He spins on his heel, staring back up at us. “Who’s hungry?”
I take a peek over at Mum, weighing up how angry she’ll be if I’m honest.
“Starving.” I grimace over at her apologetically.
“Fucking famished,” Jonah crows, still pretty pissed.
“Who wants McDonald’s?” Dad asks and all of us, Daisy included, peer over at Mum.
“Oh,” she groans. “Fine—”
Jonah throws his arms around both me and Daisy, pulling us back a little, letting our parents walk ahead to the golden arches down the street.
He grins down at Daisy with bleary eyes. “You’re a little bit magic, aren’t you, Daisy Haites?”
