Get to the supermarket in time?”
“Only just. I haven’t unpacked yet.”
“Is that your bike sprawled in the street?”
“Yeah, I’m just going.”
“You should be more careful, pet. Bikes cost money.”
“I had to answer the phone, I could hear it ringing.”
I bring the bike into the hallway through the front door and nudge it shut with the heel of my sneaker.
“Not for me, I presume?” He’s taking eggs from the carton and putting them one by one into the plastic slots in the top of the fridge door. I’ll never understand why he bothers. Why not leave them in the carton? I suppose it conserves space, but we never have all that much food in the fridge now there’s just the two of us.
“Don’t think so.”
“Don’t be absurd, Jenny. Either the call was for me or it wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t for either of us.”
“Oh. We’ve been getting a few wrong numbers lately. It must have something to do with the road repairs.”
I think of asking Poppa’s opinion about the nameless phone freak or at least telling it all to him as a sort of entertaining story but then I notice the Science Show has been on for a quarter of an hour and run for the radio. I hate missing it.
SATURDAY, 8 APRIL, LUNCH
“That was delicious, sweetie. I must eat lunch with you more often.”
“I cannot tell a lie,” I say, cleaning away the plates. “Papa Giuseppe did it all.”
Poppa wipes the last of the flan out of his beard. It’s been going gray recently. Tall and rather thin and going gray, a nice person really, but quite vague. “Who?” he says vaguely. “Someone I know, I hope.”
“It’s a brand of frozen quiche, donkey.”
“Rudeness is not attractive, Jenny. Are you saying you cheated?”
“Certainly not! I never told you I’d made it from scratch. That’s why I had to rush out to the supermarket at the last minute and miss half the Science Show.”
“I thought you went to get eggs.”
“You can get eggs anywhere. You can get eggs at the milk bar around the corner. You can get eggs at the 7-Eleven store at half past midnight.”
“I might be able to,” my father says sharply, glancing up from his Awfully Official Papers that are spread out over a third of the kitchen table. Mum would never let him do that. “You, on the other hand, will be tucked up in bed and well asleep by that hour.”
I sigh loudly. “Don’t nag. You know I always get back before curfew.”
“Hmph. Scraping in just under the clang of the witching hour. Speaking of which—”
“Ha, very funny.”
“Pun unintended, I’m glad to say. Speaking of which, I repeat, whom are you going out with tonight, someone I know, I trust?”
“David. You know him, and you can trust him.” Maybe.
“I know David?”
“Poppa, you’ve only lectured him on the theory of fiscal macro-dynamics or some damned thing every single time he drops in here to—”
“Ease up, Jenny. That David. Nice boy—I think. Does he know how to keep his hands to himself?”
“Poppady!” I’m shocked.
Actually I’m not terrifically shocked, because in fact I have to keep warning Davy to do exactly that whenever we sit next to each other in the movies or round at Louise’s for a video like Drugstore Cowboy the other night, so who knows how I am going to keep him cool while we snuggle up alone together at his folks’ place watching something gross? Do I really want to, for that matter? But it is always wise to sound as pure and outraged as possible when your father asks a question like that.
I think he sees through me, though.
“It’s a reasonable thing for the parent of a daughter to ask, I believe, especially a daughter whose mother currently declines to sit at the same table with us. I have to do the work for both Hattie and me, after all. Mother and father in one horrible balding bundle.” He smiles in self-mockery, which is always a happy thing to see in a grown-up.
“Currently?” I say, quick as a steel trap. The mysterious telephone mugger just won’t get out of the back of my mind.
“You know I hope to re-establish cordial relations with Hattie, sweetie.”
“Oh, don’t be a stuffy old Prof, Prof,” I tell him, feeling angry underneath my burst of fond love. “‘Cordial’! You still love her, admit it.”
“I admit it. But we are divorced, after all. Let’s change the subject, Jenny. The topic’s painful.”
“We have to talk it through properly some—”
“Not now.” He’s avoiding my eye, suddenly. He looks meaningfully at his watch. “I really do have a lot of work to finish. I think I’ll take all this stuff into the study. Leave the washing-up, I’ll fix it later.”
“Poppa!” I shout. I pound on the table. “How can you just stand there and say ‘the topic’s painful’? I’m part of the topic!”
“Later, Jenny. I mean it. I have too much on my plate right now to divert any emotional energy into this sort of draining row.”
“I don’t want a row, I want to—”
“You’re yelling, Jenny. For somebody who doesn’t wish to get into a row, you’re—”
“Oh damn it,” I yell, and slam back my chair and stomp to the front door, where the bell is buzzing.
“Madeleine,” I grunt.
“Hi. Would you rather kill me now or should I come back later with witnesses?”
I glare at her. She’s doing her retro-Madonna number. The kid’s got no taste. For once I agree with my father. Socks in three different luminous colors. Lace around her breasts, which are getting pretty spectacular these days anyway. Ballet tights, dark bracelets from her elbow to her wrist, a wonder she can lift her arms. Metallic woven jacket with bits of silk and satin and leather hanging off it, a bunch of Catholic rosaries around her neck, urchin shoes. God, she looks like a reject from MTV. No, that’s not fair. Standing there with the early afternoon autumn sunshine blasting through hair that seems to have exploded upwards after her brain went off, she looks like one of the success stories from MTV.
“My father will flip,” I tell her, giggling.
“You got no style, Jenny,” Madeleine says, coming in and slamming the door behind her. “Look
