‘So you said you met your dad? How did it go?’ Evie sipped her own drink.
‘Basically, he apologised for having messed up and having left but said, I think, that he never loved my mother so it would always have been awful and his biggest mistake was not leaving her earlier but he’s glad he married her because of us.’
‘Wow. That’s quite honest. What did you say? And how do you feel?’
‘I’m not sure how it made me feel. Not great. I walked out before we’d even had a drink and then I regretted it. Imagining being in his position, I suppose you can sympathise with realising that you’d married the wrong person. But I don’t think staying and having a lot of affairs was the right thing to do. I think that was cowardly and it hurt a lot of people. He should have left as soon as he realised. Which he did admit, to be fair.’
‘I suppose things probably aren’t straightforward in practice. He probably hadn’t realised that he’d fallen out of love with your mum before Lucie came along. And then a lot of people find things tricky when they have young children, don’t they? And you can see why someone would feel too guilty or confused or whatever to leave a family with young kids.’
Dan nodded. ‘Yeah, maybe I do kind of get that. It’s harder to understand or forgive the affairs, though. Those were a choice. Falling in or out of love isn’t.’ Their gazes held for a long time, too long.
Eventually, Evie visibly swallowed and said, ‘Adult relationships are different from parent-child ones, though. If it would be the right thing for you, I think your mum would want you to start seeing him again.’
‘Maybe.’ Dan thought about Katie and how he hoped beyond hope that she’d have good memories with both her parents as a child, and about Evie and how she’d never had the opportunity to meet her father. His father was an arse but hewashis father. ‘I might stay in touch with him.’
‘Sounds like a good plan. For your sake as well as his. And, for what it’s worth, there are far worse fathers than him. Jack can’t even be bothered to pitch up for the textbook biggies, like Autumn’s birthdays and Christmases.’
‘Yeah. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry you’ve never had a dad around.’
‘Honestly, I’m fine. My mum was and is always amazing. And this is about you and your dad, and I think you have to focus on the positives.’
‘Yep. I’m thinking about birthdays now. I remember this one time when he took us camping for Max’s birthday and we all thought it was the most amazing thing ever. Max and I were literally high-fiving. He nearly always made it home early for our birthdays. In retrospect, he must have blocked his diary out a long time in advance.’
‘You know what I think,’ Evie said. ‘Maybe see your dad again, maybe don’t, butdotalk to Max about what you told me at the wedding. Sounds to me like a lot of your good childhood memories involve him.’
‘That does sound quite wise again.’
‘It is. As you know I’mexceptionallywise.’
‘Yeah, maybe I will talk to him.’ Maybe he would. ‘Okay, enough about me. Talk me through what a wise woman’s cocktail plans for the evening are.’
What felt like a very short time later, Evie checked her phone and said, ‘Oh my goodness. I’d better go. I’m going to be late. I need to get ready.’
‘You already look ready to me,’ Dan said. He frowned and laughed. ‘Sorry, that sounded ridiculous. I meant you look nice.’Nice. That was far too lukewarm for how Evie looked, which was gorgeous, frankly, whatever she was wearing.
‘Well, thank you,’ Evie said, ‘but Ireallydon’t look cocktail-party-ready. I need to pull some kind of miracle out of the bag in the next half hour.’
‘I think you look lovely,’ said Dan, standing up.
‘Oh my God—’ Evie stood up too and started with her scarf arranging ‘—I sounded like I was fishing for compliments. I really wasn’t.’
‘No, you didn’t. And it wasn’t a compliment, it was a fact. Come on. I’ll walk round your side of the green with you.’
When they got to Evie’s mum’s house, Dan really didn’t want to say goodbye.
‘I’d better go inside and get on with glamming myself up,’ Evie said, rooting around inside her bag for her key. ‘Found it.’ She looked up at him and smiled. Dan swallowed. He loved the shape of her lips. ‘So, bye then.’
‘Bye.’ He really wanted to ask if she’d like to meet up in London. Except she had a boyfriend and it would maybe sound odd. ‘Hopefully see you sometime soon.’
‘Yes, hopefully,’ she said. ‘Good luck when you speak to your dad again.’ And then she whisked herself inside, and Dan had the strangest feeling that his fairy godmother had just disappeared in a puff of smoke. Though he doubted Cinderella had ever wanted to kiss her fairy godmother to high heaven.
God, he wished Matthew didn’t exist.
* * *
A week later, back in London, Dan was in a pub in Islington with Max, just the two of them, and he was wondering whether Evie was actually wise or whether this was going to have turned out to have been a big mistake.
‘Thanks,’ Max said when Dan, back from the bar, put his beer down in front of him. Dan sat down on the stool opposite Max’s, and Max raised his glass and said, ‘Cheers.’
