That shuts me up. Because he’s right. If it hurts him to talk or even think about the past, who am I to dig around old wounds?
‘There’s one thing you need to understand about my parents,’ Dad says, voice empty. ‘They are utterly and categorically selfish. Their kindness is never that, because kindness comes without expectations. And my parents don’t give without taking. I would know.’
Dad deflates on his chair like a popped balloon. If I had spared him a look these past few days, a proper look, the bags under his eyes would have told me that he hasn’t been sleeping. That this falling-out is costing him as much as me.
I’m not a complete pushover; of course he’s hurt me. But the anger I felt earlier is fading. I don’t want the split between us to run deeper, so I stop myself asking about his parents again. But there’s no way I’m able to move past it completely.
I grab our plates and get up but turn around before I reach the kitchen. ‘I’m going to their barbecue on Sunday,’ I announce.
‘No, you’re not.’
I expected that answer, so I calmly stack the dishes into the dishwasher. ‘You do whatever you want, but you can’t stop me.’ Now that I have grandparents, I’m not going to waste my chance to get to know them. The fact that they’re basically celebrities only makes me more curious. And a little intimidated. But I’m not telling Dad that.
‘You’re not going on your own,’ he says flatly. The chestnut waves of his hair stand up in all directions.
A petty part of me is satisfied to see him so riled up. I kick the door of the dishwasher shut. ‘Why? Scared of what else I’d find out?’
‘Scared, yes, but only because you’d be walking into a lion’s den, and you, my friend, are a defenceless puppy.’
‘Hey, you’re the one making me go alone, even though you know how to stand up to them.’
‘Well, I don’t, do I? If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have had to run so far away from them.’
Point taken. But, ‘They’re here now, so there’s nowhere to run. Also, don’t you think there’s a possibility that they’ve changed in the last seventeen years?’
A grin splits his face, one that makes him look rather manic.
‘There’s a lot of things I believe to be possible, like the existence of the ghoul in the supplies cupboard or Avril Lavigne dying and being replaced by a doppelganger, but my parents changing isn’t one of them. If anything, they get more vicious with age.’
‘You can’t just decide for me, Dad.’
He’s never set bans or given me ultimatums. His strategy was always to tell me his thoughts and then he’d leave me to make my own mistakes. Like that one time when I was nine and refused to wear an ugly pair of sandals to Simo’s birthday picnic and I stepped on not just one but two furious bees. Or when I thought we should offer beetroot chocolate cake in the cafe, despite Dad’s attempts to tell me people hate that vegetable, even if the cake tastes like heaven. He’d always let me have a go at proving him wrong.
‘I’m older than you were when you decided to leave home. So let me decide to get to know my grandparents. And if they’re as bad as you say they are, we don’t have to see them again.’
Dad stares at me with wide blue eyes several shades darker than mine. ‘I’ll have to close the cafe.’
‘No, you don’t. You have staff to run it. We’re only going for a meal, not a holiday. They can cope for a couple of hours.’
Dad groans like a toddler forced to eat something that isn’t beige. ‘Fine, we’ll go. On one condition.’ I raise my eyebrows,curious to hear him out. ‘We stop fighting. I hate that we’re not speaking, and when we are, that we’re shouting.’
‘I hate it too,’ I admit. ‘But I can’t stop myself from feeling things, Dad.’
He gets up and bridges the distance between the dining table and the kitchen. ‘I know that,’ he says, and places his hands on my shoulders. They’re firm and tanned and smell of the coffee he pours all day. I wish I had hands like his.
‘I’m not asking you to get over it all immediately. But you know me well. Better than anyone in my life, except maybe your mum. I want you safe and I want you happy. And I think, so far, I’ve done a pretty good job of it. Grant me a little trust, OK?’
Trust is exactly the problem here. I can’t give him what he’s broken. I say nothing, which he must take as a yes. He gives me a hug and I hug him back, instantly feeling better.
‘Thanks for cooking,’ he says. ‘It was good. Way better than that veggie bolognaise you made once.’
‘I was twelve, Dad.’
‘And I’m complimenting your progress, so let me.’
‘You’re a thirty-three-year-old man who can’t bake for shit, so what should I say?’ The man might have taught me to cook, but as soon as eggs, sugar and flour come into play, he’s hopeless.
‘Say that you will please do a morning shift at the cafe tomorrow?’
