Before climbing into the car I called the dogs, patted them a few more times and then gave them their final command.
‘Patrol!’ They immediately jumped into action, first following me down as I drove towards the gate. They sat and waited for the gate to close, and then they were off, walking the perimeter happily.
CHAPTER26
‘You didn’t tell me you were rich,’ Andrew said, staring up at the house at the top of the driveway. I looked at my house and tried to imagine it through Andrew’s eyes. I suppose it was completely extravagant and over the top. But my parents had never been subtle. Subtlety was not the way they did things, especially not my mother. If there was a small space to decorate, she would fill it to bursting point with expensive trinkets that she’d gathered. Our house overflowed with gold-framed paintings, large wall-mounted mirrors, luscious cream curtains pulled back by red ropes and an infinite number of scatter cushions! Why my mom thought each sofa needed to be festooned with six scatter cushions was not something I grasped. Nor did I understand why each bathroom had to have a small basket of rolled-up hand towels. There were at least ten hand towels per bathroom.
‘Wow, did you really grow up here?’ he asked.
‘No, I grew up in the tent in the back of the yard,’ I said, and Andrew turned and beamed at me.
‘Was that a purposeful joke!’
I nodded at him.
‘It was a good one.’
‘I thought so too,’ I said, and pulled my loud car into the driveway. We had a circular driveway, with a huge unnecessary fountain in the middle. I’d never liked that fountain. It was a replica of the Trevi Fountain, but on a much smaller scale. To be more specific, it was a replica of a part of the fountain, the part I liked least: the mythical man wrestling the mythical horse creature. I’d always hated the way he pulled on the horse’s mane and the horse looked like it was in pain. But my mom loved that thing. Had it flown in especially. She was obsessed with anything Italian, always had been, and in all her fantasy weddings for me I was getting married in a lavender field in Tuscany, or an old Italian villa on the Amalfi coast, or even on a gondola in Venice.
‘You know you’re rich when you have a driveway like this!’ Andrew remarked when we pulled up.
‘Listen.’ I turned in my seat to face him. ‘My parents and I are very, very different.’
‘Okay,’ Andrew said casually. Clearly, he was not getting my meaning.
‘What I mean is that we are allnothingalike. I’m not like them, and they are not like me!’ I reiterated.
‘I’m sure it’s not as extreme as you’re making it out to be,’ he said, just as my mother’s voice could be heard.
‘What is that awful sound?’ My mother – who looked very similar to me but was absolutely nothing like me at all – rushed out of the front door, dramatically covering her ears. She dripped in diamonds and pearls that sparkled in the lights like comets breaking through the earth’s atmosphere and burning up as bright fireballs as they rushed towards the earth. She was also as dramatic as a meteor shower; everyone walks outside to gaze up at one, like you would if my mother entered a room.
‘My God! What is that?’ She looked at my car and blinked her eyes multiple times. Either she had something in her eye, or she wasn’t sure if what she was seeing was real.
‘It’s my new car,’ I said proudly, climbing out and slamming the ten-ton door behind me. I’d learned that in order to close the doors on this vehicle, a hard slam was necessary.
‘Where is the Prius?’
‘Traded it in.’
‘For . . . that?’ My mother pointed a bejewelled finger at it.
‘A 1980s Porsche!’ My dad rushed out behind my mom and ran straight up to the car. ‘I used to have one of these. Don’t you remember, Wen?’ he said to my mom, a massive smile spreading across his face. ‘God, I loved that car. It was my first sports car.’
‘But it didn’t look like . . . that.’ My mother stepped closer. ‘Surely it wasn’t so . . . so . . . long?’
‘You’re looking at it through today’s eyes. Don’t you remember, you had a perm back then and I had a huge moustache?’
‘I never had a perm,’ my mother blurted. ‘I have naturally wavy hair.’ She looked at me pointedly. ‘You would too, if you didn’t blow dry it. We have naturally wavy h—’ She tapered off, running a hand through her dead-straight hair. ‘I had a perm, okay. I had a perm. It’s not something I’m proud of, but there you have it!’
‘Whose car is this?’ my dad asked.
‘Mine,’ I said, perking up with that feeling of pride again.
‘Yours?’ My dad’s eyes met mine. ‘Did you . . . wait, you . . . where’s the Prius?’ He looked around as if expecting to see it.
‘Traded it in. This is my car now.’
My dad’s face lit up.
