Page 110 of People Skills

‘The same as I gave you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And is he nice?’

‘He is.’

‘Good to live with?’

‘Yes. We’re only house-sharing temporarily.’ And once he moves out, I might never see him again, I suddenly think.

Dad is watching me, and I am acutely aware he has his chess face on, assessing, watching, thinking, strategising.

‘Do you like him?’ Dad asks, and I feel the question in my chest, a sharp little dagger. Do I like him. Yes, yes, yes. I like him so much, Dad. I like him more than I should, and I want you to tell me how to stop liking him because I don’t want to get hurt—I don’t want to end up back here again, jobless and alone.

‘A little,’ I say instead, trying to sound casual and offhand.

‘Well,’ Dad says. ‘You look happy. You look very well and happy.’

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘Okay, we’re out of the danger zone,’ Mum yells, and she brings wine and cheese into the lounge room and determinedly chats through our next game because she does not believe in the sanctity of chess. ‘It’s a game and I’m a person,’ she says. She used to say this to the boys about the video games too.

We have dinner, and Mum decides she dare not tempt the gods by trying to ice the cake so we eat it plain, but she does have candles, and Mum and Dad sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me. And I have a little flashback to my birthday last year, turning thirty in this house, depressed for five months at that point. Mum made a chocolate cake not unlike this one except she did ice it, because my life was so sad that eating a plain unadorned cake might just push me over the edge, might make it too clear how unadorned my own life was, so she went overboard with smarties and sprinkles, so it looked like a Frankenstein version of a child’s cake, and she made Dom and Vin call us on Facetime and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ with her and Dad, and they were clearly under strict instructions not to tease or mock me as they usually would. And the earnest cake, the earnest singing, the dutiful Happy Birthday from the boys, the fact I was turning thirty and this was all I was doing, it was all so intensely, unbelievably awful, I vowed I would never, ever be here eating chocolate cake on my birthday again.

And, technically, I’m not. It’s not my birthday until Wednesday.

I blow out the candles—two candles because that’s all Mum could find, mismatching, one gold and short, one long and silver—and Dad applauds like I’m a toddler who has done something impressive by blowing them out in one go, and we eat the cake. And then we all go to the lounge room to watch a movie.

‘Charlotte’s pick,’ Mum says, and then she vetoes every suggestion I make. ‘I’ve seen it,’ ‘I hate that actor,’ ‘I hate that actor too,’ ‘Too much violence,’ ‘Sounds depressing,’ ‘That looks like a children’s movie.’

Dad chimes in half-heartedly, ‘I read a good review of that one,’ but when pressed on details, he can’t recall it. I don’t mind. I sit between them, and the ghost of last year’s sadness, the feeling of being trapped, it’s all here, but it’s faint, drifting. Knowing I have a house, and a job, and work friends, and Xavier (sort of, maybe) makes this feel like home again in an uncomplicated way. A night in front of the TV with my parents is fine when I’m not a permanent fixture.

‘What did you do for your first date?’ I ask them. ‘You went to the movies, right?’

They both look at me, surprised by the question.

‘We did,’ Mum says.

‘To see The Fugitive,’ Dad says.

‘No, it was A Few Good Men.’

‘No, it was not.’

‘It was!’

‘Okay, you saw a movie, and what else? Dinner? A drink?’ I ask, because they could get stuck in this argument for days.

‘Nothing else. We saw the movie and he drove me home,’ Mum says.

‘And I stayed the night at her house and never left,’ Dad adds.

‘You what?’ This part is new to me.

‘The house he was renting had a cockroach problem, and I felt sorry for him,’ Mum says.

‘I told her I loved after two days.’