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“I most certainly do. I have no life of my own now that I’m retired. I have to live vicariously through my daughter. Tell me all your adventures.”

Bee felt her bottom lip start to quiver. Her father was the only person in the world she could do lip-quivering stuff with, the only person she could be herself with. The meeting with Dave Donkin had been on Tuesday and so far she hadn’t told anyone. Not Flint, not Lol, nobody, because she’d wanted to wait and tell her father first.

“They’re dropping me, Dad,” she sobbed. “The bastards are dropping me.”

“What?” He spun around.

“Electrogram. They’re pulling the plug on the album. They’re not renewing my contract. They’re dropping me.”

“But… but what about your contract, darling? You signed a contract. They can’t…”

“They can.”

“But surely they’re obliged to record and release your album—at the very least.”

“No.” Bee shook her head and blew her nose snottily into the piece of paper towel her father had just handed her. “No. I’ve been through all this with my solicitor, their solicitor, everyone. They don’t have to do anything. It’s all legitimate.”

Gregor perched himself gently on the edge of the chaise longue and put his arm around Bee. “But… why?”

“Creative differences.”

“And what the hell does that mean?”

“It means that I want to be a songwriter but my songs aren’t ‘commercial’ enough for them, apparently, and as long as I refuse to be a little dolly bird all dressed up by them and made up by them and singing some rubbish songs by them, they don’t want to know…”

“Cunts,” said Gregor, squeezing her shoulder and running his hand over her hair. “What utter cunts…”

Bee sniffed and sniveled and sapped up her father’s sympathy like blotting paper. She knew that it wasn’t all down to Electrogram, and she knew that her father knew it wasn’t all down to Electrogram. She knew that both of them knew that she’d been a manipulative, shortsighted control freak and that she’d pushed Electrogram to the very limits of their patience. But they both also knew that now was not the moment for recriminations, that now was the moment for a father to hold his daughter and agree with her that the whole world was a big, fat bastard.

Bee let her head fall into her father’s soft, warm shoulder and felt herself relax as his mouth connected with the top of her head in a big plunger-like kiss, almost as if he was trying to suck the hurt out of her and swallow it. She snuggled deeper into his big, comforting frame and felt at least some of the disappointment and deep, burning humiliation of the last few days start to melt away. Life was simple here, under her father’s heavy arm, life was bearable, life was sweet.

“You’ll get another deal in seconds”—her father clicked his fingers—“you know that, don’t you?”

She sniffed and murmured.

“Once word gets out about this, you’ll have every record label in London, in the country queuing round the block to sign you up. You know everything’s going to be OK, don’t you? You know that you’re a star, don’t you?”

She sniffed again and murmured again. She didn’t want to talk, she just wanted to sit here and listen to her father telling her that everything was going to be OK and that she was a star. He unpeeled himself from her slowly and got to his feet creakily. “My cassoulet is calling,” he said, padding toward the stove and sprinkling something green on top of the stew before giving it a good stir. “Hmmmm,” he said, tasting it from the lip of a large wooden spoon. He picked up a bottle of local Bordeaux and splashed it generously into the pot.

Bee held her crumpled tissue between her hands, which hung pathetically between her knees. “I love you, Dad,” she sniffed.

“I should think so, too.” He winked at her and dropped another handful of green stuff into his stew.

They ate in the kitchen, by candlelight, listening to Ennio Morricone. It had started to rain outside, and heavy bullets of rain battered against the windows. A fire lit in a huge brickwork fireplace spluttered and hissed as raindrops fell down the chimney stack and the flames were ruffled by ghostly gusts of wind.

“So,” said Bee, now that the subject of herself had been fully covered and she felt she’d had enough paternal attention, “what’s the story with Joe?”

Her father got to his feet and collected their empty bowls, brushing breadcrumbs from the vinyl tablecloth with the side of his hand. “I told you, darling. Something came up.”

“What is this, Dad? A soap opera? You can’t get away with saying things like ‘Something came up’ in real life, you know.”

He scraped chicken bones into the bin and sighed.

“What, Dad? What is it?”

He dropped the empty bowls into the sink and turned to look at Bee. He tried to smile but the result was so unconvincing that it made Bee want to cry.

“Oh God. Dad. What is it?” She got to her feet and put her hand on his arm.