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“For her approval then, you’d have needed to become an academic as well?”
“Oh no, she approves of the fact I’m fully self-sustaining. That bit she likes. But the cars, houses and modest coffee shops” – he gestures at our surroundings with a comical air – “she sees no value in. Not when her head is literally in the clouds.”
“I expect with her area of expertise being in the realms of ‘what is real and not real’, then yeah, I can totally see how she’d be a little superstitious.” He laughs at that. “Actually, that wasn’t the right word. More suspicious of whether this wealth of yours is even real.”
“It’s something I never talk about,” he says with a pursed mouth. “It’s literally like the last thing I ever really think about. You know, myworth.” He says it like it’s a dirty word, then leans forward and looks side to side. “Don’t tell anybody, but, money isn’t the key to happiness.”
“You’re right, I don’t think it is. I just got back from Luton. You know? It’s not London.” I pull a face and he guffaws. “But my friend Kallie’s parents aren’t rich, never really go abroad, don’t know anything beyond Luton really, and yet they’re happy. Together over thirty years, three kids, a couple of old bangers on the driveway. Some kind of magic recipe, maybe? That the rest of us know nothing about.”
“It’s about finding the one that understands you, I think,” he says gently. “Some people wake up and think about how much they’ll enjoy their morning shit. I wake up and think about which markets are going to nosedive that day and how I’ll sort out any damage.”
He makes me laugh and when the food arrives—three tiers of various little patisserie—I give him a wink and murmur, “Maybe it can buy a little happiness.” I gesture with my fingers and he grins like a loon.
After we’ve both partaken of our first miniature delight, he says more seriously, “So, what’s going on with your father?”
“Blood cancer apparently. He’s pretty sick.”
“You said he wasn’t going to tell you?”
“I didn’t hear that from his own mouth, but yes. That appears to be the truth of the matter. Whether he might’ve asked someone to get in touch with me when the end approaches… but it was one of my dad’s old drinking buddies who laid into Kallie in the local pub, as if she needed to get on at me for not caring.”
Aidan smiles sadly. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
He watches me eat something else, then he says, “Did you and he talk? Thrash out some stuff?”
I shake my head rapidly. “He’s not with it. Highly medicated. The carer wouldn’t tell me, and I haven’t been able to call his doctor yet, but I’m thinking months or weeks.”
“That’s really sad,” he says, reaching over to touch my hand.
“Is it, though?”
He withdraws his hand slowly and looks puzzled.
“I’m sorry, Aidan but you don’t know the first thing about my father and how he left me to raise myself. My feelings are very complicated right now.”
“I imagine they are.”
I stare out of the window, watching people go about their lives as if everything’s fine.
Have you ever stared out of a window and wondered if everyone else is a robot, sent down here just to exist alongside you for some company? When the truth is, you’re actually alone. Nobody else understands. The rest of the population may as well be synthetic humanoids because they could never truly step into your shoes. I’ve never been able to just be. I have to understand more… and more. I can’t be satisfied by what my father haphazardly told me yesterday, about my mother not being a fan of his “temper”. There has to be so much more to it than that. That’s why I hate the people walking around in their perfect finery with their faces blank and expressionless, so sure of their place in this world, never lacking confidence or any kind of belonging. No, because they truly belong. Whereas I’ve always felt I stand out.
I don’t belong.
Because half of me is missing.
“You know, some people say that people like me end up where we are because of never being good enough in the eyes of our parents, so we end up high-achievers, if you like.” I turn and watch him as he speaks. “But honestly, I got here through fluke and idiocy. If I had to sit there and think as deeply every day as my mother does, I’d go fucking insane. Pass me a spreadsheet or ask me to plot a route across a barren landscape and I’m as happy as a pig in shit. Ask me to tell you where I think we go after this life and I might end up with an aneurism.”
He makes me laugh and I see he’s relieved to know he can pull me back, like he is doing right now.
“Sometimes, life just happens,” he continues. “You left for London because this is what makes you happy. It doesn’t make you a bad person, Mira. He chose to live his life, she chose to live hers, and damn, if you don’t get that same choice like they did… then they are fools. If that’s what your father’s even thinking. I think it was some stupid busybody down the pub. I don’t think your father expects or would ask you to watch him die.”
I wipe under my eyes and let him touch my hand this time. “I know. It’s all…”
“A shock, yes.”
“He hasn’t been a part of my life, you know?”
