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hurried coffee or discuss going to a film – but it’s a spluttering, second-hand car of a relationship, never quite making it onto the road. A tableful of sharing platters arrives, providing a welcome distraction.
    ‘You need a top-up,’ says Marcus, still oblivious.
    He turned round one day and simply said that he’d fallen out of love with Lila, that he thought they’d both lost that loving feeling, truth be told, and that life was too short for them to stay together. There’s a lovely innocence about him – the bit that dreams and creates – and he thought that perhaps she’d be relieved it was out in the open. Surprise, surprise she wasn’t.
    My friend Zoe fixed us up a few months later at a dinner party: in my more paranoid moments I wonder if his kids think that the window of time is no more than PR bullshit and I was always waiting in the wings.
    ‘How come we’re not finding you a place?’ asks Juliet, her voice tight. She works for the firm now, Daddy’s right-hand woman. She’s bright, a Cambridge graduate who could work anywhere, but chooses to stay close to home.
    ‘Cue the explosion,’ says a laughing Marcus, covering his ears.
    ‘No explosion! I want it to be . . .’ I pause, suddenly snatched away by the past. I think about some of the limpets who clung to my father, the elaborate pantomime of pretending to care about me. The last thing she wants is a visceral sense of us. ‘I want it to be somewhere that’s mine too.’
    My flat’s a loft conversion, the ceilings low and perilous, the upstairs a raised platform – I’m more Heidi than Goldilocks.
    ‘I think we need more greens,’ says Juliet, picking up the menu, long blonde hair shielding her face.
    ‘Good idea,’ I say, grabbing the menu next to me, suddenly determined to be more than an aggravating, painful reminder of her mum’s absence. ‘What shall we have?’
    ‘Um, maybe these, with the oyster sauce?’
    ‘Let’s do it, they sound yummy!’ God, I sound like Brown Owl. Worse, the kind of Brown Owl who has a nip of whisky in the gym cupboard before Brownies starts.
    ‘So,’ I say, turning towards Robert, realizing as I do that I haven’t actually constructed an end to this sentence. ‘How’s the world of war craft treating you?’
    Sharing plates, let alone in a place like this, are invariably a disaster. I feel like I’ve eaten about one portion of my five a day plus a couple of shrimps, and yet the bill still tops £300. The whole process is painful. First Marcus offers to pay it all, then Robert insists on paying half and then I insist on paying half. ‘Don’t,’ says Marcus, his hand trapping mine as I reach into my purse.
    ‘No,’ I say, prising his hand off. ‘You paid on Sunday.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘I’m paying,’ I say, aware that Juliet’s silently enjoying the tennis match, no doubt recording the highlights for her mum. I want to sound generous and bountiful, but instead I sound petulant and stroppy: why can’t Marcus ever book somewhere ordinary? There’s no way I’m going to be able to pay my credit card this month without dipping into my savings.
    ‘Fine,’ he says, his hand retreating to his glass. ‘Thank you.’
    Finally we emerge, mole-like, into the sodium glow of the street lights. The wide, hushed road stretches ahead of us, lined with the kind of high-end furniture shops with nothing but a flash of gilt in the window and a double-barrelled name over the door. As Robert starts casting around for a cab, we say our goodbyes. I can feel myself hugging Juliet a bit too hard, her gym-taut body refusing to yield. Still I won’t quit.
    ‘Let’s do that night out. I mean, if you want to. We could go to one of those cinemas with sofas.’
    Stop talking.
    ‘Yeah, no, we should.’
    ‘Not if you don’t fancy it, but—’
    ‘Absolutely,’ she says, looking relieved as a cab pulls up. ‘Bye, Dad,’ she says, arms flung upwards to loop around his neck.
    ‘Bye, sweetheart.’ Marcus