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cats, would never even realise he was expected to make a choice. And all because I can never tell anyone of my fear that there never seems to be enough love to go round.
    As he calls their names, Tallulah enters the hall. She sidles up to his legs and curls herself around them. She half-lowers her eyelids, and lets out a seductive purr of encouragement. Dylan picks her up. I scrunch my toes on the sisal.
    â€˜So, you hadn’t come to see me, then?’ I say, going downstairs to the kitchen. I’m aiming for levity, but recognise it, once vocalised, as a handbrake turn on the slip road to hysteria. I busy myself making drinks and stand close to the kettle. In the background, Dylan is making baby talk. He is so engrossed in his reunion that it’s not until I slam his mug down on a pile of rejected CVs that he starts to communicate with me and admits that he really can’t stay.
    â€˜Just for a few minutes.’ My whine revolts me. But at just this moment, Tallulah (
she’s probably killed Tim
) leaps from Dylan’s arms. So he agrees to stay, and sips his coffee.
    â€˜God,’ he groans, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes, which are watering profusely. ‘Imagine having to entertain kids all day, every day. I don’t know how Serena and Harry do it.’
    I eye him carefully. ‘I reckon they find it hard, finding time for each other.’ I want to speak on, but something makes me hesitate, knowing Dylan will never fully understand my bizarre fears of being replaced in his affections by two
cats
. Dylan, son of Pamela, who married young and produced her little prince before she was out of her teens. As Matt once put it to me: unable to tolerate the competition, Dylan’s father had died of a heart attack when our Oedipus was less than two. Dylan has Pamela.
    I’ve never known such certainty.
    â€˜Do you know your answer machine’s flashing?’ says Dylan, suddenly. He leans over and hits the play button. Which on reflection is a good thing, as it means that I’m not alone as I listen to Audrey’s voice, letting me know, with much sorrow, that my father has died.

Chapter Seven
    I LIE AWAKE . My neck feels stiff. My pillow is wet. The street outside is silent – we’re having to sleep with the windows open because of the heat – as is the flight path. An opal light steals through a gap in the curtains. Fresh tears dribble out of my eyes and slide into my ears.
    I am remembering how, when I first showed Dad my engagement ring, he’d brought it to his lips and kissed it. He will never see it again, will never phone here again and wheeze a message into our answer machine. I will never again feel his embrace.
    He died from an aneurysm, but they couldn’t operate. Audrey, when I phoned her last night, explained that the drug in Dad’s system, skittling around his blood to prevent further strokes, was the same anti-clotting agent that made surviving surgery impossible. He has, I feel, been cheated by science. An act of bad faith that confirms my worst fears: that diligent planning counts for nothing. After I put the phone down, I had a vision of Audrey doing the same thing in her flat. Beside her phone stands one of his vases; I bet she stroked it once we’d finished our call.
    I used to love watching him throw pots on the wheel. His studio was at the back of our semi, where Mother would have preferred a sunroom. Its walls were covered with postcard reproductions, and yellowing articles torn from newspapers; reviews of exhibitions to be visited; interviews with artists. Many were marked with stars, in his red biro.
    I never stopped being amazed by how he could make things so solid, so permanent, from lumps of clay – pots, vases, even a tea service. The whole process fascinated me: rolling up his sleeves, selecting clay from the plastic-lidded dustbin he kept outside; weighing lumps in his hand, feeling their density, their