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chance.’
    ‘He’s only forty-two,’ I say. It sounds like a defence of you, but I don’t mean it personally. I’m thirty-three and I need to find a new job, I’m concerned about age right now, particularly the attitude towards age in the workplace, that’s all. I think of you suspended and I immediately feel delight. I’ve always disliked you, have always wanted your show off the air, but then I feel bad and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because of your children and your nice wife, who I’ve taken to waving at in the morning.
    ‘Turns out it was a real woman in the studio,’ Dad says, looking a bit uncomfortable.
    ‘Well, it hardly sounded like a man.’
    ‘No, she was really … you know,’ he looks at me and I’ve no idea what he is implying.
    We are quiet.
    ‘She was really pleasuring herself. Live in the studio,’ Dad says.
    My stomach turns, both because I’ve just had that conversation with my dad and also because I can see you orchestrating that in your studio, the countdown to twelve o’clock, the team all guffawing over a woman, like idiots.
    I once again loathe you.
    I lift Zara into her car seat and plant a kiss on her button nose.
    ‘So I could talk to Ted, if you like,’ Dad says suddenly, as though continuing a conversation that I don’t remember having.
    I frown. ‘Who’s Ted?’
    ‘Ted Clifford,’ he shrugs like it’s no big deal.
    Anger rises within me so quickly I have to fight the urge to lose it right there. And I’d come so close. Dad sold his company to Ted Clifford. He could have sold it for three times the amount in the good times, he likes to tell everybody, but it is not the good times now and so he settled on a reasonably good sum of money that will ensure month-long holidays in the summer with Leilah and Zara, dinners out four times a week. I don’t know if he paid off his mortgage, and this annoys me. It would have been the first thing I’d have done. I’m not sure how me and Heather have come out of this, but I’m not bothered, though I might sound it. I’m financially okay right now, I’m more concerned about Heather. She needs security. As soon as I made enough money, I bought the apartment she was renting. She moved out of residential care five years ago, a big deal for her, a big deal for anybody. She lives with a friend, under the caring eye of her support assistant, and they are getting along perfectly well together, though it doesn’t stop me from worrying about her every second of every day. I got the apartment at a good price; most people were trying to get rid of their negative equity, that second property where it was suddenly a struggle to meet the payments. It was something I expected Dad to do when he retired, instead of buying the apartment in Spain. He thought she was fine in the care home, but I knew that it was a dream for her to have her own place so I took control. Again, I’m not angry, it’s just that things like this come to me now and I can’t help but ponder them … I need distraction.
    ‘No,’ I say abruptly. ‘Thanks.’ End of.
    He looks at me as if he wants to say more. To stop him, I continue: ‘I don’t need you to get me a job.’
    My pride. Easily damaged. I hate help. I need to do things all by myself, all of the time. His offer makes me feel weak, makes me think that he thinks I’m weak. It has too many connotations.
    ‘Just saying. It’d be an easy foot in the door. Ted would help you out any day.’
    ‘I don’t need help.’
    ‘You need a job.’ He chuckles. He looks at me as though he is amused, but I know that this is the precursor to his anger. That laugh is what happens when he’s annoyed; I’m not sure whether it is supposed to wind up the person he is annoyed at – which is what happens now and has always happened to me – or if it is his way of covering up his anger. Either way, I recognise the sign.
    ‘Okay, Jasmine, do it your way, as usual.’ He holds his hands up dramatically in the air,