The dad trap, p.9
The Dad Trap, page 9
“You kids ordering food now or waiting for … Bob and Bobette?” Dave says with a raised eyebrow.
“We’ll have a look at the menu. Could you come back in a bit, please, Dave?” Florence says, smiling pleasantly.
Dave trudges back through the swinging doors and into the kitchen.
“What are they doing now?” Florence asks, craning her neck and trying to turn round.
“Don’t turn round!” I admonish her. “They’ll see you and our cover will be blown!”
Florence groans. “I think your outfit’s going to be the thing that blows our cover.”
It turns out having a meal as an adult is pretty boring. When I was little, Dad used to take me for lunch at the local sports centre. I’d run around in the soft play, rush over to Dad, take a bite of my sandwich, and then race back in.
But adults don’t do that. There seems to be lots of nodding and saying “Oh, really!” and “Fascinating!”
I think Dad is nervous because he keeps touching the back of his neck and fiddling with his hair. He’s looking nice, I have to say. Very smart. Very dressy. It has to be a date!
Occasionally, Dad and Ross stop talking and just stare at each other and Dad’s mouth twitches and then they smile and look away.
GROSS.
Florence seems very on edge. Not cool and collected like me. I don’t think she’d make a good detective. You need nerves of steel. I notice she hasn’t touched her milk either, which is a crime in itself.
UDDERLY awful. Ha. I’m hilarious.
“… love that show!”
“Me too! So funny. Do you still like…”
“Oh yes! Love them! Hey, do you remember when…”
We only catch snippets, but then I hear my dad say, “Anyway, how’s Florence settling in?”
“Big change … upheaval … struggling…” I catch Ross reply.
I look up. Florence is red-cheeked and furious.
“This is pointless,” she snaps. “They’re two boring middle-aged men having dinner and catching up. Nothing else to it. Let’s leave.”
“Wait! Wait!” I say, reaching out my hand to stop her. “We could order some French fries? Hang out? I’ve got some emergency money…”
Florence pushes back her chair and says, “We’re not here to have fun or be friends, William.”
I feel a swell of anger and shame in my belly. The drama and fun of our detecting game is over.
Books over besties. Pens over pals. Don’t forget, William.
Then we hear Ross say, “This has been really nice. It’s so nice to see you again. Sorry, I don’t know why I keep saying nice.”
“It’s definitely been … nice,” Dad says shyly. He’s biting his lip and grinning.
And then Ross says something else and, in an instant, everything changes.
“We should do this again.”
Again? AGAIN?
Oh no, no, no, you two! This is not happening again.
Suddenly what started out as a silly little game has become far too real.
No. Things need to get back to normal.
I can’t spend another evening with Florence. She clearly hates me.
I can’t spend another evening without Dad either.
“That would be nice,” Dad says. “I’ll have to see how William is, though. He can get a bit … you know…”
My jaw clenches and unclenches. I fight the urge to scream across the restaurant at them both. My legs start to bounce up and down underneath the table. I am no longer cool, calm and collected. I’m the one who’s shaken, not stirred.
Why am I not enough for Dad? What’s so wrong with our life, our home, that he wants to go out and leave it all behind? Leave me behind? Does he not realize how much I need him?
I feel that whooshing in my ears again, a sharp ache in my bones and a fizzy feeling rushing around my body.
I hear the swish of the kitchen doors behind me and the squeak of trolley wheels.
I can’t breathe. It’s all too much. I need to get out of here. Right now.
I jump up to leave, and that’s when it happens.
I trip clumsily into Dave, who is walking out of the kitchen pushing a dessert trolley. It’s piled high with delicate little pastries – macarons, tarts and flans. I know what they are because Dad and I used to watch a show about baking and we’d laugh every time the presenters mentioned a cake’s “soggy bottom”.
Dave swerves and stumbles, and then his feet get tangled together and he stumbles some more. He tries to right himself by leaning on the dessert trolley, but this only makes things worse.
The trolley careens off course and gathers speed. Florence gasps.
It’s heading straight towards Dad and Ross, who are completely oblivious to the impending disaster.
Suddenly someone at a nearby table pushes back their chair to stand up, and the runaway trolley CRASHES into it. With the force of the collision, an avalanche of profiteroles soars through the air. A chocolate eclair whizzes past someone’s ear and lands in a woman’s soup with a PLOP! She screams and leaps up in horror as the soup splashes all over her blouse. She trips backwards into the table behind her, knocking their wine glasses to the floor.
At the exact same time, Ross turns round and a gooey, wobbly, cream-covered meringue hits him square in the face.
SPLAT!
For a moment I am unable to move.
A chef rushes out of the kitchen and starts screaming something in French, and Dave – who’s fallen flat on his face – clambers up, rubbing his head in disbelief. The woman covered in soup is crying.
Ross stares at Dad.
Dad stares at Ross.
Ross has globules of rich, velvety whipped cream running down his face and shards of dark chocolate nestled in his silvery hair. On top of his head sits one lone glacé cherry, bright red and gleaming.
Dave seems disorientated, flustered. “It was… It was…”
He points towards us, and I spring into action.
“RUN!” I scream.
I throw down a five-pound note – because we may be sneaky, devious spies, but we are not thieves – and then skirt quickly around Dave. Florence follows closely behind me.
The chef is still shouting, the soup-spattered lady is still crying and Ross is still sitting at the table with an expression of disbelief on his cake-covered face.
There’s so much chaos in You Had Me At Merlot that we manage to race past our dads without being seen. Dave starts to chase after us, but he slips on a tarte tatin and skids right into soup lady.
“GET OFF ME, YOU BRUTE!” she wails.
“Come on!” Florence shouts as she shoves me out of the door. We tumble outside and dash across the road.
We quickly slip back into A Pizza Your Heart, fling off our disguises and sit back down on the bar stools, panting and wheezing.
“You two OK?” Aunt Erin frowns as she walks by, balancing a pile of empty plates in her arms.
“Great!” I say, nodding as I gasp for air. I stick my thumbs up at her and try to smile in between my ragged gasps. “So many breadsticks!”
“I won’t be much longer,” she says. “You’ve both been so patient, thank you. Do you want some dessert? There’s some cheesecake or tiramisu going spare?”
“NO!” Florence and I both roar at once.
“Definitely not!” I say.
“I never want to see a cake ever again.” Florence groans, running her hand through her rebellious curls.
Aunt Erin tilts her head at us in confusion, then shrugs and heads off to the kitchen.
We sit for a while in silence.
“I think it’s a good job we DESSERT-ed the restaurant when we did,” Florence whispers after a while.
I look up in shock. A joke? From Florence? After all that? Honestly!
“I agree,” I reply slowly. “It was a pretty FLAN-tastic escape.”
I look up at Florence and she puts her hands over her mouth, a small giggle escaping from her lips. For a moment, I forget all that’s gone on between us and the feelings of irritation and jealousy I’ve felt towards her.
“We’re naturals at this spying malarkey,” she says, a smile spreading across her face. “That was a PIECE OF CAKE!”
I try to cover my mouth too, but before I know it, we’re both rocking backwards and forward on the bar stools, hooting with hysterical laughter and clutching our tummies.
We’ve done it!
After this, Dad and Ross will NEVER want to go on a date EVER again!
Chapter Fourteen
You’ve Changed
“Are you ready, then?” Ross asks the next day, after school. His blues eyes twinkle and my dad smiles at him.
I look at Ross questioningly.
Ready for what? Florence meets my eyes in a moment of shared panic, then looks the other way.
We agreed last night never to speak of our You Had Me At Merlot mission again and, true to her word, Florence has ignored me all day. In fact, she seems to have wiped the memory of us laughing uncontrollably at the end of the night from her mind entirely… The memory of us acting like we could one day be friends.
Whatever! I just do not understand this girl.
“Hello, my little snuggle monsters!” Cheryl Shannon Louise Briggins-Foster-Jones calls out as she flounces by with Millie. She’s wearing a leopard-print all-in-one leotard with a black leather jacket today.
Millie looks the other way as Cheryl lets out a laugh that sounds like a seagull with a broken wing trying to sing a Mariah Carey song. She has bright red lipstick over her front teeth. Cheryl, not Mariah Carey.
“HAARRR! HAARRR! Lovely to see you two little smooch critters getting to know each other! HAARRR! HAARRR! Must catch up soon, darlings!”
She winks at Dad and Ross and then she’s off, a whirlwind of animal print, garish lipstick, big white teeth and even bigger hair.
Dad and Ross blush.
I turn to Dad to ask him what Ross is talking about, and it’s then that I realize he isn’t wearing his grey joggers and hoodie – and he’s worn them every day since he quit teaching.
When I was little, I used to put my face as close as I could to Dad’s face and see how many colours I could spot in his eyes. There are flashes of bronze and streaks of emerald green in them, I’m sure of it. I used to think I just had muddy brown eyes, but Dad says he can see chocolate and chestnut and flecks of amber in them.
Today, Dad’s hazel eyes seem brighter than usual and he’s wearing a smart pair of blue jeans, his special brown ankle-high boots, a crisp white shirt and a long, thick caramel-coloured coat. Getting dressed up for dinner is understandable, but this…?
“You’ve changed,” I whisper accusingly.
“Changed? What do you mean, Little Squirrel?” he replies, looking hurt.
“Changed your clothes,” I say.
“Oh! Ha!” Dad laughs. He looks quickly at Ross and says loudly, “This old thing? Just threw it on.”
“Hmm,” I say, and if I had a little black moustache like Poirot I’d twiddle it right now because something doesn’t feel right. I don’t think Dad is telling the truth.
And I think I know why.
I’d assumed their dessert disaster would have put the brakes on WHATEVER it is that’s going on, but it hasn’t.
They like each other.
This is bad.
“Anyway,” I say, turning to Ross and Florence, “we need to get going. I really need to work on my winning logo design.”
I still can’t think of a winning design.
“Yeah, Papa, me too,” says Florence.
“That’s brilliant!” Ross says. “You two can talk about it at the cafe!”
“The cafe?” I ask, my voice shrill.
Dad says quietly, “Erm … Ross and I thought that we could … erm…”
I stare at Dad.
“We … erm … thought we could all go to the cafe now and have a hot chocolate and one of Julia’s big slices of carrot cake?”
“Hopefully it’ll stay on the plate this time,” Ross says, chuckling.
Dad bursts out laughing, but I just stare at him like I’ve been slapped round the face with a wet fish.
That’s our cafe.
Mine and dad’s.
Cosy, safe, warm.
Dad and Ross going out to dinner and pretending I don’t exist while they sip champagne and giggle over snails in garlic is one thing.
But our cafe?
Not in a million years am I going to Julia’s cafe with Ross and Florence.
You’d have to tie me up, knock me out and drag me there.
Not. A. Chance.
* * *
“So, four mega-deluxe hot chocolates and two slices of carrot cake. Is that right, William?” Ross asks. He slaps me on the back AGAIN. If I were a cat I’d hiss at him.
But I don’t. I keep it all locked up, buried deep down. I mustn’t lose control. I’m a good boy now.
Ross is grinning like this is the most exciting thing in the entire world.
Usually, it would be.
The huge window at the front of Julia’s cafe is all misted up, like it’s hiding a secret, magical world inside. There’s a warm, welcoming glow coming from the fairy lights.
Dad and I usually sit together on the comfy sofas to the right-hand side.
Sometimes we read our books and I lean into Dad and rest my head on his shoulder. Sometimes we do word-search puzzles or play games on Dad’s phone. Sometimes Dad says to me, “Hey, do you t hink that guy over there is a secret agent? He looks shifty, right?”
But now, everything’s different.
How could Dad do this? Doesn’t he know how special this place is to me?
Ross confidently pushes open the door to the cafe. Hang on! Has Dad brought him here before? No, he wouldn’t do that. The scent of fresh coffee and sweet, delicious cake hits me as we walk in.
There are a few groups of people dotted around – some teenagers huddled together laughing and the old woman who’s always here on her own with her laptop. Dad thinks she’s a top-notch fashion designer who says things like, “No, darling! The colour is all wrong! I asked for CERULEAN, not BLUE!”
“Right, our treat – no arguing,” Dad says, gesturing for Ross and Florence to take a seat somewhere. Florence looks thoroughly miserable.
At least that’s one thing we have in common.
“We won’t say no to that, will we, Flo?” Ross says, barking with laughter. I shudder. He’s so loud. “Those sofas over there look good!”
“No!” I blurt out. Because those sofas are our sofas. Mine and Dad’s.
Dad looks at me, confused.
“I mean, they’re not very comfortable. Might give you piles, Dad. You don’t want those again!” I say.
“Erm … thank you, William,” Dad mumbles, his face suddenly beetroot red.
Ross looks at Dad, trying not to laugh. “Over there, then? Or over there? Maybe—”
“Urgh! Whatever!” Florence sighs. “Here is fine.” She dumps her school bag on the floor next to a circular table for four and plonks herself down.
Ross sits down quickly like a naughty schoolboy who’s just been scolded.
Dad and I get in the queue. There are two teenage boys standing in front of us, their heads together, whispering and giggling like they’re in a world of their own. Just like Dad and I used to be.
Among all the comforting scents of chocolate cake and freshly baked cookies, I suddenly notice something else now that I’m standing close to Dad.
He’s wearing his aftershave! He smells of wood sage and sea salt.
“William, are you OK?” Dad asks, looking down at me.
“FINE!” I say loudly. “Why?”
“It’s just that you’re sniffing me,” Dad replies, putting his arm around me.
“You’re wearing your aftershave,” I say quietly.
To most people this might not seem like a big deal. But Dad hasn’t worn his aftershave since he left teaching on Wednesday 15 April, and it’s now Wednesday 3 September. Every day I’ve been waiting for him to put it back on. It just smells of … him.
“Oh, right. Yeah. I suppose I am,” Dad says, squeezing my hand.
He does this sometimes to remind me he loves me.
I squeeze his hand back.
I look over at Ross and Florence. They’re sitting in silence. Florence stares out of the fogged-up window and I wonder if she hates all this as much as I do. Ross has taken off his coat and I’m surprised to see he has tattoos all over his big arms.
Just like Aunt Erin, I think. But then I shake my head because he’s nothing like my amazing Aunt Erin.
The two boys in front pay for their drinks. As they’re moving to the other end of the counter to wait for their order, one of them turns and says, “Oh, hello, sir!”
The first thing I notice about the boy is his brown, wavy, shoulder-length hair. The old woman at her laptop who’s a secret fashion designer for the stars would say it was “fabulous”, I’m sure of it. He has fair skin and there’s a glint in his eyes.
“Mr Huxley!” the other boy says.
He is stocky and broad with light brown skin and curly black hair. His eyes are very, very green.
“Hello, lads!” Dad says and his smile is wide. “Exams going OK? Oh, this is my son, William!”
“Hi, William! Absolutely loving that coat!” the first boy says.
I blush and say, “Thank you. I got it new for Year Six. It makes me feel like a spy. I can keep all sorts of cool things in here.”
“Can’t believe you left, sir! We miss you!” the second boy says. He seems calm and nice.
“English has NOT been the same without you!”
“Yep! No more teaching for me,” Dad says brightly. “Time to move on…”
Dad suddenly seems to falter. He seems unsure of himself. Now it’s my turn to squeeze his hand.
I’m here, Dad. I’m here.
Suddenly Ross is also at Dad’s side.
“Sorry, forgot to say – extra squirty cream on the hot chocolate for me. Love the stuff! Can’t get enough…” Ross turns to the two boys and smiles. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“That’s OK,” one of them says. “We were just BEGGING Mr Huxley to come back. Why did you leave, anyway?”
