I drive home. I notice that a car has been following me from where I was parked near my office. I block it out, knowing this is a common psychological experience; a white Toyota in the rear-view mirror, then ten minutes later you look up and see a similar car and are convinced someone is following you. But now that I’m focusing on it, I realise they’ve turned down our quiet street. I indicate, pull into our driveway and it rolls past. I sit there for a moment watching the rear-view mirror for the driver, but I see only a dark silhouette. Curious, I sit there thinking for a moment before heading towards the house.

Chapter Four

FOUR

YOU GET THE bad boys out of the way in your teen years, then find someone kind and caring to marry. My relationship prior to Gabe was tumultuous, something of a bad boy to say the least, but most other love interests were like Gabe: calm and easy, safe.

He was the one that asked my father before he proposed – a terrifying prospect if you knew my father back then, an academic psychologist with an interrogating gaze and sarcasm that could draw blood. Gabe called him rather than asking in person because by that stage my father was living in Vancouver, undertaking a residency at a university there. Growing up with him, I always felt a little like one of his test subjects. Something to be studied and understood, rather than cared for and emotionally nourished. He was always asking me questions, studying my responses. He was also incapable of uttering the words, I don’t know. If he was ever confronted with a problem he didn’t have the answer to, he was much more likely to say something like, ‘Well I suppose the answer would be …’ or ‘One would assume that …’ A far cry from my Gabe, who was so uncertain, so careful and kind. Gabe was someone who didn’t kiss me until our third date and wouldn’t have fucked me if I hadn’t dragged him onto me after a long night of cocktails in the city. Gabe hasn’t changed at all in that time, he’s just as rocksteady, just as moderate and conservative.

July is at the kitchen bench, when I get inside. ‘So, when is he coming for dinner?’ Gabe asks, teasing July about Hudson. I don’t want to pressure July or rush her any more with this kid. If he meets us and they do eventually break up it will be even harder for her.

‘Soon,’ she says, her expression somewhere between excitement and frustration.

‘Have you met his parents?’

‘Dad,’ she says. ‘Stop, please.’