At the start my dad seemed happy to spend time with Tom, but after a few years I noticed that he’d find an excuse to go out into the garden and do something out there. He’d come back in shortly before we left and say good-bye with a troubled look on his face. One day when I was there on my own, I’d tackled him about it.

“Don’t you like Tom?”

My dad’s eyes had shifted nervously. “Of course I do.”

“You don’t seem to like talking to him nowadays.”

“I do!”

I stared him down. “You leave the room as soon as you can. He’s always friendly to you. Why can’t you talk to him?”

“I do like him,” he said again. “It’s just . . .”

I waited, knowing he would hate that silence between us.

Eventually he said, “He seems a bit bossy. I don’t like that, love.” I know now that he was talking about his own marriage.

“He is not!” I’d said, hot with injustice. “He’s very clever, yes, but he doesn’t boss anyone around!”

“He likes things done his way,” my dad had said quietly.

Red with embarrassment and wishing I’d never mentioned it in the first place, I said, “Well, don’t we all?”

“You don’t have things your way, though, do you?” he said.

My mum had come into the room and heard what my dad had said. “Are you kidding?” she’d said. “She has everything she could ever want. Look at the house they’ve got!” My mother had been furious about my house from the beginning because her sister had left me some money in her will, which I’d used to help pay for it. She’d left sentimental items for my mum, who couldn’t care less about anything like that. My mother was an early advocate of eBay and had had those trinkets on sale before her sister was in her grave. “And her car. I’d say she has everything her own way.” She gave me a hard look and, remembering that now, I realized she’d been jealous of the life I was leading. A life I became desperate to escape. “I’d say she’s not as daft as she looks. She’s the one in control there!”

But I wasn’t. I never was. Even when he told me I was, I wasn’t.

•   •   •