“I am, but don’t change the subject. I’m pretty sure you’ve described them as ‘sexist schlock’ before. I remember because I’d never heard a person say the word schlock in real life.”

“Whatever. Like horror isn’t totally sexist? Oh, here, why don’t I stab all these women with my phallic weapon while they run around in tank tops with their nipples showing.”

“Please don’t say nipples in front of your father.” Dad shuddered.

“Yeah, I regretted it as soon as it was out.”

“Let’s move past it.”

I waited for him to say whatever he’d come up to say. He fiddled with a necklace on my dresser instead of looking at me.

“You could come with us?” Dad said hopefully.

I plumped up a pillow and nestled it behind my head.

“I’m kind of swamped here.”

“I really want you to get to know Beth better. You have to get involved somehow.”

“Do I, though?” I mused.

I knew this wasn’t the only reason he’d come up, though, to convince me to go do wedding stuff. He had to know that was a lost cause. There was something else.

“I got an offer on the house,” he said eventually. I felt the wind knocked out of me. The house had only been on the market two days. Only one person had been to see it that I knew of. We didn’t even have one of those signs from the estate agent yet.

“We’re not in any hurry. I put an offer on the flat and it was accepted, but it’ll be a while yet before everything’s sorted. We have until August.”

My dad, who had decided to get engaged and set the wedding date less than three months away, absolutely had a warped sense of what was and was not a rush.

He waited, perhaps for me to say something that would let him off the hook so he didn’t have to feel guilty.

“I hate this,” I said.

He really didn’t know me at all.

For a minute it looked like he was going to say he was sorry but instead, he tapped the dresser a couple of times, sighed, and left. Pathetic.