Page 39 of The Reunion

‘I did! And we did mine! Look. They’re blue!’

‘Wow, nice! Your favourite colour. Can you do mine for me when I get home, d’you think?’

Skye thinks about it hard for a moment, then ultimately decides, ‘I don’t think blue suits you very well, Daddy.’

I fight not to smile, trying to match her serious energy. ‘Oh. Alright, fair enough.’ It doesn’t help that Lucy is in the background smothering a laugh and doing a terrible job of it.

‘Is your party fun?’ Margot asks, just as Skye says, ‘Mummy said you’re not home till after breakfast. You’re going to have an angry tummy, like Margot when she gets hungry.’

‘I’ll find something to eat for breakfast,’ I reassure her. ‘And the party’s great, thank you, Go. That was very nice of you to ask.’

‘Are you playing hide-and-seek?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Oh. Well, why are you in the dark?’

Uh-oh, rumbled.

Skye tells me, ‘I don’t think you’ll win – you’re making too much noise talking to us. They’ll find you easy.’

‘That’s a good point. I’d better get off the phone then, hadn’t I? I just wanted to call and say behave for Mum, and night-night.’

‘We are behaving. You’re spoiling it,’ Margot tells me, but they both say goodnight (whispering, so my hiding place doesn’t get found out) and let Lucy take the phone back. She puts the film back on and returns to the kitchen with me still on the line, and closes the door before frowning at the screen. It’s a sweet look, mouth puckered and twisted up on the left-hand side, that same eyebrow contorting into a wavy line. Skye pulls the same face when she’s thinking too hard about something.

‘You are still at the party, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah. I’m, er, just …’

Lucy sighs, propping the phone against the counter while she fills the kettle and sets it on to boil, getting things ready to make herself a cup of tea. Her nails are messy blobs of pink nail varnish and there are little braids and butterfly clips through her dark blonde hair, obviously the work of the girls. She looks tired, when I get a proper view of her face again as she waits for the kettle, but then she says, ‘Hayden …’ and I’m not sure it’s to do with the fact she’s been watching Margot and Skye all evening.

‘It’s fine,’ I tell her. ‘I just wanted to say goodnight, that’s all.’

‘I know you love being a dad, but you know it’s okay to switch off sometimes, too, don’t you? Have some time for yourself? Just because you have custody …’ She hesitates, and I can feel her guilt even through the screen. She loves the girls and enjoys spending time with them, but she’s always found it hard to be a hands-on mum day to day, even when we were still trying to make a real go of it between having Margot and Skye. I’ve never blamed her for that, but I know plenty of other people have. Lucy finally settles on saying, ‘That doesn’t mean you have to go overboard to make up for it. They’ve got me, too, you know.’

‘I know, but …’

But Lucy has a career she loves and is passionate about, and a thriving social life, and I hate intruding on that when I’m happy with my remote working and quiet hang-outs with people like Ashleigh – takeout and a couple of beers on the sofa. But, as everybody has made so abundantly clear tonight, I sacrificed everything about myself to be a dad and I’m not sure how much of me is left, if I were to look.

Certainly, there’s nothing to find at the bottom of a cup of spiked punch, but that hasn’t stopped me trying.

‘But nothing,’ Lucy says definitively, looking far more authoritative than she has any right to with that hairstyle. She only stops glaring down the camera at me to concentrate on pouring water into her mug, and I think it’s uncanny that she can read me so well when she can’t even see me. ‘Go have fun, Hayden. Have a couple more drinks, huh? You deserve it.’

‘I want to. I do. But everybody is making it so hard … You should see them, Luce. You’d hate it. It’s all “best foot forward”, all smug and fake, even Ashleigh’s been …’ I grimace, remembering the sight of her grinding up against Freddie Loughton on the dance floor, something she’d never normally do. ‘It makes me feel like I’m on the back foot because I was just coming here to say hello to some old familiar faces and try to enjoy a night off, instead of showing off to everyone.’

‘That sounds like a them problem, not a you problem. I bet you’re overthinking it, anyway, and nobody’s judging you.’

I bite my tongue, not wanting to get into it all now. Maybe tomorrow over a coffee in the kitchen, when I’m back. I settle for saying, ‘Sure, maybe. I’ll text you tomorrow when I’m on the way home, won’t be too long. Thanks for minding them overnight.’

‘You don’t have to thank me, you daft thing. They’re my daughters, too.’

‘I know, but—’

‘But nothing,’ she says, and where this kind of loop would’ve sent us into a frustrated argument before, she only laughs about it now. It’s as if all the tension slipped out of the relationship when we agreed to be friends rather than partners, and we’re both better off for it. Lucy flaps a badly manicured hand at me. ‘If you don’t come home with a hangover and a fun story, we’ll be having words. Talk tomorrow!’

We hang up and for a moment I cradle my phone between my hands. There’s a lightness in my chest, though whether it’s from the chat with Lucy or speaking to the girls, I can’t tell. It makes the burden of everybody else’s pity tonight weigh a little less, rallies me, gives me a second wind ready to tackle the next few hours.

I’m just about to stand when footsteps rush past and a figure bursts across the stage behind the heavy curtain that separates us from the party. The shadows bend and glimmer, faint fragments of light catching on an array of sequins.

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