‘He’s only the second boy you’ve ever brought home to us.’
‘I’m not sure the prom date even counts, does he?’
‘Well, I still don’t understand when proms became a thing over here,’ her mother said disapprovingly. ‘But talking of all things American, have you met his parents?’
‘Not yet. They’re . . . in America,’ she shrugged.
‘Where exactly?’
‘Southern California.’
‘San Diego? Santa Barbara? I wonder if they know the Palmers?’
‘They won’t,’ Tara said quickly. ‘They moved around a lot when Alex was growing up. His parents were . . . farmers.’
‘Ah. Arable? Livestock?’
‘. . . Smallholdings, mainly.’
‘Ah.’ Her mother’s smile faltered as all potential avenues for conversation seemed to lead to dead ends. ‘And how did you meet him? Did you tell me that already?’
‘Yes. He’s at Imperial too, studying for a PhD. We met in the coffee shop down the road from the campus.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Jakob picked up a can of Elnett and shook it violently. ‘Samantha, just close your eyes for a moment.’
Her mother shut her eyes as the room was misted with hairspray. It was one of the scents of Tara’s childhood. She looked at her mother’s face in repose – rosy skin with only a few deepening lines down the sides of her mouth, owing (in spite of her ‘little tweaks’) to her readiness to laugh; champagne-blonde hair styled in a long bob; the deep-set hazel eyes she shared with Tara, which flashed like amber in candlelight (her preferred lighting setting). Samantha had never been the most beautiful woman in a room, but she was always one of the most sought-after, her warmth and flair for recounting anecdotes bringing friends to her side like moths to the flame.
Tara went to put the bottle back on the dressing table but it slipped from her fingers and fell with a clatter onto the shagreen tray. Thankfully, nothing was broken. ‘Oh!’
‘You seem . . . nervous, darling,’ her mother said, regarding her through slitted eyes again, and not – Tara suspected – on account of avoiding the hairspray.
‘Nervous? No. I’m fine. Just a bit tired, perhaps.’
‘And that’s all?’
The secret expanded like bellows in her chest. ‘Of course.’ She got up again, not wanting to lie outright, not wanting to linger in case Jakob was drafted in to ‘do something’ quickly with her hair. ‘I’m going to find Daddy before Alex gets here. He was on a call to Gerard when I arrived.’
‘Well, when you see him, remind him not to be . . .’ Her mother twirled her hands in the air, almost clocking Jakob again. ‘You know how he gets.’
A tiny smile danced in her eyes and Tara laughed as she left the dressing room. She appreciated her mother’s soft, subtle humour – her father was understated to the point of invisibility. Unlike his wife, who wore couture at breakfast, he had more than once been mistaken for the driver, which he loved. It wasn’t that he was shabbily dressed; there was just nothing about what he wore that broadcast he was worth £2.4 billion (or whatever the most recent estimate was; it shifted with the markets) – not his shoes, not his watch. In fact, Holly had a fancier iPhone than he did. Tara was convinced he downplayed his status markers in order to lull his opponents into a false sense of superiority. Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t invented the concept of the t-shirt-wearing chairman; Bruce Tremain had.
She found him in his study on the ground floor. His desk, always so neat, was dotted with a small stacked pile of papers. He was writing something but looked up as she came in, his expression still stern as his concentration lagged a moment behind his gaze, and she glimpsed him for a moment as the rest of the world saw him – an immensely powerful man, self-made, almost unlimited in his reach. As predicted, he was wearing clothes that, to the casual observer, could have come from Gap or L. L. Bean.
‘Twiglet.’ He dropped the pen and rose to hug her. ‘How’s my piglet?’
‘Twiglet the piglet’ had been his nickname for her since she was a little girl. He stepped back to take a better look at her, as though looking for changes since their last meeting six weeks before. No doubt she had bags under her eyes but if so, they wouldn’t be from overwork for once. Now that he’d come round from behind the desk, she could see he was wearing his gold-monogrammed navy velvet slippers – an annual Christmas present from her mother. ‘I’m fine, Daddy. How are you? Is this a bad time? You look busy.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just one or two things to sign off on for that pledge business.’ He frowned, checking his watch. ‘He’s not here already, is he?’
‘Alex? No, not yet. He’s coming straight from Imperial so I thought I’d take the opportunity to see you all alone first.’
Her father gave a knowing look, crossing his arms in front of his chest and leaning against the desk. ‘Oh, I see. So you mean this is a briefing.’
She grinned. He had always understood her horror of ostentation; she got it from him. ‘If that’s what you want to call it. I’ve simply asked Miles and Ma to maybe just not mention . . . the toys.’
‘The toys, I see.’
‘And of course to do a slipper check.’ She cast a quick look down at the slippers again, one eyebrow lifted.
He laughed, squeezing her shoulder like he was pinching a toddler’s cheek. ‘Outrageous! And what have you told him about us? Knowing you as I do, I imagine you’ve said almost nothing? Or has he had time to read up on me and now he thinks I’m the big bad wolf?’
‘Of course not. I told him you’re a sweetheart.’
‘Sweetheart. Dear God.’ He groaned, amused. For a man with all the responsibility that came
