It Sounded Better in My Head - Nina Kenwood Page 0,56

I am superstitious enough to believe that if you think about a good thing too much you can turn it into a bad thing, and, also, it has been twenty-four hours since Alex and I last spoke and he hasn’t texted me yet. To balance out thinking about Alex, I dwell on my fight with Zach and the still unbelievably raw fact that my parents are no longer together.

I can’t quite believe that my father has moved out. I symbolically removed his favourite R2D2 magnet from the fridge and hid it so he couldn’t take it with him. I put it in a drawer where I cruelly hope Mum will one day find it and feel a piercing pain of regret in her heart. I have been trying to work up the courage to say I don’t want you to leave, but I haven’t found a way to work it into the conversation. I kept hearing Mum and Dad having extremely polite whispered conversations about who owns what. (‘You can have the rice cooker.’ ‘Oh no, you keep it, you like rice more than I do.’ ‘Do I?’ ‘Yes, you went through that phase of eating brown rice with everything, remember?’ ‘Oh, I’m over that now.’) I wanted to smash everything so they’d have nothing left to talk about.

We reach Jock’s and that eases my anxiety, because this is like heaven for us. We stand in line and discuss flavours.

‘Hokey pokey?’ I suggest.

‘It’s a highly recommended flavour,’ Dad says.

‘Or peach sorbet. Or fig ripple.’

‘Or chocolate and vanilla. Mix the originals,’ Dad says. He is a big believer in traditional flavours.

‘Walnut espresso?’

‘I do love coffee and nuts.’

‘But I think something chocolate today,’ I say.

‘It’s moving day. We need chocolate,’ Dad agrees.

‘Cone or cup?’

‘You know my feelings on that topic, Natalie. Cone, always cone.’

‘You get more ice-cream with the cup.’

‘But you get to eat the cone.’

‘But eating out of a cup is less messy than eating out of a cone.’

‘It separates the men from the boys.’

‘Mum and I hate that saying,’ I say.

Dad says it all the time, I think to tease us. ‘I know, honey,’ he says, and his voice isn’t cheerful anymore.

We are silent then. Mentioning Mum seems to have taken all the air out of the conversation. I turn to Dad, ready to finalise our order, and his face looks strange.

‘Order for me, will you?’ he says.

‘Okay. Where are you going?’

‘Outside for a second.’ He pushes money into my hand and leaves the shop.

The lady behind the counter is smiling at me.

‘What can I get you, dear?’

I point wildly at options, mixing together flavours that don’t even complement each other like a complete amateur, and ask for both ice-creams in cones. The woman takes a long time to carefully scoop the ice-cream, and my heart is racing every second I’m in the shop and Dad is somewhere outside. His face was weird. Maybe he’s having a heart attack. Or a stroke. I get out my phone and type in 00, so I only have to add one more digit and hit the call button if I do step outside and see him on the ground.

Dad could be dead because I dithered over ice-cream choices.

I pay and rush outside. I spot him, sitting on a bench. His shoulders are a little bit hunched and his hands are resting carefully on his knees. If I walked past him on the street, I would think ‘That man is sad’, and my heart constricts at the realisation that my kind, wonderful dad is the kind of man other people might walk past and feel sorry for.

‘Dad, are you okay?’

‘I’m fine, honey.’

I hand him his ice-cream and sit down next to him.

‘It was too hot in that shop,’ he says, not looking at me. His eyes look a little red and watery.

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but this is the first time I’ve thought about how awful the break-up might be for my parents.

22

The Dating Scene

‘You’re dating now?’ I say, in my most victimised tone of voice.

I’ve come home from helping Dad move and I’m watching Mum twist and turn in front of the mirror. She’s wearing a wrap dress and cute sandals with sparkles on them. Her toenails are painted in a way that I can tell she paid for. I’ve never known her to pay for a pedicure. This is new, and I am not on board with it.

After my time with Dad today, I made a vow to be more sensitive