My Best Friend's Dad - Flora Ferrari Page 0,1

“The worst he’ll do is just stay in his study watching old racing tapes and hanging out with Jasper. You never know … if we’re lucky, he might crack a smile.”

I turn to the giant imposing gate when the car comes to a stop. It’s the sort of gate that wouldn’t look out of place in a Gothic mansion, wrought black iron with a silver wolf’s head carved into the top of it.

Fiona climbs out, approaching the stone pillar beside the gate and pressing a button on what I assume is the intercom system.

“What an amazing property,” the cab driver says, whistling softly.

“Yeah,” I mutter in agreement.

Beyond the gate the stone path winds, trees bordering it on all sides, making a tunnel of snow-dappled branches. The house sits beyond that but calling it a house is a massive understatement.

The thing is a mansion, an estate.

Fiona must see my face when she returns to the car because she gives me the mother of all eye rolls.

“What?” I giggle. “How the hell am I supposed not to be impressed?”

I assumed that they were wealthy since Saul was a Formula One driver, but this is something else entirely.

“I know,” Fiona says. “I guess I downplayed it because, well… Because who wants to be seen as the spoilt rich girl, you know?”

“You’ve never come across like that, Fi,” I assure her. “That doesn’t stop this place from being absolutely incredible though, does it?”

“Thanks, Goldilocks,” she smiles.

I can’t help but return her smile at the nickname Goldilocks, which is a play on my surname, Gold, and also a reference to the time I refused to leave a conservation site before an animal I was caring for received the proper medical attention. It was only a volunteer position, but when I saw the poor sloth’s cracked nails and heard that there weren’t enough resources to care for it, I did something very silly—I walked in and stayed there until they stopped being complete assholes.

“Those nasty men were the bears,” Fiona said when she heard the story, absolutely delighted. “And you, my brave girl, were Goldilocks, getting herself lost in the woods, not listening to reason. So from this day forth that shall be your name.” She’d picked up a coat hanger – the closest thing to hand – and knighted me with it, laying it on one shoulder and then the other. “See? Now it’s official.”

My awe for the property can only soar higher as we pass under the shadow of the trees, the house looming larger and even more intimidating.

“How many rooms does this place have?” I whisper, taking in the giant glazed windows, the high stone steps that lead to the tall oak carved front door—with two gargoyles sitting on either side, watching stonily.

“Around thirty,” Fiona says. “But please don’t start gushing. I don’t want you to start resenting me.”

“Fi, stop it with that talk, Jesus,” I say. “You didn’t decide to be born here, did you?”

Silently I muse on Fiona’s mother, the woman who ran out on them when Fiona was only a year old to join a hippy commune on the west coast.

I can’t live a conventional life, she’d said apparently.

She didn’t want to be a wife or a mother. She wanted to be … whatever people who live on a hippie commune on the west coast are.

I wonder how she could leave this place if perhaps she’d seen it as more of a prison than a paradise.

The thought strikes me like lightning that I’d never leave this snowy land. Well fine, maybe for conservation work, for college, but to abandon it, and her own daughter, and the father of her only child?

A savage shiver moves through me, a maternal instinct rising inside me, as though I can go back in time and protect Fiona from having to go through that.

“Jasper,” Fiona cries when the car comes to a stop.

I turn to find the Great Dane Dalmatian cross loping toward the car, a big grin on his face as his black-white dappled fur glistens with the snow. He runs up to the car and jumps up, so tall he can almost place his forepaws on the roof.

“Sorry,” Fiona tells the driver.

“No problem,” he smiles. “That’s one beautiful dog.”

Fiona pays him – giving him a hefty tip, I note – and then we climb from the car, the air immediately colder, pricking my skin. I giggle in delight when Jasper bounds over to me, tail wagging like it’s powered by an engine, tilting