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father is saying. ‘I was hoping I could persuade you and Charles to join me.’
    ‘Oh, tonight’s no good,’ I say, pressing the mobile into my shoulder, twisting the key in the lock and letting myself into the hall. The lights are off but Sophie’s coat is slung over the banister: she must be upstairs. ‘Charles is away and I’ve got plans, Bridget’s coming over for supper. I could do Thursday, if you’re still here then.’
    ‘I’m not in town for long,’ he says. ‘Bring Bridget too. Who is Bridget anyway? She sounds great. I’m sure I’d like her.’
    I can tell he’s demob happy: off the leash, expansive, wanting an audience.
    ‘Oh, I don’t think . . .’ I say, but he has made up his mind: he’s summoning up all his relentlessly twinkly charisma. Just listening to him makes me feel tired. You have to be in the right frame of mind to spend time with my father, and I’m not in the right frame of mind tonight. Charles (who is, after all, closer in age to my father than to me) knows how to play him, and finds him moderately amusing. I’m not so sure.
    ‘You know we’d have fun,’ he’s saying. ‘Go on, ring her, see if she likes the sound of a very good table at Marcy’s and my undivided attention.’
    I say I’ll see. And I don’t sell it to her. But Bridget, a friend since art school, thinks it’s a wonderful idea, certainly more wonderful than a Thai takeaway on the tall stools in my kitchen. She has always wanted to meet Paul. The other night she was about to go to bed when she realised Crazy Paving was on TV; she turned over to catch the backgammon scene, and the next thing she knew it was 2 a.m. Plus, you know: Marcy’s. Hel- lo?
    In the shower, I scour away Atsuko’s almond oil, my eyes shut against the deluge. See the old man, get it over with. It might be fun.
    While I’m waiting for the cab, I knock on Sophie’s door. ‘Not in,’ she shouts, so I push the door open a little and say, ‘I’m going out to dinner with Paul. He’s in town for a few days. You can come if you like.’
    ‘I’m good, thanks.’
    ‘I’ll put a pizza in the oven, it’ll be ready at half past. Don’t forget.’
    She slouches over her desk, moving her arm so I can’t see what’s on the screen. ‘Homework,’ she says, heading me off.
    I’m the last to arrive at the restaurant. My father rises up behind the stiff immaculate fall of tablecloth, palming back his hair, showing his teeth. The go-faster stripe of white at his temple; the shirred weft of the narrow silk tie gleaming like fish scales. His cheek, when it presses against mine, is smooth, cool, smelling distinctly of his particular scents: black pepper and lemon, the interior of expensive cars, the ministrations of a laundry service that returns linen banded in yellow ribbon.
    Bridget reaches over to kiss me, mindful of her champagne glass and the candle in its smoked glass holder. ‘Paul’s just been telling me all about Jessica Lange and Robert Redford,’ she says. Here we go , I think.
    ‘Just making up a few stories,’ he says, signalling for a glass for me.
    I wouldn’t put it past him. My father lives on the margins of reality, the magical shimmering point at which fantasy becomes fact. His whole life, when glanced at, looks rather like a dream: the talent, the lucky break, the success, the money, the houses. The wives.
    From my perspective, that of the child at the edge of the room, it often appeared messy, wasteful, destructive; but my father was sustained by the excitement. Perhaps he felt it was no less than his due. Once, in my early twenties, I sat at the back of a private screening room in Soho – the insulated hush of the red velvet and the thick carpet, people juggling wine glasses and notebooks as they took their seats – and Paul came in, and stood for a moment at the front, talking with the director, and the two young women in the row in front of me bent their heads towards each other and whispered, and then one