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my side. ‘I was drinking and smoking,’ he announced, his voice loud and even. ‘Nicole didn’t do anything. And we weren’t in bed, we were sitting on top of it. Fully clothed.’
    ‘You shut your mouth, boy,’ Dad sneered at him.
    ‘I will not,’ Julian said, his head held high, a look of contempt on his beautiful face. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone as much as I loved him in that moment. ‘And you , I really don’t think you are in a position to criticise other people’s parenting skills. A drunk who hits his own daughter? What kind of father is that?’
    There was a collective sharp intake of breath around the room. Dad opened his mouth to reply but nothing came out; the shock of someone talking back in that manner struck him dumb. Mum, on the other hand, was roused to fury.
    ‘You hit her?’ she shrieked at him, pushing him in the chest. ‘You hit Nicole?’
    ‘It was nothing,’ he retorted. ‘I gave her a smack for being cheeky.’
    Mum pushed him again, harder. She was starting to cry now. ‘You bastard,’ she was saying, ‘you bastard.’
    And then he smacked her, just once, very hard, in the mouth, with a fist, not an open hand. She toppled backwards and split her head open on the edge of the coffee table.
     
    Mum and I spent the early hours of New Year’s day in A&E. She had a mild concussion and needed seven stitches in the back of her head. Despite plenty of encouragement from her friends, the police were not called.
    ‘You just make sure he is not in this house when I get back,’ Mum had said to Uncle Chris as she was helped into the ambulance. He nodded gravely. He was white with shock – he knew his brother had a temper but I don’t think he could possibly have imagined, as I couldn’t have up to that point, that Dad would actually punch Mum.
    A couple of Mum’s nursing friends stayed with me in A&E until she was ready to go home at around four o’clock in the morning. As we passed through the main waiting room, I noticed that Charles was sitting in a corner, drinking a cup of coffee. He watched us go, but didn’t say anything.

Chapter Three
     
    Boxing Day, 2011
    I’M SUPPOSED TO be working. And if I’m not working I ought at least to be cleaning the house. I’m doing neither. I’m sitting at my desk in my tiny attic office, composing polite replies to my father’s email, explaining that, while I’m terribly sorry to hear that he had been diagnosed with cancer, I’m not able to come and visit him before his operation. I just don’t have the time.
    How extraordinarily callous that sounds. It is extraordinarily callous. It’s also true. I don’t have time. I have three days in which to do a million things before we leave. And why should I change my plans for him anyway? What, to paraphrase Janet Jackson, has he done for me lately? It’s just so bloody typical of him to come to me now he’s vulnerable and feeling low. Where was he four years ago, when my whole life fell apart? And the language of his message! ‘… this is a matter of great regret for me …’ – it sounds like he was resigning from a job, not writing to the daughter he’s barely seen in twenty years.
    Then again, I am going to be in Oxford tomorrow to carry out the interview that I ought to be preparing right now. And Ledbury is only about an hour and a half’s drive from Oxford. I could always drop by after the interview. Show some generosity of spirit, a bit of kindness to an old man struck down by illness, even if he is a miserable old bastard who doesn’t deserve it.
    I should talk to Dom about it. Dom will know what to do. I wonder, briefly, whether I should contact my mother and let her know. We almost never speak about him; he’s the elephant in all of our rooms. I can’t tell her. Not now, she’s in Costa Rica on holiday, having fun with friends. I’m not going to spoil that, not for him, not after everything he’s put her through.
    I pick up my phone and ring Dom’s