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with the two of them first?
    It was a mild, moist morning, the sun just trying to break through pearly clouds. The kitchen window was open to let in the air, or to let out the smell of burnt toast. All four of us were grouped round the table, all of us in various states of undress—but then didn’t we all know each other, just about? Wasn’t there now a pretty thorough familiarity, in fact?
    But then again, was this quite the same kitchen, quite the same Brighton even, its relaxed weekend sounds wafting through the window, as only last night?
    I suppose it was still technically possible that your father might have crunched his toast, downed his coffee, smacked his lips and said, “Well, nice knowing you, girls, must be off.” Three more notches (if that’s how it really was), a full house, so to speak, to his score. The purple-trousered bastard.
    But he definitely didn’t.
    And let’s call it two and a half. In Osborne Street, that is. I’ve never known precisely what his
overall
score was. One doesn’t ask. I think it can be assumed that this is a number no man is honest about. But, take it from me, your dad did his sleeping around before he came to a halt with me. I don’t say that to boast, to claim surrogate points. Perhaps I do. With me, it was six. Honest. To some that may seem quite a few, in two years, to some not so many. It was enough for me: to be able to say I’d slept around. And to sort out the Mikeys from the rest. What are women programmed to do? Biologists will tell you, and Mike was one: to select a mate.
    But take it from me too, the formal study of biology, in your father’s final year at Sussex University, was of secondary, temporarily receding interest. He’d branched out. Whatever his score was, before me, he
scored.
Scoring wasn’t his problem: this fifty-year-old man, comatose now at my side.
    But before he fell asleep tonight we made love in a special, a poignant, a farewell way. You’ll understand this soon.
    It’s possible that in that never to be forgotten kitchen in Osborne Street your father might have taken his leave of my life, of Linda’s and Judy’s. And of yours. I might have become just a sad addition to his score. But I don’t think it was ever on the cards, and what he actually did was something marvellous. I fell in love with him, if that was possible,
more.
And, given our nocturnal conversation, I could just about feel, too, how it must have felt for him. Sometimes a woman can feel like a man feels. I’d already begun, you see, to feel your dad’s feelings. To be twenty-one and not to be a prisoner of war. To be centre-stage of life and not to put a foot wrong.
    He finished his coffee. He looked levelly at all of us, but his hand, I remember, under the table, was surely placed on my thigh. The granddad T-shirt, that weekend, was a gruesome shade of magenta, his hair could probably have done with a wash, but he spoke like a lord. These days, as you know, it’s your father’s business to command. He has to address those board meetings, give little rallying speeches at conferences, generally come up with the right message—he’ll need all his skills tomorrow. I could never have predicted it, all those years ago. But perhaps that little quorum round the kitchen table at Osborne Street was an early glimpse.
    “Ladies,” he said. Ladies! The three maisonettes. “Ladies, thank you for breakfast. Lunch will be on me. On the beach, with champagne. You’re all invited.”
    Undoubtedly one of your father’s finest moments—not counting the whole of that preceding night. I was amazed at his chivalrous presence of mind. Even I could see that Linda and Judy couldn’t have been expected just to clear off. They were part of this unique occasion, they had to be honoured—thanked. In any case, they weren’t going to decline such an offer. I was amazed by how your father masterminded that day. As he spoke the sun came peeping through those pale clouds. It would be