He pinches my nose between his thumb and his forefinger. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your nose.’
‘You don’t have to be kind, you know. I accept it.’ I put my hands together in prayer. ‘I am at peace with my conk, Parnell. Well, unless I’m around my brother and he starts his “Kinsella by name, Kinsella by nose”routine.’
‘Your brother sounds like a prick.’
‘He is. The prickiest of the pricks. I used to wish he’d die in an accident.’ Parnell looks horrified so I add a quick laugh. ‘OK, maybe not die. Just get mangled up a bit, fed through a tube .?.?.’
‘You’re bloody dark, Kinsella. I wouldn’t go telling your shrink that, she’ll have a field—’
‘How do you know about that?’
My voice burns with accusation but of course he knows. Of course Steele would have told him. You can’t sell a car without the logbook and you can’t give someone responsibility for me without mentioning the faulty wiring.
I can’t meet his eyes.
‘Look, anything to do with kids is tough. Stop beating yourself up.’
It’s a genuine plea from someone who knows, not a half-meant platitude or a counselling cliché, but I really, really don’t want to go here with Parnell. I rather liked how I thought he saw me – a bit dark, a bit clever and with a perfectly OK nose. It makes me all kinds of miserable that he knows I can’t keep my shit together.
He turns my cheek, forces me to look at him. ‘Hey, you didn’t do anything wrong, Cat.’
Cat. Not ‘kiddo’. Not even ‘Kinsella’.
‘So everyone keeps telling me but I didn’t do anything right either.’ He waits for me to go on. ‘I froze, Boss. I threw up. I cried – hysterically. All in front of a little girl who’d just spent the best part of two days doing jigsaws next to her mum’s corpse.’
‘You have to try .?.?.’
‘No, listen, hear me out, I’m getting to a more positive bit, honest.’ He doesn’t look convinced so I plough on quickly. ‘Do you know, the only thing I can be, not proud of, just not ashamed of, is that I acted on my gut that day checking on Dafina – that’s the mum – ahead of the court case. I mean, if I hadn’t, God knows how long Alana-Jane would have been stuck there and the body would have been in a much worse state. Don’t get me wrong, she looked horrific – there was so much blood and she’d started to go a bit greenish. But if it’d been a few more days, when the bloating started, and the smell .?.?.’
Parnell nods. He understands. ‘Focus on that then. Your natural copper’s instinct made an absolutely horrendous situation a bit less horrendous.’
I pinch my thumb and forefinger together. ‘A tiny bit, maybe. I don’t think me vomiting through my nose did though.’
‘I hear the little girl’s quite taken with you.’
I blink away a tear. ‘She drew me a picture. Wanna see it?’
‘Of course.’
I pull it out of my wallet where it’s lived for two months, wedged between a photo of me and Mum in a bumper car and a ticket for a live gig I completely forgot about. It’s a drawing of me in bright orange outline wearing a spotty pink dress and high heels – one clumpy shoe twice the size of the other. I’ve only got one ear and my nose is a messy green splodge but I’ve got a lovely big smile. It bursts out the side of my cheeks and fills the whole width of the page.
It’s the smile that gives me comfort that I must have done something right.
‘It’s uncanny,’ says Parnell. ‘She definitely got the nose right.’
A quick slap to the head and we stand side by side for a few minutes, silently pressing buttons on the quiz machine, answering questions about everything from country music to past Nobel prize winners. Eventually Parnell’s appetite for trivia runs out and talk turns back to the inevitable.
‘So what about Thomas Lapaine?’ Parnell looks frustrated, although it could be the four-pound jackpot we just gambled – and lost. ‘I haven’t got anything personal against the guy but eliminating him puts us one step closer to the “random stranger” nightmare which is the last thing we all need.’
I sip my wine, realise I’ve sunk two thirds without noticing. ‘I’ve got something personal against him. Bloke’s a tosser.’
‘We’ve met worse.’
He’s right but I’m riled. ‘It’s just all that “not getting any warmth at home” crap really winds me up.’
‘Alice didn’t have many friends. Could suggest a cold fish?’
‘Nor does he!’ I reply, a bit too loud. There’s a TV playing in the corner but the sound’s turned down. ‘Tech reckon his social media circle’s pretty minuscule.’
‘Maybe he has real friends. Do they even exist anymore?’
I ignore the question, stay stranded on my own soapbox. ‘I mean, what even is “warmth”? Wasn’t she putting out regularly enough? He kind of implied that. Or didn’t she mollycoddle him enough like Mother?’
Parnell shrugs. His position on the fence annoys me, even though it’s got no right to, and when you’re annoyed and five drinks down, you occasionally say things you regret.
‘My dad had affairs.’
It comes out as a loaded declaration. A defining statement of sorts. And it is to me, I suppose. It’s certainly shaped the person I am and many a counsellor has argued that it’s the reason behind every neurosis, disorder and general vague oddity that I’ve been daft enough to admit to. However, to Parnell, I’m just a melodramatic colleague. An emotional drunk admitting her dad did something that a lot of dads do. Mums too.
I try to explain, put my outburst into context.
‘And he used to sound just like Thomas Lapaine, that’s why I brought it up. Mum didn’t love him enough, apparently. She didn’t give him enough attention. She was always too busy with us. He was just a cash machine .?.?.’
‘And he said all this to you?’ Parnell lands a size nine on my side of the fence. ‘Not good.’
‘Yeah well, he wasn’t a good husband.’
‘Clearly. Bad husbands can still be good fathers though.’
Bless Parnell, he loves to play the curmudgeon but essentially he’s an optimist.
‘I dare say some can, he can’t.’
Parnell takes a long slug of ale. I’m sure he’s buying time so he can think of how to change the subject and frankly, who could blame him.
‘OK, define a “good father”?’ he says eventually, staying on the same rocky course.
‘Someone who puts his kids first. Someone dependable, consistent. You,’ I add, cringing a bit. ‘At least from what I know anyway.’
‘Me?’ He takes out his phone again, offers it to me. ‘Do you think you could call Mags and repeat that. I haven’t been home for the twins’ bedtime in nearly a fortnight and look at me now, out drinking with you.’
‘I thought Maggie OK’d it?’
‘She did. She’s a good woman. The best.’
I feel bad now. I have this fantasy that me and Maggie become friends at some point. She tells me stories about a younger and slimmer Parnell while I get her wasted on Glitter Bombs.
‘Jesus, you should have gone home, Boss, put your kids to bed. Why didn’t you, for God’s sake?’
‘Because you asked me to come for a drink. And the only reason a young girl like you asks an old duffer like me for a drink is if she’s drowning her sorrows. If she’s lonely or upset about something.’
I say nothing.
‘I’m right, aren’t I? You’re still brooding over the little girl in the bedsit – and, well, it’s obvious this case, Thomas Lapaine’s affair anyway, has brought stuff about your dad to the surface.’
Yeah, just a little.
I don’t know whether to laugh like a drain or cry myself dry.
I opt for more silence.
‘Look, you can’t let it cloud your judgement, kiddo. You’ve got a long career ahead of you, you’re going to meet a lot of cheating slimeballs, I’m afraid. Can’t arrest them all.’
‘S’pose not,’ I say, after a while. ‘Hey, unless you become a private investigator when you retire and I help you out with the cheating spouse cases. Parnell PI. It’s a got a ring to it.’
‘Retirement.’
Parnell exhales the word but it’s not a peaceful exhale. Feeling bad about bringing it up, I draw the conversation back.
‘Anyway, I do have one thing to thank Dad’s affairs for.’