‘That’s good. Nothing worse than being cooped up in libraries.’
She’d refrained from saying that actually, that was how she planned to spend the rest of her life, if possible, and instead smiled and let him usher her down the hall to the dining room. It was at the corner of the building with windows on both sides, those on Beaumont Street looking out towards the grandeur of the Ashmolean Museum, the others this way, towards the Memorial and Balliol College beyond. By contrast with reception, it was filled with light, and the glass and silverware glinted on stiff white linen. Wood panelling, oil paintings. From the window table that her father requested, she had a view of the room and the three other parties of early eaters already ensconced, a trio of businessmen all wearing grey suits, and two couples in their seventies, the nearest pair sipping sherry while they perused the menu. The weekday lunch, she thought, preserve of those on pensions or expenses, and those consciously or otherwise avoiding the intimacy of dinner with its candlelight and greater likelihood of drinking too much truth serum.
To her surprise, however, her father immediately ordered two glasses of champagne. ‘To you,’ he said, chiming his glass gently against hers, ‘and your double first.’
‘God, no pressure.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘no pressure. But you’ll do it.’ He took a sip. ‘Your mother would have been proud of you today, Rowan.’
She had been startled: he never talked about her mother. When she was younger, she’d resented it, wanting – needing – information, but as she’d grown older, she’d understood and even come to appreciate his silence. It was too painful, she’d thought; for him, the memories; for her, the lack of them. Blood aside, loss was what they had in common. She’d felt an intense pang of longing for her mother then, a void yawning at her centre like a hole burned all the way through. In recognition of what it must have cost him to say it, she stifled the questions that came afterwards: Are you proud, Dad? Could you tell me?
Their elderly neighbours had taken delivery of salmon mousses and, glancing over, Rowan caught the woman’s eye. She wondered if they shared the habit of analysing fellow diners, working out their relationships and situations, and if so, what this woman made of the girl and the man entertaining her. Their colouring said they were family, his genes had dominated her mother’s timid ones, but given their formality with one another, she could be excused for guessing they were niece and arm’s-length uncle. Her father was making an effort, though, she had to admit, and as they ate, they carried on a polite trade in information. She told him about the papers she’d sat and the ballot for rooms in college in the autumn; he talked about Rio and Santiago and a new cancer drug in which Stern Rizer was investing a huge amount of research funding.
Halfway through his main course, however, he gestured to the waiter for more champagne and she knew that something was going on. She’d attributed his animation to the first glass, the effect of lunchtime drinking on someone who wasn’t used to it, but with the second glass she realised that, in fact, her father was nervous. He was fortifying himself. Girding his loins.
He’d waited until she’d finished her risotto, at least. Then, downing a full inch from his glass in a single swig, he’d looked across, almost bashful. ‘We’re celebrating two things today,’ he said. ‘Three, actually.’
‘Are we?’ Her heart started pumping harder.
He smiled. ‘I know this will come as a surprise but I didn’t want to bother you with it before the exams and . . . Well, no point beating around the bush: I’m getting married.’
Something at the very centre of her collapsed. She felt it behind her ribcage: a house of cards, a shirt slipping off a hanger to fall shapeless to the floor. The room pulled away, and she had the impression that she was looking at it from the end of a tunnel, her father a tiny figure far removed across the white plains of the tablecloth. A rushing sound in her ears, the sea heard in a shell, and the floor tipped dangerously beneath her chair. She grabbed the edge of the table.
Her father didn’t notice. ‘. . . waiting for dates but probably the second week of December,’ he was saying. ‘Jessica – she’s looking forward to meeting you – wants a winter do. The village church is very pretty there and, of course, it’s traditional for it to happen on the bride’s home turf so . . .’
‘What’s the third thing?’ said Rowan, her voice sounding as if it belonged to someone else.
‘What?’
‘Three things.’