“I love you too, Parker.”
Dad came through carrying a board with a half leg of lamb. “Mind out, you two. Come on, sit down or everything’s going to get cold.”
We took our usual seats around the dining room table and Dad carved up the lamb joint.
“Is there any reason we’re having roast dinner on Saturday night?” I asked.
My father shot me a look. “It’s your favorite, isn’t it?”
I was so lucky to have him as my dad.
“Arthur, I’m going to be making lamb pasanda from now until Christmas. Can you shop for three rather than thirty-three next time?”
My heart shifted slightly, as if it didn’t quite fit correctly. I’d felt the same twinges ever since Tristan had left.
“I wasn’t sure how many people were coming,” Dad said. “I thought Parker and Tristan might have made up now all this Mike thing is sorted out.”
“Sorted out?” I asked.
“Didn’t Tristan tell you?” Dad asked. “He was arrested and charged with attempted kidnapping. He’s been denied bail and is on remand pending trial.”
A mixture of relief and horror coursed through me. “Charged already?”
“I guess they had a lot of evidence,” Dad said. “No doubt thanks to Tristan.”
“Wow, that’s a relief, right?” I glanced at Mum.
“Absolutely. We can all sleep a little easier.” She patted my hand and poured me a glass of wine.
“You think Tristan helped the police?” He said he was going to speak to them but after the divorce papers he’d sent me, I had no reason to assume he was still helping.
Dad shot me a familiar look that said you know the answer to that question.
Of course Tristan had helped the police. That was the kind of man he was.
“Did I ever tell you that when I first started working at the bank, they put me in a role where I had no clue what I was meant to be doing?” Dad said. “I was straight out of university—a graduate trainee. All of a sudden I had a responsibility that, deep down inside, I knew was beyond me. I was completely out of my depth.”
My father rarely talked about work at home—he seemed completely content to leave his work life in the office while my mother and he planned trips, argued about politics, and tried to decide what to do with the abandoned vegetable patch in the garden.
“No one would believe that now you’re responsible for everyone’s paychecks.”
“Quite,” he said, passing me a bowl of broccoli and carrots. “I was dropped in at the deep end and at the time I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to sink or swim, but I ended up catching my breath and making it to shore.”
My mother patted my father on the arm. “Like an Olympic gold medalist.”
“The first day I came home from work, I remember thinking I wasn’t going to go back. I couldn’t even find my way to the loo. There was no hope I was going to manage all the spreadsheets I’d been given, let alone make sense of the meetings that had been put in my diary. I came home, poured myself a glass of whisky, and wrote out my resignation letter.”
My mother laughed. “You silly goose.”
“It felt overwhelming,” my father continued. “I was supposed to have all these answers, to know what I was doing. I didn’t see any alternative other than to quit. Otherwise, I risked everyone finding out I was incapable.”
I couldn’t imagine my father ever feeling like he wasn’t the king of everything he did. He even made a pretty mean roast dinner. “You didn’t hand the letter in though, did you?”
He shook his head. “Nope. I drank my whisky and decided that the next day, I was going to see how it went when I pretended to know what I was doing. I went in there with the confidence of an employee who’d been working there five years. If I didn’t know something, I asked. If I needed help, I said so—because if I’d been there five years and didn’t know something, I’d ask. Basically, I faked it. I faked experience and confidence. It worked. It didn’t take long until one night I got home, I poured out my whisky, and I realized I had a really good day. I wasn’t pretending anymore. I actually knew what I was doing.”
My stomach flipped over. He’d faked it until he made it.
“And now of course I realize that every graduate trainee who ever starts a job feels overwhelmed. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t even know where to pee. So each year, with each new intake, I tell them the story of what I did on my second day on the job.” He took a sip of his wine. “Just because something feels overwhelming doesn’t mean you should just resign and walk away. Sometimes it’s worth sticking around, asking for help. You never know, sooner than you think, the whole thing turns real.”