THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
“Nobody is coming.”
Felicity sipped her G&T, ice chinking against teeth, fingernails tapping. Thirty years. Love had turned to hate. “They’ll come,” I said.
It was twenty past eight and the house was ready. Plastic streamers hung from oak beams; the birthday banner stretched across the mirror above the mantel.
Fifty today. No better off than I was at twenty.
“Sorry,” Katie said, skipping down the stairs. “I didn’t realise the time.” She paused, glancing around. “Where is everyone?”
“Nobody is coming.” Felicity’s ice chimed in her glass as she stirred her drink with a finger. I imagined taking a handful of cubes, ramming them down her throat.
“They’ll come.”
Katie reached for a sausage roll.
“Don’t you dare,” I warned. Felicity scoffed, knocked her drink back in one.
“But Dad, I was just going to have one.”
“Not until the guests arrive.”
“I’m hungry. I can rearrange and—”
“Katie!”
“You don’t have to be so hard on her,” Felicity said, gin bottle back in hand.
“And you don’t have to be an intolerable lush, but here we all are.”
Felicity froze. I fought down my delight and fluffed the balloons by the front door.
“You can have one,” Felicity told Katie, behind me. Stupid cow.
It was ten past nine and the house was waiting. The streamers were wilting around the
