Page 18 of Love at First Sight

I do not understand how it is possible to enter your own father’s engagement party and not recognise anyone, and yet that is exactly what happens when I arrive at the Soho venue Dad and Simone have hired for the occasion.

The hotel is sleek and polished, with layered fabrics in lots of different prints that make me think of rich people who believe it is crass to buy furniture rather than inherit it.

A man in a suit at the door enquires if I am here for the ‘Cameron-Highville celebration’, and a bolt of surprise shudders down my spine that if my father gives Simone his name, it won’t be nearly as bad as if he double-barrels it and takes her name, becoming a Cameron-Highville himself.

To think he wouldn’t have the exact same surname as me makes me sad, and reinforces the notion that he is choosing Simone over me.

It’s what Mum did: remarried and took a new name.

It turns my stomach to think Dad could do the same.

Anyway. Everyone here is a stranger, with the exception of a man I recognise from Simone’s band.

They’re all around my age, and nearly all holding coupes of champagne that staff deftly refill from yellow-labelled bottles.

I linger, looking over the heads of everyone, panic building in my chest, and then the crowd parts as Leo walks through holding two bottles of beer and says, ‘Fuck me, you look gorgeous!’

I am so relieved to see him, so relieved that he is who he is, that I laugh, taking a beer and hugging him sideways on, so we smash cheeks and make kissing noises without our lips touching any skin.

‘This is quite the do, isn’t it?’ Leo asks, standing beside me to survey it all. ‘Not being funny but it feels like a thirtieth birthday. As in everyone is so …’

‘Young,’ I say. ‘I know.’ I don’t see Dad’s sister, my cousins, nobody we actually know.

We’ve got a small family, but I assumed they’d be here.

I half wonder if Simone has even met them, and if she has …

Well. Do they think the same about her as I do?

It’s never occurred to me to find out. I don’t see Dad’s sister, Auntie Carol, much because she lives in Newcastle.

Perhaps she didn’t want to travel. ‘I think these are all Simone’s friends. ’

‘The wicked stepmother.’

I scrunch up my face in disgust. ‘Don’t,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘It’s one of those laugh-or-cry situations, if you get what I mean.’

‘Well then,’ Leo declares. ‘Let’s laugh. Sup up, slowcoach, and let’s do a couple of shots to really get into the swing of things.’

I can’t, in that moment, think of a reason not to do shots, so I follow Leo, and let him take my hand as we weave through the crowd towards the bar, where he tells the barman we want two of his smoothest tequilas.

I search around for Dad so I can say hello properly, and locate him across the room talking to somebody I don’t recognise.

He must be yet another friend of Simone’s.

Dad waves and makes a motion as if to say he’ll be over in a minute, and I give him a thumbs up.

Once we’ve been served, Leo and I cheers, down our shots, pull tequila faces and wash it down with our beers.

At some point Leo’s hand finds its way to the middle of my very naked back, his thumb gently rubbing my bare skin, and by our second shot I am leaning in to talk to him, our faces close, even though it’s not really that loud.

It’s just nice to be with him, to feel part of a team against the world – against Simone and Dad.

Thank god he’s here, is all I can think.

Thank god for you, Leo . Looking very attractive, I might add: he’s got two-day stubble and is sun-kissed from all this warm weather we’ve been having.

It makes his eyes seem bluer, somehow. I grin at him, in that slow way that happens after three drinks.

‘So, go on then,’ Leo says, eventually. ‘What’s your story?’

‘My story?’ I repeat, pulling a face.

‘Yeah!’ he says. ‘You know, why you’re single, why you hate Simone, how your mum feels about all this? Throw in any extra details as you see fit.’

I laugh. ‘So just the superficial first-date questions, then?’

Leo arches an eyebrow. ‘I’m very interested in you calling this a date.’

‘Are you?’

‘I enjoy the clarity of it,’ he says, and he is so utterly charming I could melt.

See, this is how it should be. Unambiguous.

Easy. I might have had one great afternoon with Cal, but already the confusion and baggage is too much.

I don’t need it, even if it does kind of feel like I know him on a cellular level, like my soul recognises his soul or something.

I was so obsessed with the big bang of our instant connection, so caught up in the romantic narrative of meeting somebody and falling in love at first sight, but this is nice too. It’s easy.

‘What about you,’ I bat back to Leo. ‘What’s your story?’

He shakes his head. ‘Nah. You first.’

I sigh, flipping through a mental list of where to start.

I’m keen to keep things light. ‘I’ll start with Mum – she doesn’t feel any way about all this, I’m sure, as she left to live in Australia when I was eighteen and I’ve seen her only a handful of times since.

She’s not the maternal type. At least she waited until I went to uni to leave us, I guess? ’

Leo absorbs this. ‘Well, that’s shit,’ he says. ‘Everyone deserves a mum who adores them.’

‘No prizes for guessing why I’ve gone into professional childcare, really, is there?’ I say. ‘I think the same, so I suppose I made a job out of it.’

‘I didn’t know you worked in childcare,’ he says. ‘Teacher?’

‘Career nanny,’ I say. ‘Happily so.’

‘Do you feel like you have to qualify career nanny by saying happily ?’

‘I’ve never been asked that before,’ I say.

‘But yes, I suppose I do. For some people it’s a stopgap, but for me, working with kids is my life.

I studied childhood development at university, then worked for two other families before the one I’m with now.

It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do and all I’ve ever really cared about.

There’s a kids’ club idea I’m in the process of developing, but that would be extra, not a replacement. I love my job.’

Leo nods. ‘People think being a butcher might not have been an active choice, but it was. Is. I don’t know what kind of kid thinks, Yeah, I’d love to grow up and carve up cows all day , but I did.

I didn’t even know anyone who was a butcher.

It’s not like mine is a family business or anything like that.

My dad always used to get gammon steaks for Saturday-night tea, and a big joint for a Sunday roast. Maybe I relate meat to like …

love?’ He bursts out laughing. ‘Jesus,’ he says, waving at the bartender. ‘I need another drink.’

‘That’s nice!’ I insist. ‘I think we’re all just trying to relive our happiest memories, aren’t we?

We love something or someone and we do our best to recreate that.

Makes sense.’ Leo looks at me like he doesn’t buy what I’m saying.

‘You have happy memories of sausages, and so made a business out of selling them. I longed for an adult to want to stick around, so I’ve looked after the same kid for the past seven years.

I mean, I should be charging a hundred pounds an hour for this kind of intelligent insight. ’

‘Two beers and two more shots please,’ Leo asks the barman, before turning his attention back to me. ‘You win,’ he says. ‘I’m in a pit of psychological despair now.’ He clicks a tequila glass against mine. ‘Salut!’

The obscene thing about shots is that the more you do, the easier they go down. I don’t even gag this time.

‘Would your best friend be surprised if she saw your face on Crimewatch ?’ Leo then asks, apropos of nothing.

‘No,’ I say, and Leo chortles gleefully. ‘What?’ I say, right as he splutters, ‘Jessie, you didn’t even have to think about that! Which begs the question, have you ever been on Crimewatch ?’

‘Not for anything they could prove,’ I say, and Leo laughs again.

‘Jessie! There you are!’

Dad is all dolled up with – wait for it – a fitted floral shirt and an actual non-ironic silver chain around his neck. All he’s missing is pulled-up socks and a can of lager and he could be a Gen Z poster boy with his own TikTok channel.

‘Here I am!’ I say, which isn’t the friendliest greeting I could give, and I don’t know why I don’t just hug him nicely.

‘With Leo, which isn’t at all weird,’ I add, and Leo and Dad shake hands, Leo saying it’s an honour to be here, et cetera.

I hadn’t texted Dad about him inviting Leo, because quite frankly I couldn’t be bothered to get into it.

But Dad doesn’t address our togetherness or his role in it, instead beckoning for Simone, whose smile falters enough for me to notice when she sees Dad is with me.

She excuses herself from talking to a man with a handlebar moustache and open-toe shoes to come over.

‘Welcome, darling,’ she says, leaning in to air-kiss me on both cheeks. It’s so affected and strange, like she’s a minor celebrity exhausted by the constant attention from us mere plebs. She extends her engagement-ring hand to Leo. ‘Simone,’ she says. ‘I feel like I recognise you …’

‘Leo,’ Leo says. ‘And it’s probably thrown you that I’ve not got my white butcher’s coat on.’

‘Oh, that’s it! Yes!’ Simone says, and it’s the most upbeat and kind I think I have ever heard her sound.

Is this what Dad sees? Because I have never seen this from her.

She has never, not once, been upbeat and kind to me.

‘Best brisket we’ve ever had, isn’t it, darling?

’ She slips her arm through Dad’s, effectively blocking me off from him.

‘Darling, Max and Oscar want a moment of your time.’ She looks between Leo and me. ‘Pardon us, won’t you?’