Page 41 of In the Same Boat

‘Sammie hates me.’

Dad frowns.

‘She doesn’t hate you.’

‘She absolutely does,’ I insist.

‘She hasn’t known you long enough to hate you,’ he points out, as though I could potentially grate on people once they get to know me.

‘She didn’t look happy when she found me in her living room,’ I say.

‘Maybe because I was upstairs with her mum,’ he suggests.

‘She didn’t love that – but she did accuse me of stalking her.’

‘I’m sure she was joking.’

‘Are stalking accusations funny?’

He wonders for a moment.

He definitely can’t say she looked pleased to see me today. She looked furious. She definitely doesn’t like me. And now that I think about it…

‘I don’t even think she likes you much either,’ I tell him.

Dad snorts. But then he smiles softly.

‘To be honest, son, I don’t care.’

‘No?’

‘No, seriously.’ He leans forward slightly. ‘I care whether Chrissy likes me. Which she does, by the way, or she wouldn’t be here. And if Sammie thinks I’m a clown, well… fair enough. I’ve survived worse opinions. It’s my job to change her mind.’

‘I’m not going to spend my holiday convincing Sammie to like me.’

‘I’m not asking you to,’ he assures me.

‘Then what are you asking me to do?’

‘Just… suck it up and be a mate.’

‘A mate?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m not your mate.’

‘Course you are.’

‘I’m your son,’ I remind him.

‘You are,’ he says quietly. ‘So don’t you want your old dad to be happy?’

Ah. There it is. The emotional blackmail. Subtle, impossible to ignore, successful.

I run my hands through my hair.

‘You know that’s manipulative, right?’