One evening in July, when I couldn’t sleep – the baby was pressing down on my bladder – I received a call from Carin Mollare. She apologised for the late hour, but said Daddy and his girlfriend were refusing to vacate the Riccione apartment. ‘We’ve paid for Week 25 and 26. I showed him the documents, but still he refuses to move.’ She said he had added an extra lock to the door. 

Carin and I had been friendly during holidays at the timeshare, though we hadn’t spoken in a while. ‘But you always have the ground floor flat,’ I said.

‘We upgraded,’ she said. ‘Post-lockdown treat.’

I asked her if the Management Company couldn’t sort it out.

‘They’ve moved to Montenegro,’ Carin said. ‘No-one has the number.’ She said they’d had to find a hotel, and that her husband was angry. ‘Will you speak to your Papa? I think he listens most to you.’

I called Daddy but he didn’t pick up. I considered what to do, then rang Box. ‘Daddy’s barricaded himself in the timeshare,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘What does that mean?’

‘The new people can’t get in. It’s Carin and Egil.’ 

I knew Egil to be a big man, adversarial, and I didn’t want Daddy getting into a fight. Box had certain rules, though. She had not been to Riccione in years, but she had also endured two lockdowns in her gardenless flat, and might want a change of scene. ‘Maybe we could go together? Take a trip? Get him out? Can you still fly?’

Box was a little ahead of me, about 34 weeks. 

‘What will we do?’ she said. ‘Two pregnant twins? Break down the door?’

‘We can persuade him to a dignified exit. Avoid the situation exploding.’

Box sighed. Often she pretended things that happened with Daddy weren’t a big deal, or she’d say something like ‘Forget about him. He’s a lost cause.’ ‘What about work?’ she asked. ‘Doesn’t Milo need you?’ 

Milo’s new movie was still a few months away. ‘It’s just a few days.’

‘Fine,’ she said eventually. 

‘Perfect. We can fly out tomorrow and come back Saturday.’ I scrolled through the airline’s website, finding us seats. ‘The Rimini flight’s at 10:10,’ I told her. ‘Ancona’s earlier. Don’t get confused.’

‘I’m coming back on Saturday, Ani,’ Box said. ‘With or without you.’

Daddy loved being in Riccione. He said it was where he felt his best, but it was also where things went wrong. I often wondered if he was killing himself out there, like Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. Maybe I was being overdramatic, but after everything that had happened that year it was impossible not to view the world through a hyper-deathy filter. Though it was July, the viral creep was still everywhere in London. People walked around grateful to be through the worst of it, but also empty-headed; a quarter zombie. For the most part, I felt a little numb.

The plane smelled of warmed ciabatta and liquid cheese. Though it wasn’t yet noon, vodka and scratch-cards were offered in half-hour hosannas from the tannoy. The pandemic meant there were very few passengers, which encouraged a hen party – no-one was wearing much, despite the cold recirculating air – to even louder volumes.

I searched for the bride and found her eventually: she was wearing two springing penises on a headband, which made me think of my dream the previous night. It seemed as if all my dreams recently had been both sexy and menacing. I’d asked my midwife about this – why the night-time now was such a relentless sex-show. She’d said something about blood-flow, genitals. 

Box had a trashy magazine open on her lap: two American actors were photographed in tiny swimming things in Mauritius. ‘Look at her eyelashes,’ Box said, peering at the inset. ‘They’re incredible.’

‘Mink.’    

‘I keep wondering how celebrities dealt with lockdown. Wouldn’t anonymity be painful for them?’

‘They’re all in therapy,’ I said. ‘Every single one of Milo’s friends had a massive blow-out crisis.’

‘And Milo?’

‘Milo found lockdown “a chance to regroup”,’ I said. ‘One of those.’

Box rearranged her position. She looked uncomfortable. Her bump was so much bigger than mine. Invariably, our twin pregnancies invited gaffes. Around us, people forgot the dark-matter of spermatozoa, as if our babies had been conceived via autosuggestion. Were we having twins? Will the babies be twins? Will the babies be identical? I understood – more so, because of this year – the need to find something fairy-tale in us, something mythological. And our chloasma – a mask of pigmentation caused by our janky hormones – made us look even stranger. 

Box looked out of the window. The plane flew through cloud and the light on her face flickered and settled. ‘I was shocked when I saw Daddy in hospital. He looked so bad.’ 

It was rare for my sister to talk like this.

‘He’s very sick,’ I said, though we did not really know how sick he was, or how sick he might get. He had once described the pain as residential, but you never knew, with Daddy, whether the pain was psychic or physical. 

I never knew whether Riccione was the place he wanted to die or the place where he felt most alive. Sometimes, I imagined what I might be like on the other side of Daddy’s death, but I always came up short, since I could not imagine who I would be without him. But what frightened me most was that sometimes, in the anticipation of grief, I imagined that I might also be free.   

‘Have you told him we’re coming?’ Box asked.

‘Not yet.’ I said.

‘Is Martine there?’

Martine was Daddy’s new girlfriend. ‘Yep.’

‘What’s the master plan?’ 

‘We lure him out with a free hotel room. A bar tab. A spa day. Two fresh new babies. I don’t know. Whatever it takes.’ 

Tumbling laughter came from the hen party up front. A steward had stopped to cheer them on in a drinking game. 

‘Do you really think you can do it?’ 

‘Sure,’ I said. I had once persuaded Milo to fly out for a press interview in LA and return for an evening show the following day at the Donmar. ‘It’s my forte.’

‘And how’s that working out for you?’ Box said, with surprising bitterness. 

I let this rest a little. The only thing we ever fought about was Daddy. We always disagreed on the best way to handle him. I had believed for a long time in the dumbo idea that love would eventually triumph, and that he would come back to us. Box, on the other hand, thought I should threaten him with abandonment, then follow through. I knew she was probably right, but I didn’t have the energy for intervention. I always went when he needed me. 

Box put the magazine away and chose a hypnobirthing track from her iPhone. 

‘You really think that’s going to work?’ I said, suddenly wanting an equaliser, but I saw she had closed her eyes, and was already somewhere deep inside herself.  

The plane had quieted. I tried to sleep but it wouldn’t come. I thought about Daddy, holed-up in the timeshare. A while ago, with a friend’s kid, I had watched an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine where Henry refuses to move from a tunnel because the rain would damage his bodywork. But even when the rain stops he refuses to come out. This is dangerous: not to work, not to be useful. Passengers try to pull and push him out, and the fascist Fat Controller threatens and curses. With all options exhausted they brick Henry into the tunnel, finishing the wall below his eyes, so he can forever see the sunshine; the world; the happy trains of Gordon and Thomas – basically cis, non-unionised, white bro trains – zip past, poop, poop, poop! ‘And there he was left,’ says the voiceover, ‘for always and always.’ 

I thought of poor Daddy, and looked at my beautiful twin, and held her hand. 

In the high blue enamelled light the plane soon began its descent, and Rimini’s pixelated rooftops came into view, with the train tracks slashing the city, and the beach dense with umbrellas, and there was the airport, angled for landing, and the luggage in the overhead cabins rattled downward, until the wheels bounced – once, twice – and the baby pushed my organs upward so I felt like I might choke, and the hen party sang, ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go!’ 

Our hotel was around the corner from the hostage situation. The concierge talked at us for some time (Gemelle! Incinta?!!!), and only handed us our key cards after misting them with disinfectant. Then she followed us to the lift, pumping her hands as if drawing water from a well, crying ‘In bocca al lupo! In bocca al lupo!’’ 

In the elevator there were about eight thousand identical pregnant women in the endless mirrored space. 

Box looked at our reflections. ‘Where does this end?’ 

We slept off the early-morning for a few hours, and when I woke I thought of Lucca, the baby’s dad, who was in fact Italian; his face, recently, had been slipping from specificity. He had wanted to be involved but I had fended him off. Other mothers said doing it on my own would be fine, but their expressions told me they were lying. 

Box was still asleep in the other twin. I went out to the balcony, where the sunlight picked out the velvet heads of the geraniums. Motorbikes streamed by, and pay-per-use kid rides bobbed on springs. People rode city bikes to the beach, where North African men sold things from portable displays. People wore masks and kept their distance, but summer had broken here, deep as a ravine. 

The heat was beautiful; almost penetrative. I closed my eyes, feeling its pressure on my eyelids. It felt as if I had come through an accident. 

My phone pinged. Milo was selling his old flat in King’s Cross, and the buyers were making last-minute demands. As with everything to do with Milo, it mattered little in value but everything in sentiment. ‘So the buyers want insurance against the leaseholders not taking out insurance,’ he said, picking up. 

‘What does that mean,’ I said, ‘insurance against the insurers?’

‘I don’t know. Can you find out?’ A Vespa zinged by. ‘Where are you?’ 

‘Kilburn,’ I lied. ‘I’ll look into it.’ 

Box told me to be quiet, and I shut the partition door. 

‘Was that Mary-Kate?’ he said; his go-to joke. He had once set up a dinner in Mayfair with me and Box and the Olson twins, which hadn’t worked, atmospherically. 

I rang off and emailed his solicitors to re-absorb the insurers’ cost elsewhere. The image I used for myself with Milo was that I was a cave, and that he should speak into me and I would echo back his words: a metaphor which had seen me through five years as his PA. But since Daddy had got sick I’d been experiencing unexpected rage toward Milo. I was frightened by these new feelings, because if Milo caught wind of them, he might just look for someone new. Plus, he was already nervous about the baby. Milo was always asking about Lucca, as if Lucca was some great mystery I was keeping from him. 

The baby rolled, its skull pushing out of me. I gave it a stroke then pushed it back in. If the boy was a little early, he would be a Virgo, just like his cousin: genetically speaking, his half-sibling. 

A Whatsapp appeared from Daddy: ‘Have you heard of Red Velvet?’

‘The cake?’

‘They’re a K-pop group,’ he texted. He sent me a YouTube link; the thumbnail was a group of sexy Korean women. ‘You’ve got to watch them,’ he wrote. ‘They’re really something.’ I already knew Daddy would have watched the video on repeat. In his retirement – he’d been a civil engineer before his early exit – he often became obsessed with odd things: eBay, Aldi, K-Pop. 

‘Daddy, we’re in Riccione. Box and me.’ 

It said ‘Daddy is typing’ then it went back to ‘Online’. 

‘Carin Mollare said you won’t leave the timeshare,’ I continued. ‘It’s serious, Daddy. They’re angry. They’ve had to book a hotel.’

I waited for the two blue ticks, but they didn’t change from grey. 

Box came out onto the balcony in a tight black dress with a cup of coffee.

‘You look pretty,’ I said. 

‘Thanks, babes.’ She made a kissing noise. ‘God, I hate this place,’ she said. 

‘Was the last time you saw him in hospital?’

Box closed her eyes, as if she were trying to control something.

‘Thanks for coming,’ I said. ‘I know you didn’t want to.’

‘I’ll help you once,’ she said. ‘Then I’m done. Then I’m at the beach. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘okay.’ 

I opened Daddy’s link and we watched ‘Peek-a-Boo’. The video was intensely adrenal: five Korean women scheming to kill a white pizza-delivery boy while executing a brilliant series of dance moves, rotating a spyglass around their eyes. 

Afterward Box threw the last of her coffee in the planter. ‘Daddy’s so weird.’ She angled her chair to the sun. We were probably making our chloasma worse, but then, in pregnancy terms, from a certain point everything seemed to get worse – nothing got better. ‘It’s magic, isn’t it?’ said Box into the sunshine. 

‘A potion.’

Daddy’s timeshare was in a modern building, with a ten-by-ten advertising hoarding of a footballer in a Barcelona strip advertising Cheetos. The lift was tiny, and Box and I couldn’t fit in with the babies too, so we took the stairs. At the top, out of breath, we listened to music leaking from the apartment. After a few bars I recognised it as the song Daddy had sent me. 

I knocked. ‘Daddy, it’s us!’ I shouted. 

I didn’t know whether he’d seen my text. 

A shadow passed over the door’s spy-hole. ‘It’s me, girls,’ said Martine. ‘Let me get your father.’ Martine – who was always dolled up, even over breakfast – wore sexy nightwear around us, slips and camisoles, saying she felt more like our sister than my dad’s girlfriend. Box and I both disliked her intensely. 

‘Boxy! How big you are!’ came our father’s voice from behind the door. ‘And you too, Ani. Oh, it’s good to see you girls.’

I could tell he was in a high stage of his drunkenness. At this point he would come across as charming – people would want to give him things, and make him happy – but soon he would slide out of reach. 

I said we had come to get him out of the flat; that Carin had paid for Week 25.

‘Nonsense! I paid for Week 25.’ 

‘Daddy? Are you going to let us in?’

‘I’m sorry, girls, but those two people might be in the stairwell as we speak.’ 

Box opened the stairwell door. ‘There’s no-one there.’

‘It’s a trap. They’ve been here three times today. I’ve had to fix a draw bolt.’ 

I saw Box doing her hypnobirthing breathing. 

‘Cos’è tutto questo rumore?!’ came a woman’s voice from behind the opposite door. 

‘Scusi signora!’ my dad shouted. 

‘What is happening?’ said Box quietly, looking at me. ‘Are we actually in a farce?’

‘Two minutes. Please,’ I said to her.

‘Le mie figlie sono qui da Londra!’ my dad shouted. 

‘Quindi lasciali entrare dentro, buffone!’

‘I can’t do this,’ Box said. She kissed me, but I saw she was scared. ‘I’ll be at the beach.’

My head was whirling as I watched Box leave. 

‘Boxy is angry with me,’ Daddy said.

‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling suddenly so sad, and disappointed. ‘Daddy, if you come out, you can have the room next to ours. The hotel’s empty. A little holiday, altogether, before the babies come.’ 

‘I just can’t,’ he said, which were the same words he had used when I had told him at the hospital that he had to stop drinking.  

Under the doorway, a folded twenty-euro note appeared. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a gelato, Ani? You must be tired.’ The K-Pop song stopped and re-started. ‘Martine’s learning the dance. It’s hard, eh? You work up a sweat just watching it. Those girls are so talented. Did you watch it?’

‘I watched it,’ I said, hearing the zero-ness in my voice. 

‘Peek-a-boo,’ he said, and I saw the light blink at the spy-hole, and I thought of the game played with little children: the one where the adult disappears.  

When we were fifteen years-old, and after our parents had separated, Daddy made our house into the party house. Box and I had always been popular – Scandinavian, monozygotic – but that stock rose when our newly divorced dad let our friends drink and smoke at home; often, joining in. At that point he was a smoker, and there were always bricks of duty-free Italian cigarettes to break into, and beers in the fridge boys could just go ahead and take. Several of my friends lost their virginity in our attic room. On Sundays, there were bodies everywhere; Daddy charring the bacon in the saucepan; a pitcher of Bloody Mary, ice melting, as new kids joined the hourless breakfast, half-naked and hungry. 

The thing Daddy never remembered was that his drinking had preceded the divorce. He always misremembered the story, as if all the trouble started there, and was, in some way, attributable.

I remember wanting all the partying to stop and yet I couldn’t let it. Our friends loved our house. I guess it was manipulative – a stitch-up – but then no-one really understands toxicity while you are in it, especially not a child. Later, pleading exams, Box stopped her weekend visits and stayed with our mother, but I continued. I’d worked out that if I pretended my feelings could not be hurt by his constant drunkenness, then it could almost be true. 

*

Each time we went over to the flat, Daddy wouldn’t let us in. He said it was an ambush; that if he opened the door Carin and her husband would push their way in. ‘I know you two are friends,’ he shouted to me, ‘I know whose side you are on!’ I kept on thinking of Henry, bricked up behind the wall, his eyes tense with pain, which made me more determined to get him out. 

Carin texted me, saying her insurance had paid for the hotel till Saturday. 

We had until then. 

Box had said she would spend her time down at the beach, but her rules, her boundaries – they just didn’t hold in this level of disintegration; this level of mess. Instead, each morning, she came with me to the apartment. We talked to Daddy through the door, talked to him as if he were a man in a coma. 

We said: ‘This is your last chance.’ (Me.) ‘Aren’t you running out of booze?’ (Box.) ‘I will do the dance routine. I’ve learnt it. I could do it with Martine.’ (Surprisingly: Box.) ‘I think I’m having the baby early.’ (Me.)  ‘If you don’t let me in,’ (me) ‘I will never come back to Riccione.’

Nothing.

I had solved worse problems for Daddy before, but previously he had co-operated, or submitted, like a baby. Now there was just us and the door, and the door itself – now shut; now draw-bolted – became terrible in its significance. What would we do if we couldn’t get beyond it? 

‘I am the door,’ Daddy said at one point, as if he were Jesus Christ himself. 

I texted Carin asking her for more time. She declined. I asked for a meeting. She didn’t want to do that either. ‘Look,’ she wrote, ‘Egil’s calling the police on Saturday. I’ve put him off until then. I’m sorry, Ani, I know your dad has some problems.’

After Daddy wouldn’t let us in, Box and I would go down to the fountain at the foot of his block, biting at ice-creams from the gelateria. One day, as we watched the water tangle, a beach-seller approached us. He was showing us his goods: sunglasses, necklaces, and trinkets. ‘Where are you from?’ he said.

‘London,’ Box said. ‘And you?’

‘Angola,’ he said. ‘A bad year for you.’

‘Yup,’ Box said, ‘very bad.’ 

I bought two pairs of sunglasses and a letter-opener for Daddy. It was pretty, engraved with roses, and the only thing I thought could fit under his door. Gifts had worked in the past. They had been a way of buying trust.

The seller took my money then faced my palms to the sky. The gesture felt tender, as if I should also open my mouth and receive a wafer. Instead, he gave me two squirts of hand sanitiser. The already evaporating gel smelt of alcohol and the spring passed. ‘Good luck with your babies.’  

‘You too,’ I said. 

Box put on her sunglasses, laughing. 

‘Don’t cry,’ he said to her.

‘Sure.’ She ate some more ice-cream. ‘Okay.’ 

We watched him walk away. 

‘Oh,’ Box said. ‘This is too hard. Too hard.’ 

And yet, despite all of this, it felt impossible not to relax. The heat was a tonic. So was the sea. There was something of the sanatorium to Riccione; as if we had come for a cure after the years of plague. We ate a whole heap of shellfish we weren’t allowed, and the pickled seafood made the corners of our mouths ache. Our tans made our chloasma look less weird. I slept deeply, and the sleep was still full of lusty dreams, but without the sadistic tremor of the ones from home. We spent the mornings with the door, but the afternoons were ours.  

I could see by degrees how Box, too, was working off the year. Watching people in the restaurants, in bars, you could see them visibly unload the pandemic’s dull violence. A few weeks ago I had randomly walked into St Paul’s at Evensong, and at the end I realised nearly everyone was crying; grieving whatever it was they had all lost. 

I wondered why I hadn’t. All year I had travelled in the weird vacuum of the lockdown’s slipstream; at all costs, I had kept going. Work people – contacts of Milo, people I had never met in person – talked to me of their anxieties and depressions. Everyone regularly started a conversation with how depressed they were, feeling emboldened, I guess, by the nationalized mood. I couldn’t stop Milo’s actor friends in LA and New York confessing their breakdowns, their divorces, their despair – after last summer – at their newly discovered racism. And yet, not long ago, these people had seemed the most tough, the most implacable. ‘Ani’s so serene,’ they told Milo. ‘So tranquil.’ And I took this as an endorsement, and continued to coast, even to prosper; despite Daddy’s hospitalization, despite the constant cave-energy needed to keep Milo happy. 

But over the past few days – perhaps the heat had some truth-serum – I’d begun to think maybe I’d carried my quarter zombie with me for a long time; longer than the lockdowns, longer than I knew. 

On our last day I woke after a strange dream. It had been sexual, like the others, but this time, immensely pleasurable. There was stickiness between my legs and I wondered for a moment whether my waters had broken early. Instead, as the liquid cooled, I realised it had been a wet dream. I mopped it up with some tissue, and though the dream hadn’t been about him, I thought of Lucca. 

It hung over me; the question of Lucca’s participation. He had asked whether I wanted him to make an honest woman out of me and I hadn’t known how to answer, because I didn’t know whether he was joking. I had not been careful with Lucca. The idea of life with a baby was appealing. It was a protected kind of place.  

I checked my phone. Daddy had texted me a picture of him and Martine on the balcony. She was a slim child-like thing with dark hair and big eyes. Only a little jaundice was left around his hairline. Really, a lot of the time he got away with the worst parts of his behaviour because he was just a randy Norwegian with a crystalline blaze in his ice-blue eyes. 

I went over to Daddy’s that morning to deliver the gift. As I was walking I passed a newspaper kiosk and caught Milo on the cover of a tabloid. The photograph showed him drinking coffee in what looked like Soho, wearing the tracksuit pants that – I knew he knew this – nicely showed the outline of his junk. The headline said Milo Reynolds was having a crisis of nerves. 

I had lied to Box when I said Milo had been fine. Late one night in April – Milo had called me away from Daddy’s hospital bed –  he told me he didn’t know who he was; that who he was had disintegrated. He had sobbed in my arms, but inside I had felt only contempt. Really, it felt as if I might detonate. 

At the fountain I rang Milo. The tabloids sometimes knew things that I did not. 

‘I’m looking at the King’s Cross lease,’ Milo said excitedly, in lieu of hello. ‘The buyers are right! You know what the pandemic’s taught me? Insure yourself. Insure yourself to the hilt! Tell them I’ll pay it,’ said Milo. ‘Tell them I salute their caution.’ 

‘You want me to say you salute their caution?’

‘Yes,’ Milo said, ‘Why not?’ 

‘Masquerina,’ a passing policeman said.

I replaced my mask and told Milo I’d do whatever was needed. 

‘Are you all right?’ Milo said. ‘You don’t sound like you.’

For a moment I thought about telling him everything – Daddy, the door, the threat of the police tomorrow – then shelved the idea. 

‘Where are you?’ he asked again. 

Really, it felt as if something was fusing inside of me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, then pressed the red button, surprising even myself, and cancelling the call.   

Later Daddy texted and asked if we could meet at the Lobster that night. Don’t tell Carin! he’d written, with the sunglasses emoji, which was the one he most overused. This was good progress, I thought. Perhaps the gift had done its job. 

When Box and I got to the club that evening the host did Gemelle? Incinta! then led us to a table. ‘No walking. No standing. No dancing. No Coronavirus, OK?!’ 

We took off our masks and each ordered a glass of wine. The Lobster was on the beach, an empty dancefloor at its centre, with wicker and leather booths around its edge. Even this early the sex vibe was off-the-chain: post-viral, euphoric; men in skinny jeans, women in neoprene; already hook-ups on the pristine banquettes. 

The setting sun had turned the clouds into roses, and the sea, which from the plane had looked almost limitless, was now foreshortened, its foam leaving a tangled script upon the beach. 

‘It’s like Noah’s Ark in here!’ said Box, shouting over the music. 

‘People need a release, I guess,’ I said, surveying the deep sexland of the club. 

I saw that the hen party from the flight was also here. The bride wore a sash and a diamante tiara. I gave her a wave, but she didn’t see me. From somewhere I could smell tomato, geranium.

The wine tasted delicious, so cold and crisp. From our table I could see Daddy’s balcony, and in the sky a single contrail. I imagined a scenario where he would come for a drink and we’d persuade him onto our flight tomorrow. Martine too. I would text Carin: all done! All sorted! – and someone would tell me what a good job I’d done. 

‘You know,’ Box said, ‘it’s not Daddy I’m actually concerned about. It’s you.’

I didn’t want her to be negative just before he arrived. I felt tired, and a little separate. At the hen party table I saw the man with shaggy brown hair had joined the bride. He looked like the footballer in the advertisement. 

‘Do you remember,’ Box said, ‘when we were little, we were eight or nine – it was Christmas, we were still in Clapham. And Daddy insisted on giving me my present first, which made no sense, since we always got presents at exactly the same time. Anyway, when I unwrapped it, it was the satchel with the strawberries on it. But it was the one you’d wanted, not me. Do you remember?’

I remembered this clearly. Box took another drink of her wine. 

‘And Mummy pulled Daddy away, explaining the mistake, but Daddy wouldn’t admit he’d got it wrong. But it hadn’t been a mistake. He’d done it on purpose. Switched the gifts. Why would he do that? Why would he play around with you like that?’  

‘I don’t know.’  I wished she would stop talking. 

Over on the other table the bride was laughing. Inside her mouth was very dark. It looked like she and the footballer would end up in bed tonight.

‘It was an accident,’ I said. 

‘No, Ani. That’s what I’m saying. It wasn’t. And the weird thing was you weren’t even upset. You knew it was a test. And you thought you could win by not reacting.’

I looked again at Daddy’s balcony. Someone was up there. Martine maybe, or Daddy. The beach trembled, as if with an earthquake, but it was an ambulance on the road. Aromatics of vaped camomile and jasmine surrounded us in a haze.  

‘He’s not coming,’ said Box. ‘He was never coming.’

My phone pinged. I thought it would be Milo, reprimanding me for hanging up during our call, but instead it was a picture message from Daddy: a photo of the letter-opener. What am I meant to do with this? said the caption. Kill myself? 

I clicked the phone shut, but Box had already seen it.

‘He’s persecuting you,’ she said. 

I put my phone on the table. I stared at it for a while. I tried, one last time, to run through Daddy’s options, so that he wouldn’t be beaten up by Egil, or end up in a jail cell, or end up dead. I imagined there might be a solution but couldn’t see it. It was like a tiny thing coming out of its hole, then disappearing immediately. Peek-a-boo! Peek-a-boo!  

‘I think it’s time to give up,’ I heard Box say. ‘This isn’t a game, Ani, it’s abuse.’ 

But I knew if I gave up now I would have to give him up for ever. 

‘I do understand, Box,’ I said, holding the stem of my glass. ‘I’m not dumb. I do understand that all of this is toxic.’

‘It’s just—’

‘Please don’t say you have your baby now to consider.’

‘In a few months, he will do this again.’ 

There was a flash of diamond in my peripheral vision; a sash of white satin; the bride and the footballer were walking to the beach, her name chanted by the hens. 

I had a sudden memory of when I was a child, hidden in our garden, hearing Daddy’s voice calling me. ‘Ani!’ he had shouted, from far away. ‘Ani, Ani! Come back, little bird!’ 

As I finished my wine the song changed. Screams came from the other booths. Women pulled men to their feet as the song riffed through the beginning notes, and the stage was suddenly packed with dancers. It was Daddy’s song. I didn’t know K-pop had made it this far. A solitary bouncer tried to disperse them. ‘Coronaviroos!’ he said, ‘Coronaviroos!’ 

But everyone ignored him. They held their masks in the air, like white flags. Then the hens began to dance, doing the same moves I’d seen in Daddy’s video: rotating a spyglass, flicking their ankles and hips. They were all in sequence, exactly in time. 

The crowd parted as the bride came back. She spotted me and Box at the table. ‘Twins!’ she said, taking our hands. ‘There’s nothing better than twins!’

Box refused, but I let the bride lead me toward the hens. I joined in, as best I could, remembering the moves – rotating the spyglass, flicking my hips. I felt something inside me again, like this morning’s arousal, except this time it was festive, and bigger, and my mind felt free, and very tranquil. 

The bride smiled, took off her crown and put it on me. ‘That’s it,’ she said, not letting go of my hand. ‘You’re doing it right.’ I realised she looked so beautiful in her costume of white satin. ‘Peek-a-boo,’ she said, ‘peek-a-boo.’