Surprise Me
Page 34

‘I haven’t seen this one for ages,’ I breathe, and we all fall silent to watch. Daddy’s addressing the ballroom at the Hurlingham Club, where my party was. He’s in black tie, and Mummy’s all shimmery in silver and I’m in a red minidress, which Mummy spent Saturday after Saturday helping me look for.
(Now I look back, it really doesn’t suit me. But I was sixteen. What did I know?)
‘My daughter has the wit of Lizzy Bennet …’ Daddy is saying in that commanding way of his. ‘The strength of Pippi Longstocking … the boldness of Jo March … and the style of Scarlett O’Hara.’ On screen the guests break into applause and Daddy twinkles at me and I gaze back up, speechless.
I remember that moment. It blew me away. Daddy had secretly gone through all the books in my bedroom, looking for my heroines and writing a speech around them. I glance over at Mummy now, my eyes a little hot, and she gives me a tremulous smile back. My mother can drive me mad – but there are times when no one gets it like she does.
‘Good speech,’ says Dan after a few moments, and I shoot him a grateful smile.
But as we’re watching, the screen starts to go blurry, and suddenly the voices are distorting, and the video becomes unwatchable.
‘What happened?’ demands Tessa.
‘Oh dear!’ Mummy jabs at the remote, but can’t improve the picture. ‘This copy must be damaged. Never mind. If everyone’s finished, let’s go into the drawing room and we can watch something else.’
‘The wedding!’ says Anna.
‘The wedding!’ shrieks Tessa.
‘Really?’ says Dan incredulously. ‘Haven’t we done family DVDs?’
‘What’s wrong with watching the wedding?’ I say. And if I sound a little defensive … it’s because I am.
So, yet another key fact about my family: we watch our wedding DVD a lot. A lot. Probably every other visit to Mummy’s place, we all sit down to watch it. The girls love it and Mummy loves it and I have to admit I do, too.
But Dan says it’s weird to keep replaying one day of our life. In fact, Dan hates our wedding DVD – probably for the same reason that Mummy loves it. Because while most wedding videos are about the happy couple, ours is basically all about Daddy.
I never even noticed to begin with. I thought it was just a lovely, well-produced DVD. It wasn’t until about a year after our wedding that Dan suddenly flipped out on the way home from some gathering and said, ‘Can’t you see, Sylvie? It’s not our DVD, it’s his!’
And the next time I watched it, of course, it was obvious. It’s the Daddy show. The first shot of the whole DVD is of Daddy, looking gorgeous in his morning suit, standing by the Rolls-Royce we used to get to the church. Then there are shots of him leading me out in my wedding dress … shots of him in the car … the pair of us walking up the aisle …
The most moving moment of the whole DVD isn’t our vows. It’s when the priest says, ‘Who gives this woman to be married?’ and Daddy says, ‘I do,’ his resonant voice all choked up. Then all the way through our vows, the camera keeps panning over to Daddy, who is watching with the most poignant expression of pride and wistfulness.
Dan thinks Daddy went into the editing suite and made sure that he featured prominently. After all, he was paying – he was the one who insisted on hiring an expensive video team, in fact – so he could have it just the way he wanted.
I was incredibly upset when Dan first suggested this. Then I accepted that it was possible. Daddy was … not conceited, exactly, but he had healthy self-esteem. He liked to be the centre of attention, always. For example, he was desperate to be knighted. Friends would mention it and he’d brush them off with a lighthearted joke – but we all knew he wanted it. And why not, after all the good he did? (Mummy’s really sensitive about the fact that he missed out. I’ve seen her blinking while reading the Honours List in the newspaper. Let’s face it, if he had been knighted she’d be ‘Lady Lowe’ now, which does sound pretty good.)
Even so, I have a different theory about our DVD. I think the video team were just naturally drawn to Daddy, because he dazzled like a movie star. He was so handsome and witty, he whirled Mummy around the dance floor with such aplomb, no wonder the cameraman, or editor, or whoever it was, focused on him.
To sum up, Dan’s not the greatest fan. But the girls are obsessed by watching the wedding – by my dress, mainly, and of course my hair. Daddy was insistent that I should wear my hair – my ‘glory’ – down for the wedding and it did look fairly spectacular and princesslike, all wavy and shiny and blonde, with braids and flowers woven through it. The girls call it ‘wedding hair’ and often try to do the same with their dolls.
Anyway. So what usually happens is that we start the DVD, Dan absents himself and after a while the girls get bored and go off to play. Whereupon Mummy and I end up watching together in silence, just drinking in the sight of Daddy. The man he was. It’s our indulgence. It’s our tin of Quality Street.
Today, though, I don’t want Mummy and me to gorge on watching Daddy all alone. I want things to be different. Together and relaxed and more … I don’t know. Unified. Family-like. As we head into the drawing room, I put my arm through Dan’s.
‘Watch it today,’ I say coaxingly. ‘Stay with us.’
Mummy’s already pressed Play – none of us comment on the fact that the DVD was already loaded in the machine – and soon we’re watching Daddy and me stepping out of my childhood home in Chelsea. (Mummy sold the house a year ago and moved to this flat nearby, for a ‘new start’.)
‘I had the local paper on the phone yesterday,’ says Mummy as we watch Daddy posing with me for pictures in front of the Rolls-Royce. ‘They want to take photos at the opening of the scanner suite. Make sure you get your hair done, Sylvie,’ she adds.
‘Have you mentioned it to Esme?’ I ask. ‘You should do.’
Esme is the girl at the hospital who is organizing the opening ceremony. She’s quite new at her job and this is her first big event and almost every day I get an anxious email from her, beginning: I think I’ve planned for everything but … Even over the weekend. Yesterday she wanted to know: How many parking spaces will you need? Today it was, Will you need Powerpoint for your speech? I mean, Powerpoint? Really?
‘Dan, you are coming to the ceremony?’ Mummy says, suddenly turning to us.
I nudge Dan, who looks up and says, ‘Oh. Yes.’
He could sound more enthused. It’s not every day your late father-in-law is honoured by a whole hospital scanner suite being named after him, is it?
‘When I told the reporter everything that Daddy had achieved in his life, he couldn’t believe it,’ Mummy continues tremulously. ‘Building up his business from nothing, all the fundraising, hosting those wonderful parties, climbing Everest … The journalist said his headline would read, “A remarkable man”.’
‘It wasn’t exactly “from nothing”,’ says Dan.
‘Sorry?’ Mummy peers at him.
‘Well, Marcus had that massive windfall, didn’t he? So, not quite “nothing”.’
I glance sharply round at Dan – and sure enough, he’s all tentery. His jaw is taut. He looks as though he’s sitting here under total duress.