A Minor Indiscretion by Carole Matthews Page A

anyway.
    Ed looks at Tanya. “Well—what?”
    â€œYou have missed my parents’ evening,” she wails, and crashes upstairs, managing to knock all the Gustav Klimt prints askew for maximum effect. “You don’t care about me at all,” she shouts down over the banister rail. What she really means is that she’s had to listen to me moaning at her for the last hour, telling her how she is going to be grounded for three whole weeks while she catches up with her homework, and how she probably won’t getany pocket money until the same year she starts drawing her pension and that “Daddy, how could you!” would probably have smoothed it all over for her.
    Ed turns to me, looking vaguely mortified. “I completely and utterly forgot,” he says.
    â€œOh, Ed! How could you!” I say, taking up my daughter’s refrain.
    â€œI got caught in a meeting.”
    â€œYes. I can smell it on your breath.”
    â€œI had one, ” he insists. “At the Groucho. A quick one.”
    I glance at the clock to make a point.
    â€œOh, Daddy! How could you!” Elliott is in his best striped pajamas and is holding Barney, the chipper purple dinosaur, by his one remaining ear. His eyes roll round his sockets and he pouts petulantly. Clearly, my youngest child, when he has finished his extortionately priced schooling, is heading straight for a career on the stage. We both try not to smile at him. “You’ve missed Tanya’s parents’ evening. And all her schoolwork is really, really bad,” he says triumphantly.
    â€œI hate you too, Elliott, you little snitch,” Tanya shouts over the banister.
    â€œTanya!” I’m the one who shouts in this house.
    Elliott rolls his eyes some more. “Women,” he says with a campy flick of the wrist and flounces upstairs to bed.
    â€œElliott. Wee and clean your teeth. I’ll be up in a minute.”
    I march through to the kitchen because I want to shout at Ed too and I don’t think you should ever row in front of your children. He puts his briefcase down and shrugs out of his coat in a weary way, and somehow, instead of making me feel soft toward him, it incenses me even more. With drooping shoulders, he follows me through to the kitchen.
    â€œI forgot,” he repeats before I can launch into him.
    â€œIt was the last thing I said to you when you left the house this morning.”
    â€œI have dealt with a million things since then, Ali. It slipped clean away. I didn’t do this on purpose.”
    â€œSometimes I wonder whether you care at all. They are your children too. Next year is Tanya’s exam year. This is important to her.”
    â€œIt’s important to me too….”
    â€œIs it?”
    â€œYou know it is.”
    â€œI have been trying to ring you for hours, and your phone is switched off.”
    â€œThe battery was low. I was trying to save it.”
    â€œA fat lot of good that is to me.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    I know that you can’t use mobile phones in the Groucho without threat of expulsion for such a hideous flaunting of the rules, and this makes me cross because it bothers Ed more than his daughter’s entire future. But I can’t stay angry, I’m too exhausted. What I really want is a big cuddle and for Ed to tell me that my daughter isn’t going to end up as a juvenile delinquent and a single-parent family. I’m so upset that she can’t see the opportunities she has to make a great life for herself and is, instead, content to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and spend her days at school goofing off. Am I such an awful role model for her? Where have I gone wrong that she doesn’t want to be a geneticist or a corporate lawyer or a Shakespearean actress? Why does she have no ambition beyond how many times she can get one ear pierced?
    I pretend that all I want in life is her happiness. But it is lip service. I