Page 122 of From Notting Hill with Love…Actually
When did David ever call me that?
“Thanks,” I said as I saw Dad sitting on the sofa flicking through the channels on the TV. I glanced back at Sean standing in the hall.
“Go for it, Red,” he mouthed silently as David closed the door behind me.
My father looked up as I entered the room.
“I brought you some coffee,” I said, holding the mug out as a peace offering.
Dad looked at the coffee mug and then he looked at me.And for one awful moment as we stood staring at each other I thought he wasn’t going to take it.
“Thanks,” he said, eventually reaching out and taking the mug. With his other hand he switched the TV off with the remote control.
I sat down next to him on the sofa, strangely in the exact place I’d sat with Mum only a few days previously.
“I’m really sorry, Dad,” I began, taking a deep breath. “I should have told you about finding Mum here in London and that I’d been spending time with her. It was wrong of me to keep it from you.”
Dad just looked at me over the top of his coffee mug while he sipped steadily at its contents.
“But I just wanted to get to know her a little better first before things kicked off—as I was sure they would do when you found out. And for once it seems I was right.”
I gave a little smile, hoping to lighten the moment. I didn’t like it when my father was silent like this. It wasn’t his usual style at all.
Relieved I’d made the first move, I relaxed a little and tried to lean back against the cushions behind me. But they were further back than I thought, so I kind of toppled backward and had to balance my tea high in the air like some sort of circus acrobat to prevent myself getting scalded.
My father leaned across, lifted my mug away from me, and placed it safely on a glass coaster on the table in front of us.
“Do I still have to look after you even after all these years?” he asked, speaking for the first time.
“Looks like it.”
Dad placed his own mug down now too.
“Why, Scarlett?” he said, looking at me with sadness in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to come and find her?”
“I didn’t know I was. It’s all just happened by accident.”
“You mean this wasn’t the reason you wanted some time away—so you could come and find your mother?”
“No. I hadn’t even thought about it. I mean, yes, I had thought about her, obviously, but I didn’t come to London so I could find Mum. I came to prove something else.”
“What?”
Oh. Now I was cleverly digging myself out of one hole by burying myself deep in another.
But it couldn’t get any worse, could it?
“I came here to try and prove to you and to Maddie and to David that movies do exist in real life. And that I’m not wasting my life by loving them so much.”
My father rolled his head back and closed his eyes.
“Oh, Scarlett, not this again.”
“Yes, this again,” I said, standing up. “And do you know something? I was right, because since I’ve been here I’ve managed to live my life in…” I tried to do some quick calculations in my head. “I don’t know how many movies, Dad, because there have been so many I’ve lost count. So movies do exist in real life, because I’ve proved it!”
“With your mother’s help, no doubt,” my father muttered. “I bet she was there goading you along. I can just see her loving all this. I bet it took her right back.”
I stood and looked at my father sitting on the sofa. He wasscowling down at the carpet, caught up in his own thoughts and recriminations. And suddenly I felt I was fighting Mum’s battle as well as my own.
