Hmm. It transpires that the aged parent, which is to say my father, is coming to visit on Monday. Unlike Quercus and myself, he is not sufficiently pikey as to make the caravan, a lumbering beast of unknown antiquity which arrived in our garden at the beginning of the building work and has yet to realise it is now little more than a garden ornament of dubious style and taste, an attractive prospect, so he is going to stay in a small hotel thing up the road.

It’s strange. I haven’t seen him since October, when he arrived with virtually no warning, stayed less than twenty-four hours, told Quercus’s mother how ‘cross’ the tiny daughter seemed, and departed the parish. He came largely because he was bored, I felt; mid-house-move, he brought some boxes of things from what was once my family home, largely things which I’d already told him I didn’t want and hadn’t got room for. It was strange, awkward. He dropped hints about how we should go and visit them in their new home at Christmas; this being our first Christmas with the tiny daughter, and it having been A Bit Of A Year, what with the tiny daughter’s arrival, the ending of the PhD, and the building of the extension (complete with my seven-week absence due to the lack of running water and whatnot), we just wanted some time off, quietly, sitting and staring at a Chrimbly tree without the harassing tones of relatives to whom one isn’t really related, if you know what I mean. And that was it – I haven’t seen him since. We speak on the phone from time to time – he tells me how fantastic Wife II is, and how she does this/that/t’other which is extraordinary/talented/creative/hard-working, and I sort of verbally nod and smile. Sometimes this pattern varies, and he asks how the tiny daughter is before moving swiftly on to more pressing matters such as, for example, the latest orchestra he has started, or the programme on a forthcoming concert.

It’s hard, really hard, not to feel very saddened by this, particularly in relation to the tiny daughter. I don’t want to have to beg him to feel interested in her, jumping up and down, trying to reach the bottom of his jacket so I can tug on it and get him to look our way. I know I shouldn’t have to ask him to take an interest, and if I do have to, then it’s not worth it. But having spent a lifetime feeling that he wasn’t really interested unless I did exactly what he wanted me to do, it’s hard to shake the habit, I suppose. So I view this forthcoming visit with a curious mixture of nervousness and disbelief – I can’t believe he’s actually coming for starters – and I worry about his reactions to the witchling. I just want him to see for himself how lovely she is, how exciting, how interesting. And I fear that all he sees is Generic Baby, regardless of her being my daughter, his granddaughter, a visual reminder of my dead mother (though perhaps that says it all). He used to tell me almost proudly that he loved me because I am me, and not because I was his daughter; he pointed out his relationship with my brother, which, always pretty piss-poor, he used to illustrate his idea that water is thicker than blood, as it were. Ironic, then, that I expect, or wish, that he love her because of what she is, rather than who she is. He’ll think what he thinks no matter what I do, so why do I worry, and why do I think I can change this?