Balancing Act by Joanna Trollope Page B

that’s how I am. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not going to grovel about it either. The bottom line is, Susan, that I’d appreciate your help now, but I won’t think any worse of you if you tell me to get lost. It’s up to you.’
    Susie stood up. Then she sat down again. She spread her hands out in front of her as if the sight of them, of her wedding ring, would somehow provide comfort and guidance. She said slowly, ‘Your turning up like this is a nightmare. A complete nightmare. And your exasperating passivity only makes it worse. You’ve never lifted a finger to earn anyone’s respect all your life, and it looks to me as if you have no intention of changing your ways. And I haven’t the first idea what to do about it. That’s the truth.’
    ‘What’s the proverb?’ Jasper said. ‘About a bad penny?’
    Daniel put his beer bottle down on the pub table betweenthem. ‘It’s something to do with a counterfeit coin always finding its way back into circulation.’
    ‘And that’s Morris. Odd, to have a father-in-law after pretty well forty years of marriage without one.’
    Dan said, ‘Don’t you want to go up to Stoke to meet him?’
    Jasper laughed. He tipped his beer up and took a gulp. ‘Susie didn’t want me to.’
    ‘Did you offer?’
    ‘Sure. Just her and the girls, she said.’
    Daniel hesitated a moment, and then he said, ‘Did you mind?’
    ‘Nah. When have I ever minded a thing like that?’
    Daniel picked up a packet of vegetable crisps that lay on the table and pulled it open. Then he held it out to his father-in-law.
    Jasper grinned at him. ‘D’you think, Dan, that if they’re made of parsnip they don’t count as crisps?’
    Daniel said distantly, ‘I prefer them.’
    ‘You’re a pompous twit,’ Jasper said affectionately. He took a handful. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Purple ones too. Beetroot.’
    Daniel leant forward. ‘Jas,’ he said, ‘you
must
be concerned about what’s going on up there. They’ve been in Stoke two days. You
must
want to know what’s going on—’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘Jas—’
    ‘Look,’ Jasper said, ‘it would be hard to be married to Suz if you were quite conventional. But I’m not conventional. Never have been.’
    ‘
I
am,’ Daniel said.
    Jasper grinned again. He patted Daniel’s arm. ‘I know, Dan.’
    ‘I have a work ethic, Jas. And that old bastard doesn’t sound as if he’s ever had one.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I don’t want him sponging off Susie or Cara or any of us. And until there’s some kind of plan, I can’t be sure he won’t manage it, somehow. Just by being eighty-something, for starters.’
    Jasper said easily, ‘Suz’ll think of something.’
    ‘I could shake you.’
    ‘She often says that. But you can’t have two driven people in a marriage.’
    ‘Yes, you can.’
    Jasper let a beat fall, and then he said, ‘What has Cara said to you?’
    ‘That she’ll be back tonight and she’ll tell me everything then.’
    ‘And the old boy?’
    ‘She says she can’t talk about him yet.’
    Jasper laughed again. ‘Sounds very unsatisfactory for you all round!’
    ‘It is,’ Daniel said. ‘And on top of all else …’
    ‘All else?’
    ‘The company.’
    ‘Ah,’ Jasper said. He plunged his hand into the crisp packet again. ‘The
company.
That.’
    There was a pause. Then Daniel said tentatively, ‘Do you hate it?’
    ‘Me? No! I don’t hate anything. Why should I hate the company?’
    ‘Because,’ Daniel said, not looking at him, ‘it means so much to Susie and she’s so involved with it.’
    Jasper smiled at his beer bottle. ‘I was there at the beginning, remember? She tells me everything, anyway. There’s nothing about the company I don’t know.’
    Daniel took a crisp. It was as pointless to contradict such an absurd statement as it was to argue with Susie in certainmoods. He said instead, ‘Are you curious to meet your long-lost father-in-law?’
    ‘I would quite like to punch his lights out,’