We drove up to my father’s estate just as the sun was setting.  Despite my trepidations, I tried to face it with my head held high and a smile on my face.  I’d always been an eternal cockeyed optimist, searching for a rainbow after every sorrowful storm, and that guitar-shaped swimming pool I’d just spotted in the corner of the garden would do nicely, thanks.  He was loaded!

A strikingly handsome couple appeared at the door.  The husband, a dark-haired man with long, strong, beautiful legs and firm, round buttocks, smiled down at me.  “You must be Ivy,” he said, before glancing up at my mother.  “Hello, Gigi.  It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, and it’s going to be a while longer if I have anything to do with it,” said Mama, her hands on her hips, “Now, look, I’ve spent the last fifteen years raising your kid, and it’s worn me out.  Time for you to do your bit, sunshine.  You can give her back when she’s thirty.”

The wife, an elegant beauty in a camel-fur coat, scowled down at us.  “She can’t stay tonight,” she snapped, her face twisting into a grotesque parody of a smile, “We have plans.  Clive and I have tickets to the opera tonight- we’ve been planning it for months.”

“Now, Tamsin,” said my father, his smile small and pleased, “Love Never Dies isn’t exactly an opera, per se…”

“We’re going, Clive!  I’m getting my Phantom fix, or somebody’s getting hurt, you hear me?”

“Tough titties, blondie,” said Mama, flicking V’s at her, “She’s on your doorstep now, and she’s your problem.”  And before Tamsin could say anything in response, she jumped back into Abelard Cephalopod’s Mini and the two of them drove off.

To lift myself above the despair I felt at her departure, I gazed with interest at that awesome pool I’d seen earlier.  I watched the pet dolphins they kept in the deep end perform a perfect dance routine to “Don’t Stop Believing,” and, for a moment, I felt less alone.

My stepmother let out a long, resigned sigh.  “I guess you’d better come in.  Damn it.”

As soon as I got through the door, I turned in slow circles, my breath caught, my eyes wide, staring, staring, until I got too dizzy and collapsed on the floor.  My stepmother prodded me with her shoe until I got up.

“I’ve never seen a house as beautiful as this,” I breathed in wonder.

“Nobody has,” said my father happily, “My parents had it built to their exact specifications back in the Seventies.  When I was a boy, I used to think there wasn’t a house anywhere in the world as fine as the one where I lived.”

“None with cocaine dispensers built into all the bathrooms, anyway,” grumbled my stepmother.  She turned on me like a vicious tiger protecting her young.  “Now, look here, missy.  If you’re going to be staying here, there’s a few things you need to understand.  I don’t want you telling anyone you’re Clive’s daughter.  It’s embarrassing enough to have everyone know he used to go out with that slapper Gigi Pratt, let alone that there’s some kid of hers knocking about.”

Oh!  How those cruel words tore at my heart!  No sooner had I been reunited with my father, the kind, handsome daddy I had longed for all my childhood, than…

“We’ll just have to tell everyone you’re a visiting MI5 agent,” she added, “They stay with us from time to time.”

Oh.  Actually, that sounded really cool.

“Well, I’m glad that’s settled,” said my father, with a hearty laugh, “Now come through and meet your stepbrothers.  I’m sure you’ll get along famously.”

Stepbrothers!  My heart fluttered in delight.  How I’d longed for a brother as a child!  The happy days we’d share… the walks in the park… the games of “fetch” and the trips to the vet…

“You’re thinking of a labrador,” said my father, “Brothers are different.”  But I was so enraptured that I barely heard him.