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Sometimes I wonder if my father loves his moustache more than he loves me. He's had it longer. He grew the thing before he met my mother. I know because I've seen it in the pictures that she used to show me when I was smaller and not as shy about asking awkward questions.
My father doesn't brush me with a special comb twice a day, or anoint me with a specialist pomade that he orders off the internet. (Not that I'd want him to. Because eww.)
My dad's house – the house where I live now too – is big and old and fancy. The people that he bought it from must have spent a lot of time restoring it – that is what my father says anyway – so that modern people who like to pee indoors could live in it. They must have really loved it, those people; all the walls were beautifully coloured with stencilled silhouettes and little painted flowers, wild and hothouse; really, really beautiful to see.
'Girly,' declared Captain Moustache, and immediately he hired a team of team of men to sit around drinking tea I'd made and eating breakfast rolls in between spurts of painting everything in various shades of white, with names like 'Lily of the Valley, 'Ermine', 'Baby Teeth' and 'Miscellaneous Clouds.'
