Excerpt from Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

And that was it, I was thinking I really was going to fry in hell when Dougie rescued the whole mission with, 'His dad's got a tattoo on his bum.' Doug saw it that time Frank was changing into his wetsuit. Then he started describing this butter fly. He had the woman hooked. But he had to ruin it by saying it was a monarch butterfly and suddenly she was shaking her head.

'I don't know anything about a monarch butterfly.'

And just like that Doug was backtracking, 'Well it may not be exactly a monarch…'

'His name is Frank,' I said. 'Frank Bryant.'

The news took the wind out of her sails. Her earlier hostility was waning and we could hear her mind ticking. She said, 'I know lots of men by that name. There's thousands of fucking Franks.'

But as she was saying it, all the conviction of what she was trying to put across seemed to lift and her face softened as if she too didn't really believe in what she was saying any more. And just like that she said we could come in but on condition that we didn't use her bathroom. She said she had water and she had beer. 'If you want beer you'll have to pay for it first. Water's free, though.'

'Water,' said Dougie, and the quickness of his reply saw the woman roll her eyes. The important thing was we'd got in out of that terrible heat. For God knows how many years I'd dreamt and fantasised of meeting up with my dad, but at that moment I'd have given it all up for a glass of water. The woman set down a jug on the kitchen table. She placed two glasses

beside it. We gulped down three glasses apiece. The woman refilled the jug and we drank that too. I was gulping down the last glass when the woman said to me, 'Your father usually gets in around seven.' She said, 'I don't think I want to miss this.' Now she was looking at me in a different light, examining me, and in a voice that was slightly mesmerised, she said, 'You've got your father's eyes. You're lucky.' Then she said, 'I'm Cynthia, by the way. I've known your father for the past three years but I think I'll leave Frank to explain all that. I don't want to say anything more for the time being.'

She wound up letting us use her bathroom. It was either that or we'd have to piss in her backyard. And after that we sat around waiting for Frank to turn up. Dougie joined in the vigil too, checking his watch, staring between the whitewashed walls and the window where we first saw the shadow of Cynthia. For the first hour with Adrian in London I'd felt skittish as we worked ourselves into our respective roles. I hadn't seen him for eighteen months and so naturally there had been some loosening of the old parental shackles. He was a young man now. Despite this and a shared desire to meet as equals, the old relationship of father and son would not lie down. It loomed over us, stalked us, at different times had either one of us tongue-tied or at the other extreme had us assertively revert to form.

With Frank I didn't know what to expect. A diving expedition; a memory of him lingering at my bedroom door. It's not much to sustain roles. I didn't feel like anyone's son. I suspect Frank felt the same, that he wasn't anyone's father. And yet while we waited for him to turn up my strongest desire was that I wouldn't be a disappointment.

Once when Cynthia went to the bathroom Doug gave me a nudge and asked me how I felt about her.

'She's all right,' I said. At least I wouldn't have to confront the woman who had made my mother's life such a misery. We heard the toilet flush. Cynthia came to the door to ask if we'd like more water. 'Or would you rather have a beer?' She said, 'Don't all speak at once.'

Excerpted from Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones. Copyright © 2016 by Lloyd Jones. Excerpted by permission of Text Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.