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I just spent $7,400 on a two-week family holiday. Fourteen days side by side with my 12-year-old daughter. On the last night I asked her what she'd remember most about the trip. She said the hotel pool was nice and TikTok worked. $7,400. Fourteen days. That was her answer. I take my family on holiday every summer. It's the thing I'm most proud of. I work hard all year for two weeks in July where we switch off and actually be together. This year Portugal. Two weeks. The whole thing — flights, villa, hire car, restaurants, day trips — came to $7,400. Before we left I made a deal with myself. No work emails. Full presence. Real family time. On the last evening I decided to do something I hadn't done all holiday. I asked my daughter the questions that actually mattered. What was the best conversation you had this whole trip? What are you actually looking forward to when we get home? What's something you've been thinking about that you haven't said out loud? What do you want to do with your life — not for work — just what do you actually want? My 12-year-old daughter stared at the restaurant menu. Isla: "I don't know." Isla: "Seeing my friends I guess." Isla: "Nothing really." Isla: shrug. Then she asked if she could have dessert. I have been taking this child on holiday since she was four. I know her passport number. I know which seat she prefers on the plane. I know she gets carsick on winding roads and needs the window. I do not know what she thinks about. I sat there with the Mediterranean behind us and $7,400 of quality time behind me and I felt it. I had been next to my daughter for fourteen days. I didn't know her any better than when we landed. That night I told my wife. "Ask me something real about Isla. Something she actually thinks about." She looked at me. Thought about it properly. "She wants to be a vet, she said that last year—" "That was three years ago," I said. "She changed her mind. She hasn't said what to since." My wife put her book down. "I didn't know that." $7,400. Fourteen days. Neither of us knew our daughter. Two days before the end of the holiday I was having breakfast alone on the terrace. A family at the next table. Dad, daughter — maybe ten years old. No phones. The dad was leaning forward with both elbows on the table. The daughter was talking. Not politely. Not performing holiday conversation. Actually talking. Her hands were moving. He was completely still. Listening the way you listen when you don't want to miss a single word. It went on for twenty minutes. I watched the whole thing over my coffee. Isla was upstairs asleep. We'd eaten breakfast together every morning for twelve days. I could not remember a single thing she'd said. I walked past their table on the way out. There was a small card deck next to the father's coffee. I stopped. "Sorry — what are those?" He held one up. "Conversation cards. My wife found them before we left. We do a few at breakfast every morning. Best thing we packed." He showed me one. "What's something you've always wanted to ask me but never have?" His daughter had answered that one for twenty minutes. "What are they called?" "QuestKids." I found them on my phone before I reached the room. I ordered them to arrive the day we got home. Week 1: I didn't wait for a special moment. Tuesday evening. Isla doing homework at the kitchen table. I put the box down next to her. "Want to try one before dinner?" She picked it up. Looked at it. Pulled a card. "If you could be secretly brilliant at something nobody knew about, what would it be?" She answered without hesitating. "Forensic science," she said. "Like figuring out what actually happened." I looked at my daughter. Three years since the vet idea. She'd found something else. Never said a word. Week 3: Isla started picking cards before dinner without being asked. She had one ready for me on a Thursday. She wanted to know my answer first. I realised I was learning too. At 44 years old I was sitting at a kitchen table answering questions I hadn't thought about since I was twelve. Isla asked me what I regretted most so far. I told her the truth. She listened to every word. When I finished she said: "Is that why you work so much?" I looked at the table. "Yeah," I said. "Probably." "You should work less," she said. Just like that. Twelve years old. Saying the thing nobody else would say. Week 7: Her form teacher called on a Wednesday. "Mr. Clarke, I wanted to let you know about something Isla did this week. We were doing a personal essay exercise — I asked the students to write about someone they'd want to interview and why. Most students wrote about celebrities or athletes. Isla wrote about you. She said she'd recently discovered you were a more interesting person than she'd realised and she had more questions." The teacher paused. "She said she was only just getting started. I don't know what's changed at home. But whatever it is — it's showing up in her writing. She's asking questions in class I haven't heard a student her age ask." I sat in my car for a long time after that call. Fourteen days in Portugal. She discovered I was interesting at the kitchen table on a Tuesday evening. Two weeks ago: Isla came into the kitchen on a Sunday morning. She had the card box. "Can we do some before everyone else is up?" Just the two of us. She pulled a card for me. She pulled a card for herself. We sat at the table for an hour before my wife came down. When my wife walked in Isla said: "Mum, I saved one for you." A connected family isn't one that goes on the best holidays. It's one that knows how to ask. If you've spent thousands on experiences and come home no closer than when you left... If you've been side by side for days and realised you're still strangers... If you know their passport number but not what they actually think about... The location was never the problem. The question was. Before the next holiday becomes another $7,000 of beautiful photographs and nothing said. Before they stop expecting the conversation to go anywhere. Before you're sitting at another restaurant with the sea behind you wondering why it always feels like something is missing. I spent $7,400 on two weeks in Portugal. A $39.90 card deck told me my daughter wants to solve crimes. The cards that gave me my daughter are called QuestKids. 150 questions that work at breakfast, in the car, at the kitchen table on an ordinary Tuesday. The ones she's been waiting to answer. The ones you've been sitting next to her not asking. You don't need a holiday. You need a Tuesday evening and the right question.