‘It’s funny how meeting someone’s close family can bring into focus everything that’s wrong with them,’ said Charlie. Kate had insulted her; being made privy to one of Charlie’s more obnoxious thoughts was her punishment. ‘You suspect there’s something deeply amiss about a person, and then you meet their parents and think, “Now I understand.” I wonder if Simon, having met mine, can see clearly everything that’s wrong with me. And bound to get steadily wronger as I get older.’
Kate chuckled. ‘Sometimes it’s possible to defy both nature and nurture,’ she said. ‘Look at Sam—he’s the kindest, most considerate man alive, and his parents are lazy, selfish tossers. His brothers and sister too—the whole Kombothekra clan. When we have them round they sit immobile in armchairs like the human equivalent of a druid stone circle while Sam and I wait on them hand and foot. They do nothing for themselves. They’re worse than my boys have ever been, even as toddlers.’
Charlie couldn’t help smiling. It was reassuring to know that even women with silky blonde hair had problems.
‘They’re going to get what’s coming to them,’ said Kate, her eyes narrowing. ‘I’m not inviting them for Christmas dinner this year. They don’t know it yet. I do, and I’ve got nine months to gloat in secret.’
‘It’s only the first of March. Please don’t put Christmas in my head.’ What would Charlie and Simon do? Would he want to spend Christmas Day with her? Would it be a merging of the Zailer and Waterhouse families? Charlie felt her blood temperature drop by several degrees.
The situation with Sam’s folks had to be dire, she thought, if Kate was planning to withdraw her hospitality. She was the sort of person who seemed to want nothing more than to drag strangers in off the street and cook for them, then insist they stay the night. Charlie had been a virtual stranger when Kate had first started to demand her presence at Kombothekra family meals; now, after countless such occasions, Charlie supposed she had to regard Kate as a friend. It couldn’t hurt to have a friend who made staggeringly good apple and cranberry crumbles, could it? Kate always said that whisky was the crucial ingredient, but in Charlie’s view it was even more crucial to start off as the sort of person whose notions of pudding extended beyond unwrapping a Cadbury’s mini roll.
‘Did you and Sam have an engagement party? Of course you did,’ Charlie answered her own question. ‘I bet it was at one of your houses.’
Kate dragged herself out of whatever revenge fantasy had temporarily consumed her. ‘My mum and dad’s. Huh! Sam’s parents wouldn’t . . .’ She stopped. ‘But you didn’t want the party at yours, you said. Simon didn’t want it at his.’
‘Exactly,’ Charlie said quietly. ‘What’s wrong with us?’
Kate shrugged. ‘Simon wouldn’t have been able to relax with people all over his house, would he? And you’re in the middle of decorating.’ She grinned. ‘Though I’m not sure something that never ends can be said to have a middle.’
‘Don’t start.’
‘I did try to tell you that an undecorated house was the ideal party venue—no expensive wallpaper for people to puke on.’
‘And you were right,’ said Charlie. ‘But I still went ahead and booked a dingy room in a pub, because I’m not like you and Sam. Neither is Simon. We’re incapable of making anybody feel welcome. If we have to pretend to like the people we know, we’d rather do it on neutral territory.’ For some reason, Charlie enjoyed being vicious about herself; she felt it compensated for those occasions on which she was vicious about other people. ‘Did anyone give a speech?’ she asked.
‘At our engagement party? Sam did. It was earnest and endless. Why, are you going to? Is Simon going to?’
‘Of course not. We don’t do anything properly.’
Kate looked puzzled. ‘You can give a speech if you want to. It doesn’t matter if it’s off the cuff. Often a spontaneous—’
‘I’d rather dip my face in a tray of acid,’ Charlie cut her off. ‘Simon would feel the same.’
Kate sighed, gathering her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. ‘I bet he wouldn’t if he was certain of being able to give a really good speech. Confidence, that’s all he’s lacking. This is unfamiliar territory for him.’
‘Sounds like you know more about him than I do.’
‘I know he adores you. And before you say “Why doesn’t he show it, then?”—he does. If you don’t see the signs, it’s because you’re looking wrong.’
‘I thought I was looking deathly,’ said Charlie through clenched teeth.
‘Simon does things his own way. He needs time, that’s all—time to get used to being a couple. Once you’re married you’ll have plenty of time. Won’t you?’ Kate sounded as if she was proposing something unutterably wholesome: a brisk walk in the fresh air. ‘Stop worrying about what you ought to be doing and stop comparing yourself to other people. When are you going to set a date?’
Charlie laughed. ‘I hope you know what a lone voice you are,’ she said. ‘You’re the one person who doesn’t think me and Simon getting married would be the biggest mistake since the dawn of time. Including me and Simon, that is.’
Kate pulled Charlie’s cigarette out of her mouth, threw it on the ground and stamped on it with a gold pump. ‘You should give up,’ she said. ‘Think of your future children, how they’d feel having to watch their mother die.’
‘I’ve no intention of having any.’
‘Of course you’ll have children,’ Kate said with authority. ‘Look, if you want to feel sorry for yourself, let me make it worth your while. Do you know what everyone’s saying in there?’ She pointed at the pub. ‘Almost every conversation I’ve been party to has centred around whether you and Simon have
done it
yet. I’ve heard two people predict that you’ll be divorced within a year and a good five or six say they doubt there’ll be a wedding at all. Do you know what Stacey Sellers has bought you as an engagement present?’
Charlie had a nasty feeling she was about to find out.
‘A vibrator. I heard her laughing about it, telling Robbie Meakin and Jack Zlosnik that Simon probably wouldn’t know what it was. “He’ll run a mile when he finds out,” she said.’
‘Don’t tell me any more.’ Charlie jumped down from the wall and started to walk towards the bridge. She lit a fresh cigarette. Dying wasn’t an altogether unappealing prospect, unobserved as she would be by her own non-existent children.
Kate followed her. ‘Then she said, “Oh, well—at least Charlie’ll be able to get her rocks off after Simon’s scarpered in terror.” ’
‘She’s a cockroach.’
‘More of a slug, I’d say,’ Kate amended. ‘She’s all squish and no crunch. And she’s going to have a field day if you walk out of your own engagement party and don’t come back. Do you want her to think you’re ashamed of your relationship with Simon?’
‘I’m not.’ Charlie stopped. ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks.’ Kate grabbed her arms, wrinkling her nose as cigarette smoke wafted in her face. ‘You love him more than most people love the people they’re married to. You’d die for him without a second thought.’
‘Would I?’
‘Take it from me.’
Charlie nodded, in spite of feeling as if she ought to argue. Why should she take it from Kate? Was it possible to measure the levels of love present in one’s guests while serving up baked Alaska?
Kate released her grip. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘unless all the gossip I keep hearing is completely off the mark—and gossip rarely is, in my experience—then you and Simon have got some kind of problem with your sex life.’ Before Charlie could tell her to mind her own business, she went on, ‘I don’t know what it is and I’m not asking to be told. But I do know one thing: there’s more to love, and to life, than sex. Now, the only way to put a stop to what people are saying in there is to go back and interrupt every conversation. Address your guests. Don’t leave them to speak to each other—they can’t be trusted. Stand on a chair—you’ve got flat heels on—and give a speech.’
Charlie was surprised to hear herself laugh.
You’ve got flat heels on
—had Kate really said that?
‘Char, wait for me!’ The voice came from the knot of trees by the side of the bridge.
Charlie closed her eyes. How much had Olivia overheard? ‘My sister,’ she said, in answer to Kate’s raised eyebrows.
‘I’ll see you inside in no more than three minutes,’ said Kate.
‘Who was that?’ Olivia asked.
‘Sam Kombothekra’s wife. You’re late.’
‘It’s not a concert,’ said Olivia. It was a saying she’d picked up from her and Charlie’s father. Howard Zailer said it about all the things he didn’t care if he was late for. He never said it about golf, which he played at least five days a week. Howard’s passion for golf had been forced on his wife, though they both pretended Linda’s sudden enthusiasm for the game had been arrived at independently, by a huge stroke of luck.
‘So, are you giving a speech?’ asked Olivia.
‘Apparently.’
Olivia was wearing an ill-advised tight skirt that bound her legs together, and could only take tiny steps towards the pub. Charlie had to restrain herself from screaming, ‘Get a move on!’ She would march back into that room and beat the shit out of anyone who looked as if they might have been predicting the demise of her and Simon’s engagement.
How dare they? How dare they drink champagne we’ve paid for and slag us off behind our backs?
Her speech—forming in her mind as she walked with feigned patience beside her shuffling sister—would be a verbal thrashing for all those who deserved it. Not exactly party spirit in the traditional sense, thought Charlie, but at least she was fired up.
Once inside and upstairs, she stood on a chair. She didn’t need to bang anything or call out to get attention. All eyes were on her, and people quickly shushed one another. ‘Can someone turn the music down?’ she said. A man in a white shirt and a black bow-tie nodded and left the room. She didn’t know his name. She wondered if he knew hers, if word of her unsatisfactory sex life had spread as far as the Malt Shovel staff who were helping out for the evening.
A quick scan of the room confirmed that Kathleen and Michael Waterhouse had left. Simon, in a corner at the back, was looking worried, no doubt wishing Charlie had conferred with him before opting to make a tit of herself in front of everyone they knew.
The music stopped mid-song. Charlie opened her mouth. Two seconds ago she had known what she was going to say—it would have left no conscience unflayed—but she kept looking at the wrong people. Lizzie Proust was beaming up at her, Kate Kombothekra was mouthing, ‘Go on,’ from the back of the room and Simon chose that precise moment to smile.
I can’t do it, thought Charlie. I can’t denounce them all. They don’t all deserve it. Possibly less than half of them deserve it. Kate might have been exaggerating. It struck Charlie that denouncing was probably the sort of thing that ought to be handled with a bit more precision.
You’re standing on a chair in the middle of the room. You’ve got to say something.
‘Here’s a story I’ve never told anyone before,’ she said, thinking,
What the fuck am I doing?
She hadn’t told the story for a very good reason: it made her look like a world-class moron. She saw Olivia frown. Liv thought she knew everything about her older sister. It was almost true. There were only a couple of stories she’d missed out on, and this was one of them. ‘When I was a new PC, I went into a primary school to give a talk about road safety.’
‘The headmaster had never seen you drive, then!’ Colin Sellers called out. Everyone laughed. Charlie could have kissed him. He was the perfect undemanding audience.
‘In the classroom, apart from me and the thirty or so kids, there was the teacher and a classroom assistant—a young girl—’
‘Woman!’ a female voice yelled.
‘Sorry, a young
woman
, who was working as hard as the teacher was—wiping noses, helping to draw pictures of highway code symbols, ferrying kids to the loo. The teacher had introduced herself to me at the beginning of the lesson, and she’d made all the children tell me their names, but she never introduced the assistant, which I thought was a bit rude. Anyway, when I’d finished doing my bit and the bell was about to go, the teacher stood up and said, “Can we all please give PC Zailer a huge round of applause for coming to visit us and giving us such a fascinating talk?” Everyone clapped. And then she said, “And now, let’s put our hands together for Grace.” ’
Charlie cringed at the memory, even at a distance of several years. She saw Sam Kombothekra laughing next to Kate, the only person who seemed to have anticipated what was coming next.
‘Thank goodness, I thought to myself: finally the poor classroom assistant—Grace—is getting some acknowledgement for all her hard work. I started clapping vigorously, but nobody else did. All the little kids were staring at me as if I was a nutter. And then I realised that they all had their palms pressed together, praying style . . .’
A tide of giggles rose in the hot room. Charlie heard her father’s throaty guffaws. Her mum and Olivia were on either side of him, watching him to assess how much he was enjoying himself and infer from that how much enjoyment they were entitled to.
Think nice thoughts.
Kate Kombothekra was giving Charlie a thumbs-up sign from across the room. Stacey Sellers had a smear of guacamole in the corner of her mouth.
‘That’s right,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s when I remembered that I was in a
Catholic
school, and that Grace, as well as being a girl’s name, was also the name of a prayer. The fact is, I knew nothing about Catholicism, having been raised by atheist hippies whose idea of a deity was Bob Dylan.’ Linda and Olivia Zailer looked worried momentarily; when Howard laughed, they smiled, but turned warning eyes in Charlie’s direction. ‘If I had any ideas at all about Catholics, I probably imagined they were all repressed weirdos who think they’re right about everything all the time.’ Charlie gave it a few seconds before saying, ‘And then I met Simon.’