Magpie

  He flinched.

  ‘It’s tricky. Two of them live abroad, and Millie never calls …’

  ‘Your mum could still call them.’

  ‘She does. But we’ve always been close.’

  He would turn back to whatever he was doing – watching a rugby match on TV with his arm around her shoulders; flicking through a book on business management strategy – and that would be that. He never seemed to sense any subtext or ulterior motive to Kate’s questions. He always thought the best of her, and would take what she said at face value. It was part of his unconscious charm, she knew, and she couldn’t have it both ways.

  So his family was a topic best avoided. Besides, Annabelle and Chris lived hundreds of miles away in Tewkesbury and as long as Kate didn’t have to spend time with them, she supposed she was fine with it.

  But then the invitation came, via one of the Sunday evening phone calls. Jake was sitting on the sofa as usual and Kate had moved to the bedroom to flick through one of the newspaper supplements. She heard him talking.

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘All good, thanks.’

  ‘Oh, not too busy this week actually. The deal went through, so that’s good.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’

  ‘Oh. OK. Yup.’

  ‘Well she’s not with me actually. Let me ask her.’

  He had walked through the doorway towards the bed, phone outstretched.

  ‘It’s my mum,’ Jake said. ‘She wants to talk to you.’

  Kate had the strangest feeling she was about to be told off, as if Annabelle were going to inform her in no uncertain terms that she was not good enough for her much-adored son. She didn’t take the phone, but put up the hood of her sweatshirt, burrowing her head deeper inside the soft cotton like a child. She didn’t know why she did it. Jake shook the phone at her, mouthing, ‘Take it!’

  She reached out, and pressed the phone to her ear.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi. Kate?’

  The voice was clear, imperious.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Annabelle here, Jake’s mother.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  Annabelle laughed sharply and Kate realised she had been rude.

  ‘How are you?’ she said, her voice assuming a faux cheeriness. ‘It’s lovely to talk to you!’

  ‘It’s nice to talk to you too, Kate, and to put a voice to the name I’ve been hearing so much about. I suppose you and Jake have been …’ there was a slight but meaningful pause ‘… courting for, what, three months or so now?’

  ‘Actually it’s six, but—’

  ‘Six! Goodness!’

  Kate looked at Jake, who was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, a light frown across his forehead. She wondered if he had deliberately shortened the length of their relationship so as not to make his mother feel threatened.

  ‘And you’re spending so much time together,’ Annabelle continued. ‘You always seem to be at his flat when I call.’

  ‘Well, I …’ So Jake hadn’t told his mother that they were living together. ‘Yes,’ she concluded, weakly.

  ‘Listen, I’ve got to dash as there’s a paella on the stove, but I was just saying to Jakey that we’d love to have you guys down for lunch one weekend. Whatever suits you. I know how busy you young people are, so you choose a suitable date and we’ll work around you. Except the twentieth. I can’t do the twentieth because of the choral society. And actually not the thirteenth either, but any other date would be wonderful.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kate said, even though this was her least favourite kind of invitation. There was no way of coming up with an excuse unless someone offered a specific date. ‘That would be lovely.’

  ‘Great. Looking forward to it.’

  The silence stretched out between them for slightly too long. Kate looked at her feet at the end of the bed. She was wearing knitted brown socks. Beyond them, she could make out the tops of the trees in the park and a thin trail of reddish-pink cloud.

  ‘Could you pass me back to Jakey?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, sorry.’

  She handed the phone over. Jake raised his eyebrows, but she turned away from him and pretended to read her magazine. Kate hated having to meet the parents. It was why she had never suggested a similar thing to Jake. Her own parents were perfectly nice, quiet, Tory-voting, semi-detached-house kind of people, but they were largely irrelevant to who she was now. They didn’t understand her and she didn’t understand them and both parties were respectful of this. She mistrusted adults who could not invent themselves away from their family units. She didn’t see why she had to obey the rules of convention by traipsing to the countryside and tugging her forelock at posh Annabelle and mousey Chris simply because she chose to pursue a relationship with their son.

  The bed dipped as Jake came to lie next to her. She felt his body slot into hers, his knees bending into the backs of hers. He kissed her neck.

  ‘Is that OK?’ he asked. ‘I know it’s the kind of thing you loathe but I really appreciate it.’

  Her shoulders softened.

  ‘Mum will love you. I just know it.’

  She turned to him and kissed his mouth.

  ‘I’ll do it for you.’

  And she was as good as her word.

  Three weeks later, they drove to Tewkesbury. The car had been their first serious joint purchase, with Jake scanning the AutoTrader website for days before he found a suitable option: a silver Volkswagen Polo with a reasonable amount of miles on the clock, being sold for £2,000 because of a scratch on the front which neither of them cared about. The description had alerted them to the fact that the car had only ever been handled by ‘women drivers’, which Kate found hilarious.

  ‘Can we email them and ask what kind of women they are?’ she said, scratching the back of Jake’s head in the way he liked.

  ‘What sort of woman would you refuse to buy a car from?’ he asked, smiling.

  ‘A fallen one. A loose one. One who wears too much Lycra and smokes fags out of the passenger side of her best friend’s ride.’

  Jake laughed, without getting the reference to TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’. He never really listened to music, preferring sports commentary and talk radio, but they did share a love of Oasis.

  ‘We shall examine the women in question,’ Jake said, pulling her over his lap so that she was sitting astride him. ‘And if we find them wanting, we shall refuse to buy their car.’

  They kissed, and when she pulled back and looked at his handsome, open face, Kate thought to herself that she had never liked anyone this much. She loved him, of course, but often being in love with someone did not translate into liking them. With Jake, she felt both love and like.

  When they turned up to a low-rise 1950s apartment block in Lambeth to buy the car, there were no women in sight. It was a man who took their money and handed over the keys.

  ‘And that, my friend, is how the patriarchy works,’ Kate said, sitting in the passenger seat as Jake reversed out of the parking space.

  ‘Is it OK for me not to care about the patriarchy for just one day if it’s got us a good deal on a car?’ Jake asked, letting the steering wheel spin back on itself.

  ‘I’m not sure it is, but I won’t report you this time.’

  She had traced her fingertips along the line of the freckles on his bare forearm and, later, they’d had sex and she imagined herself sprawled across the car bonnet, feeling the heat from the engine against the small of her back as she came.

  She thought of this again on the drive to meet Jake’s parents. They had never actually had sex in the car. It would be too small and uncomfortable, she knew, but still she liked the idea. She would be embarrassed to suggest it to Jake in case he laughed at her and thought her perverted. His attitude to sex was similar t
o his outlook on life, which was the fewer unnecessary complications, the better.

  She turned to look at Jake in profile in the driving seat – he always drove because he was better at it. His face had caught the sun from yesterday’s picnic in Battersea Park when they had taken a blanket, a bottle of rosé, a baguette and a tub of supermarket hummus and got tipsy through the warmth of the afternoon.

  ‘You OK?’ Jake asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Don’t be nervous. You look great.’

  Kate wasn’t nervous although she supposed she should be. She could be polite and charming and do her duty, but beyond that she felt it was wiser not to attempt to win over Jake’s mother or establish a false intimacy with her. She had a hunch it would be better to keep Annabelle at arm’s length.

  She switched on the radio to avoid any further chat. A pop star’s voice, heavy on the reverb, snaked into the car. But although she didn’t feel nervous, she had taken great care with her clothes. It was not that she needed to impress Annabelle, rather that she wanted to feel as confident as she could and for this reason, she had worn her favourite cropped jeans, dressed up with a pair of block heels, and a silk mustard-coloured shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a chunky gold necklace. She used the hairdryer this morning, so her hair was smoother than usual, the familiar choppiness now tamed into a sleeker bob. Red lipstick, dark mascara, a hint of blush on the apple of each cheek and that was it. She knew Jake liked red lipstick. He said it made her look Parisian and every time he said it, she laughed at the blinding obviousness of male desire.

  It took them three hours to get there, through the Chiltern Hills and the endless roundabouts of Swindon and then into the mottled buttery houses of the Cotswolds before finally Jake indicated and they turned off into a short driveway, emerging into the courtyard of an imposing red-brick house. When Jake talked about his childhood home, he referred to it as a farmhouse, but looking at it, Kate realised it wasn’t a real farmhouse as much as a posh person’s version of what they believed a farmhouse to be. She could count four chimneys on the roof and there were stone carvings around each of the windows. The front door had two perfectly pruned miniature trees on either side of the entrance, the leafy branches obediently cut into glossy green spheres. The gravel on the driveway looked so clean it seemed staged. The house was surrounded by fields and woodland and Kate emerged from the car to the sound of birdsong.

  ‘You are taking the actual piss,’ she said, as he held out his hand for her to take.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is beautiful.’

  He blushed. ‘Thank you.’

  She hadn’t meant it warmly. Beautiful was the wrong word, she realised. It was intimidating and she hated herself for being intimidated.

  The door opened before they had pressed the ornate Victorian bell button.

  ‘Darling!’

  Annabelle swept out and hugged Jake close, burrowing her head into his neck. The clinch lasted for several seconds before she let him go.

  ‘And this must be Kate.’

  Annabelle stepped forward, taking both Kate’s hands in hers.

  ‘Let me look at you,’ Annabelle said and she allowed her gaze to travel over Kate’s body. ‘You’re very thin, aren’t you?’

  Jake laughed.

  ‘Mum, stop! You’re so obsessed with weight.’

  ‘Oh, I’m only joshing. It’s a compliment for us girls, isn’t it, dear?’

  She forced Kate into a bony hug. Kate had to close her eyes to prevent herself from rolling them.

  ‘It’s so lovely to see you,’ Annabelle said, looking at Jake from behind Kate’s shoulder. ‘Come in, come in.’

  The hug ended abruptly and Annabelle walked into the house.

  ‘Lovely to meet you too,’ Kate replied to her receding back.

  The hallway was cool, the floor tiled in a reddish-brown pattern that reminded Kate of boarding school. In the dim half-light, she was able to look at Annabelle properly for the first time. She was a tall woman, upright and elegant. Her body was strong rather than willowy. She had large hands, with long fingers encircled by thin gold rings. She was deeply tanned and on the right side of her face, two livery splotches had formed a pale brown archipelago. Her eyes were the clearest blue, like shallow sea-water you can see sand through. She was wearing a white floaty linen cardigan over a sage-green camisole and white linen trousers and pale purple Moroccan slippers, the leather folded down at the back so that her ankles were exposed.

  ‘Hi Dad,’ Jake said, and Kate noticed a slight figure emerging from a doorway. Chris shook his son’s hand and then came across and kissed Kate lightly on both cheeks. He had kind eyes and wore a burgundy jumper with elbow patches.

  ‘Nice of you both to make the trek,’ he said, his voice immediately getting lost in the echoing gloom of the house. He beckoned them into the drawing room, as he called it, which was light and floral, the plump sofas upholstered in a lily-of-the-valley pattern. ‘Now: drinks.’

  Chris pottered off to the drinks cabinet beneath the wall of bookshelves. Kate spotted a copy of Civilisation by Kenneth Clark and several silver-framed photographs of mop-haired children. She realised she was still holding the bunch of tulips she had brought from the local Battersea florist. The stems had pressed against the brown paper wrapping, making it soggy.

  ‘Oh, I meant to say, Annabelle. These are for you.’

  Annabelle looked at her oddly. She reached across in her billowing linen and took the flowers, holding them out slightly as if they might stain her. She smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

  ‘Kate, thank you,’ she purred. ‘I was going to tell you we don’t stand on ceremony round here and you must call me Annabelle, but I’m so glad you felt comfortable enough to do it straight away.’ She lowered her head to breathe in the scent of the flowers. ‘You are clever to find these. I don’t normally bother with cut flowers – we’ve got so many beauties in the garden, you know. Oh!’ She gave a short burst of laughter. ‘Of course you don’t know. You’ve never been here before, have you? Forgive me, darling, I lose track of all of Jakey’s friends.’ The way she said ‘friends’ implied quotation marks. ‘I’m such an idiot. We’ll have to show you around later, won’t we, Jakey? You can see the little cottage we’ve just done up in one of the outbuildings. Yes. Lovely.’ She lifted the bunch of tulips, wilting now under the pressure of her gaze. ‘But these are just … gorgeous. Now I must try and remember where the vases are. Sit, sit, please!’

  Annabelle gesticulated towards the chairs.

  They sat. She slid out of the room, giving Jake’s shoulder a squeeze as she went and kissing the top of his head like he was a toddler. Kate caught Jake’s eye. He winked at her. She inhaled, slowly. Just a couple more hours and then they could get out of here.

  ‘Here you go,’ Chris pressed a giant tumbler of gin and tonic into her hand. She took a large sip just as Annabelle re-entered the room with a glass of white wine and launched into an impromptu toast. Kate swallowed her gin as quietly as she could.

  ‘I just wanted to say what a treat it is to have Jakey home, and to meet the ever-so-stylish Kate.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ Chris said, raising an even bigger glass of gin towards the centre of the room and smiling with a vagueness that suggested this drink had not been his first of the day.

  Annabelle sat on the sofa next to Jake, placing her free hand proprietorially on his knee. Kate, in an upright armchair on the other side of the room watched as Chris bent to sit on a battered leather stool by the fireplace. He was interrupted by Annabelle saying, ‘Nuts, darling!’

  ‘Oh yes, my mistake,’ Chris said, straightening up from his half-squat, bones creaking as he did so. He walked back to the drinks cabinet, took out a jumbo-sized packet of peanuts and poured a measly handful into a tiny crystal bowl, which he brought back with great ceremony and placed on a low
coffee table filled with back copies of House & Garden. The table was too far away for Kate to reach, so she drank her gin and her head became light. Chris had made it exceptionally strong.

  ‘So,’ Annabelle said, leaning back on the sofa, her legs crossed at a graceful angle. Kate had read somewhere that high-society women crossed their legs in this way so as not to leave red patches on their skin. ‘How did you two meet?’

  ‘I gatecrashed Kate’s thirtieth birthday party,’ Jake said, looking over the room at Kate and grinning at her.

  ‘Goodness,’ Annabelle said. ‘How rude!’

  ‘It was fine, Annabelle. He came bearing champagne, so I let him in.’

  She decided she was going to use Jake’s mother’s name as much as possible in conversation.

  Chris tittered.

  ‘Sensible,’ he said.

  Annabelle did not laugh but gazed levelly at Kate, a slight smile shadowing her mouth. She said nothing more, and there was power in her silence. Kate felt the back of her neck prickle. She drank more gin and didn’t try to move the conversation on as she might usually have done. She sensed Annabelle was testing her, and Kate refused to give in. The silence stretched outwards until Jake reached forwards for the nuts and walked around to offer her some.

  ‘You can’t get at them from over there,’ he said and Kate was happy he’d noticed.

  They had lunch in the kitchen (‘No point in the dining room when it’s just the four of us, don’t you agree?’ Annabelle said) at a long pine table, laid with a lavender-coloured tablecloth that Kate was told had been brought back from one of their many trips to Provence. The crockery was even more floral than the sitting room had been and the granary baguette was served already sliced in a bowl with ‘BOWL’ written around its rim. The knives and forks had faded ivory handles, nicotine yellow in colour.

  Annabelle made a great show of clipping up her long blonde-grey hair and putting an apron on before removing a steaming dish of chicken thighs and preserved lemons from the Aga. It was served with mashed potato that still had a few lumps in it and over-boiled broccoli.

  ‘Red or white?’ Chris asked, proffering bottles of each. ‘The red’s fairly good plonk. The white’s a crisp little Sancerre …’