Andrew winked. “Got that all figured out,” he said.
Peggy stopped dead, waited for him to turn around and face her.
“Andrew, did you just wink at me?”
* * *
—
As soon as he got back to the office from the supermarket, he walked straight over to Keith’s desk.
Keith was eating a donut and chortling at something on his screen. But when he saw Andrew he dropped the donut and scowled.
“Hello, Keith,” Andrew said. “Listen, I just wanted to apologize for what happened the other week. Things got really out of hand, but I am so, so sorry for pushing you like that. I really didn’t mean to hurt you. I hope you can forgive me.”
He handed over the champagne Peggy had picked out and offered Keith a handshake. Initially, Keith seemed taken aback by this charm offensive, but it didn’t take him long to regain his composure. “Costcutter own brand, is it?” he said, ignoring Andrew’s hand and turning the bottle over to read the label, as Meredith hurried over to stand protectively at his side.
“Well, this doesn’t exactly make up for what happened,” Meredith said.
Andrew held his hands up. “I know. I agree. It’s just a little gesture. I really hope that we can all get together tonight at mine, have a lovely time, and put it all behind us. What do you think? Sound like a plan?”
Okay, okay, keep a lid on it, don’t sound so desperate.
“Well,” Keith said, clearing his throat. “I suppose that I was maybe being a bit out of order myself. And, well, I guess you weren’t trying to deliberately knock me out.”
“No,” Andrew said.
“Obviously given another day I’d have probably sparked you out for hitting me, if you’d not got that lucky shot in.”
“Definitely,” Meredith said, looking at Keith admiringly.
“But, for the sake of, you know, moving on, I’m happy to say bygones be bygones, and all that shit.”
This time Keith shook his hand.
Just then, Cameron walked past, doubling back to see what was happening. He had dark rings under his eyes and looked horribly gaunt.
“Everything okay, chaps?” he said, slightly warily.
“Yes, absolutely,” Andrew said. “We were just saying how much we’re looking forward to dinner tonight.”
Cameron searched Andrew’s face for signs of sarcasm. Apparently satisfied of its absence, he smiled, put his palms together and said, “Namaste,” before backing away into the corridor and heading to his office with a new spring in his step.
“What a weirdo,” Keith said.
Meredith, realizing that Keith’s label was poking out of his shirt collar, reached over and tucked it in. Keith, Andrew noticed, looked a little embarrassed at this.
“So, Andrew,” Meredith said, “do we finally get to meet Diane tonight?”
“No, afraid not,” Andrew said. “She and the kids have tickets for a show. Crossed wires on the dates.” Even though he’d rehearsed this line several times, it still took all his concentration to make the words sound genuine. As he sat down at his desk, a fresh pile of paperwork in his in-tray, a new lot of death to be tackled, he couldn’t help but picture Peggy’s reproachful look as he begged her to help him. Only you can change things. It has to come from you.
— CHAPTER 33 —
Andrew walked out of the office laden down with booze, looking both ways before he crossed the road, and promptly dropped the bag of wine on the pavement, where it landed with a crunch. “Unlucky, mate,” called a white-van man inevitably driving past at that moment. Andrew gritted his teeth and made his way to another Sainsbury’s. What was it about going into a supermarket already carrying a bag of shopping that made it feel like you were returning to the scene of a botched murder?
He just about remembered which bottles of wine he’d previously bought and added another bottle for good luck. The woman behind the till—Glenda, according to her name badge—scanned the bottles through and hummed approvingly. “Big night tonight, m’love?”
“Something like that,” Andrew said.
Innocent though they’d been, Glenda’s words opened the floodgates to Andrew’s nerves. He could feel his heart starting to race as he hurried along, sweat beginning to pool under his armpits. He felt like everyone he passed was giving him a meaningful look, as if there were something at stake for them too, and every half-overheard snippet of conversation seemed to be charged with meaning. His anxiety wasn’t helped by the fact that Rupert’s directions to his house seemed needlessly complicated. (He’d told them all to ignore Google Maps—“It thinks I live in a shop called Quirky’s Fried Chicken. I’ve sent several e-mails”—and go by his own instructions.) When Andrew did eventually find the place, sweat was pouring off him and he was out of breath. He jabbed at the doorbell and heard a slightly pathetic and oddly discordant response, as if it were on the verge of breaking.
The door was answered by a cloud of smoke, followed by Jim.
“Come in, come in,” Jim coughed.
“Is everything okay?” Andrew said.
“Yes, yes, just a minor accident involving a paper towel and a naked flame. I’m cracking on with the starters nicely though.”
Andrew was just about to ask whether there was a smoke alarm in the kitchen when it went off and he stood helpless, weighed down with the shopping, as Jim frantically flapped a tea towel in the air.
“Stick the wine on the island for now,” Jim said, indicating the pristine granite worktop complete with wine rack and artfully arranged Sunday supplements. “I need to work out what I’m pairing with what.”
“It’s not an island,” came Rupert’s voice from the doorway. “According to our estate agent, anyway. It being connected to the wall on one side, it’s actually a peninsula.” Rupert was wearing similarly smart attire to when they’d met in the pub, but with the addition of a purple dressing grown tied loosely at the waist. He noticed Andrew looking at it.
“It gets quite cold in my office but I can’t bring myself to turn the heating up. Don’t worry, I’m just an IT consultant, not Hugh Hefner or anything.”
Jim pulled some ingredients from a bag and, having lined them up on the counter, began to scrutinize each item closely, as if he were judging a village fete competition.
“All good?” Andrew said.
“Yes. Absolutely,” Jim said, tapping a finger against his chin, his eyes narrowed. “Absolutely.”
Andrew looked at Rupert, who raised an eyebrow at him.
Andrew was about to ask Jim if he was sure he knew what he was doing when the doorbell rang, the sound even more weary and out of tune than when he’d rung it himself. Rupert put his hands in his dressing gown pockets.
“Well it’s your house tonight, you better answer it.”
As Andrew left the room he heard Jim asking if Rupert owned “a cleaver, or something,” and felt his heart rate increase another notch.
Andrew opened the door to find Alex. Her hair was dyed a shocking white-blond, although it wasn’t altogether rid of the purple, which was clinging on in the odd streak.
“So I’ve got loads of decorations and stuff,” she said, thrusting one of the two bags she was holding into Andrew’s hands. “Gonna really set the mood and make it all massively, extremely fun! Look—party poppers!”
She skipped past Andrew down the corridor.
“Um, Alex, when you say ‘massively, extremely fun’—obviously I want it to be fun but I don’t want anything too extreme or . . . or massive.”
“Sure, gotcha, don’t worry about it,” Alex said. Andrew followed her into the dining room in time to see her enthusiastically scattering glitter onto the dining table.
“Shit,” she said suddenly, slapping a hand to her forehead.
“What’s wrong?” Andrew said.
“Just realized I’
ve left a whole bag of stuff at the shop. I’ll have to go back.” When she took her hand away there was glitter in her hair.
Back in the kitchen, Jim was indiscriminately hacking at a butternut squash with a cleaver as if he were hastily dismembering a corpse.
“Everything all right?” Andrew said, hovering nervously.
“Yes, yes,” Jim said. “Ah, that’s what I was going to say: Rupert, do you have anything that we could use as a trolley to transfer the food to the dining room on?”
“A trolley? Can’t I just carry it?” Andrew said.
“Yes, but I thought it might look quite fancy if you were to prepare the last bits and pieces of the main next to the table, gueridon-style, you see?”
“Gueridon?” Rupert said. “Didn’t he play left-back for Leeds?”
The doorbell warbled again. Andrew was wondering about what else in the way of party decorations Alex might have returned with, but when he opened the door it was with horror that he found Cameron standing on the step.
“Hellooo!” Cameron said, stretching the word out as if he were calling into a tunnel to hear the echo. The smile disappeared from his face. “Oh, crumbs, I’m not mega-early, am I?”
Andrew just about managed to regain his composure. “No, no, of course not, come in, come in.”
“Something smells good,” Cameron said after he’d stepped inside. “What’s a-cookin’?”
“It’s a surprise,” Andrew said.
“How intriguing,” Cameron said with a knowing grin. “I’ve brought some vino rouge, but I’ll probably stick to the Adam’s ale this evening after my—how shall I put it—overindulgence last time.”
“Right, sure,” Andrew said, taking the bottle and guiding Cameron into the dining room.
“Clara and I had sort of clear-the-air talks when I got home that night, truth be told—unpacked everything and really drilled down. It always helps to talk things through, doesn’t it?”
“Absolutely,” Andrew said, realizing with some concern that Cameron looked even paler than earlier.
“Well, I like the glitter,” Cameron said. “Very jazzy.”
“Thanks,” Andrew said. “Take a seat and I’ll be back with your water in a sec. Don’t move!” he added, making a gun with thumb and forefinger. Cameron raised his hands meekly in surrender.
Andrew sprinted into the kitchen and closed the door. “Okay, we have a very big fucking problem,” he said. “One of the guests—my boss, in fact—has arrived and is just sitting there in the dining room. So you need to keep as quiet as possible—and don’t let anybody through this door who’s not me.”
Rupert was swiveling back and forth on a tall chair, looking completely unfazed. “Can’t we pretend to be staff or something?” he said.
“No,” Andrew said. “Too weird. They’ll ask too many questions. Right, what am I doing? Ah yes, water.”
Andrew turned to the cupboards, looking for a glass.
“Hmm, slight issue,” he heard Rupert say.
“What? And where do you keep your glasses?”
“Top-left cupboard. And the issue is there’s a woman just outside, staring at us.”
Andrew nearly dropped the glass as he spun around to look at the window. Thankfully, it was Peggy. And as she caught his eye and smiled, one eyebrow slightly arched in amusement, it was then that Andrew was overwhelmed by now happy and relieved he was to see her—that this was how he felt whenever she came into the same room as him.
He walked over and slid the French windows open.
“Hello,” Peggy said.
“Hello.”
Peggy widened her eyes slightly.
“Shall I come in?”
“Oh, right, yes,” Andrew said, quickly stepping aside. “Everyone, this is Peggy.”
“Hello . . . everyone,” Peggy said. “I think your doorbell’s kaput.”
Andrew started to garble an explanation but Peggy put up her hand to stop him. “It’s fine, it’s fine, you don’t have to explain. I’ll go through, shall I?”
“Good idea,” Andrew said. “Cameron’s already here, actually.”
“Spectacular news,” Peggy said. “Down here, is it?”
“Yep. Second—no, third—door on your right.”
Andrew watched her leave, then turned back to the countertop, leaning on it for support and taking some steadying breaths.
“She seems nice,” Jim said.
“She is,” Andrew said. “So nice in fact that I think there’s actually a very good chance I’m in love with her. Anyway, how’s the butternut whatever coming along?”
When Jim didn’t answer, Andrew looked around to see that Peggy had reappeared without him realizing it. There was a moment when nobody did anything. Then Peggy stepped forward and reached past Andrew, avoiding his eye. “Glasses in here, are they? Lovely. Just getting Cameron’s water.”
She filled the glass from the tap and left, whistling softly.
“Oh great,” Andrew said. He was about to follow this up with some less family-friendly words when there was a knock at the front door.
“I’ll get it,” Andrew said, heading off down the hall. He opened the door to find a panicked-looking Alex bookended by a confused-looking Meredith and Keith.
“Just picked up those things you asked for,” Alex said robotically.
“Ah. Right. Yes,” Andrew said. “Thank you very much.”
“No problem . . . neighbor.”
Andrew took the bag and ushered Meredith and Keith into the hallway, gesturing to Alex that she should go around to the French windows.
“Good luck!” she mouthed, giving him a double thumbs-up.
“Can I use the loo?” Meredith said.
“Yes, of course,” Andrew said.
“Where is it?”
“Um, good question!”
Meredith and Keith didn’t join in with Andrew’s forced laughter. “It’s just through there,” he said, pointing vaguely down the hallway, then scratching at the back of his head. Meredith went through a door and Andrew breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the bathroom fan come on. He showed Keith into the dining room and asked him to take Alex’s bag in with him.
“Should be some fun bits and pieces in there. Party stuff, you know?”
He patted Keith on the back, wondering when it was he’d become a back-patter, and dashed away to the kitchen.
Jim had his hands over his face and was muttering through his fingers.
“What’s happened?” Andrew said.
Jim took his hands away. “I’m so sorry, mate. I don’t know what’s happened, but I think in technical cooking terms, I’ve bollocksed it.”
Andrew grabbed a spoon and took a tentative slurp.
“Well?” Jim asked.
It was hard to adequately explain what Andrew’s taste buds had just experienced. There was too much information to process.
“Well, it certainly has a tang to it,” Andrew said, not wanting to hurt Jim’s feelings. His tongue was probing at his back teeth seemingly of its own accord. Wine, he thought. That was the answer. If they were drunk enough they wouldn’t care about the food.
He uncorked two bottles of merlot and headed to the dining room. As he came around the corner he was just thinking how ominously quiet it was—that it was the sort of silence that hung in the air following an argument—when he was met by a series of loud bangs. Startled, he felt both bottles slip from his hands. There was a moment where they all looked at the red wine spilling out onto the light blue carpet, and the falling streamers from the party poppers nestling in the resulting puddle, before everyone burst into life, offering different advice.
“Blot it, you need to blot it. Definitely blot it,” Peggy said.
“But only with up-and-down movements, not side to side—that just makes it worse, I s
aw it on QVC,” Meredith said.
“Salt, isn’t it?” Keith said. “Or vinegar? White wine?”
“I think that’s a myth,” Andrew said, just in time to see Cameron leap forward with half a bottle of white wine, which he deposited onto the carpet.
“He’s going to kill me,” Andrew breathed.
“Who is?” Meredith said.
“No one. Everyone, please just . . . wait here.” Andrew dashed back down the corridor and into the kitchen. He explained the situation to Rupert, who listened to his rambling, took him by the shoulders and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll sort it later. You need to give those people some food. And I rather think I’ve found a solution.” He pointed to the counter, where five frosted Tupperware boxes sat. They were all labeled with “Cannelloni.”
Andrew turned to Jim, about to apologize.
“It’s fine, do it,” Jim said. “They might’ve found my dish a bit on the . . . challenging side anyway.”
A period of relative serenity followed as they cooked the cannelloni in batches in the microwave and cleaned up the mess. Andrew even felt relaxed enough that when Rupert wryly observed the absurdity of what they were doing, and Alex joked that she couldn’t believe Andrew had talked them into it, he nearly dissolved into hysterics, having to shush the others good-naturedly. He periodically returned to the dining room to hand out breadsticks and olives, while Alex took on the role of continuity adviser on a film set, making sure he carried an oven glove over his shoulder and wiped a damp cloth on his forehead to give the impression of slaving away at a hot stove.
When the food was finally ready to dish up, Andrew felt the most composed he had that evening. The cannelloni wasn’t exactly awe-inspiring, and neither was the conversation, but it really didn’t matter. Civility was exactly what was needed, and thus far everyone was on the same page. Keith, who had been quieter than usual, and less inclined to sarcastic asides, related a story, falteringly, about a voicemail he’d received the previous week. A woman had seen in the local paper the story of a pauper’s funeral and had only then realized it was her brother, whom she’d not spoken to in years. “She told me they’d fallen out because of a table. They thought it was an antique passed down through ten generations. They’d fought over it when their parents died and eventually she came out on top. It was only after she’d seen that he’d died that she decided to get the thing valued, and it turns out it was a fake. A cheap knockoff. Barely worth a fiver.” Keith suddenly seemed uncomfortable in the reflective silence. “Anyway,” he said. “Just makes you think, I suppose. About what’s important.”
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