The Wish List: Escape with the most hilarious and feel-good read of 2020!

by Sophia Money-Coutts

  We crunched along a gravel drive, flanked by lawn, before the driver stopped. All I could see through the window was a front door surrounded by stone pillars.

  ‘That’ll be £18.50 please,’ he said and I tried to pay since Rory had bought our train tickets.

  ‘Definitely not,’ he said, passing a twenty to the front. ‘You’re on my tab.’

  ‘I’m always on your tab,’ I said. I felt guilty. Our bill was constantly uneven because Rory paid for everything: for coffees, for dinner. For taxis. For bottles of wine and bunches of peonies.

  ‘I hope so,’ he replied, kissing me briefly before opening his side of the car. ‘Chop chop, let’s find the matriarch.’

  I climbed out, grateful for fresh air after the onions, and was about to stretch when a grey blur hurtled across the lawn and jumped at me so I staggered, nearly falling to the gravel. ‘JESUS CHRIST IT’S A WOLF.’

  Its paws were on my shoulders so I skipped back a couple of steps to try and free myself. ‘Help, Rory! Help me. How do I get it off?’ I shrieked.

  ‘Merlin, get down!’ Rory said, but he was laughing. ‘It’s not a wolf, you big wimp. It’s my mother’s greyhound. Merlin, here, boy.’

  Merlin dropped his paws and trotted to Rory. My heart was thumping against my chestbone and I felt stupid. Why had I become some sort of dog magnet? I eyed Merlin warily as he thrust his head under Rory’s hand. He was the size of a small pony. How much did that thing eat?

  I brushed the dog hair off my chest and glanced up at the house. It looked old, built from pale yellow stone with two storeys of sash windows running across it. In the middle, around the front door, was a circular porch with pillars either side, ivy knotted around them. An old-fashioned pram with a large hood and silver wheels was parked to one side.

  The door opened. ‘Welcome, my darlings,’ cried a woman in a purple kaftan. Her white hair was plaited over one shoulder and she was barefoot. Eccentric dressing clearly ran in the family, I thought, suddenly feeling very urban in my jeans and ankle boots.

  Rory stepped forward first. ‘Hi, Mummy,’ he said, kissing her on both cheeks, before looking over his shoulder. ‘This is Florence.’

  I smiled and walked around the other side of Rory to greet his mother, trying to avoid Merlin and ignore the fact that my boyfriend had just called his mother ‘Mummy’.

  ‘Good to meet you, Mrs Dundee.’

  She waggled a finger at me. ‘I can’t bear being called that. It makes me feel so old. Elizabeth, please.’

  ‘Sure,’ I replied, awed by her elegance. Up close, Rory’s mother looked like an old Hollywood star. The corners of her blue eyes crinkled when she smiled but her skin still shone like butter.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she said, ushering us through the door. ‘Are you hungry? Lunch is ready. Goodness, what a big bag. Are you staying all month?’

  ‘No, sorry, I just wasn’t sure what to bring so OH MY GOD…’ I jumped as the door swung closed behind us, revealing a looming polar bear standing on its hind legs.

  ‘Ah yes, that’s our bear. Bi-polar, we call him. My great-great grandfather shot him on an expedition he made to the Arctic in 1894. Rory, take Florence’s bag upstairs and we’ll go and see about drinks.’

  ‘Right-o,’ said Rory, making for a curved staircase which ran up from where we were standing. I gazed around me. The hallway looked like a posh junk shop. Under the curved staircase was a dusty grand piano. Against the opposite wall was a grandfather clock, ticking but telling the wrong time. And in between, facing us, was a large fireplace puffing clouds of grey smoke. It made me feel cold. If possible, it was colder inside than it had been outside.

  ‘This way,’ Elizabeth beckoned me. ‘The kitchen’s warmer.’ She moved like a ghost, gliding through a doorway into a large kitchen which looked out on to the lawn behind the house. Her three cats were lying on the kitchen table in a patch of sun.

  ‘Your cats!’ I said. ‘What are they called?’

  ‘Pablo, Claude and Frida. After the artists. We give everything very silly names here, I’m afraid. There’s a peacock stalking around the garden called Salvador. What would you like to drink? I’m making a jug of Bloody Mary.’

  ‘Lovely.’ The kitchen was warmer but it was also an Aladdin’s cave of crap. Beside an Aga was a laundry basket exploding with socks and shirtsleeves. Silver dog bowls and saucepans dotted every surface as if catching leaks. I glanced upwards. There was a brown watermark shaped like France on the ceiling. On one side of the sink was a stack of newspapers piled so high it looked in danger of cascading to the floor at any second. On the other was a fruit bowl which contained only brown fruits. Brown apples, brown pears, withered grapes and bananas that seemed to have passed the brown stage and gone black. I sniffed. Above the smell of overripe bananas and dog, I could also smell burning.

  ‘Right, what can I do?’ said Rory, coming through the doorway. ‘Where’s Daddy?’

  Daddy? Oh no.

  ‘Shooting,’ replied his mother. ‘And you can fetch the sherry for me, then take the partridge out of the Aga. Killed only last weekend!’

  ‘Lovely!’ I said again, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  An hour later, I was still hungry. Rory had been right about the eccentricity. Having served us each a tiny, charred bird on a plate with nothing else, no vegetables, Elizabeth fetched a lump of cheese from the fridge. Next, she’d retrieved two bottles of red wine ‘from the cellar’, blew the dust off them and set them down on the table.

  As a result, I felt that discombobulating sense of being drunk while it was still light outside.

  ‘I’m going to walk the cats,’ she announced, standing up.

  ‘Florence, my darling, feel like a stroll?’ said Rory.

  ‘You don’t want to walk with me,’ replied Elizabeth. ‘Why don’t you show her round the garden?’

  The mystery of the pram was revealed while I stood under the porch minutes later, trying to slide my feet into the wellingtons. It was a challenge after four glasses of wine.

  Elizabeth, wearing a khaki mackintosh over her kaftan and a silk headscarf tied under her chin like the Queen, appeared from inside carrying all three cats and dropped them gently into the pram, before lowering the hood as a new mother might to protect her baby. ‘See you in a bit,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘The Battenbergs are coming for dinner so drinks in the drawing room at six!’

  ‘I did warn you,’ said Rory, as Elizabeth pushed the pram down the drive.

  ‘I like her. She’s different.’ I wasn’t just being polite. Her whimsical, devil-may-care attitude was refreshing. As she trudged through the metal gate at the end of the drive, it looked like she was taking a new granddaughter out for a spin. If anyone peered under the hood they’d get a heck of a shock, although presumably they were used to the sight round here.

  I looked at Rory and laughed, before clapping a hand over my mouth. He’d put on a tweed coat and tweedy hat which made him look like Sherlock Holmes. Tufts of blond hair poked out from under the ear flaps.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I mumbled, still laughing from behind my fingers. ‘I just didn’t know I’d be playing Watson while you solved a mysterious crime on this walk.’

  ‘Florence Fairfax, you are going to pay for that,’ he said coolly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  In less than a second, Rory had wrapped his arms around me and reached inside my coat to tickle me. I hated being tickled.

  ‘Oh my God, stop!’ I screamed, wriggling free and running down the path around the house towards the lawn. The wine made me clumsy but I staggered through a narrow gap in a hedge before he caught the hem of my coat and pulled me to the grass.

  ‘Nice try,’ he said, his arms pinning mine.

  ‘That hat is ridiculous.’

  ‘You have red-wine teeth,’ he replied.

  Our noses were almost touching and we were being drunk and absurd. But I liked it. This felt more like the romantic weekend I�
�d envisaged. Two people locked in their own bubble, laughing together as if life in that moment was entirely perfect, nothing else necessary.

  He kissed me and put his hand back inside my coat, then reached under my jumper and wrapped his cold fingers around my ribcage.

  ‘Fancy it?’ he asked, grinning at me.

  ‘What? Out here?’

  He nodded and I could see from the intensity of his stare that he meant it. Also, I could feel his erection against my leg.

  ‘What about your parents?’ I craned my neck to look back at the house but it was hidden by the hedge. I’d unwittingly run into an enclosed section of the garden, surrounded by the hedge, where herbs were growing in pots and in neat clumps along a flowerbed.

  ‘They’re not here,’ Rory whispered, lowering his head to kiss me again. ‘Don’t you want to?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I really do. But it’s just…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got a wet bottom from the grass.’

  ‘I can solve that.’ He rolled over, pulling me with him, so that his back was on the ground and I was on top of him. I reached back to feel my jeans.

  ‘Yeah, knew it. I’ve got a wet bum.’

  ‘So take them off,’ he said, before he put his hand to the back of my head and pulled me in for another kiss. I wanted to, I could feel myself yielding. But, still, we were outside, lying next to his parents’ hedge and it was four in the afternoon. I thought they had scones in the country at teatime, not sex in the herb garden. And Merlin the giant dog would presumably lumber along any minute and try to join in.

  ‘Come on,’ he coaxed, ‘do it. Take them off for me. Nobody’s here.’

  So, not wanting to seem uptight, I stood and leant to peer through the gap in the hedge at the house. No sign of human or dog. I unzipped my jeans and peeled them down as Rory undid his flies.

  ‘I’m not doing it with that hat on,’ I said, as I tugged my jeans over my ankles and dropped my knickers on top of them. Rory removed his hat and flicked it like a frisbee over the hedge.

  I lifted one leg over him and knelt down, sniggering as I felt the damp grass against my skin. ‘This is a very bad idea,’ I said, as I reached between my thighs and held his erection, before slowly guiding him into me.

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s a fucking exceptional idea,’ Rory groaned, as I started rocking on top of him. It felt pretty strange at first, given I was still wearing my waterproof coat. From the waist up, I looked like a countryside rambler; under that, well, I was probably blue and pimply given that it was a cold October afternoon and the sun had dropped behind the hedge. But my initial fears subsided after a few moments and disappeared completely when Rory licked his thumb and reached forward to rub me with it.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ I repeated, as he circled it again and again around my clitoris.

  ‘Look at me,’ he instructed whenever I threw my head back at the intense heat of the pleasure, so I’d drop my chin again and look straight at him.

  Moments later, I felt myself start to contract around him as he moved inside me, faster and faster, his hand speeding up simultaneously, pushing harder between my legs.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ I gasped, so the words became one. ‘OhmygodohmygodohmygodOHMYGOD.’

  ‘Oh my God, COWABUNGAAAAAAAAA!’ said Rory, thrusting his head back into the grass as we came together.

  ‘Oh my gosh!’ came a different, more surprised voice, as a man’s head poked through the gap in the hedge. ‘Sorry, old bean, I heard voices and thought you might have lost this.’ The man tossed Rory’s hat towards us and vanished again.

  ‘Ah,’ said Rory, glancing at the hat, which had landed next to my bare knee. ‘Florence, you’ve now met my father.’

  I was embarrassed for various reasons when I came downstairs with Rory for drinks later that evening. Largely because I’d been caught rolling around on top of him in the herb garden. But also because Mia had got it wrong about the strapless red dress. Everyone else in the drawing room looked liked they were off to a Quaker meeting: men in corduroy trousers, women in muted dresses with long sleeves. I looked like I was going to the opera. Plus, the hourglass cut of the dress pushed my chest so high my cleavage practically started at my chin. I felt wretched. And cold. According to Rory, his father only put the heating on if the garden pond had frozen over.

  ‘Daddy, meet Florence, Florence meet Daddy,’ Rory said, introducing us as soon as we walked in.

  ‘Hello, Florence. Mortimer Dundee, how do you do? I hardly recognize you with your clothes on!’

  ‘I think the less said about that the better,’ Rory said quickly. ‘How was shooting?’

  ‘Bloody good fun. Now what are you both having to drink?’

  Pulling open a cupboard door behind him, Mortimer revealed a mirrored drinks cupboard with bottles of jewel-coloured spirits.

  ‘Gin and tonic, I think,’ said Rory. ‘Florence?’

  ‘Could I start with a water?’ I felt as if I’d only just sobered up from lunch.

  ‘A water?’ boomed Mortimer. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ He leant in so close that I could see tiny red spider veins spreading either side of his nose like a road map. ‘Perhaps you need to rehydrate after earlier, eh?’

  He roared at his own joke before turning back to the drinks cupboard. I breathed as deeply as I could in my dress and wished I’d written ‘nice parents’ on my list, instead of focusing on the mother.

  ‘And you remember Octavia?’ Rory said, one hand on my back as I turned to see the blonde from the House of Commons.

  ‘Course, hello, I didn’t know you’d be here!’

  ‘I wasn’t going to be, but then my parents said they were coming for dinner so I’ve abandoned London to join the party,’ Octavia said. The red lipstick was back on and she was wearing a pair of black jeans and a black silk shirt which made me feel even more out of place – a painted Russian doll.

  ‘I saw the pictures of you and that dog, so funny!’ she added, smirking at me like Cruella de Vil. ‘Quite the celebrity.’

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Mortimer, handing me a tumbler of water and Rory his gin and tonic.

  ‘Oh, Morty, it’s hilarious. You must see. Florence is an internet sensation.’

  ‘Is she now?’ he said, leering at me from behind his eyebrows.

  ‘No, I promise I’m not, it was just a silly mistake. A dog wh—’

  ‘Rory, sweetheart, hold this for me,’ interrupted Octavia. She handed her glass to him and pulled her phone from her jeans pocket.

  ‘Look, Morty, isn’t it brilliant?’ she said, holding it up so we could all see the screen, my gurning face and Percy wrapped around my leg like a baby koala. ‘He’s a famous Instagram dog and Florence was interviewing him last week…’

  ‘I was actually interviewing his owner,’ I said, trying to regain control of the situation. ‘She’s a Japanese poet, very successful, her second book’s just coming out and she—’

  ‘And Florence was up on stage,’ went on Octavia, ‘and he started rogering her leg. Isn’t that hysterical? The pictures went everywhere. My whole office were crying with laughter about it.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad,’ I said, with a tight smile.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Elizabeth’s tinkly voice behind us.

  Octavia turned to another gaggle of people standing beside the fireplace: Elizabeth, along with two others I assumed were Octavia’s parents. He was wearing a sleeveless maroon jersey over a pink shirt and had the jowls of a middle-aged UKIP supporter; she looked like Patricia, a helmet of perfectly brushed brunette hair sitting on top of a taut, joyless face.

  ‘Oh, Mummy, Daddy! You must see. This is Florence, Florence, these are my parents, Lord and Lady Belmarsh.’ She held up her phone for them and explained the story all over again to hoots of genteel laughter.

  I looked to Rory for support but he just grinned and rolled his eyes at me, as if Octavia was a small and unruly child. I felt like s
omeone had forced a poker down my throat and was stoking the embers of last week’s humiliation.

  ‘Well, well, well, Florence, you do seem irresistible!’ said Mortimer, still looking at me as if I was a rib of beef.

  Luckily, there then came the sound of a gong and Elizabeth announced dinner. I drained my water and put the glass back down in the mirrored drinks cupboard with such a noise I worried the shelf had cracked. Luckily not.

  The dining room was dim, the only light coming from several candles strung along the mahogany table. The candlesticks were made from deer antlers and, on the wall, several foxes’ heads with sharp incisors snarled down at us. I looked from the heads to an oil portrait hung from the wall behind Mortimer (alas, I’d been placed next to him). The portrait was a nude, a pale-skinned woman sitting on a rock beside a pool of water, leaning forwards to wash her hair in it. You could see the crease of her bottom.

  Mortimer followed my glance. ‘That’s Elizabeth, you know.’

  ‘What?’ I flicked from him back to the white bottom on the rock.

  ‘Done years ago,’ he said, as he stuck his finger and thumb into his mouth to retrieve a piece of gristle. ‘It was her wedding present to me.’

  Dinner wasn’t much better than lunch. Elizabeth, tonight in a red kaftan with jewelled slippers that curled at the toes, had carried a large porcelain dish through from the kitchen and announced that we were having game pie. She’d passed plates of this around the table and we’d helped ourselves to vegetables from bowls in front of us.

  I managed two mouthfuls of the pie but it was stringy, tasting much as I imagine rat might. In the dark, I looked down at my plate again and tried to hunt for my next mouthful. Something small and spongy rolled under my fork. An eyeball?

  ‘And what do you do with your time,’ Morty asked, ‘apart from terrorize poor dogs, ha ha!’

  ‘I work in a bookshop,’ I replied, giving up on the pie and lifting a forkful of mashed potato to my mouth. Couldn’t go wrong with mashed potato. ‘That’s why I was interviewing this Japanese poet. Because she’s pretty well known and has got her sec—’