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

by Sophia Money-Coutts

  He didn’t let me finish. ‘Oh, a bookshop. So you’re in trade?’ I might as well have told him I worked in a brothel.

  The potato was cold.

  ‘You know the one, Daddy. Frisbee in Chelsea?’ interrupted Rory from the other end of the table.

  ‘Oh, I simply adore Frisbee,’ Elizabeth interrupted, clapping her hands together. ‘How wonderful. I’d love to work in a bookshop.’

  ‘I know it,’ barked Lord Belmarsh. ‘Looks like a charity shop from the outside.’

  ‘It’s actually a very special place,’ I replied, spearing a small piece of cabbage on my plate in the hope that it was edible. I’d eaten almost nothing at lunch and was now well into my third glass of red wine. If I couldn’t eat this cabbage I feared an embarrassing accident. ‘It’s been there since 1967.’

  ‘But she’s not going to work there for ever because she’s writing her own book, aren’t you, darling?’ said Rory.

  The cabbage disintegrated in my mouth. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be there, to be honest,’ I replied. ‘I really love it.’

  ‘But you want to be a writer instead of selling other people’s books,’ he urged, and it seemed, briefly, as if Rory was a pushy parent, encouraging me to say the right thing in front of everyone else; that he too was ashamed I worked in a shop.

  ‘Both, if I’m lucky,’ I replied with a smile around the table. I felt like a performing seal.

  ‘When are you going back tomorrow, darling?’ Elizabeth asked him.

  ‘After lunch?’

  ‘Oh good. I thought we could all go for a ride in the morning. Do you ride, Florence?’

  Mortimer leant towards me. ‘She means horses, my dear.’

  ‘I used to, yes,’ I said. ‘But not for years. My French grandmother had a very small, very obstinate pony called Winston that I used to ride into the village and back to get croissants in the morning.’

  ‘Wonderful! We’ll go out for a canter after breakfast in that case. Oh dear, Morty, look, there’s a vole,’ she added, pointing to the skirting board where a small dark object scuttled along the carpet.

  ‘A vole!’ shrieked Lady Belmarsh.

  ‘Oh, Mummy, stop fussing, it’s not going to bite you,’ said Octavia.

  I wondered if I could trap it and eat it.

  ‘Morty, go and get Pablo, he’ll catch it,’ said Elizabeth, putting her napkin on the table. ‘And if everyone’s finished, shall we go through and sit soft?’

  We went back to the drawing room for coffee served in thimble-sized cups. I drank three, mostly to warm up and quieten my hunger pangs, but also to dilute the red wine. There was a box of After Eights on the coffee tray so I had several of those too, scrunching the black paper sleeves in my fist to hide how many I ate.

  ‘Rory tells me you and he grew up together,’ I said to Octavia, who was sitting next to me on the sofa.

  ‘Yes! He was my first proper kiss when we were thirteen,’ she replied, before turning and pointing towards the windows. ‘It was here, actually, during a party one summer. He whisked me into the herb garden and had his wicked way.’

  ‘Ha! The herb garden, that’s funny,’ I murmured, glancing across the room to where Rory was in discussion with Lord Belmarsh. It wasn’t funny, obviously, but I didn’t want to let her know that. ‘And you’re going out with Noddy?’

  Octavia’s head fell back against the sofa and she laughed. ‘Noddy! God no. I love him but not like that.’ She paused and glanced at Rory. ‘No,’ she said lightly. ‘No boyfriend at the moment. I’m all free.’

  Then she lowered her voice, almost to a whisper, and leant in closer. ‘But don’t worry, Rory and I wouldn’t work.’

  ‘Really? How come?’ I squeaked, unable to think of a sharper reply.

  ‘I’m too challenging for him,’ she said, with a flick of her red nails. ‘He needs someone more docile. Someone who’s not going to outshine or threaten him. Someone who’d make a good political wife. Someone, perhaps, a bit like you.’ A smirk danced on her lips as I groped for a reply. Why did other people often seem to have such quick retorts at moments like these while my own mouth flapped like a guppy fish? I was too stunned to come up with anything clever.

  ‘I, er, I mean, er, I think it’s bit, er, early for that,’ I stuttered eventually. ‘I mean, we’ve only been on a few dates and I’m actually not that do—’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,’ she carried on, glancing back at Rory. ‘I can tell he likes you. And he’s been told he needs to find a wife before being given a seat so you could easily end up married, living in this house.’ She settled back against the sofa and spread her arms out across it.

  I tried to process what she’d just said. I felt like a tiny alarm bell had just gone off inside my skull. ‘Sorry, he’s been told he needs to find a wife?’

  Her red mouth formed a perfect circle in surprise. ‘Oh, didn’t you know? You mustn’t worry too much. It’s all political shenanigans. But the party does tend to prefer candidates who can demonstrate family values so Rory’s been unofficially instructed to get married.’ She paused and smirked again. ‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’

  ‘Right,’ I murmured, gazing at the fireplace in front of us. ‘No, no, he hasn’t mentioned anything.’

  ‘Hector, darling, I think we should go home and let the dogs out,’ said Lady Belmarsh.

  ‘Quite right,’ replied Lord Belmarsh, standing up. ‘We should be orf, but thank you, Dundees, for a terrific dinner.’

  I stood with Octavia and murmured goodbyes like a robot.

  ‘So lovely to see you again, Florence, and see you in London, I’m sure,’ she said, with another smile. Unbelievable. The woman would take gold in every category of the Smirking Olympics.

  Rory, his parents and I stood in the porch to wave them down the drive.

  ‘That was bloody marvellous, and delicious pie, darling,’ Mortimer told his wife as we went back inside.

  Suddenly, I felt so tired I could barely stand.

  ‘Rory, take poor Florence upstairs, she looks exhausted,’ instructed Elizabeth.

  ‘Knackered, I’ll bet,’ added Mortimer.

  ‘Yes, Mummy,’ said Rory, ‘but are you all right, darling? You look awfully pale.’

  ‘Mmm, fine,’ I said faintly.

  ‘I’ll run you a bath,’ he said. ‘How about that?’

  I nodded silently before we said goodnight to his parents and walked up the curved staircase. What to say? How to say it? Was that what I was? A box marked ‘wife’ for him to tick? A project?

  I decided I’d have a bath and broach the subject in the morning. I was too shattered now. The combination of red wine and coffee was making me both drowsy and jittery. Obviously there was almost no hot water in this arctic house so I lay in the tepid, avocado-coloured bath and counted the flowers up and down the curtains. And by the time I tiptoed back down the corridor in a scratchy towel to our bedroom, Rory was already asleep.

  I woke the next morning with a cold nose. Our bedroom was freezing. At around 3 a.m., when I wondered if I’d survive the night, I’d scrabbled in the dark for two jumpers and a pair of socks. I’d considered putting several pairs of knickers over my head as a hat before deciding that it might alarm Rory. I exhaled with my mouth open and saw my breath hang in the air, then pinched my thumb and my forefinger around my nose to try and warm it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Rory, opening his eyes.

  ‘By dose is cold,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  I removed my hand. ‘My nose is cold.’ Then I sniffed and smelled fish. ‘What’s that?’ I asked, fearing that I might have to eat whatever Elizabeth had murdered in the kitchen.

  ‘Kippers. Daddy always has kippers on a Sunday morning,’ he said, leaping out of bed, flashing his bottom at me. But not even that could cheer me up. The conversation with Octavia had been the first thought that wormed its way into my brain when I woke, making me feel deflated before I’d even opened my eyes.

&nb
sp; He’d already pulled on a pair of trousers and was buttoning a shirt at the foot of the bed. I couldn’t bear to extend an inch of bare flesh from under the blanket.

  ‘Come on, lazybones,’ he said, pulling the bottom corner of the blanket and whipping it off. The sudden cold made me shriek and curl into a ball on the mattress. ‘RORY! I hate you, that’s so mean.’

  He laughed as he headed for the door. ‘As if you could hate me. I’m heading to the kitchen but come down whenever you’re ready.’

  I sat up and looked around the bedroom for my bag. My mouth still tasted of baked rat. I needed to brush my teeth, get dressed, go down to the kitchen and forage for a piece of toast. They must have toast. You couldn’t screw up toast.

  Twenty minutes later, I followed the fishy stench back down the long corridor, the stairs and into the kitchen.

  ‘Morning!’ cried Elizabeth, standing over the Aga. Rory and his father were sitting at one end of the kitchen table, the cats stretched across the other.

  ‘Morning, Florence, I trust you slept well?’ asked Mortimer. He was clearly an advanced-level pervert since even this sounded like an innuendo.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ I fibbed.

  ‘Have a seat,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Would you like a kipper? I’ve saved you one.’

  I waved my hands quickly at her. ‘No! I mean, no thank you. Just a piece of toast would be great.’ I pulled out the chair next to Rory, sat and felt Merlin’s wet nose push at my forearm. I patted him lightly on the head in case the others were watching, then twisted my body away.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve received a boring email from the office,’ said Rory, putting a hand on my leg. ‘There’s a developing situation in Algeria which means I need to go back up after breakfast. Do you mind?’

  ‘Oh no! That means no riding,’ said Elizabeth. ‘What a pity.’

  ‘That is a pity,’ I said, trying to sound sad.

  ‘You’ll have to come back for a gallop another time, eh?’ said Mortimer, over the top of his paper.

  I smiled thinly at him as Elizabeth dropped a piece of toast on my plate. ‘There you go, butter and jam on the table.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, reaching for the butter dish. Oh. It was covered in dog hair. I peered more closely. Or cat hairs, plus a couple of human hairs for good measure. I scraped around the hairs, looked at the jam jars in front of me and decided to stick with butter.

  Rory continued tapping at his phone, Mortimer read his newspaper and Elizabeth hummed while shuffling pots around the kitchen so I sat eating my toast and stared through the French windows. I’d talk to Rory on the train. I wasn’t sure how to start the conversation but I’d think of something.

  This, I decided, with another crunch of hairy toast, was why life without boyfriends was easier. I’d been all right on my own and now I was in a pickle. I liked Rory. I felt a small kick of pleasure inside me every time I remembered that I had a boyfriend, every time I mentioned him to someone. Sure, not very feminist, but it made me feel more normal, less alone. And yet here I was, weakened by him because his behaviour had influenced my own mood. Or maybe that was just what a relationship looked like? I pulled a hair from between my lips and flicked it from my finger to the floor. If I got back to London without dysentery it would be a miracle.

  Luckily, because it was a Sunday morning, the train was almost empty. We sat at a table and Rory optimistically slid his book on Margaret Thatcher out from his satchel.

  ‘Can I talk to you about something?’ I asked, forcing myself to get the sentence out. I knew, once I’d said those words, that other words had to follow them, although I still wasn’t exactly sure what those words would be.

  ‘Hmm?’ he said, not taking his eyes off the page.

  ‘Do you want to marry me?’

  He turned towards me with a grin. ‘Florence Fairfax, are you proposing to me on the 11.03 to London King’s Cross?’

  ‘No, sorry, that’s not what I meant, I’m not proposing.’

  ‘I think you are,’ he said in a mocking tone. ‘That sounded very much like a proposal to me.’

  ‘I’m not proposing! Listen, I’m being serious – it was something Octavia said to me last night.’

  A ripple of alarm passed over his forehead. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said that you were only going out with me because you’d been told you need to get married for your career, for a seat,’ I said, as quickly as I could, as if getting the words out faster made them less painful. ‘That someone had told you to find a wife, and that’s why you’d picked me.’

  Rory closed his book and put it on the table so Margaret Thatcher glared back at me. ‘I’m sorry she said that.’

  ‘It’s true?’

  He sighed, turned, looked away from me through the window and I felt a black surge of anguish. OK, never mind. We’d break up, and that was sad, but Marmalade would be waiting for me at home. And it had been a diverting few weeks. And at least I could say now that I’d had a boyfriend, even if it was only for three seconds. That would shut Patricia up. And I’d probably cry for several months but I’d finally get over it, maybe when I was in my mid-forties. And then I might seriously think about signing up for a nunnery. Were nunneries listed on Google? I’d look when I got home.

  ‘Course it’s not true,’ he said, turning back a few moments later, just as I was wondering if I had the right shaped face for a wimple.

  ‘So why did she say it?’

  ‘Because she’s jealous and always thought she and I would end up together,’ he said, with a sigh. He took both my hands in his. ‘And yes, it’s true the party used to prefer that candidates were married. Solid family men, that sort of thing. But not any more. Come on, Florence, you’re better than this, it’s not 1919.’

  I rolled my lower lip through my teeth. ‘So she made it up?’ I asked, frowning.

  He shrugged. ‘That’s the only thing I can think of.’ He glanced away from me, down the aisle at an approaching rattling. ‘Look, here comes the man with the trolley. Do you want anything? Can I buy you a restorative cup of coffee? I think I might have one.’

  I wasn’t sure I could concentrate on coffee while my brain was still whirring.

  ‘Hello, my good man,’ Rory said to the short man in a regulation waistcoat pushing the trolley through the train. ‘Could I please have a cappuccino, hold the chocolate.’

  ‘Don’t do them,’ he replied in a surly tone. ‘We do white coffee or black coffee.’

  ‘Ah, of course, what a terrific choice. Well, in that case a white coffee please. Florence?’

  ‘Er…’ I looked at the man in the waistcoat as if he’d help me out and sell me the secret to a straightforward relationship instead of a coffee that tasted like puddle. ‘No, I’m good, thanks.’

  Rory tapped the card machine and took his coffee – ‘Magnificent, thank you so much’ – before putting his free hand over mine.

  ‘Ignore Octavia,’ he said. ‘She’s a troublemaker sometimes.’

  ‘I will, I just wanted to ask,’ I replied.

  ‘Don’t be absurd, of course you should ask,’ he said, kissing my head before releasing my hand and immediately opening Margaret Thatcher.

  When we arrived at King’s Cross, Rory caught a cab to his office. I took the Northern Line home, inconveniencing every other person on the Tube with my suitcase.

  I found Mia and Hugo on the sofa discussing wedding canapés. Mia was cross-legged with her laptop balanced on her knees, Hugo was lying flat along the rest of it, his gangly legs dangling over the sofa arm like a cadaver.

  ‘What do you think, Flo, if you had a choice between the venison carpaccio with fig compote or partridge tart with horseradish cream?’ she asked.

  ‘Please, no more partridge,’ I said, releasing my suitcase. ‘Rory’s mother murdered several of them for our lunch yesterday.’

  ‘Course, his parents!’ shrieked Mia, shutting her laptop screen and dropping it on Hugo’s torso.

  ‘Owwww, Mia, t
hat really hurt,’ said Hugo, clutching his stomach.

  She ignored him. ‘How were they? I’ve been tits deep in crab cake and scallop goujons since yesterday; tell me everything.’

  ‘It was kind of hilarious,’ I replied. I needed a quiet afternoon to go over it in my head. The house. His parents. Nearly being ravaged by a wolf. Actually being ravaged by Rory in the herb garden. The food. Octavia’s conversation and my talk to Rory on the train. I looked down as I heard a ‘mewl’ to see Marmalade sitting patiently at my feet.

  ‘Hi, pal,’ I said, scooping him up and scratching under his ear, never more grateful to see him.

  ‘Hilarious how?’

  ‘Mad,’ I replied, as Marmalade buried his face in my neck. ‘Eccentric. Like, they live in this huge posh house with dogs and chickens, even a peacock, but it looked like a squat inside. Well, maybe not a squat. But it was pretty old and run-down. Curtains that looked like they’d been put up 900 years ago, an extremely casual attitude towards voles and a whole room for boots. Boots! And no heating.’

  ‘That’s posh people for you, they spend all their money on horses.’

  ‘They do have horses.’

  ‘Exactly. But you liked them? His parents?’

  ‘Yessssss,’ I said slowly. ‘They were just quite… different.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I loathed Hugo’s mother when I first met her.’

  ‘What?’ interjected Hugo, pressing his head back into the sofa to glance up at Mia. ‘I thought you liked them?’

  ‘I do now,’ she replied, running a soothing hand over his forehead before looking at me and mouthing ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘All I’m saying to Florence,’ she went on, ‘is that it doesn’t matter if you don’t love the parents straight away. There’s all this pressure about meeting them for the first time but sometimes other people’s families are even worse than one’s own.’

  ‘Where’s Ruby?’ I asked.

  ‘Dunno. Haven’t seen her all weekend. Have you invited Rory to the wedding yet?’