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

by Sophia Money-Coutts

  I sighed and Jaz winced, turning her face away at my breath.

  ‘Sorry, had some red wine. And then Rory made me have sex with my bronzer brush.’

  ‘WHAT?’ she shouted.

  ‘WHAT?’ said Zach, appearing at the top of the stairs.

  I closed my eyes. This morning was bad. So bad.

  ‘Florence Fairfax?’ said Jaz.

  ‘Yes?’ I squeaked, opening my eyes.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  I glanced at the clock over the till. ‘OK, Jaz, I’ll tell you while we put the table up outside. Zach, you didn’t hear that.’

  ‘I certainly did hear that,’ he said. ‘And nice of you to join us. Luckily, I got here early and found poor Jaz loitering outside the door with Dunc.’

  ‘Dunc! Where’s he?’

  ‘Downstairs in the kids’ section,’ said Zach.

  As Jaz and I carried the trestle table upstairs, I explained the previous night in more detail, although I left the part about the blindfold and the bronzer brush until we were outside so Zach couldn’t eavesdrop. At least the forecast had been right; it was the perfect October day, a clear sky and the sun already high enough to dazzle us as we fought with the table legs.

  ‘What did I say? The guy’s a pervert,’ Jaz said, once I’d finished explaining.

  ‘He’s coming later today so you can tell him yourself,’ I said, as I unfurled a banner I’d made that week. ‘As are my entire family, including my dad.’

  ‘Your old man?’ said Jaz, squinting at me in the sunshine. ‘It’d be nice to meet him.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I murmured back, realizing that, although I’d mentioned Dad many times in NOMAD meetings, I’d always kept him – and the rest of my family – very separate. But today, everyone would collide. Not just Jaz and my family, but Rory, too, along with Eugene and Norris. And Zach! The thought made me dizzy.

  ‘You all right?’ said Jaz.

  ‘Mmm,’ I said again. ‘Come on, help me with this.’ I handed her one end of the banner and picked up the Sellotape from the table.

  ‘Chuck us that,’ Jaz said after I’d secured my side.

  She taped her corner and we stood back to survey our handiwork.

  A BOOKSHOP’S FOR LIFE, NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS, said the banner, in wobbly red letters since I’d decided to paint it rather than risk the printer again.

  ‘That? That’s the slogan you went with?’ said Jaz, her hands on her hips.

  Zach opened the door and came out, hand in hand with Dunc.

  I squatted down. ‘Hello, you’ve got so big!’

  He buried himself between Zach’s legs.

  ‘You’ve got a mate,’ said Jaz. ‘What are your babysitting rates like?’

  ‘Free to this one,’ Zach replied, putting a hand on Dunc’s head. ‘We’ve been looking at dinosaur books, haven’t we?’

  Dunc nodded. ‘Yes, and my favourite is the, er…’ His small face contorted with concentration before he frowned up at Zach.

  ‘The diplodocus,’ said Zach.

  Dunc nodded authoritatively.

  ‘You’re my hero,’ Jaz told him.

  ‘Not at all. But nice work, you two. You all right if I open up?’

  I nodded. ‘I might make a coffee quickly. Jaz, want one?’

  ‘Yeah, babe. Milk, three sugars please.’

  The sunshine meant shoppers flocked to the King’s Road in their cashmere overcoats and sunglasses. By lunchtime, we had over three hundred signatures and Jaz had gone hoarse from shouting like a town crier.

  ‘Save our local bookshop,’ she croaked for a final time before I told her to quit. I could feel the tentacles of a headache twitching behind my forehead.

  Zach ferried us tea and biscuits while Eugene manned the till inside, helped by Dunc sitting on the counter, sliding new books into paper bags.

  It was around eleven when I spotted a familiar head of silver hair coming towards us.

  ‘Dad!’ I cried, one hand shielding my eyes from the sun, the other waving like a small child who’d just spotted her father at the school gates.

  He grinned and, behind his spectacles, his eyes crinkled into lines. Time spent in hot countries meant his face had darkened over the years as his hair turned paler.

  ‘Ah, my Florence, hello,’ he cried, as I hurried out from behind the table and he wrapped his arms around me.

  ‘Hi,’ I mumbled into his overcoat before stepping back and squinting at him. ‘How are you? Tired? How was the flight? When do you go back? Where are the others?’ I glanced over his shoulder to gauge how long I had him before they arrived.

  Dad laughed. ‘Which question do you want me to answer first?’

  ‘All of them. Oh no, actually, meet my friend Jaz. Jaz, this is my dad, Henry.’

  ‘Henry Fairfax, hello, very good to meet you.’ He held a tanned hand out towards her.

  ‘Henry, my man, you too. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  Dad pretended to grimace. ‘Not all terrible, I hope?’ Ever a diplomat, he was always ready to charm strangers.

  ‘Mostly terrible, yeah, but some good,’ she replied, with a grin.

  He turned back to me. ‘Your stepmother and sisters have stopped in a shop down there…’ He turned and pointed along the King’s Road. ‘Patricia wanted to look at hats. And I’m extremely well, only sorry that this trip is so brief.’

  ‘You’re flying back tomorrow?’

  ‘’Fraid so. Got to be back in the embajada on Monday.’

  This meant the embassy. Dad was good with languages. He’d picked up Urdu in Pakistan and was now fluent in Spanish. Mum had been the same – born in France, she could natter in French and English as a child and learned Hindi while teaching in Mumbai. Apparently she’d called me ‘baby bandar’ when I was tiny, a Hindi term of affection meaning ‘little monkey’. I didn’t remember this but Dad had told me once and I’d held on to the phrase ever since, an oral talisman that reminded me of her.

  ‘How is it?’ I asked again. ‘How are the soybean magnates?’

  ‘Oh fine, fine,’ he replied. It was always his answer. There could have been another war brewing in the Falklands and he would have shrugged it off. It was an unflappable calm which explained both why he’d been successful in diplomacy and his marriage to Patricia worked.

  ‘But forget about me,’ Dad went on. ‘Look at all this!’ He waved at my banner. ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘All right. Got a few hundred names, I reckon. Will you sign?’

  ‘Try and stop me,’ he said, picking up a pen.

  As Dad leant over the table, I heard Patricia’s voice floating towards us. Not the words, just the shrill tone. I watched her approach, flanked by Mia and Ruby. Hugo was lagging at the back, phone clutched to his ear.

  ‘Morning, darling,’ said Patricia, proffering her cheek.

  ‘Morning, did you find a hat?’

  Patricia made a noise of disgust. ‘No, they were all hopeless.’

  ‘I took some photos though, look,’ said Ruby, grinning. She pulled out her phone. They were ludicrous: Patricia with what looked like a turquoise bath puff attached to her head; Patricia wearing a pink boomerang; Patricia in a red beret.

  ‘No sniggering please, girls.’

  ‘Oh, Pat, come on, we’re only joking,’ Ruby replied, slipping her phone into her pocket.

  Before Patricia could complain about the nickname I turned back to the table and introduced them all to Jaz, then told everyone to add their signatures to the petition.

  ‘But what exactly am I signing for?’ demanded Hugo. ‘I don’t like signing things I’m not fully informed about.’

  Mia tutted. ‘Sweetheart, it’s to save the shop, and Flo’s job. It’s not a pyramid scheme.’ She held out a pen which Hugo looked at suspiciously before leaning over the sheet and adding his name.

  ‘Is Zach here?’ asked Ruby, peering through the shop window.


  ‘He’s probably downstairs.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Dad.

  ‘My colleague Zach.’

  ‘I’m with you, Rubes, he’s a honey,’ said Jaz, winking at her.

  ‘Where does he come from? And who are his parents?’ demanded Patricia, who was mourning the departure of Jasper from Ruby’s life and, with it, the idea of her daughter becoming a duchess who lived in a castle.

  ‘He’s Norris’s nephew. A photographer.’

  Patricia’s lip curled. A photographer didn’t sound at all like someone who might own a castle.

  ‘He’s hot and he rides a motorbike, and he teases Flo, which is very good for her,’ said Ruby, grinning. Then she turned from her mother to me. ‘I saw Rory in the kitchen this morning, had a cup of tea with him. He said you two were up very late last night.’

  ‘Can we not talk about last night,’ I said, at a flashback of the bronzer brush. This absolutely was not a topic I wanted to discuss in front of Dad and Patricia.

  Jaz cackled.

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ said Dad. ‘I might just go into the shop and have a browse.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Ruby, hurrying in after him.

  The others hovered in front of the table and Hugo’s face flinched as if in pain.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Worried about time,’ he muttered, glancing at his wrist. ‘Mia, we really should be going if we’re going to get to Claridge’s.’

  ‘But where’s this boyfriend of yours, Florence?’ interjected my stepmother. ‘I thought he was going to be here? Your father and I are longing to meet him.’

  Right on cue, Rory’s face appeared behind them.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ he boomed, so everyone spun to face him. He was wearing a beige overcoat, Raybans and a pair of leather gloves. ‘How’s my little campaigner?’ he asked, leaning over the table and kissing the top of my head.

  ‘Bit tired,’ I said, ‘but Rory, meet my friend Jaz and my stepmum Patricia.’

  Patricia beamed so widely her eyes formed little slits. ‘Rory, hello, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to meet you. We were starting to worry because poor Florence here has never had a bo—’

  ‘BOLOGNAISE!’ I shouted. I couldn’t think of anything else. I’d panicked and belted out the first word that came to mind.

  ‘Are you feeling all right, darling?’ asked Patricia.

  ‘Mmm, fine, I was just thinking about my lunch. And I’ve never had a proper bolognaise before. Some people make it with cream and others say you should never put mushrooms in it. What do you all think?’ I was gabbling, as if speaking faster would alleviate the social tension I felt. This gathering of people, the colliding of several parts of my life, felt like a complicated Venn diagram – and I was right in the middle trying to hold it all together.

  ‘I think we should be leaving for our own lunch,’ said Hugo, looking at his watch again. For once, I was grateful to him.

  ‘Stop fussing,’ said Mia, ‘I need to talk to Jaz about my wedding hair.’

  She and Jaz started discussing the merits of loose hair versus bridal up-dos, while Rory peered at the sheets lying on the table.

  ‘How many signatures?’

  ‘Over three hundred, we reckon.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Oi! I’m quite proud of that.’

  ‘No, of course,’ he replied quickly. ‘You should be.’ Then he glanced up at me. ‘Where’s your dad?’

  ‘Inside with Ruby, who’s chasing after Zach.’

  ‘Not the communist?’ said Rory, wrinkling his nose as if someone had just farted.

  Patricia gasped. ‘He’s a communist?’

  Rory leant towards her, smirking. ‘I don’t think officially, but he might as well be. A terrible left-winger.’

  ‘Oh dear, we can’t have that,’ said Patricia, straining her neck to look inside the shop.

  I handed Rory a pen. ‘Sign please.’

  He added his name at the bottom of a sheet. ‘Three hundred and one,’ he said, handing the pen back to me. ‘And I should probably be getting on to my office.’

  ‘Hang on, you need to meet Dad,’ I said, feeling a pang of disappointment that Rory might disappear so quickly when I’d spent the previous weekend sweating with anxiety, hoping I didn’t say anything wrong in front of his parents.

  ‘Yes, Rory, I gather you work in politics, like my husband,’ Patricia said, placing a hand on his forearm, as if to stop him from physically leaving.

  ‘Indeed I do.’

  Patricia patted his arm approvingly. ‘I do so love a man with ambition.’ Then she glanced at me. ‘Wasn’t ambition one of the things on your list, Florence?’

  ‘MAGICIAN,’ I shouted, cursing Patricia in my head. She seemed completely oblivious to the idea that Gwendolyn had to remain a secret.

  ‘What list?’ said Rory.

  ‘A list of jobs,’ I lied. ‘I wrote it when I was little. They were the jobs I wanted to do when I grew up.’

  You wanted to be a magician?’ said Rory, with a frown.

  ‘Yup. I loved, er, Paul Daniels. And then I wanted to be a, er, cook. And then I read The Secret Garden and decided on books. Isn’t life funny?’ I laughed too loudly at this, my eyes sliding from Rory to Patricia, then Mia and Hugo and finally Jaz. They all stood blinking at me, as if they were silently weighing up whether I should be committed to some sort of asylum.

  I felt relief flood my body as the shop door opened again and Dad stepped out, followed by Ruby. A distraction. But then Zach appeared behind them with Dunc on his shoulders and the relief was swept away by a spike of anxiety at the thought that he’d say something snarky to Rory.

  Christ, this morning was an emotional assault course and the table felt crowded. I wanted to sit down but we didn’t have any chairs.

  ‘Dad!’ I said weakly. ‘This is Rory, Rory, this is my dad.’

  ‘Rory, excellent to meet you.’

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ said Rory, pushing his sunglasses on to his head before shaking his hand. ‘The pleasure is all mine.’

  ‘No, no, none of that please. And I’m delighted to hear you’re joining us for Mia’s wedding?’

  ‘It’s also my wedding,’ chipped in Hugo.

  ‘I am,’ Rory replied. ‘Very much looking forward to it.’

  As Dad and Rory grinned at one another there was a lull in conversation.

  ‘And this is Zach,’ I said, for the benefit of those outside who hadn’t met him.

  Rory spun to face him. ‘Oh it’s you. Hello,’ he drawled.

  ‘Hi, everyone.’ Zach released one of Dunc’s legs to wave at the semicircle before his eyes reached Rory. He took in his sunglasses and gloves. ‘Nice to see you again,’ he added. ‘Are you off to a Goodfellas convention?’

  ‘Ha, no, no,’ said Rory, with a short bark of fake laughter. ‘Actually I really must be getting to the office, so much paperwork to get through.’

  ‘The Middle East’s not going to solve itself,’ Zach replied, with a wide smile.

  I ground my teeth. I’d been desperate for my family to meet an actual, real-life man I was dating but now I wanted everyone to clear off. This was exhausting. I felt like a very small country, more an island, really, whose threat level had been raised to critical by the presence of various competing factions. I needed peace and space for my jangling loyalties and emotions to calm down.

  ‘We really must go too, Mia,’ said Hugo.

  ‘All right, all right,’ she said, flapping a hand at him. ‘But Jaz, I’ll ring you.’

  ‘Sure, babe. Any time.’

  Patricia declared they’d catch a taxi to Claridge’s from the King’s Road and everyone murmured their goodbyes.

  ‘I’m walking that way so I’ll come with you,’ replied Rory, before leaning over to kiss me. ‘Bye, sweetheart, call me when you finish here?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Dad hung back as the others headed down the little street towards the King’s Road.
/>
  ‘Florence, darling, it’s such a coincidence, but I’ve just discovered that Zach’s about to go travelling across South America.’

  ‘Are you?’ I said, frowning at Zach. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yeah. When I’m done here. I’ve been wanting to go to Patagonia for years to take pictures.’

  ‘Lunch, lunch, lunch,’ demanded Dunc, his little heels kicking against Zach’s chest.

  He laughed. ‘All right, buddy, we’re off.’

  ‘Zach, do get my email address from Florence to look me up,’ said Dad.

  ‘I will, thanks.’

  A high-pitched shout came from down the street. ‘Henry!’ It was Patricia, gesticulating at a dawdling taxi.

  Dad nodded at her, then looked back to me. ‘Bye, darling, sorry this was so brief.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said, stepping out from the table for another hug. ‘When are you next home?’

  ‘Probably the wedding,’ he said, releasing me.

  ‘Not till then?’

  ‘It’s only a month or so away.’

  ‘True.’ I nodded at him and told myself that, at least outwardly, I had to act like a grown-up, even though I wanted to hold on to Dad’s ankles and refuse to let him leave.

  ‘Be good,’ he replied with a grin. ‘Great to meet you both,’ he added, waving at Jaz and Zach before hurrying towards the taxi.

  ‘And we’re going to get some food, aren’t we, Dunc?’ said Zach, before glancing at Jaz. ‘Anything he can’t eat?’

  Jaz opened her mouth as if she was about to issue a stream of mad rules but then closed it. ‘Nah, whatever you like. But let me give you some cash.’

  Zach waved a hand at her. ‘I’ve got it.’

  They sauntered off and I let myself fall back against the shop’s windows with a big sigh.

  ‘Careful,’ warned Jaz. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Mmm, just tired.’

  ‘Families, eh?’ she said, with a sympathetic grin.

  ‘Yeah. Something like that. But listen, you don’t have to stay. Take Dunc home when they get back. I can manage on my own.’

  ‘Are you kidding? Getting to shout at all these posh people? Not a chance! Save our local bookshop!’ she croaked.

  ‘All right, I’ll go and get sandwiches. Any preferences?’

  ‘Not a sandwich. Can you get me the falafel salad from Pret? And a fork. And a handful of napkins?’