by Beth Thomas
It compounds my theory that inside all men just want to be cavemen or superheroes. There’s something so essentially masculine about charring patties of meat over coals, and handing out blackened chicken wings drenched in a honey glaze. It makes them feel macho, I guess.
I’m lying on my bed in Abby’s spare room. She thinks I’m frantically choosing something nice to wear and sorting out my hair and make-up, but I’m ready. My hair’s still a bit damp from the shower, but it looks OK, loose on my shoulders; and the only make-up I’m wearing is pink-tinted Vaseline on my lips. Clothes are by Tesco – jeans, blue and grey stripey tee shirt. Shoes: magic trainers. Might as well get as much use out of them as I can, they cost enough.
I have absolutely no memory of Abby telling me about this barbecue. In fact, I’m fairly sure she didn’t mention it, just so she could spring it on me at the last minute, knowing I’d think I’d forgotten about it but would have to pretend I hadn’t, and therefore would have no time to come up with an excuse or be out training all afternoon. I’ve told her enough times that I don’t like barbecues, so she’s using subterfuge to get me to one. Either that, or I really have forgotten it.
‘Is that what you’re wearing?’ she says to me, standing up as I enter the living room a minute later.
I look down at myself, just to make sure I haven’t accidentally put on a clown’s outfit. Nope, stripey tee shirt, jeans, just as I remember. I raise my eyebrows and nod. ‘Yeah?’ The interrogative comes out accidentally and I instantly regret it. We both know that it represents a chink in my Tesco armour, and I drop my head back in resigned defeat.
Abby just looks at me for a moment from a pair of gorgeous white linen trousers and floaty pink top with spaghetti straps and glitter on the front. She closes her eyes. Some sort of internal battle goes on for a few seconds. Then she opens them again. ‘OK. Fine. Whatever. Let’s go.’ I blink. It seems my defeat was short-lived.
I had been wondering which neighbour was hosting this barbecue because Abby and Tom live in a purpose built block of flats, with no garden, and therefore so do all her neighbours. But when we reach the street it all becomes clear as we cross over the road and head for the row of semi-detached houses a little way up.
‘How do you know people who live here?’ I ask her, as we push open the front gate. There is an A3-sized piece of paper Sellotaped to the front door that says ‘Barbie – round the back please!’ It seems to have been written in blue crayon.
Abs stops and turns to look at me. ‘I’ll allow you no more than one guess.’
I press my lips together exaggeratedly. ‘Um, pony-trekking holiday in Tuscany?’
She rolls her eyes, then grins and shakes her head. ‘Yeah, got it in one, Sherlock. Nothing to do with the fact that we live on the same street and see each other on the pavement, in the corner shop, putting the recycling out. We went all the way to Italy to meet.’ She hesitates. ‘It is Italy, right?’ I nod silently. ‘Great. Thought so. Now come on.’ We dutifully follow the wobbly blue arrow at the bottom of the sign towards a gate to the side of the house, from behind which a sprinkle of classic barbecue sounds is coming: the sizzle of saturated fat dripping onto hot coal; the crack-fizz of a beer being opened; a ripple of laughter; a faint whimper of distress …
Abs stops at the gate and turns to me. ‘You OK?’
I realise at this point that the whimpering is coming from me. ‘Yeah, sorry.’
She puts her hand on my arm. ‘Seriously, Daze. Are you OK with this? I mean, you don’t have to come with me if you really don’t want to.’
I like how she gives me this option now, standing at the gate to the garden where we’re already expected. Earlier on it was all, ‘Get your arse in here NOW!’ and ‘I know you haven’t forgotten about this barbecue.’
I smile and heave a deep sigh of relief. Now I can bow out gracefully and spend the afternoon with Hugh instead. I open my mouth to say it, but then the expression on Abby’s face suddenly registers on my conscience. She’s got her eyebrows up in an interrogative, but at the same time those cursed eyebrows are imploring me to stay, damn them. She really wants me to come to this barbecue with her. With a sinking feeling of dread, I realise that I owe it to her to be there, and I shake my head. ‘No, no, of course I want to come. Looking forward to a change of scene, actually.’
She visibly relaxes, and smiles. ‘Oh that’s great, Daze. I’m so pleased. I really want you to stay, but I didn’t want to have to blackmail you.’ She turns and pushes the gate open.
‘Just don’t leave me alone,’ I whisper to her back as we march up the shadowy side of the house towards the sunny garden.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says, glancing briefly over her shoulder. ‘I won’t.’
‘Promise?’ The white glare of the garden is getting bigger and brighter ahead. Abs doesn’t answer.
Ten minutes later I’m sitting on a chair on the lawn, trying to make conversation with a woman who looks like she ordered her dress from 1985. Not that I’ve got anything against 1985. It was an excellent year if, like me and that dress, you were born then.
‘I’ve never really liked scuba,’ my new friend is saying. ‘Never really feel safe do you? I mean, it’s not a natural environment, is it, underwater? Not for us air breathers.’ She’s just got back from the Maldives, which is lucky for me as it means I don’t have to say much, just look like I’m listening intently. I nod occasionally and throw in the occasional ‘Uh-huh’, and it seems to suffice. When I begged Abs not to leave me alone, I actually meant not to leave me at all. She glances over at me now, satisfied that I’m not alone, and goes back contentedly to her conversation on the patio.
‘But the snorkelling was incredible …’
‘Uh-huh.’ I wonder idly what the time is, but it seems rude to look at my watch while someone is talking to me. I can see my new friend’s watch easily, but it’s too far away to make out the face properly. Plus of course it’s upside down. She pauses to lift a chicken leg off her plate and a blob of potato salad falls onto her lap.
‘Oh bugger,’ she says unexpectedly. ‘Bugger bugger bugger.’ She stands up. ‘Back in a mo, just gonna go and sponge this off. Help yourself to food, love.’ And she scurries off towards the back door. I watch her go and wonder why she would bother. That dress is truly awful. A little potato salad on it is definitely an enhancement.
While she’s gone I glance around the garden and feel suddenly self-conscious in my very drab outfit. Most of my nice clothes from pre-November are too small for me now, although these jeans went on pretty easily today, now I come to think of it. They must be a pair I bought more recently, after the Jaffa Cake diet had taken its toll. I don’t remember buying any clothes recently, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t. Or does it? Either way, I need to get out at some point and get myself one or two nice things, even though I’m not sure at this point when I’d wear them. Unbidden, an image of Danny pops into my head, smiling at me with the sun behind him as he brushes a stray strand of hair off my face. Even from here, it’s obvious to me that I’m not wearing Tesco jeans, trainers and a grey tee shirt. I will definitely need a floaty floral skirt and spaghetti strap top for that one …
‘Wow, it’s the ladder police,’ a voice says beside me suddenly, and my beautiful vision of Danny on a beach breaks up to reveal a familiar-looking man standing next to me. It takes me a second but then it hits me that it’s the man I saw holding the heavy wheelbarrow when I got lost near the park that time. And his reference to the ladder police makes complete sense as it dawns on me that it was him I was talking to about law suits up the ladder earlier on. Oh no. He looks rumpled and cheerful in a pale blue linen shirt but, if I’m honest, he also looks pretty sexy, and I’m cringing as I think back to my stroppiness earlier on. Why didn’t my flirt muscle kick in automatically, like it did with Danny? God knows what sort of impression I’ve made on him. And I have absolutely no chance to retrieve the situation from a grey crew-neck tee shirt. ‘Got the afternoon off?
’ he goes on. ‘Or are you here in an official capacity, to ensure all ladders and wheelbarrows are the regulation distance away from walkways?’
I smile up at him politely. ‘No, no ladder violations here.’ I leave the smile there for a second more, then turn away. Hopefully he’ll get the message.
‘Well that’s a relief.’ Apparently he doesn’t. ‘Nothing like a ladder violation to ruin a perfectly good barbecue.’
‘I don’t think the words “perfectly good” and “barbecue” can be used in the same sentence, can they?’
‘Oh ho ho! I’m sensing something here. Would I be right in thinking that you are one of that strange, shadowy band of individuals who find sitting outside on a summer’s afternoon enjoying food and drink in a social setting disagreeable?’ He puts a hand up, palm out. ‘No, wait, don’t answer for a minute. Hang on.’ He glances around him quickly, then strides away towards the big table on the patio, grabs a chair and returns with it. ‘I need to be sitting down to hear this,’ he says, plonking the chair on the grass next to me and sitting on it. He leans forward and clasps his hands between his knees. ‘OK. Go on. I’m ready.’
‘Go on what?’
‘Go on, explain to me why you find …’ he waves an arm vaguely in the direction of the rest of the world ‘… this so unpleasant.’
‘This? You mean the barbecue?’
‘Ha, good point. It probably does apply to the whole world. But let’s start small, shall we? What is it about barbecues – and this barbecue in particular – that you find so unpleasant?’
‘I didn’t say I found it unpleasant.’
He turns his head a little so that he’s looking at me sideways. ‘Oh but you did. Maybe not in words, but everything about you is shouting it. You’re over here on the grass on your own, you’ve been staring into the same empty glass for the past twenty minutes, you’re dressed like you’re going to a funeral.’ He grins and shakes his head. ‘Actually, if you don’t mind me saying so, you look like you’ve dressed up in your mum’s clothes. Your mum’s funeral clothes. This is a party, you know. Not a wake. It’s meant to be fun.’
I frown. ‘I am having fun, thank you. And I’m only on my own for a moment while … um …’ oh crap, what was her name? ‘… the lady I was talking to has popped inside.’
‘Hmm. “The lady you were talking to”. No name? No sign of her? Only popped in for a moment?’ He looks pointedly around the garden, then leans forward and squints up at me. ‘She doesn’t really exist, does she? Come on, own up. You’ve just invented her, haven’t you?’
Defensive outrage flares up in me suddenly. ‘No, I have not. She was right here.’ I glance around too, feeling like I’m in a Hitchcock movie, trying to find evidence of scuba-lady’s existence. My eyes land on a blob of potato salad on the ground. ‘Look at that, see? She dropped that. I’m not eating anything, so it obviously wasn’t me.’ I fold my arms self-assuredly. ‘QED.’
‘Hey, OK,’ he laughs as he puts both hands up in a ‘stop’ gesture, ‘fair enough. The old lady really was here.’ He winks theatrically. ‘I believe you, Miss.’
‘She was!’
‘No, no, I know, I’m not doubting you, I’m merely making an observation. No, maybe observation is the wrong word. I’m lodging a query. I’m interested. You’re interesting.’
‘Yes, you’re right, I am. But not in the way you think.’
He nods vigorously. ‘Oh but you are. Vanished lady notwithstanding, you are cutting a bit of a sad figure over here on your own. It’s a lovely sunny day, friendly people are here, there’s food and alcohol. But still you’re miserable. That is interesting.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m not miserable, I’m just feeling a bit …’ I stop. Oh my God, why was I even going to say that to him? He’s looking at me very intently, his eyebrows up as if he’s fully expecting me to spill my most private thoughts to him right here in this sunny garden. Well I’m not. ‘Actually very little about this situation is interesting. I’m just here because my friend made me come.’ Dammit, didn’t mean to say that.
‘Hmm. That’s an interesting statement.’
‘I mean, my friend brought me.’
He laughs. ‘Interestinger and interestinger. So, which one is the selfish, inconsiderate friend?’
I nod towards Abby, who is currently looking curiously my way. ‘That’s her. But she’s not selfish or inconsiderate. She’s amazing and wonderful. Which you would find out if you weren’t so busy making snap judgements about people, and actually spent some time to get to know them.’
‘Hi Felix,’ Abby says now, walking over to us. ‘Great to see you. How’s things?’ My jaw practically hits the floor and I find myself gawping from one to the other.
‘Hi Abs,’ he says, standing up. He embraces her lightly and kisses her cheek. ‘I’m pretty well thanks. Wow, you look beautiful.’ He stares openly at her for a moment, then glances around with exaggerated nervousness. ‘Is Tom here?’ For some reason this makes me furious. Abby is my friend! He’s not allowed to assume some kind of relationship with her. And I’m the one who calls her Abs!
She smiles broadly. ‘Don’t worry, he’s at work. Probably going to join us later, when he finishes.’
‘Hang on,’ I cut in, putting my hand on her arm. ‘You two know each other? How?’
They both nod, both with identical pleased grins. ‘I guess it’s just that kind of neighbourhood,’ Abby says.
‘Hey,’ he says, ‘don’t say that. People will think something untoward has been going on.’
As they laugh together easily, I can’t help but think how I wouldn’t mind being part of a neighbourhood where someone like this could just happen along at any moment.
‘So, Daisy,’ Abby says, turning back to me, ‘this is Felix Bryson. He lives two houses up. Felix, this is my very best friend, Daisy Macintyre.’
‘The pleasure is all mine,’ he says, bowing very slightly. ‘Now, can I get either of you two ladies a drink?’ He makes a quarter turn towards the back door of the house, his head still turned to face us.
Abs shakes her head. ‘I’m fine thanks, got one over there.’
Felix turns to look at me. I regard him coolly through my fringe for a moment, and as I do his eyebrows bounce up and down a couple of times. A small laugh escapes me involuntarily.
‘Aha!’ he bursts out suddenly. ‘She smiles! And there was I thinking she was absolutely determined to be cheerless today.’
I frown. ‘Don’t get used to it,’ I say darkly.
He frowns back. ‘Good God no. That would be a mistake. So, Madam. Can I bring you something delicious to imbibe?’
‘OK. Your eyebrows have convinced me. Thank you.’
‘Marvellous.’ Quickly he pats his eyebrows. ‘Nice work, boys.’ Then he rubs his hands together excitedly, all of which makes me have to actively stop a smile from creeping out. ‘What is Madam’s pleasure?’
‘Surprise me.’
He narrows his eyes and turns his head slightly as he looks at me. ‘Ooh, you are interesting. A surprise it is then. BRB.’ He winks at me, then strolls off whistling towards the door. We both watch him go, then Abby turns to grin.
‘Isn’t he great?’
I shrug. ‘I barely know him …’
‘Oh, look, there’s Eva,’ she says suddenly, and strides away. Now I really am on my own. At a barbecue full of strangers, in a grey tee shirt. Seriously wishing now I had put some mascara on, and a slightly more flattering top. And maybe done my hair a bit more … stylishly. Self-consciously I reach up to touch it and am surprised yet again with the shorter length. It feels OK actually; kind of silky.
Felix returns carrying two tall, pink, creamy-looking drinks and sits back down next to me.
‘It’s called a Pink Panther,’ he says delightedly, handing me a glass.
‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘I guess because of the …’ He trails off. ‘Ah. Are you teasing me now?’
I keep my face bland. ‘Ma
ybe.’ I take a tentative sip of the drink and realise, too late, that it’s alcoholic. It’s sweet and creamy and delicious, but definitely alcoholic. I look up at Felix to find him staring at me expectantly, like a dad watching his kid open a present. ‘What’s in this?’
‘Um, frozen pink lemonade, Malibu and cream. If I remember right. What do you think?’
‘Oh.’ I lower the glass back down to my lap.
His face falls a little. ‘You don’t like it?’
I shake my head. ‘No, no, I do. Thank you. The thing is … I just … I haven’t been drinking alcohol for … quite a long time, and sitting here in the sun, hot day, not having had any for so long …’
‘You’re worried you might get trollied and lose control of your inhibitions? Striptease on the lawn? Air guitar “The Power of Love”? Slow dance with a stranger?’
Embarrassing myself while tipsy is not something I’ve been worrying about. Getting mind-shatteringly wasted every day is. It’s been such a colossal temptation the past few months, I decided from the outset to avoid alcohol completely if I could. Otherwise who knew where it could end? Absolutely no need for Felix to hear about that, though.
‘I might get a headache, is more what I was worried about. My air guitar is in the attic.’
He smiles. ‘Ah, right. Well, if it’s any consolation, it’s only a very small amount of alcohol. Just to give it that coconutty flavour. But I’ll get you something else, if you’d rather?’
I take another sip. It really is absolutely gorgeous. ‘No, it’s OK, don’t worry. I’ll risk it.’ I’m fairly sure that at this point in my life, the slopes are much less slippery than they used to be.
He grins. ‘Excellent.’ He takes a slug of his own drink and smacks his lips exaggeratedly. ‘Bloody lovely. Now. Where were we?’ he says, leaning forward conspiratorially. ‘Oh yes. You were telling me how selfish and inconsiderate Abby is.’