by Sue Margolis
“Okay, maybe not emigrate, but we’ll have to move to Surrey. I hate Surrey. It’s full of orange women with boob jobs and big lips.”
Victoria decided that her only hope was to send hand-tied calla lily bouquets to all the mothers who had been forced to witness Joyce’s obscene display.
When Amy’s phone rang on Monday evening, the last person she was expecting to be on the other end was Joyce.
“Amy, I just don’t know what to say about what happened yesterday. I am mortified. I came into your home and behaved in a way that is unforgivable. Your dad was furious with me, and quite rightly. He and I had a long talk last night, and I told him he had every right to walk away, but he refused. Instead he wants me to join AA, and he’s said he’ll support me. I can’t begin to tell you what a wonderful, caring man he is. I really don’t deserve him.”
It was true, Amy thought. In so many ways, Phil was a wonderful man. He’d worked for charity all his life. He doted on his daughters. Yet during the last few years of his marriage to Val, he had neglected her so badly. What was it he had found in the troubled, alcoholic Joyce that he hadn’t been able to find in Val? The answer was pretty obvious. Joyce was a damaged soul who needed him in a way that Val never had. Maybe Amy had never understood just how much her father needed to be needed.
“AA sounds like a good idea,” Amy said.
“It’s time. I’ve been in denial about my drinking for so long. My mother was an alcoholic. She spent most of my childhood smashed or in bars getting smashed, and in the end it killed her. I don’t want that to happen to me.” She paused. “Amy, I really am so sorry about yesterday. If there were just some way I could make it up to you …”
“Look, it was embarrassing, but no harm was done. I think it’s Victoria you should be apologizing to.”
“I’ve tried phoning, but she refuses to speak to me. Simon was surprisingly understanding and said he’d get her to call me, but I’m not holding my breath. I was wondering if you could talk to your sister and try to impress upon her how awful I feel about what happened.”
Amy said she would do her best. “And Joyce, good luck with AA. I hope it works out.”
“So do I. You have no idea how much my relationship with your dad means to me.”
As soon as she got off the phone, Amy phoned her dad to tell him about her conversation with Joyce.
“I knew she would phone,” Phil said. “Joyce has her problems and yesterday’s display wasn’t good, but deep down she’s a good woman. She’s loving, caring, funny. She’s got a heart of pure gold.”
“I know. I can see that,” Amy said. “And most important, she needs you to be her rock.”
“Ah, there is that.”
“But Mum needed you, too.”
“Oh, she did when we first married. Back then she wasn’t much more than a girl, but as she got older, her self-confidence grew. She got a job, had her own money. Like I’ve said before, I felt superfluous to requirements.”
“So you couldn’t deal with her independence.”
“It’s the old male ego thing, I guess. I’m not proud of it, but I’m too old to change now and I know that even after Joyce has kicked the booze, she will always need me.” He paused. “You know, with me and your mum, it wasn’t all my fault. For years she’d been telling me how dull I was and how I’d gotten old before my time. She used to tell people that she was married to a farting sofa. None of that did my self-confidence much good, you know. The problem was that we married too young, before we really knew ourselves and what we wanted.”
“It’s okay, Dad, I’m not accusing you. I know it takes two for a relationship to break down. I just get sad sometimes, that’s all.”
“I know, love,” Phil soothed. “I know.”
WHEN AMY told Brian and Bel about Joyce’s erotic poetry recital, they hooted and demanded to know why they hadn’t been invited to the party.
Bel said she was going to order a copy of Pudenda to read in bed with Ulf. On Tuesday night, when she spoke to Sam on the phone, he couldn’t stop laughing either, especially when Amy got to the bit about Arthur coming into the kitchen asking about members and Volvos.
“So when shall we get together this week?” Sam said.
Amy suggested Friday. “Charlie has a birthday sleepover. You could come here.”
“Great.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Amy, you there?”
“Yeah. I was just thinking. Charlie’s feeling a bit iffy about going to this thing on Friday. Although this kid’s in his year group, he’s in another class and Charlie doesn’t know him that well … I could suggest he give it a miss, and then you could come and meet him.”
“Amy, this has to be your call. If you’re ready for Charlie to meet me, then I’m ready, but you have to decide.”
She didn’t skip a beat. “I’m ready.”
“Okay.” Sam laughed. “Looks like we’re both ready.”
IN THE end, Amy thought it would be a good idea to kill two birds with one invite. She spoke to Sam again, and they agreed that on Friday he would arrive about six. The three of them would hang out for a couple of hours so that he could get to know Charlie. Then, after Charlie had gone to bed, Bel and Ulf and Brian and Rebecca would come for dinner. “I’ve only met Ulf once,” Amy said. “I’ve never met Rebecca. Oh, and FYI, she’s a born-again virgin. So if Brian seems a bit irritable and tense, you’ll know why.” She giggled, and Sam said it was the first time he’d been in a relationship with a woman who could list shamans, erotic poetesses, and born-again virgins among her friends.
“By the way,” Sam said, “you sure Brian’s not going to punch my lights out because of my tenuous connection with Bean Machine?”
Amy laughed. “Of course not. He knows it’s nothing personal.”
AMY DECIDED that if she was going to have a dinner party, she wanted her floorboards finished. It seemed ridiculous even to think she could get a decorator at such short notice, but she managed it. The last chap she phoned, after having called a dozen or more, said he’d just had a cancellation.
He turned up at seven on Wednesday morning and painted the floorboards while Amy was at work. By the evening the rubberized paint was dry. Amy couldn’t get over how magnificent her floors looked. The white walls and matching boards looked so stylish. Her flat had gone from shabby to shabby chic in a couple of coats of paint. Now she wanted to buy a new dining room table and chairs and have the kitchen and bathroom refitted. Like that was going to happen. Instead she made do with treating herself to some new orange velvet cushions from the Habitat sale, which, although she said so herself, looked stunning on her acid green sofa. In the same sale, she also found some giant orange silk tulips. Usually Amy hated artificial flowers and silk ones worst of all, but these were so big and over the top that they didn’t pretend to be real. She put them on the coffee table in a tall metallic vase. They looked magnificent. Charlie said they got in the way of the TV screen and insisted on moving them while he was watching cartoons. When Amy asked him what he thought of the floors, he said they were all right and could he have some crisps.
She cooked for Friday’s dinner party the night before. She made a Spanish chicken casserole with orange and chorizo. It all went into one pot, along with the rice, so all she had to do was heat it up an hour before they were ready to eat. For dessert she made chocolate mousse, which she decanted into six pink cocktail glasses and left in the fridge to set.
That evening, while she and Charlie were having supper, she dropped into the conversation that her new friend was coming over the following day, a couple of hours before the dinner party, and that he was the man who had sorted out Charlie’s fight with Arthur at Café Mozart.
“I remember him. He was nice,” Charlie said, nodding. “So is he going to be your husband?”
“Oh, sweetie, it’s far too early to start talking about things like that. At the moment we’re just friends. Okay?”
“K.”
&n
bsp; SAM TURNED up at six on the dot with a very large bouquet of white roses.
“Oh, Sam, you shouldn’t have,” she said, taking them from him. “But I’m glad you did. They are gorgeous.”
“I’ve done my Charlie prep, by the way.”
“What?”
“I worked out my conversation strategy while I was driving over,” he said. “I thought I’d start with Arsenal and move on to Nintendo via popular cartoons, superheroes, and his art, of course.”
“Sam, please tell me you’re joking.”
His face broke into a grin. “Of course I am, but it did cross my mind.”
It was only as they walked into the living room where Charlie was watching Shrek that Sam noticed that the floorboards had been painted. He said how great they looked and how he couldn’t believe she had gotten them done at such short notice.
“Pure luck,” Amy said. She turned to Charlie. “Sweetie, could you switch that off now. I’d like you to say hello to Sam. Do you remember him from Café Mozart?”
Charlie looked up. “You told Arfur off.”
“I did indeed,” Sam said.
“I’m watching Shrek. Do you like Shrek?”
“Actually, it’s one of my favorite films.”
“Guess what my favorite bit is.”
“When the dragon chases them?”
“Uh-uh … Come here. I’ll whisper. It’s a secret. You can’t tell my mum.”
“Oh, thanks,” Amy said, chuckling. “You boys just gang up and leave me out, why don’t you.”
By now Charlie was cupping his hand over Sam’s ear. They both burst out laughing. “I agree, that is a brilliant bit,” Sam said.
Amy suggested letting Charlie finish the film, which had only a few minutes left to run. “Then, as it’s such a lovely evening, we could all go for a walk in the park.” She explained to Sam that there was an Italian café there with a pretty sundeck. “Charlie can have spag bol and ice cream, and we can sit with a couple of Peronis.”
Amy couldn’t help thinking that Sam played the next couple of hours pretty much to perfection. He didn’t make too much of a fuss of Charlie, nor did he attempt to become his new best friend. He chatted with him about school and drawing, and the two of them played knockabout with Charlie’s football. When they got back, Charlie asked Sam if he’d like to see his magic tricks. Amy took Sam to one side to warn him that these “needed some work” and tended to go on a bit, but Sam didn’t seem remotely bothered. “I’ve lost count of the number of magic shows my nephews have subjected me to,” he said. Amy left them to it and went into the kitchen to put the casserole in the oven and make the salad.
Twenty minutes later, when she came back with two glasses of wine, Charlie was still performing his terrible tricks, but Sam was hanging in there and giving every impression of being transfixed.
“You know what, Charlie,” Amy said, “I think it’s time for a bath and bed.”
“Aw.”
“Come on. It’s almost half past eight. Brian and Bel will be here any second.”
Charlie agreed to get in the bath as long as he could stay up to say hello to Brian and Bel.
“Okay. Deal. Now scat. I’ve run your bath and put bubbles in. Don’t forget your ears.”
Amy and Sam sat on the sofa. Sam told her how sexy she looked in the clingy black dress she was wearing and kissed her on the lips.
“Charlie’s a great kid,” he said. “Lively, polite, funny—and very smart.”
“That’s not to say he can’t be a handful sometimes.”
“Aren’t all kids?”
“So, go on,” Amy said. “What’s Charlie’s favorite bit of Shrek, the bit you couldn’t tell me?”
“You can’t ask me that,” Sam said in mock horror. “I took a solemn oath. A chap doesn’t give up another chap’s secrets. It’s simply not cricket.”
“Don’t tell her,” Charlie’s little voice cried. “Don’t tell her.”
Amy and Sam swung around.
“I wouldn’t have dreamed of it,” Sam said. “It’s our secret.”
“Good,” Charlie said. He turned to his mother. “No soap.”
Amy told him to get in the bath and she’d come in with a fresh bar.
A minute or two later she was in the bathroom, handing him the soap and reminding him again to do his ears.
“I like Sam,” Charlie declared. “He kept my secret.” He began soaping his face. “Do you think he likes snakes?”
“As it happens, I think he does.”
“If he became your husband, he would make you buy me one.”
“Why?”
“Because when children get new daddies, the daddies want to be their friend.”
“Blimey, there are no flies on you, Charlie Walker.”
“There was one tiny one a second ago, but I drowned it.”
Amy laughed. “No … if somebody tells you there are no flies on you, it means you are very smart.”
Amy watched her son basking in parental approval.
“Now, then, get washed. There are clean PJs on your bed.”
As she left the bathroom, she closed the door behind her. From inside came a muffled, high-pitched imitation of Eddie Murphy, straight from Shrek: “And then one time I ate some rotten berries. Man! There were some gases leaking outta my butt that day!”
BRIAN ARRIVED first, minus Rebecca. She had phoned him to say she had an emergency at work and would be along as soon as she could.
Brian and Sam shook hands, but it was clear that they weren’t entirely comfortable in each other’s company.
When Amy had invited Brian to dinner and told him that Sam would be there, he hadn’t look too pleased. “I just can’t get over the fact that Sam is helping to close down my business.”
“Come on, Brian, we’ve been over this. Sam’s a good guy. He does pro bono work in Africa, but he also has to make a living. He didn’t accept the Bean Machine job to spite you.”
“Duh. I do get that.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel like you get it. Now promise you’ll behave.”
“Hey, I’m a grown-up. Of course I’ll behave. I seem to remember that it was you who lost your temper with Sam the first time you met.”
Amy grunted.
When Bel and Ulf arrived, the tension eased. “Omigod,” Bel cried. “Don’t these floorboards look fab? You know what would look great in here? Some distressed old pine furniture.”
“What, you mean like a panic-stricken sideboard?” Brian piped up.
“Yeah, yeah. Very funny,” Bel came back. “It means you paint it and then treat it with chemicals so that it looks old and beaten up.”
Amy said she wasn’t sure that was the look she was going for, but Bel wasn’t listening because by now she had noticed that her green tunic and leggings were a perfect accessory to Amy’s sofa and cushions.
Amy just about managed to interrupt her to make the relevant introductions. Then she was off again. First she mouthed to Amy that she thought Sam was gorgeous, and then she proceeded to tackle him on the subject of Prince Charles’s influence on British architecture. “I mean, the man is a total dinosaur. All he’s interested in is neo-Georgian suburban eyesores, and people in the architectural establishment kowtow to him. If you ask me, he has set British architecture back twenty years.”
Sam was in the middle of explaining why the Prince of Wales didn’t have quite the influence people thought he did, when Charlie appeared, insisting on performing another magic show. Amy protested and said it was well past his bedtime, but Bel and Brian said they would love to see some of Charlie’s tricks.
After ten minutes of Charlie asking people to “pick a card” or “say the magic word,” Amy put her foot down and insisted it was bedtime. “Okay, but only if Bel and Brian read me stories.”
By nine o’clock, stories duly read and Charlie silent, if not asleep, they were still waiting on Rebecca. The last of the nibbles had been finished ten minutes earlier, and everybody was starv
ing.
“I don’t get it,” Bel said to Brian. “Rebecca teaches night school French. What’s the emergency? Somebody get tangled up in a reflexive verb?”
“Very droll,” Brian came back. “As it happens, she had to teach a later class as well as her own because one of the other tutors is ill.”
Rebecca arrived five minutes later, full of apologies and bearing a bunch of freesias. Rebecca was every bit the doe-eyed beauty Brian had made out. She was tall and willowy, with dark curls that cascaded down her back. She was wearing a short vest top over skinny cropped jeans with turnups. Her belly button contained a pretty sapphire piercing.
Brian stood up as she came into the room and immediately offered her some wine, which she turned down in favor of sparkling water. “You sit down,” he said. “It’s coming right up.” He couldn’t have been more attentive or looked more smitten if he’d tried.
Amy couldn’t help noticing that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Because she had no bust to speak of, this made her look girlish and vulnerable rather than sexy.
It was only when Amy started serving the food that she realized how Rebecca played on this. She couldn’t have the chorizo because the fat upset her lipid balance. Chicken was fine, but rice wasn’t. She didn’t do carbs after six. Amy was about to serve her a chicken breast when Rebecca stopped her. “It is organic, isn’t it?”
Amy said it was free range, which was pretty much the same deal.
“Actually, I won’t have any if you don’t mind.”
Brian didn’t seem remotely irked by her behavior and even offered to make her an egg white omelet. She refused it on account of her egg allergy.
“Oh, dear,” Amy said, “so I guess that means you won’t be wanting any chocolate mousse for dessert.”
Rebecca said she wouldn’t. “And even if I weren’t allergic, I would never eat raw eggs.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Bel muttered.
Amy was aware of Brian kicking Bel under the table.
In the end Rebecca accepted some cottage cheese. She ate this with Amy’s salad, using chopsticks, which she produced from her bag.