Three covered saucepans were simmering on the range and a perfume of coconut and curry floated in the air. ‘Something smells good,’ I said. Ant, who didn’t much like spicy food, raised an eyebrow by way of reply.
We sat on vintage iron bar stools at the central island and Amy asked us what we wanted to drink. It was then that I realised I’d forgotten the wine. ‘I’m so, so, sorry,’ I said, ‘but I left it chilling in the fridge.’
‘Fat lot of good it is there,’ Ant said. ‘I can’t believe that you forgot it.’
‘Um, we both forgot it,’ I said gently. ‘But I’m happy to nip back.’
‘It’s fine!’ Amy said. ‘Don’t be silly. We’ve got plenty of wine. Is that what you’d like? Wine, or beer, or I can do gin and tonics. I’ve got Prosecco in the fridge as well, and I’ve even got some of that weird . . .’ She peered into a cupboard and produced a bottle of some fluorescent red mixer. ‘I can do spritz, if you want.’
Ant caught my eye then and shook his head and rolled his eyes, silently berating me about the wine again. ‘I’ve offered to go and get it,’ I pointed out.
‘Really!’ Amy said. ‘Just stop before I get offended.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, though I wasn’t quite sure what I was apologising for.
‘So, wine, beer, Prosecco, spritz? I might have a spritz myself,’ Amy said.
‘Um, I’ll have a beer, if that’s OK,’ Ant said.
Joe appeared in the doorway. He was in jeans and a plaid shirt and was barefoot. His hair was still wet and he had a towel draped around his shoulders.
‘Jeans?’ Amy said. ‘Really?’
‘This is OK, isn’t it?’ Joe asked, for some reason addressing the question to me.
I nodded. ‘Totally fine with me,’ I said.
‘Honey,’ Amy said. ‘Make an effort, huh? We have guests.’
‘You don’t care, do you?’ Joe asked, now looking to Ant for reassurance.
‘Not at all, mate,’ Ant said.
‘I care,’ Amy said. ‘We’re all dressed up. Anthony’s put on a lovely suit, Heather – Heather? ’
I nodded.
‘Sorry, I had a doubt there for a moment,’ Amy continued. ‘Yes, Heather’s wearing a lovely evening dress . . . It’s called being polite.’
‘A suit?’ Joe asked. ‘Really?’
Amy gestured at Anthony as if to demonstrate that there was nothing ridiculous at all about wearing a suit.
‘He’s come from work, haven’t you?’ Joe said.
‘Um, yeah,’ Anthony lied. ‘Totally true.’
‘Just change,’ Amy said. ‘Humour me.’
‘Christ,’ Joe said. ‘Whatever.’
‘Honestly,’ Amy said, once he’d left. ‘He has all these lovely clothes, but all he ever wants to wear is jeans.’
‘I’ve never much liked jeans, myself,’ Ant said. Then, turning to me, he asked, ‘Have I?’
‘No,’ I agreed, feeling a bit sorry for poor Joe and a bit shocked at the way Amy bossed him around.
Amy poured some of the red mixer into her glass and then started to uncork the Prosecco. ‘Can I do that for you?’ Ant asked.
‘Thanks,’ Amy said, handing over the bottle and going to the refrigerator for Ant’s beer.
‘And you? What would you like?’ Amy asked me.
‘She’ll have Prosecco, won’t you?’ Ant said, and though I probably would have said that anyway, I hated him in that moment for replying for me.
Joe reappeared, looking a bit uncomfortable in a sleek navy suit over the top of the same plaid shirt as before. ‘Better?’ he asked, as he crossed to the stairs to pull a pair of white trainers from the cupboard.
‘Shoes might be good,’ Amy said, at which Joe raised the trainers and gave them a wiggle.
‘I said shoes,’ Amy said.
‘No one cares,’ Joe said, pulling the trainers on to his bare feet.
Amy stared at him for a moment. She froze, the beer bottle in her hand, and blinked very slowly, and for a minute I thought she was going to lose it. But then, as if what she’d actually done was press a reset button in her brain, she smiled instead, and asked Joe if he wanted Prosecco.
To ease the tension in the room, I said, ‘I just love what you’ve done with your kitchen. I think it’s one of the prettiest kitchens I’ve ever seen.’
‘The guy is a kitchen fitter, sweetheart,’ Ant said, with a hint of a sneer.
‘Oh, of course,’ I said. ‘Well, I wish we’d got him to do ours.’
‘Do you, now?’ Ant said.
‘Yes, I do,’ I said, smiling at Joe and feeling brave.
‘Maybe next time,’ Joe said, smiling.
‘Definitely!’ I said.
‘Oh, we’re redoing the kitchen, are we?’ Ant said. ‘Women! Jesus, it just never stops.’
Despite the shaky start, the evening turned out to be a success.
Next door in the lounge, the kids ate pizza in front of a film, while we adults, to put it bluntly, got sozzled.
Amy opened two bottles of Prosecco just for the aperitif and she, Joe and I downed both bottles plus another of delicious Californian Chardonnay. Ant, for his part, drank four, perhaps even five bottles of Singha beer. And they weren’t small bottles, either.
The food was excellent – though poor Ant ate more rice than he did Thai curry – and the conversation flowed easily, helped on, I think, by all the booze.
Ant’s humour was a little prickly for my taste, and a lot of it seemed to be at my expense, but as Amy had a similar sense of humour directed at Joe, I didn’t feel exclusively targeted, and if I’m honest, despite a lot of it being a little too close to the bone, I laughed more than I had in years.
The only truly difficult moment was when the subject of holidays came up and Ant explained that we weren’t going away because I didn’t want to go with his mother.
‘Oh, now you see, I did want to go with Joe’s father,’ Amy said. ‘It’s Joe’s father who doesn’t want to come with us.’
‘You see,’ Ant said, nodding in my direction. ‘Some people know how to appreciate their in-laws.’
I felt terribly trapped in that moment because it looked, to Amy and Joe, as if I was an awful person. But I could hardly explain that Ant’s mother was a monster, could I? And my addled brain was unable to find any other way out.
‘I . . .’ I spluttered, trying to jump-start my brain into action.
‘Yes?’ Ant said, glancing at Amy and then nodding towards me in a watch her get out of this kind of way.
‘I . . . I don’t know . . .’ I said.
‘You can’t stand her,’ Ant said. ‘Just say it.’
‘Oh, really?’ Amy said. ‘How sad.’
It was then that Joe intervened. ‘Well, not everyone can get on with everyone, eh?’ he said forcefully. ‘And things aren’t that simple on our side, are they?’
Amy frowned at him. ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘I get on with Reg just fine.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve only met your mum once, for, like, an hour. And I’ve never met your dad.’
‘Really?’ Ant said. ‘Why’s that, then?’
I sighed with relief that the conversation had been moved on.
‘Oh, I just don’t think they’d get on,’ Amy said. ‘Mum and Joe, that is. So, I mean, what’s the point?’
‘We wouldn’t get on?’ Joe said, looking amused. ‘Why is that, honey?’
‘And your dad?’ Ant asked.
‘Oh, Dad lives in Toronto,’ Amy said. ‘So . . .’
‘Toronto!’ I exclaimed. ‘So you’re Canadian? Sorry, I thought . . .’
‘American,’ Amy said. ‘You thought I was American.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I admitted, ‘but yes, I think I did.’
‘It happens all the time,’ she said. ‘But no. Nothing American about me. I’m half English, half Canadian.’
‘And so you lived there?’ Ant asked. ‘I mean, if you have the accent and everything?’
&nbs
p; ‘Till I was twelve,’ Amy said. ‘And then Mum and Dad split up . . . So I came home with Mum. And I’ve sort of flitted back and forth ever since. They’re both so lovely, I could never decide which one I wanted to spend time with.’
‘Though you haven’t spent much time with your dad lately,’ Joe commented.
‘No,’ Amy agreed. Was that a glare she sent his way? It was so fleeting it seemed hard to tell. I thought then how skilfully Joe had moved the conversation on, and as Ant was busy chatting to Amy, I sent him a hint of a smile by way of thanks. In return, he sent me the tiniest, quickest wink, and for some reason – and it probably had a great deal to do with all the alcohol I’d been drinking – that tiny gesture of complicity made me want to cry.
My plate moved then, and I snapped back into the moment to realise that Amy was trying to take it. ‘Now for dessert,’ she said.
‘She’s made her speciality,’ Joe told me. ‘It’s bloody lovely, so I hope you’re still hungry.’
As we tripped along the lane homeward, I commented on the amazing dessert. It had been a vegan banana and chocolate ‘cheese’ cake, and was probably the nicest cheesecake I’d ever eaten. ‘She’s a pretty impressive cook,’ I added.
‘The cheesecake was OK,’ Ant agreed. ‘Which is more than I can say for that banana curry.’
‘It was banana blossom,’ I said. ‘And I thought it was delicious. It was just too spicy for you.’
‘I didn’t like the texture,’ Ant said. ‘It was weird.’
‘It was like fish,’ I said. ‘The texture was like cod.’
‘That’s what you all kept saying,’ Ant said. ‘But it wasn’t. It was weird and slimy, and other than the bloody spices, it tasted of nowt.’
‘The pizza was weird, too,’ Lucy chipped in, tugging at my hand for attention. Ant was carrying Sarah, who was sleeping.
‘Why was it weird?’ I asked, squeezing her fingers.
‘The cheese was funny,’ she said.
‘Because it wasn’t cheese,’ Ant commented. ‘And what’s so wrong with cheese, anyway?’
‘What do you mean, what’s wrong with cheese?’ I asked.
‘I mean, why not just use bloody cheese,’ Ant said. ‘It’s not like eating a cow, is it?’
‘Well, they have to kill the calves so we can have the milk,’ I explained. Kerry had explained the arguments in favour of veganism at great length to me over the years – in fact, so much so that I’d ended up agreeing with her, really. Had it not been for my uncanny ability to avoid thinking about anything that troubles me – the killing of baby cows, for instance – I would have been forced to go vegan myself.
‘Do they?’ Ant said. ‘Oh, fair enough then, I suppose. If you’re gonna get het up about that sort of thing . . .’
We walked past another house identical to our own and then Ant shocked me by saying, ‘You know, we could go to Spain.’
I turned to study his features, and even though there wasn’t a great deal of light, there was enough for me to see that he wasn’t joking. ‘Really?’ I said.
‘I’m not saying we should,’ Ant continued. ‘I’m not saying that at all. But . . .’ He combined a shrug with hiking Sarah a bit higher. ‘This one’s getting heavy,’ he said.
‘I want to go to Spain,’ Lucy commented, but without much enthusiasm. She was too tired to put any energy into it, I think.
‘But what, Ant?’ I prompted.
‘What?’ he said.
‘You said, you’re not saying we should go, but . . .’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It just doesn’t seem as daft as it did when you explained it. Not now we know them.’
‘I don’t think you can really say we know them,’ I pointed out. ‘They seem nice enough, but that’s not knowing them.’
‘No,’ Ant agreed. ‘I suppose not. But I like her. She made me laugh. He’s a bit of a nobody, though.’
‘You just fancy her,’ I teased. Saying it felt like poking my tongue into a bad tooth. It hurt, but I couldn’t resist.
‘Well, she’s a good-looking woman,’ Ant said. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
I immediately regretted my teasing. Life is better when certain things are left unsaid. Life is better when other, more attractive women and dead baby calves are not thought about.
‘You know, she reminds me of someone,’ I told him, to change the subject. ‘I was trying to work out who all night.’
‘Yeah?’ he said, as we entered our driveway and the automatic light clicked on, blinding us. ‘Who?’
‘Some American actress or singer, I think.’
‘Madonna,’ he said. ‘She looks like Madonna.’
‘No,’ I said, as we reached the front door and Ant slipped the key in the lock. ‘No, I know what you mean, but that’s not it.’
‘Kylie?’ he suggested.
I laughed. ‘No!’ I said. ‘She’s nothing like Kylie.’
‘She’s blonde,’ Ant said. ‘They’ve both got arms and legs and nice arses.’
‘Yes, they’re both women,’ I said, hating him for mentioning Amy’s nice arse. ‘But that’s about where it ends.’
‘Anyway, she’s nice,’ Ant said. ‘Lively. God knows what she sees in him, though.’
‘I thought he was nice too,’ I commented.
‘Nice, yeah. But dull.’
‘More quiet than dull,’ I said.
‘He’s a good craftsman, but you’re better getting him to fit your kitchen than tell you a joke. Still . . .’
‘Still what?’ I asked.
‘Well, I mean, your jokes aren’t exactly side-splitters, are they, and I’m with you.’
We’d reached the bottom of the stairs, so Ant pushed Lucy forward, and saying, ‘I’m gonna put these two straight down,’ he started to carry Sarah upstairs, behind her.
I watched them disappear from view and then walked to the lounge, where I stood in the dark, looking at the window. The tree outside was swaying in the breeze, casting orange patterns from the street light across the carpet. The room looked alien and, for some reason, a bit unfriendly. I realised I was unsteady on my feet from the alcohol and perched on the arm of the sofa to steady myself. It was because Amy’s house looked so much more welcoming, I decided. It was in contrast that our own lounge looked so cold.
I’d spent the nicest evening I’d had with Ant in ages, I realised. If ever, in fact. Yet, I was feeling sad to find myself home alone with him. It was a strange feeling, almost as if I was missing Amy and Joe. I thought about Amy then, and despite my irritation that Ant had found her ‘good-looking’, I conceded to myself that he was right. She was, unarguably, good-looking. She was tall and slim and vivacious and funny and entertaining. In a nutshell, she was everything that I wasn’t. But despite my jealousy, I’d liked her. A lot of what she said reminded me of the witty dialogues you get in American sitcoms. Everything she said had an edge of wit or sarcasm to it – nothing was ever delivered without some kind of linguistic spin. More than once, I’d missed something funny because I’d been laughing at the previous thing she’d said. She’d made me feel a bit frumpy, really – a bit slow, as if I’d been unable to quite keep up.
And then I thought of Joe, and though I’d liked him, though I’d found him to be kind and unusually attentive to everyone’s moods and sensibilities, ultimately I agreed with Ant. He was nice, but ‘nice’ wasn’t necessarily that much fun.
‘Are you coming up?’ Ant called from the top of the stairs. ‘I’m gonna crash, I think. I’m bladdered.’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’
A gust of wind made the tree move again, and the patterns juddered across the floor. For some reason, I thought of my mother and her strange, indecipherable message. Had she said, ‘Go to Spain?’ I wondered. But no, that wasn’t it either. I shivered and stood and with one last glance out of the window, turned to head upstairs to bed.
Neither Ant nor Lucy mentioned Amy, Joe or Ben again that week, but I thought ab
out them almost constantly. The evening had been by far the most exciting thing to happen to me since we’d moved, after all. As for Spain, I couldn’t help but feel I’d come close to getting something I’d wanted for ever – namely, a sunny holiday in a foreign country. Even though I still couldn’t see any real way that we could have said yes to the proposition, I was fully aware of the irony in the fact that I was the person who had showed the least enthusiasm.
Early the following Saturday morning, Kerry called me on WhatsApp. I was in the conservatory with the girls, and Ant was still snoozing upstairs.
‘Hello, stranger,’ Kerry said. It was true that we hadn’t spoken for months.
She’d just passed her Italian language test with flying colours, and was about to apply for Italian nationality, she explained excitedly. The whole Brexit business had made her self-employed status somewhat complicated in Italy, she said, and becoming Italian was the easiest solution.
‘They make you jump through so many hoops,’ she told me. ‘I have to provide years and years of tax records, and I’ve got to get hold of Mum and Dad’s birth and death certificates. You haven’t got them, have you?’
I told her that I would ask Ant to look, as it was he who ran our filing system.
Kerry went on to babble about a new flat she’d found and how it had a spare room if ever I wanted to visit, but that she wasn’t sure if she was going to take it because it was so expensive, and what if they refused her Italian citizenship . . .
She chattered on for a good twenty minutes about this and that before eventually saying, ‘Anyway, enough of me. What’s going on with you?’
‘Oh, not much,’ I said. ‘Same old, same old. You know.’
‘You always say that,’ Kerry said. ‘But I really can’t believe your life is that boring. Have you got a secret lesbian lover or something?’
So I told her about our meal down the lane. And then I told her about Spain.
‘That’s totally pazzo, you know?’ she said. This slipping Italian words into the conversation was a new thing.
From Something Old Page 12