30
The next day, I have an important and considerably less nerve-shredding social occasion: I’m cooking a roast lunch for my three closest friends. Ordinarily I might regret peeling carrots when I could be getting nicely oiled in a gastropub, yet the dinner party has reminded me how glad I am to have friends who are neither a) Matt or b) Lucy.
Rupa’s palace appears well equipped at first, largely due to her pristine range cooker. On investigation it turns out this flat is the equivalent of those ultra-sleek modern hotels with nailed-shut cupboards and nowhere to put your sponge bag. Even my ingredients haul from Tesco Metro on the narrow counter makes the place look like a school’s harvest festival. As I sweat over the pans and flap the oven door open and shut and wish the chicken was less my skin tone and more Olivia’s, I reflect on how Ben’s wife floats around on a velvet cloud, rolling on castors. She didn’t break a sweat serving dinner for six last night, and it was all done with such confident élan. When I cook for people, I nervously watch them start chewing, preparing to apologise. And I can’t possibly accomplish it without stress. (‘Just chuck a rustic bowl of pasta in the middle of the table and invite everyone to dig in, what could be easier?’ THE PUB.) I catch sight of the ghost of my hassled face in Rupa’s glass splash backs and think how Olivia and I are more like different species than members of the same gender.
Confusingly, Rupa has an extravagant dinner service – white, square, edged in silver leaf – so the table setting is easy, but no utensils, and I left most of mine behind. When Caroline arrives, I have to rush back to stir the carrots with a bread knife and check the chicken’s firmness with a chopstick.
‘It’s fascinating to see a consummate professional at work in their natural habitat,’ she says. ‘Like a Heston Blumenthal gastronomic laboratory. Look! A foam!’
I catch a pan just as it boils over.
‘Ungrateful bitch!’
‘Haha. Are we waiting to see if Ivor’s wearing that ridiculous train driver hat so you have something to serve the mash in?’
She gives an evil cackle and grabs an olive from the dish on the counter, an unstoned Queen Green disappearing inside the sticky oval of her lip-glossed mouth. You know how everyone wears less constrictive trousers and a greasy ponytail on a Sunday, among their nearest and dearest? Not Caroline.
‘Cheers,’ Caroline says, holding up her wine and taking a deep swig. ‘Oh, it’s nice to get out of the house.’
She closes her eyes, leaning back.
‘Graeme could’ve come too,’ I say, secretly glad he hasn’t. He’s always restless, off home turf. He’d be prowling around inspecting the fittings and finding fault. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Graeme, as such, and obviously he’s a great fit with Caroline. He’s just a fit with all the parts of her that are most unlike me. We survey our mutual roles in Caroline’s life with a kind of benign befuddlement as to what she sees in the other.
Caroline’s eyes snap back open.
‘He’s so grumpy at the moment. Work’s getting on top of him. He spends all his time in the study or walking everywhere with the phone clamped to his head. I saw him at the bottom of the garden, trying to talk to someone when he was meant to be mowing the lawn. I had to get him to stop before we were sifting severed toes out of the grass cuttings.’
‘He’s very, er, driven,’ I nod.
‘I know. I wonder if we’re ever going to slow down, sometimes. We have the big house, the cars, the holidays. All we share is Newsnight and Waitrose Thai-for-two dinners. I’m ready for a change.’
Caroline and Graeme have agreed to start trying for a baby next year. Like the pair of ultra-organised executives they are, they worked out a schedule.
‘Well he’ll have to slow down if you get pregnant.’
Caroline makes a sceptical ‘harrumph’ at this.
‘Can I ask you something, Rach? Personal?’
I throw the roast potatoes around the dish a few more times, jam them in the oven, pick up my wine and utter a decisive: ‘Yes.’
It’s nice to be back among people who think they have to check before they ask something personal.
‘How was it between you and Rhys, bedroom-wise?’
‘Uhm …’
‘Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me.’
‘No, no. Er. OK-ish. Bit routine. Usually Rhys after a night out with the lads, crawling into bed smelling of fags he wasn’t supposed to smoke any more, whispering “Would you be adverse to a cocking?”. ’Course I’d say “The word is averse.”’
‘Oh, great,’ Caroline rolls her eyes.
‘We’ve separated,’ I remind her.
‘I know! That’s what I was eye-rolling about. The split-up couple were doing it more than me and Gray.’
‘Caroline, Rhys and I did not split up because of sex, or the lack of it.’
‘I know.’ She picks at the cuff of her floppy, fine-knit jumper. ‘Lately Gray has the sex drive of a panda.’
‘Is that a lot? Or not?’
‘Well, zoos fly in dates for them from China and it’s on the news when they get one of them pregnant. Whaddayouthink?’
‘Ah. Right. Well these things ebb and flow, it’ll come back.’
She nods, grabs another olive. We’re interrupted by the sound of the doorbell. I welcome Mindy and Ivor and pour them a glass each, too.
‘To Rachel’s new start,’ Mindy toasts, and as we clink glasses I’m reminded of a similar toast to Ben and Olivia.
Since meeting Olivia, I’ve barely dwelt on how much I envy her. Not because I don’t envy her, but if I started, I’d never stop. I’d curl in on myself like those magic fish you get as cracker gifts, or corrode like limestone in a hail of acid rain. Although it’s a shame she’s not got a better sense of humour, since Ben has a good sense of humour all of the time. When Lucy was wittering that her son might have ADHD, Simon said ‘Can he sell me some? Street price?’ and Ben and I cracked up; Olivia only wrinkled her delightful nose. I think Ben should’ve held out for delightful nose and a funny bone.
Although everyone has to have one more glass of wine than I intended, lunch is eventually ready, even edible, and by putting the serving dishes on the counter we all fit round Rupa’s tiny Shaker table.
‘Tell us about the date, Mind,’ I prompt, once all plates are full.
‘It was fun, yeah,’ she says. ‘We’re going to try that new restaurant on Deansgate on Thursday. Jake’s doing an MA in international business so we talked shop a lot.’
‘Maybe you can give him a Saturday job?’ Ivor says.
‘At least I’ve got a date, Ivor, whether he remembers John Major’s government or not.’
Ivor grunts at this and helps himself to another potato.
‘Ooh, how did the dinner party go?’ Caroline asks me.
‘Fine, yeah. I’m out of practice at all that show-and-tell malarkey, but I think I muddled my way through.’
‘So, come on, what’s Ben’s wife like?’
‘Beautiful …’ I say.
‘Naturally,’ Caroline says.
Yeah not all natural, she looks like she goes down the electric beach to catch those blue rays, I think, before