‘Oh!’
‘She was coming. We had a row in the station.’
‘Terminal?’
‘Yes. King’s Cross.’
It’s not often that Julian makes a joke, so everyone laughs a little too much at it, and then realises that it’s rather heartless to laugh at his predicament, so they all stop laughing rather suddenly.
‘But you’re getting on all right with your partners at work, are you, Julian?’ asks William.
Naomi has never seen her father taking such an active role in the conversation. Something is definitely up.
‘Oh, yes,’ replies Julian. ‘Well, they’re all men. I don’t have problems with men.’
William goes round the table, pouring more wine. This is without precedent, not because he’s mean, he isn’t, but because he never even thinks about drink. But today he is drinking as well. Naomi’s anxiety grows.
Penny offers seconds, again with, to Naomi’s mind, an unnecessary verbal accompaniment. ‘I didn’t give you too much first time around, in case you all felt you’d been eating too much over the holiday period, or in case it was too hot for you. But I thought, you can always come back for more.’
Everyone comes back for more.
‘It is very good, Penny. No more self-criticism, please,’ says Antoine sternly.
Her father raises his glass. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I think we ought to drink to Naomi, and wish her good luck with her sitcom.’
He’s ticking off the conversational boxes one by one, thinks Naomi, smiling with a modesty that, sadly, is not false, as they toast the success of her upcoming sitcom, which goes into production in a couple of weeks and will be on the screens in April.
‘Yes,’ says her father. ‘We’re very proud of our little girl.’
‘Dad, I’m thirty.’
‘That’s young. Only thirty, and a starring role in a sitcom.’
‘What is this sitcom?’ asks Clive.
‘It’s about a couple who keep having children. It’s about how the mother has to do all the work. It’s about the stresses of motherhood and of marriage, only it’s funny.’
‘Well, that sounds a good part,’ says Julian encouragingly. Only on matters to do with Naomi does he brighten in the family these days. Naomi almost wishes that he wasn’t so loyal to her. It makes it hard for her to criticise him for the rest of his unsatisfactory life.
‘I don’t play the mother,’ says Naomi. ‘I play the neighbour.’
‘But you’re regular,’ says her father. ‘You’re in it every week. Aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a start. You’ll be back at the Coningsfield Grand. “Starring Naomi Walls from…”. What’s your series called?’
She doesn’t want to tell them. She still hopes the title may change.
‘It’s not quite decided.’
‘It’s a pity you boys couldn’t come over from Paris to see her in the touring production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Grand,’ says her father. She has never known him anything like so talkative.
‘She was wonderful,’ admits her mother. ‘She really was the Queen of Egypt. I couldn’t believe it was my little girl.’
‘Mum!’
‘Well. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.’
‘The drama group from the school went. And most of the teachers,’ says her father.
‘She’s had her ups and downs,’ says her mother. ‘Her bits of bad luck. A broken foot when she was down to play a lady footballer. A play cancelled when the leading man dropped dead in the dress rehearsal. Casting directors, if I’ve got the title right, who couldn’t recognise talent if they fell over it. But she’s come through. She’s going to be a star.’
‘Mum!’
Naomi is deeply embarrassed, not least because Emily is believing it.
‘Are you really, Mum? Are you really going to be a star?’
‘We’ll see, Emily. We’ll see.’
‘That’s my girl,’ says her father. ‘Modest to a fault.’
No, Dad. I don’t think so.
Over the apple pie and custard her father, who has undoubtedly drunk more wine than ever before, raises yet another new subject.
‘Do you ever see Simon at all?’
‘When he takes Emily and brings her back, on his days, if I can’t avoid him.’
‘Oh, dear. Still…still bitter, then?’
‘Dad, he’s Emily’s father. I don’t want to talk about him in front of her.’
‘I was on the stairs when you talked about him to Felicity the other day,’ says Emily. ‘I heard what you said.’
‘Oh, my Lord, what did I say? Or should I not know?’
‘You said when you went away on holiday he was…I didn’t really understand it ‘cause I didn’t know what it was, but you said something about he was a cornflakes adult.’
‘What? Oh! Oh, yes. Oh, Lord. I said he used to look round in hotels even during breakfast to see if there were any girls he could try to seduce later that day. I described him as a cereal adulterer. Cereal as in cornflakes.’
‘Yes, we did get it,’ says Clive.
‘I hope the jokes in your sitcom are better than that,’ says Julian.
I hope so too. I ha’e me doots.
‘What’s an adulterer?’ asks Emily.
‘It’s a childerer who’s grown up,’ says Antoine.
Emily giggles. Antoine can always make her giggle.
‘No, what is it really?’
‘It’s a person who’s married who goes off with someone else and spends time with them when he should be spending time with his wife,’ says Naomi.
‘Or husband, as the case may be,’ says Julian.
‘Was Dad an adulterer when he went to the gym then, ‘cause he went to the gym nearly every day?’
Very probably he may have been, Emily, but we won’t go into that.
‘No. Not every time, Emily. Some of the times he was supposed to go to the gym. He works there.’
Emily is still a bit puzzled, but William leaps up, rubs his hands together, and says, ‘Come on, Emily. I’ve got a job for you. Well, it’s a game really.’
Immediately, Penny leaps up too and says, ‘I’ll make coffee. Coffee everyone?’
Emily, William and Penny all leave the room.
‘What’s going on?’ asks Clive.
‘I don’t know,’ says Naomi, ‘but something is.’
Penny enters with a tray of cups but no coffee. William returns from the garden.
‘I’ve got her collecting twenty different kinds of leaf,’ he says. ‘That should give us time. Sorry, everyone, I don’t want to spoil your day, and it’s a bad start to the year, but there’s no way of telling you this except very directly, and there it is, but…well…the fact is…er…’