A Catered Affair (21 page)

“I can’t imagine what it feels like,” he said, “when you lose an asylum case and a deserving person gets sent home—to face prison or even worse.”

I said it could be pretty tough on the emotions.

“There’s this really appalling case I’ve been reading about. You must have come across it—the Iranian civil rights activist who’s facing possible deportation.”

“Nasreen Karimi. She’s my client.”

“No kidding. She sounds like one very brave woman. I can’t believe there could be any doubt about whether she deserves to be granted asylum. What do you think will happen?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. She has an excellent case. All we can do is pray that the judicial review goes in our favor.”

“When will you know?”

“It could be days or weeks. They just leave you hanging.”

He wished me luck, and I said we were going to need it.

“So, has Josh been in touch?” he said.

I told him about the famous text.

“Tosser,” Kenny said.

“I know. But you know what? I still miss him. I think a bit of me still loves him. God, I’m pathetic.”

Kenny laughed. “No, you’re not. All those mixed feelings are pretty much par for the course. I sleep with one of Steph’s sweaters because it smells of her. It’s the only way I can drop off. At least I’ve started eating now—even if it is only TV dinners.”

I said that I knew the entire Marks and Spencer ready-meal line by heart. “Mind you, that first week after Josh dumped me, I could hardly get anything down.”

“I was the same,” he said. “I lived off cold baked beans, straight from the tin.”

“I couldn’t get out of bed.”

“Me, neither,” he said. “And I went for weeks without shaving.”

“God, if I do that my armpits start to look like I’ve got Art Garfunkel in a headlock.”

His face broke into a smile. “There’s an image.”

“All I did,” I said, “was watch cable TV.”

“Me, too.”

“
Bridezillas
.”

“
Weaponology
.”

“
Wife Swap
.”

“
Cannibalism: Extreme Survival
.”

“
It’s Me or the Dog
.”

“
World’s Wildest Police Videos
. I had so many people who were there for me, but . . .”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “You still felt lonely as hell.”

“People do their best to understand, but nobody really gets it if they haven’t been through it. For me, nights are still pretty bad.”

“I know,” I said. “When we’ve finished dinner, I’ll go home and cry myself to sleep while I listen to Cher singing ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).’”

“I might stay up and torment myself by going through our photograph album.”

“God, I’m feeling really miserable now.”

“Me, too,” he said. “So what do you think? Shall we get together and do this again?”

“Absolutely.”

“
I
t was just so good to talk to somebody who knows what I’m going through,” I said to Rosie the next morning, when I popped round for coffee.

“But don’t you think I know what you’re going through?” she said, giving me this ever-so-slightly woebegone look that seemed to be saying,
Aren’t I good enough for you anymore?
I felt the need to reassure her that she wasn’t about to lose her best-friend status.

“Oh, sweetie, of course you know what I’m going through. And you’ve been brilliant these past few weeks. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. The thing is, Kenny is going through it right now, just like me. It’s like we’re sharing a journey.”

“Yeah. I suppose I can understand that,” Rosie said, pouring coffee into a couple of mugs. She handed one to me and we sat down at the kitchen table.

“So you don’t think Kenny could be interested in you?”

“What? No. We’re talking about somebody who sleeps with his ex’s sweater.”

“And you’re not interested in him? I mean, don’t forget you’ve already propositioned him once.”

“Yeah, when I was totally trashed—not to mention in shock and practically suicidal with misery. Rosie, you have to believe me—right now I don’t have a single romantic thought in my head. I never think about sex. My Rabbit hasn’t been out of its drawer since Josh dumped me.”

Just then, we heard a key in the front door. Rosie said it was her mum and dad back from the park with Ben and Izzy.

I’d known Frank and Pru for as long as I’d known Rosie. They were in their mid-seventies now. Rosie, who had two much older siblings, had been what Pru referred to as her “time of life” baby.

Just before Rosie started university, the Thomases retired and moved from London to rural Scotland. They lived in a rambling stone farmhouse thirty miles from Edinburgh.

During the summer vacation I would often go and stay for a week or so. The house was on the edge of a loch, surrounded by dark, treeless hills and mist. It was also five miles from the nearest pub or post office. Back then I used to get withdrawal symptoms if I was more than a mile from a branch of Topshop. For my first visit, I packed bikinis, tiny skirts, boob tubes and strappy sandals. Of course it poured all week and Rosie and I ended up traipsing round the loch, me sporting one of Frank’s old Barbours, a pair of Pru’s green wellies and something called a waxed bucket hat.

It took me a while to get used to this land of long walks, roaring stags and running salmon—not to mention the fear that at any moment, Macbeth’s three witches might emerge from the mist, full of screeching, toil and trouble. Eventually, though, I came to appreciate—even crave—the peace and tranquillity of the Scottish countryside.

Pru baked the best-ever Dundee cake and went to church. She was a Methodist teetotaler who sang “Jerusalem” as she pegged out the washing and spent a great deal of her time complaining about all the sex and swearing on TV. She didn’t seem to mind the violence. Frank, who was pretty long-suffering—but didn’t lack a sense of humor—had long ago nicknamed her Prudence McPrude. He also made the point that she might feel less concerned about all the sex and swearing on TV if she didn’t sit glued to it each night.

Frank spent his time driving from here to there in his ancient Land Rover, mostly running errands for Pru. If he got the chance he would stop off for a pint and a ploughman’s lunch at the local pub. In the afternoons—assuming he had a pass from Pru—he would sit in his study reading the works of the early socialist thinkers, like Robert Owen and Thomas Paine. (It was Frank who’d inspired Rosie’s interest in left-wing politics.)

 

 

Ben came charging into the kitchen now, his face bright red from excitement and the August heat. He was wearing a T-shirt with I AM THE BIG BROTHER across the front. In his hands was a very large Tupperware container. This appeared to have something moving around inside it.

“Mum, Mum. Granddad found lots of frogs. We put vem in my box. Granddad made holes in the lid wiv his penknife, so vat vey can breev. And Gran’ma says I have to call my penis my winkie.” He held up the container for his mother’s inspection.

“Be careful,” Ben said, “or vey will jump out. They’re green speckled ones. Like in the song.”

Rosie lifted a corner of the lid and peered in. “You’re absolutely right. Aren’t they lovely? I’ve never seen speckled frogs in real life.” She paused. “Ben, can we spool back for a second? What was that you said about calling your penis your winkie?”

“Gran’ma says.”

“I think Grandma may have got a bit confused,” Rosie said. “Your penis is your penis. We don’t need any other words. OK?”

“K.”

Rosie shot me an exasperated I’m-not-sure-how-much-more-I-can-take-of-my-mother look.

“What about my bum hole?” Ben piped up.

“What about it?” Rosie said.

“Is that the right word?”

“It’s fine.”

“An’ whaddabout tits? Dad says I can say tits.”

“Does he? Typical.” Rosie sent me another look. “Well, maybe Dad and I should discuss that. I don’t think that ‘tits’ is a very nice word. I would prefer it if you said ‘breasts.’ ”

“’K . . .” With that, Ben turned his attention to me. “Aunty Tally, jew like my T-shirt?” He stuck out his chest. “It says I’m a bruvver.”

“That is so cool.”

“Ben loves his baby sister,” Rosie said. “Don’t you, Ben?”

He shrugged. “She can stay here for eleventy-one days.” He held up three fingers. “Then she has to go back to her own house.”

“Aw,” I said, turning down the corners of my mouth to make my point, “couldn’t she stay here just a tiny bit longer?”

Ben gave a vigorous shake of his head. “Nope. She smells.”

At this point Pru and Frank appeared.

“Tally,” Pru cried. “Frank, look—Tally’s here.”

“I know, dear. I’m standing next to you. I can see her perfectly well.”

The three of us exchanged hugs and long-time-no-sees. They both offered their condolences regarding Josh. “Rotten old business,” Frank said, hands in the pockets of his corduroys.

“But you are young and pretty,” Pru chirruped, taking my hand in both of hers and patting it. “You’ll get over it. No point dwelling—that’s what I say.” She looked at Rosie. “I said that to you after Dan left, didn’t I?”

“You did, Mum,” Rosie said, rolling her eyes. “Many, many times. In fact, it was pretty much all you said.”

“Oh, I’m not sure that’s true.”

Rosie asked her mother where Izzy was, and Pru said she was asleep in her pram in the hall. At this point, Pru turned to Ben. “Darling,” she said, frowning, “do keep those nasty frogs away from me. You know Grandma doesn’t like frogs. I hate the way they jump without warning.”

“Mum, you live in the country. How can you be scared of frogs?”

Pru shuddered. “I don’t know. I’ve got a phobia—that’s all.”

“Gran’ma’s a scaredy-cat.” Ben giggled. Then he turned to his mother. “Do frogs do smelly poohs?”

Pru grimaced. “Ben, I wish you wouldn’t use that word. It’s so vulgar.”

“Pooh,”
he repeated, full of embarrassed defiance.

“Ben, please,” his grandmother said. “We don’t say words like that in this house.”

“Mum, take it easy,” Rosie said. “Ben and his friends are all into bums and pooh right now. It’s called being almost five. They think bodily functions are hilarious.”

This time, Pru shuddered.

“What on earth is your problem?” Rosie said. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t pooh in your house. You and Dad go for number twos.”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” Frank said. “These days, much to your mother’s disgust, I go for a Donald. In fact, I can feel one coming on right now. So, if you will excuse me, I think I will adjourn to the throne room.” He picked up the
Guardian
and disappeared upstairs.

“A Donald?” Rosie said to her mother.

“Donald Trump. It’s rhyming slang. Sometimes, your father can be so childish. He heard it on TV. Had him in stitches.”

“Oh, you mean Donald Trump . . . dump.”

“Rosemary. Please. Not in front of you know who.” She pincered some imaginary lint from her tartan pleats. “I don’t understand why you can’t teach Ben to say number twos.”

“Because it’s twee and means nothing. A bit like winkie.”

Clearly aware that she wasn’t going to win, Pru said she was going to put the kettle on and did either of us fancy a top-up. Rosie and I said we were fine. We sat in silence while Pru got busy with cups and teaspoons and opened a tin with a stag on the lid—full of her homemade shortbread.

Ben said he was going into the garden to play with his frogs. Rosie reminded him that it would be cruel to keep them in a hot plastic container for too long and that pretty soon he would have to put them in the pond. He nodded and disappeared.

By now Izzy was waking from her nap. We could hear her in the pram, making soft snorting and snuffling sounds. “Somebody’s hungry,” Rosie said. “I’d better get her.”

But Pru insisted she leave her “just in case she drops off again.”

“Mum, she’s not going to drop off again. She wants feeding.”

Pru said that Rosie had fed her only a couple of hours ago. “If you’re not careful, that child will have you wrapped around her little finger. You can’t give in to her every demand. She has to know who’s boss. Tough love—that’s what she needs.”

Rosie turned to me. “You will notice that my mother has a zero-tolerance attitude to infants.”

“Now you’re just being silly,” Pru said. “I’m just worried about how you’re going to cope when your father and I leave; that’s all. I don’t want you making a rod for your own back.”

Rosie brought Izzy into the kitchen. She was wide-awake and looking round the room with her big blue eyes. “Oh, Rosemary, just look how alert she is,” Pru said. “We’ve definitely got a bright one here.”

I couldn’t get over how cute Izzy looked in her pink dungarees and matching stripy T-shirt. Rosie was watching me watching the baby.

“Think you might like one?” she said. She was holding the baby in the crook of one arm and unbuttoning her shirt with her spare hand.

For a second or two I was overcome with sadness. “Like that’s going to happen anytime soon.”

“Tally, you’ve had a terrible setback in your life, but this is not the end. The story isn’t over.”

“Rosemary’s right,” Pru said. “A few years from now this will be nothing more than a bad dream.”

“I try telling myself that,” I said, “but I find it hard to believe.”

“You just have to keep repeating it,” Rosie said. “Eventually, it will sink in.”

Prudence said she would take some apple juice and a couple of biscuits out to Ben. “And when your dad comes down, maybe you could, you know . . . cover up a bit.”

“What? . . . You’re saying I should be embarrassed to breastfeed in my own home?”

“Not exactly, but your dad does find it a bit difficult.”