Behaving Like Adults (9 page)

I rubbed my ear.

‘When you ask nicely,' I said and cut her off. ‘Yes,
what
, Claudia?'

Claudia had paused from neatening her eyebrows. Her mouth was agape. ‘Who
was
that?'

‘Elisabeth with an “S” Stanton-Browne with an “E”.'

‘But you were, you were . . .'

‘I was rude to her because she was rude to me. When she's recovered her manners, then we'll talk.' Fact was, I
didn't have the strength to deal with Elisabeth just then. I felt exhausted. I didn't know how to help her. I'd probably ring her later and apologise.

‘Flairs for ya.'

All heads swivelled greedily towards the door. A guy in a cap and blue overalls was standing there, bored, holding a spectacular bouquet. This thing was out of control, red
furry
exotic blooms the size of soup bowls, lush green jungle leaves, trailing vines spilled from the cellophane, sleek slender yellow lilies stiff and haughty, scarlet petals curled to elegant tubes,
this
was more than flowers, it was a gift from nature and she was showing off.

I'm not sure that Nige didn't cut off his caller. ‘Pleasebemineohpleasebemine.'

Claudia placed her tweezers on the desk.

I stayed where I was. There's something wonderful about being sent a bouquet. The implications are marvellous. This is what you deserve. This is how I think of you. I hoped they were for me.

Nige lunged at the delivery man, whipped the flowers. He peered at the name on the envelope and snorted. ‘Bloody hell,
I
organised the venue.'

Claudia swallowed. 2-1.

Nige grinned. ‘Someone likes you, Holly.'

Claudia sighed and picked up her tweezers.

I took the bouquet from Nige, placed it gently on a chair and opened the card.

He'd drawn a smily face in the ‘o' of Holly.

‘Who? who? who?' cried Nige. Claudia flared her nostrils.

I shook my head. ‘It doesn't say.' I smiled. ‘I'm going to the shops to get a vase and a jumper.'

I ALWAYS THINK
that bad things happen to other people. Which reflects well on my capacity for hope and not so well on my sense of compassion. Once, Nick and I booked a romantic weekend (or rather, we booked the weekend, we hoped to supply the romance ourselves) on the Isle of Mull. I set the alarm wrong, giving us fifteen minutes to make the hour journey from our house to Heathrow. Even as I watched 11.39 flick to 11.40 in fluorescent green on the driver's dashboard I couldn't believe that we would miss our plane, take-off time: 11.40. That such a thing would happen to
me
was, literally, unthinkable.

It shows how lucky I'd been so far, my life going so neatly that I expected to get through the whole of it unscathed. But then most people I know are the same. Even Nige, who had a miserable childhood – his mother, unmaternal to say the least, specialised in petty cruelties like cutting his nails so short they bled – believes he's exempt from dying in a car crash, because he is
Nige
. When Issy gave birth, she barely blinked at the baby, she was so offended at the pain. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for it. Trauma is for idiots. I suppose optimism is a survival skill.

When I arrived home, the day after Party Night, with my new pink jumper and saw Manjit's girlfriend's car parked in the drive, my optimism scarpered and I couldn't blame it. Everything about Manjit's girlfriend grates. For a start, her name is Bo – which she once told us, is Chinese for Precious. And she is, although not in the way she thinks. (Nick went through a phase of pronouncing it
Boh
to
annoy her.) Her car is a green Citroën 2CV, you can hear its approach from neighbouring counties. It's as much a statement as a shiny red Porsche. She makes me feel guilty, and I don't feel guilty that easily. I suspected I knew why she was here.

I composed my face and unlocked the front door. As I pushed it,
she
pulled it open.

‘Hello, Holly, been shopping?'

Already I felt about six years old.

‘Yes, I needed a new jumper.'

There was a meaningful pause, during which Bo's unconscious screened third world scenes, for my benefit.

Bo, an academic, is paid less than a nurse or a teacher, and resents other people earning money. Even nurses and teachers. Even though she has a profitable sideline – she thinks up questions for
University Challenge
. When I launched Girl Meets Boy, the curl of her lip could have rivalled Elvis. You could tell she was dying for the business to go under with debts of three million. She's the sort who feels that if
you
are successful, there's less chance she'll be. When Nick told her the agency had accepted its 100th member, she raised her thin eyebrows and said, ‘I'm impressed.' She meant, of course, ‘I'm surprised.'

But mainly, I can't forgive her for coming to our house and saying in front of the cat, ‘Whenever I see an animal charity I walk straight past it.' What, I thought, and you're proud of that?

There was a thump above our heads and a bark of laughter. Bo and I glanced at the ceiling as if we expected to see through it. Bo smiled at me, and I felt an uncharacteristic desire to shake her firmly by the throat. She knew I wanted to know what was going on. We smiled thinly at each other, wondering who would crack. I was about to, when Nick and Manjit saved me the trouble, by lumbering downstairs with the spare futon.

‘Beeeeek areful, you're scraping the wallpaper!' screeched Bo.

‘Sorry,' said Manjit. (This is pretty much the only word he ever says to Bo. We went to the theatre once and Nick and I kept count. Twenty-three sorries.) ‘Hello, Holly. Er.'

When Manjit – who was facing down – said this, Nick – facing up – tried to swivel, tripped and was nearly crushed by the futon. Manjit laughed.

‘Manjit!' said Bo. ‘He could have hurt himself.'

‘Sorry,' said Manjit. 'Er, how's it going, Hol?'

I smiled at him. Manjit is one of the sweetest men I know. Doubtless he'd been ordered to give me the cold shoulder, but couldn't manage it. Manjit finds it very hard to be nasty to people, something others might take advantage of, were it not for the fact that he is a black belt in karate. I made him give me a lesson once and he nattered between chops.

Nick, red faced, reached the safety of the hall parquet and let go of the futon. He scowled at Manjit, then me. ‘You locked Emily's catflap and she had an accident.'

I felt nausea high in my throat. ‘You haven't let her out, have you?'

Nick's eyes widened at my stupidity. ‘Of course I let her out. She's an outdoor cat and she was crying to go outside!'

I barged past him, ran through the kitchen, pulled open the back door, and shouted, ‘Emileee, Emileee'. Then I ran back in, grabbed her biscuit box, darted back into the garden and shook it. ‘Emileee, Emileee, biiiiiiiscuit!'

Emily, whose acuteness of hearing depends entirely on whether food is imminent, trotted out of the green towards me and curled around my ankles. I scooped her up, shut the door behind us, and poured a small pile of biscuits onto the floor. ‘Good girl,
good
girl, who's got such lovely furry knickers!'

‘Interesting,' said Nick. This was mean of him considering he also turns into a loon around Emily. (‘Who's Daddy's special whisker kitten?) The great pleasure of sharing your living space with an animal – I prefer not to say ‘own', it's insulting – is
not
that it enables you to
indulge your parental instincts without being answered back. The best thing about a pet is that it allows you to regress to toddlerhood. You speak in a silly voice, you buy yourself a great many brightly coloured toys, allegedly for the creature, and its benign presence is a fine excuse to spend many happy hours talking to yourself.

I swung around. ‘Where's Bo and Manjit?'

‘Putting the futon in Bo's car. I'm moving out.'

I did think it was sweet that Nick felt the need to tell me this, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. When he's nervous, he has this habit of rubbing a hand over his hair and mussing it up so that it covers his eyes. Right then it made me want to cry.

I said, ‘But the futon won't
fit
in that car. A knife and fork won't fit in that car.'

I hoped he'd laugh but he didn't. He replied, ‘Then we'll tie it to the roof.'

‘Right.'

‘That was pathetic, what you did last night, Holly.' He looked at the floor, and rubbed at an invisible mark with his sneaker toe. ‘You don't even like that bloke. And you accuse
me
of behaving like a child.'

I was unfaithful. That's what I was. It helped to have it spelt out. I shook my head and stared at his feet. I felt a pang at their familiarity. It takes an awful lot to stop loving someone. We'd both pigeon-toed away from the relationship, step by step. Every inch, I'd wanted him to drag me back, but he hadn't. I'd found myself dreaming like a teenager. Imagining myself being swept away in his arms, creating desperate situations he'd rescue me from. Not that I needed rescuing, not that I wasn't more than capable of rescuing myself should the need arise, but if
he
did the rescuing it might make him feel useful. Now I thought about it, I wasn't sure I'd ever made Nick feel useful.

He swept his hair from his eyes and said, ‘I don't like to be humiliated.'

I nodded, vaguely. Maybe I did humiliate him. I was one
of those terrible women who wait, tight-jawed, for their partner to finish speaking, then roll their eyes at his friends. But what he said embarrassed me sometimes. And often he'd say the words so slowly, with long pauses in between, as if he was barely able to form a sentence. It wasn't that. His brain had jumped to an unconnected thought that was more interesting; his mind was a butterfly, flitting from lilac to daffodil as the mood took it. I found that charming, then I didn't. I'd always be marching ahead, wanting to
get
somewhere, and he'd be lagging back, enjoying the scenery.

‘So I'm out of here. Goodbye, and give my regards to your parents. It was nice knowing you.'

‘Wait.' My hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, and my voice was a silly shrill squeak. What had I been thinking? All my plotting, for
this
? I felt like a city dweller who fantasises for many years about giving it all up for a fairytale cottage near the coast and then does. And realises she's trapped alone in the middle of nowhere in a cold damp crumbling shack with a broken toilet far away from anyone she cares about.

‘Nick.'

Nick's parents owned a country cottage, but it wasn't a shack. It was fantastic, I think I preferred it to the Italian villa. That villa had a haughty look about it, and I never quite forgave it for the olive/lemon incident, but this cottage was so darling you'd swear it was built by pixies. It was the cottage that Americans think England is made of. Its white beamed walls seemed to swell in the middle, and its thatched roof sloped almost to the ground, reminding me of a person with a hat pulled down over their ears. Blowsy pink roses rambled around the oak door, and its garden was lush, unruly and beautiful, teeming with lavender, white lilac, poppies, blackberry bushes and apple and pear trees, around a green lawn.

Some of the happiest days of my life were spent there. Nick's parents love to make a fuss,
any
day or occasion
that even suggests you might be justified in making a fuss, they make a fuss. St David's Day (the family isn't Welsh) Nick's mother decided to bake Eccles cakes. Cooking isn't her forte and they tasted like Play Doh. Easter, they had us painting eggs, laid by a hen. Well, of course, they were laid by a hen, but what I mean is, they were laid by a hen we
knew
. This is sounding worse and worse. But it was wonderful. Then Emily dragged in a hare. It was dead and very bloody. I didn't scream, I had a suspicion that Lavinia, Nick's mother, didn't respect women who screamed, I just about swallowed my tongue instead.

I was glad I did. Nick's father, Michael, picked up Emily in one hand, the hare in the other, deposited both outside the back door, washed his hands in the deep enamel sink and said, ‘That's nature for you.' Lavinia lit a cigarette in a holder and blew smoke to the ceiling. I nodded and continued painting my egg. And then, a couple of times, we spent Christmas there.

My
parents, as with everything, have a sensible attitude to Christmas. The tradition in our family is that everyone's name goes into a bowl and each person is assigned the task of buying
one
present, for the person whose name they pick out.

Forgive my capitalism, but I thought it a rotten tradition. (Nearly as bad as Rachel's parents' tradition: the tree is decorated on Christmas Eve, and no one is allowed to open their presents until 8 p.m. on Christmas Day.) I didn't like receiving only one present, especially if Issy chose it because then it would be miserably educational, and I loathed giving only one present. I'd go to town and look in Liberty's windows, Selfridges' windows, and I'd see about a million presents that I knew my family would love – a silver rucksack for Claudia, the Complete Works of Jane Austen for my mother, a cable-knit jumper for my father, make-up in gold cases for Issy, a black rubber bustier for Claudia (she went through a phase of claiming to be a vampire, to the point of having fangs filed; she still has
them, they're cute when you get used to them, although my parents never have), navy Italian leather shoes for my mother, an antique footstool for my father, La Perla lingerie for Issy – and then I'd have to resist it all and buy a boring old saucepan with a lid because I was only shopping for Mum and a saucepan with a lid was all she knew to ask for.