that it’s not meat.” She suddenly cheered up. “We’ll make the gravy nice and strong! That’ll help.”
“Yes, and we’ve got my lemon possets for after,” I said. “Everybody loves those!”
I’d made the possets myself. It is my special pudding that I do. Cream, sugar and lemon juice, all whisked up and poured into little separate dishes. I am quite proud of my lemon possets! They are what Cass calls gourmet, meaning, like, very refined. Not just some old rubbish out of a tin.
I reckoned the whole meal was going to be gourmet, what with the dining table being cleared of clutter and laid out all posh and proper with place mats and sparkly glasses, and the cutlery checked to make sure there weren’t any bits of old food mouldering on it, which is what sometimes happens when me and Cass do the washing-up.
Em says we are slapdash. When she washes up she is very slow and careful. I get quite impatient! I keep trying to snatch things from her so I can get on with wiping them. This leads to breakages. We break a lot of things in our house. It is one of the reasons we tend not to have any matching plates or glasses.
Dad isn’t so much slapdash as clumsy. He managed to shatter a glass the other day just breathing on it. Well, that is what he claimed.
“I didn’t go anywhere near it!” he had said.
Dad is pretty useless, really, at everything except teaching people history. He can’t even change a plug without nearly electrocuting himself. But he is a very intelligent person. Perhaps that was why Caroline had fallen for him. She must have realised from the word go that he was not very clever at the ordinary, everyday things of life, since the way they met was when Dad reversed into her twice in the underground car park! He is not the world’s best driver. According to Cass, he could even be the world’s worst.
Poor Dad! He really did need looking after. It was why we were all working so hard to make the evening a success. Just because Dad was hopeless it didn’t mean the rest of us were.
Now that we’d finally settled on what to cook, Cass started to fret about not having a proper wine glass for Caroline to drink out of.
“I thought that was a wine glass,” I said. I pointed to one that I’d spent ages polishing with a bit of old sheet that we used for wiping up. “It looks like one.”
“Actually,” said Cass, “it’s a sherry glass.”
“Sherry is wine,” said Em.
“Not table wine. Oh, God, why didn’t I think of it before? I could have picked some up on my way home!”
“We’d only go and break them,” I said.
Cass ran her fingers through her hair, bunching it up on top of her head.
“This is serious! Caroline’s not the sort of person to drink wine out of an ordinary tumbler.”
“So why can’t she drink it out of the sherry glass? It’s ever such a nice shape!”
Cass said, “But it’s not a wine glass! It wouldn’t hold more than a thimbleful.”
I honestly couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. A glass is a glass, seems to me.
“They’re very pretty tumblers,” I said. Gran had given them to us last Christmas. “And look, there’s loads of them!”
“They’re still tumblers.” Cass took her fingers out of her hair, leaving it sticking up like a haystack. “Sophisticated people don’t drink wine out of tumblers.”
I said, “Oh.” Caroline was definitely a sophisticated person.
“I don’t want her thinking your dad’s some kind of oik. And omigod! What about plates? Do we have five plates?”
Em rushed to have a look. “There are five with roses,” she said, “but two of them are chipped.”
Cass let out a little scream. Me and Em exchanged glances. Em shook her head. Cass is usually such a calm sort of person. Very laid-back, like Dad. I was really surprised it bothered her so much. I mean … once the food was on them, what did it matter?
“You can always give the bad ones to me and Em,” I said, trying to be helpful. “We won’t mind.”
“She’ll still notice,” moaned Cass. “I’m sorry, girls, I know you think I’m making a fuss over nothing, but I feel so bad for your dad. I feel like I’m letting him down.”
Me and Em stayed silent.
“Thing is,” said Em at last, “it’s Dad she’s supposed to be in love with. Not plates and glasses and stuff.”
“This is it,” I said. “If I was in love with somebody I wouldn’t care what they ate off. They could eat off newspaper. They could eat off the floor! Wouldn’t make any difference to me.”
“I would think it’s a bit pathetic,” said Em. “Getting all worked up about that sort of thing.”
Sadly, Cass said, “That just shows what sort of upbringing you’ve had. I’ve been a poor substitute for a mother!”
We both immediately rushed to reassure her.
“You’ve taught us to care about the things that really matter,” said Em. “Like not eating animals, and—”
She stopped and rather frantically rolled an eye in my direction. I dived in to her rescue.
“And not wasting your life doing boring things like housework!”
Cass smiled and shook her head. “Oh dear,” she said. “What a legacy! Never mind.” She picked up the mock steak and kidney and popped it into the oven. “It’s a bit too late to do anything about it now. I suggest you two go and get changed. Your dad will be bringing Caroline back at any moment.”
“Why have we got to change?” said Em. “What’s wrong with the way we are?”
“Well, for one thing,” said Cass, “you’re covered in flour. Just go and find something clean! You want your dad to be proud of you, don’t you?”
“Got to be smart for Caroline,” I cried, as we hurtled upstairs.
I knew exactly what I was going to wear. I had this favourite skirt, bright red with pleats, like a mini kilt. Really short. I mean, like, really short. My friend Lottie had one too; we’d bought them at the same time. Lottie’s mum had taken one look and gone, “Oh, to be eleven years old again! What I wouldn’t give to be able to wear something like that.”
Lottie, being kind, said, “Mum, you still could!” but her mum said no.
“They’re for little young people, not middle-aged mums.”
As I stood in front of my wardrobe mirror, admiring myself, there came an anguished wail from Em’s room.
“Hey, Bitsy!”
“What?”
I
