her brothers on beaches, to kick footballs into nets on school holidays, and play tennis on unkempt lawns at the old house for most of her childhood, she has an athlete’s presence. She is my one ally in this family and I adore her.
‘Would you like somewhere to deposit that lad of yours?’ she asks now, nodding at Daniel, who sleeps in my arms. Like his mother, he has odd sleeping patterns that seem to defy the ordinary government of day and night. He will have about five hours from midnight and then a few hours in the afternoon, but only if someone holds him during the nap. Otherwise, he wakes and cries, arching his back and screwing his eyes shut as he howls. No amount of rocking or lullabies or cooing in his ear will make any difference at all. The only place he will sleep other than in my arms, is in the car. I should be a taxi driver, for all the senseless miles I clock in the early hours.
Cath says, ‘I’ll take him. Or perhaps we should give David something to do.’ Stephen’s brother, David, has been parked in front of the cricket the whole of the day, leaving his seat only to visit the buffet lunch, the majority of which was supplied by his wife, who remains mostly in the spare bedroom with a migraine. Their three boys, outside on the small frozen lawn, have been kicking a football for hours against the side of the house. Once in a while Tricia comes out of the spare bedroom, screams at them to stop, then goes back into the bedroom. Meanwhile, David wrings his hands at the Test match, which appears to be taking place somewhere hot. The players are all in wide-brimmed white hats, their noses covered in zinc oxide.
‘I’ll hold on to him,’ I say. If I hand him over surely Cath will notice how much heavier he has gotten, how much bigger. It isn’t that I don’t want Daniel to grow – nothing of the sort – only that I don’t wish to draw attention to how immature Daniel can seem, such a big boy and yet still sleeping in his mother’s arms.
The lunch consists of several Marks & Spencer’s quiches, a plate of sausages for the children, a green salad and several bowls of variously dressed cold dishes. I brought Cornish game hens in a complicated sauce, which was a mistake. As usual I tried too hard and my effort makes me look as though I’ve turned up to a child’s birthday party in a Chanel suit. I don’t know why the game hens, arranged on a platter of roast potatoes and watercress, are just so wrong for this family lunch, but they are. I understand why Emily doesn’t like them, however. She thinks they look like the corpses of Easter chicks.
‘No soggy vol-au-vents from you, then,’ says Cath, eyeing up the platter. ‘Very impressive.’
‘I would think they are overpriced, being mostly bone,’ says Stephen’s mother, Daphne. She looks hard at the game hens, pursing her lips with a mixture of triumph and disdain as though to say she is not fooled by appearances, nor impressed by oddities such as these half-sized birds.
‘I was told to bring quiche,’ shrugs Tricia, dropping two dissolvable aspirins into a glass of water, then stirring the bubbles with her finger.
‘These are quiche,’ I say cheerfully, pointing at the game hens.
But the game hens grow cold, remaining for the most part on their nest of watercress. And my profiteroles are also a disgrace, being passed over for the blackberry crumble with Bird’s Custard and a summer pudding, still slightly frozen from the box. Why do people with so much money fill themselves with such garbage? Is it some English eccentricity I will never understand?
Stephen leans toward me, whispering, ‘You know, if you ate more, you might grow breasts again.’
‘Stephen, don’t be vulgar,’ says Daphne. Like a schoolboy standing at a closed door with an inverted cup, she misses nothing.
‘I’m sorry, dear,’ says Stephen’s father, sitting in his chair. He has not moved for many hours, and is engrossed in the cricket. ‘Were you talking to me?’
‘No, Dad, Stephen was just being himself,’ says Cath, rolling her eyes.
But at least Stephen defends my game hens. He finishes off two, declaring them ‘charming’ to anyone who cares to hear. I fumble with my plate, trying not to disturb Daniel, who sleeps all through lunch. Lying across me on the couch, he looks more like a puppet for a ventriloquist than a boy. In the end I find it is too much trouble to eat, and anyway, I’m not hungry.
‘Sit with me,’ I ask Stephen.
‘I am sitting with you,’ he says, from the other side of the room.
Daphne steps through the house with a regal air. She wears a floor-length woollen skirt, a crisp high-necked blouse. I am too casual in chinos and a jumper. But then, last time there’d been such a gathering, I showed up in a silk skirt and heels, only to discover they expected me to go on a ‘family walk’ through half the Chilterns. I should have known I had it wrong this morning when we were dressing. Stephen polished his shoes before we got in the car.
‘Why don’t you put that child down?’ says Daphne now, looking with mild disapproval at her sleeping grandson.
‘He’s attached to me,’ I whisper, at which she gasps.
‘You have a very odd sense of humour,’ she says, moving away.
Her next complaint is how fat her elder son has become. ‘You need to make time for the gym, dear,’ she tells David, perched momentarily beside him on the armchair, like a visiting bird.
David doesn’t look away from the TV screen. He’s the only one who seems to like the profiteroles and has no intention of being distracted from them, or from his cricket. ‘Too much on at work,’ he says dismissively. Then he points his fork at the profiteroles. ‘Did you make these things?’ he asks me.
I shake my head no.
‘Bloody good,’ he says. Like most men of his type, David is under the impression that women cook to gain compliments from men. When we don’t cook, but instead buy food, the compliment is forfeited, unrequired. I have been instructed by my mother-in-law on more than one occasion always to admit to baking a dish from scratch, regardless. ‘Up to and until they see the bar code, it is yours,’ she told me. I am not seeking to impress but rather to deceive. If I can present a reasonable lunch, then the rest of my life is similarly ordered. That is my statement, an If/Then statement. The logic of ordinary housewives. A complete lie.
‘They don’t look like something you’d make,’ says Daphne, glancing from David’s bowl to me. ‘Though I suppose someone had to make them. What I want to know is how they get the cream into that incy-wincy, tiny little hole?’
‘With a gun,’ I say. Something about my tone startles everyone in the room. Stephen, David, and Daphne look at me all at once now, blinking. Raymond, who is in a corner with a book on the history of London, stares at me over his bifocals. Stephen’s father rustles from his chair as though woken from a dream. ‘A pastry gun,’ I add, trying to smile.
In fact, I bought the profiteroles that morning at a pastry shop while cruising with Daniel, who would not go back to sleep no matter how much I drove. The pastry shop is run by a group of young Italian men who I gather are somehow related. At 5 a.m. they are in the shop, preparing for the day. The shop has dark shutters, newly painted white brickwork, spotlights that shine out to the pavement. I could hear voices inside, smell the dough, the sugar. Stumbling inside, I surprised them all. They tried to tell me they were closed; then suddenly a short man in baggy black trousers and what might have been a pyjama top charged out from the kitchen at a pace. He was older than the others, their father, perhaps. His hands were wet, his beard unshaven. He was balding in a pattern that made him look as though he had a huge forehead. He saw Daniel, with
