The Waitress (6 page)

Katie didn’t move. ‘Final answer?’

The woman nodded firmly.

‘Final answer. Half a sugar.’

Katie obliged. As the woman walked out of The Café with her black coffee and half a sugar, Katie said dully, ‘I know all the names of the shadow Cabinet.’

Sukie nodded. ‘I’m the voice behind the Anusol advert on Essex Radio.’

They stood there for a while watching the rain.

Early Saturday afternoon, Katie threw her last bag into her car. She hadn’t intended to leave for her parents’ this late – it was now starting to get dark – but the temptation of having three whole car seats to fill with luggage had proved too much and her packing time had extended way beyond the usual, even though she was only going for one
night
. She’d also started packing much later than she’d planned because she’d completely overslept and then had needed a hot bath to get her body working properly. Forty minutes after getting into it, she’d woken up, chilled and wrinkly. She had a coffee and phoned her mum to tell her she might be late. The journey would be easy. Just a few motorways and she’d be home. She’d packed her CDs and was raring to go, boosted by the fact that the next time she hit London, she’d be on her way to her date with Dan.

4

So far it had taken Katie four hours. Weekend traffic didn’t help the fact that she took the wrong turning off the motorway twice which resulted in a loss of confidence so complete that she missed the next two exits and had to double-back twice. By the time she got home she would need a valium and a shower.

As would most of her family.

Katie had a condition that was prevalent in her family, which the men dubbed Locational Dyslexia, the women A Crap Sense Of Direction. It didn’t much matter what it was called; the result was the same. She couldn’t direct herself out of a paper bag with an exit sign.

And now she was having a nightmare roundabout experience. As she approached, she saw that none of the locations she had memorised were mentioned – even briefly – on this roundabout sign. She glanced in her mirror – cars were slowing down behind her and there was no time to stop. She didn’t have a chance to look and see if any of the names on the signpost were even in the same direction as home. Needles of sweat pricked her armpits and her heart quickened. Getting nearer to the
roundabout
, she moved across into the middle lane. Perhaps the signs painted on the roads would help her – but what if she was in the wrong lane? She watched all the other drivers already on the roundabout, envious of their apathetic expressions. Couldn’t she just plump for a car and follow it?

A wide space emerged, leaving her enough time to pull out comfortably. She glanced behind her again – a queue of cars – there was no alternative, she would have to get on to the roundabout. Hoping that somehow there would be more clues once on it, she edged forward and, staying in the middle lane, went round as slowly as possible, reading the signs intently.

Still nothing. Not one sign gave her any information she could do anything with.

She was now grimacing heavily, panic having levelled out into misery. She completed the roundabout once more. Still nothing. Of the three exits, one was a no-go. She could see that it took the drivers on a dual-carriageway from which there was no return. Just looking at it traumatised her. Of the other two exits, one extended as far as the eye could see, with no possibilities of a U-turn, the other, seemingly, went straight back to London.

She rounded the circle again, muttering uselessly to herself.

After her fourth round-trip, she phoned home on the hands-free.

‘I’m on a roundabout,’ she shouted.

‘Well done!’ cried her father cheerfully.

‘I can’t get off it.’

‘I’ll get your mother.’

It only took Deanna two roundabout trips to get to the phone, by which time Katie was starting to get giddy and a bit depressed.

‘What are the exits?’ Deanna asked calmly.

‘I’m just coming up to them again . . .’ said Katie, slowing down accordingly. She read them all off to her mother.

‘Hmm,’ Deanna said thoughtfully. ‘That’s odd.’

‘Why?’ Katie’s voice trembled. ‘Am I on the wrong roundabout?’

‘Ah! Just as I thought. You want the third exit. How misleading.’

The never-ending road.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘I’m not going to end up in Birmingham?’

‘Sweetheart,’ said her mother. ‘Would I ever send you to Birmingham?’

‘Right, I’m indicating now.’

‘Good girl.’

‘I’m going off the roundabout.’

‘Good girl!’

Almost immediately she drove past another sign, and this one now mentioned, bottom of its list, the location she needed.

‘It’s right!’ she cried. ‘You were right! I’m going the right way!’

By the end of the journey, her entire family had been navigating her from home via one phone line and three extensions. It had not been a smooth process. Deanna had shouted at Katie’s pregnant sister, her brother had said ‘Bugger’ while his parents were on the line and,
horrifyingly
, her father had said ‘Bollocks’ while all of them were on the line. The shock waves of silence that reverberated down the phone after that almost caused Katie to miss another turning.

‘Darling,’ she heard her mother’s voice cut through the silence, ‘are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Bea?’ Deanna asked Katie’s older sister. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ said Bea, ‘but I might have lost the baby.’

‘That’s
not
funny,’ said Deanna. ‘Cliffie? Are you still there?’

‘God yes,’ came the voice of their younger brother. ‘I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’

‘Sydney?’ said Deanna. ‘Are you still there? Or would you like to go and calm down?’

‘No I would bloody well not like to go and calm down,’ came the voice of Katie’s father.

When she finally heard the comforting sound of gravel crunching under her car’s wheels and saw the warm lights of the family front room through the topiary, Katie almost wept with relief.

Deanna came to the door followed by her two golden retrievers. Katie stepped out of the car, her leg muscles doing a Bambi, and within minutes everyone was feeling much better. The journey hadn’t caused any permanent damage to the Simmonds family – at least nothing a swift round of whisky and some group therapy couldn’t sort out.

Later, her mother and sister joined her in the cosy cliché kitchen, complete with Aga, oak table and dresser,
while
she ate her re-heated dinner. Meanwhile her father, brother and brother-in-law caught the latest rugby scores on the news.

‘They’re going to the pub to watch the rugby in the morning, so we can have a nice catch-up then,’ said Deanna.

‘I hope they’re back for Sunday lunch,’ said Bea.

‘Oh, Mum, I won’t be staying long after lunch,’ said Katie.

‘Why?’

‘I have a date.’

Bea and Deanna were all ears.

‘He’s called Dan.’

‘And?’

‘No, Dan.’

She finished off her apple and rhubarb crumble with hot custard. ‘He’s ex-Oxford, he’s made enough money in the city to start his own business and he’s got a crinkle in his cheek when he smiles.’

‘What did he study at Oxford?’ asked Deanna.

‘What colour eyes?’ asked Bea.

‘What time are you going?’ asked Deanna.

‘How tall?’

Katie took a deep breath. ‘The date’s at eight, so considering how long it took me to get here, I’ll probably have to leave in about half an hour. Blue eyes, about six-foot tall, don’t know what he studied.’

The conversation was interrupted by The Men appearing. Deanna leapt up to attend their needs, whether it be making a pot of tea, washing up a glass or fetching a home-made cookie from the pantry.

As Katie watched her family with an affectionately critical eye, she couldn’t help but wonder how her sister, the arbiter of taste, the queen of aesthetics, could ever have married Maurice. Maurice didn’t really have a face, he had a chin with optional extras, and the older he got, the more colonial his chin became. It had already taken over his neck and looked set to march triumphantly onward to his ears. Katie wondered if her sister would wake up one day and discover that it had annexed his entire head.

To her mind, what must have made things rather painful for Bea was that Maurice’s mother was a rare beauty, with a neatness in the chin area not found in any of her husband’s ancestors’ portraits, and Katie could only wonder how Bea, competitive in all things womanly, felt about having this much to live up to. The only hope was that her children – the first of which was already a neat little bulge under Bea’s Jaeger cashmere – would, if it had to take after anyone from Maurice’s family, take after his mother. They’d all find out in three months’ time.

‘How’s it going sis?’ asked Cliffie, taking one of Deanna’s home-made spiced cookies and eating it in one. ‘Recovered from the journey yet?’

Katie yawned her yes.

‘Someone’s a sleepyhead,’ nodded Sydney, her father. ‘I think it’s time for bed.’

Katie dragged her feet up the wide, shallow staircase to her small, neat attic bedroom, unchanged since she left for college and beyond, all those years ago. Blue-and-white check wallpaper and matching curtains set off the single bed with its Princess-and-the-Pea-style headboard. She felt
instantly
soothed by the room’s delicate tranquillity, a quality she’d never been aware of as she grew up. After leaving her clothes on the blue-and-white-check corner armchair she slipped into the cool sheets and turned off her blue-and-white-check bedside lamp. She closed her eyes, and tried to squeeze in some snapshot moments of last week’s party before sleep tiptoed in to snatch her away.

Downstairs, Bea and Maurice got themselves comfy in their bed in Bea’s old bedroom. It had been four years after her eldest daughter’s wedding before Deanna had finally replaced Bea’s bed and Maurice stopped having to use the old put-you-up. Deanna had said she’d never got round to it, but the fact was that a mere wedding licence and year-long pre-nuptual preparations had not suddenly made her and Sydney able to deal with the fact that their daughter was officially no longer a virgin.

After Bea and Maurice had spent their third entire Christmas season with Maurice’s family, Bea had finally admitted to her parents that Maurice just couldn’t bear the thought of having to sleep in ‘that bed’ during ‘what was meant to be a holiday’. Deanna had finally capitulated. She bought an Emperor-size bed; a bed big enough for them never to know they were in it together. How their daughter and son-in-law spent their nights under their roof was obviously their business, but Deanna and Sydney certainly spent
their
nights sleeping easier knowing that it was physically possible for Bea to be sleeping on the opposite side of the bedroom to her husband.

Cliffie’s room had never had to change. At twenty-one, he had yet to leave home, and everyone knew he
wouldn’t
. He had a very nice local job and was content to stay cosseted by the heat and comfort of the family fire.

Spartacus and Hector, the family’s retrievers, settled down in the porch off the kitchen, whiffling against the Wellingtons, and the grandfather clock’s chimes echoed softly in the dead of night. Outside, November’s night brought a frost that traced gossamer patterns over the Simmonds’ rambling back-garden, and silence fell, soft as a Walt Disney fairy, dense as the night-sky, all over Glossop.

At seven the next morning, Katie woke to the smell of sizzling bacon and frying eggs, the sound of hot water clunking its way through the house’s old radiators and the sensation of being cushioned in a comfort zone so soft she thought she was floating. She lay still, savouring the moment, letting her eyes adjust to her room with the morning’s light casting new angles and corners to it. When she heard the dogs’ excited barking she knew The Men must be on their way out, which meant she hadn’t missed too much of the day. She waited until the prospect of leaving her bed metamorphosed from an unbearable one of cold discomfort, to a pleasant one of hot breakfast, family gossip and a clean body. The process took fifteen minutes, by which time she could hear Bea’s bath running. She knew that her mother would already be dressed, having breakfasted all the men and Bea, and would now be waiting for her.

She gingerly grasped the duvet, slowly moving it away from her, leaving her with nothing but fleece pyjamas protecting her against the elements. She waited for the
cold
but the temperature change was painless. She sat up, swung her legs out of bed, wriggled her toes in the old thick-pile carpet and stood up. She padded over to her wooden-framed, double-glazed attic window and opened her curtains. Hazy winter sunlight streamed into her room, showing up the dancing dust particles and making the frost outside look all the more magical.

Downstairs in the kitchen, her mother sat at the head of the long oak table, dogs at her feet, teapot, butter dish and milk jug in front of her on the table,
Telegraph
open beside them. She beamed up at her daughter.

‘Aha!’ she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. ‘You’re up!’ She walked to the fridge. ‘There’s a fresh pot just made,’ she said, bending down to take out bacon and eggs. Katie knew there was no point telling her mother not to make her breakfast. It would be like telling the dogs not to wag their tails. She poured herself a cup of tea, topped up her mother’s, flicked through the paper and watched her mother prepare breakfast, complete with buttered mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. Deny it though she might, being looked after could be incredibly nice sometimes.

As she finished her breakfast, Katie realised she was waiting for two little words to jar the morning’s ease. She knew Bea wouldn’t be too much longer upstairs and this might be the only opportunity her mother had to quiz her all weekend. She finished her breakfast and waited patiently. Her mother had earned the right to voice the words; breakfast was perfect.

‘So,’ asked Deanna, taking the plate to the sink. Katie could almost see the two words forming at the back of her mother’s throat. ‘How’s work?’