Time of My Life (24 page)
‘I’ve never seen him.’
‘He’s right behind me.’
‘No, he’s not. Lucy, whatever you’re doing, it’s not funny.’
‘I’m not doing anything. What are you talking about?’
‘Were you talking to Nigel?’
‘Nigel? Who’s Nigel? Should I have been?’
‘My husband,’ she said angrily.
‘No! I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. What …’ But I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence because the door slammed in my face. ‘What the …?’ When I turned around to interrogate Mr Pan on what on earth he’d done to poor Claire, I finally understood. Mr Pan wasn’t there, he’d run off down the corridor leaving her to think I was asking her to mind an invisible cat. Feeling cruel, even though that hadn’t been my intention, I ran after him and found him, right at the feet of a grumpy neighbour who never spoke to me.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ I said in shock. ‘Is that a stray cat? How on earth did he get in here? Or maybe it’s a she? Who’s to know? Let me just get rid of him for you.’ I scooped Mr Pan up in my arms and hurried back to my apartment, mumbling, ‘Dirty, yucky, horrible stray cat,’ for anyone and everyone to hear.
I sat at the dining table in my parents’ home and fought the urge to fidget with everything. I clasped my hands on the table and contained the anxiety that I felt within. I hadn’t yet found the courage to tell them that once again I was lifeless, not because I had brushed it under the carpet as I used to do, but because Life disagreed with my decisions and had left me. I had stalked him with phone calls all afternoon in a pretend effort to apologise but really it was to see if we could cancel the family dinner. He hadn’t answered the phone and then after six tries his phone was switched off. I didn’t leave a message; I couldn’t find the words because I wasn’t near sorry enough to beg for his forgiveness and he would sense I wasn’t genuine. It wasn’t a good situation to be in; it was neither funny nor clever. It was one thing to ignore your life yourself, it was quite another for your own life to ignore – then abandon – you. If Life had given up on me, what chance did I have?
The evening was too chilly to eat outside and so Edith had decided to set up the dining room, my parents’ most formal room and used only for special occasions. Initially I had thought she was trying to get me back for stealing her cake and presenting it to Mum as my own home-baked gift, just like the bouquet of flowers last time, but on observing her that evening, I felt she was genuinely excited to meet the extra special guest and wanted him to receive the grandest of Silchester welcomes. Mum hadn’t held back on preparations either as every room leading off the entrance hall had a Waterford Crystal vase filled with fresh flowers, the dining table was cloaked in white linen, the finest silverware was laid out, her hair was freshly blowdried, and she was wearing a pink and turquoise tweed Chanel shift dress and jacket with one of her dozens of pairs of flat pumps. Most people called their dining rooms
the dining room
, or in some households
the kitchen table
; we, however, called our dining room
the Oak Room
. Thanks to our great Literary Writer who came before us, the walls of the dining room were panelled floor to ceiling in oak, and crystal wall lights shone over the expensive eclectic collection of paintings – some abstract, some of men with tweed caps dipped low as they worked the bogs in Mayo.
‘Can I help?’ I asked Mum as she floated into the room for the third time, carrying a sterling silver tray to add to the table of condiments which totalled more than any human being would ever need in a lifetime let alone in one meal. There were tiny silver bowls of mint sauce, mustard – whole-grain and French – olive oil, mayonnaise and ketchup, all with tiny silver spoons displayed beside them.
‘No, dear, you are our guest.’ She surveyed the table. ‘Balsamic?’
‘Mum, it’s fine, really, I think there’s plenty on the table.’
‘He might like some balsamic for that lovely two-bean salad you brought for Mum, Lucy,’ Riley said, stirring it – the tension not the condiments.
‘Yes.’ Mum looked at Riley. ‘You’re right. I’ll get it.’
‘She likes salad,’ I defended my gift to her.
‘And that it came in a plastic container from your work canteen makes it all the more special,’ he smiled.
I hadn’t told them my life wasn’t coming for dinner partly because I didn’t know whether he would show or not but mostly because I rather stupidly thought it wouldn’t make much difference whether or not he turned up. I thought that when the time came I could think of a polite excuse for why he couldn’t make it, but I misjudged it. I hadn’t anticipated such eagerness on their part to be acquainted with my life. There was a buzz in the air, an excitement and surprisingly, almost a nervousness. That was it. My mum was nervous. She was rushing around trying to make sure everything was perfect in an effort to please my life. Edith was too, which astonished me. Technically it was me they were trying to please and I couldn’t help but feel flattered, but mostly I knew I was in trouble. The news wasn’t going to go down well and the later I left it the worse it was going to get.
The gate intercom buzzed and Mum looked at me like a deer caught in headlights. ‘Is my hair okay?’ I was so surprised by her behaviour – Silchesters didn’t get flustered – that I couldn’t answer so she rushed to the gilded mirror above the gigantic marble fireplace and stood on tiptoe to see the top of her head. She licked her finger and stuck a hair down in place. I looked around at the table settings for eight people, and suddenly I was nervous.
‘It may be the carpet man,’ Edith said, trying to calm Mum down.
‘Carpet man? What carpet man?’ I asked, my heartbeat beginning to quicken.
‘Your life friend kindly gave me the number of a carpet company whom he said did wonders in your apartment, though I wish he could have come after the dinner,’ she frowned as she examined the time again. ‘I must say, it was so pleasant speaking to him on the phone, I’m really looking forward to meeting him in person. I know I’m going to love him’ Mum scrunched up her face again and hunched her shoulders at me, lovingly.
‘The carpet man?’
‘No, your life,’ she laughed.
‘What happened to the carpet, Sheila?’ my grandmother asked.
‘Coffee on the Persian rug in the drawing room. Long story but I desperately need it cleaned by tomorrow because Florrie Flanagan is visiting.’ She looked at me. ‘Remember Florrie?’ I shook my head. ‘You do, her daughter Elizabeth just had a baby boy. They called him Oscar. Isn’t that nice?’
I wondered why she never asked Riley whether the birth of any child was ever nice. We heard footsteps coming towards the door. I watched as Mum took a deep breath and smiled in preparation, and I tried to think quickly what to do if either Don or my life walked in the door. I didn’t need to worry as Philip popped his head in the door. Mum exhaled.
‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘Well, thank you for the warm welcome,’ Philip said and as he stepped inside his seven-year-old daughter, Jemima, followed him. She was as serene as always, her face didn’t change, no expression but a calm look around the room and her eyes slightly widened and lit when she saw Riley and me.
‘Jemima,’ Mum said, rushing towards her for a hug. ‘What a lovely surprise.’
‘Mum couldn’t come today so Daddy told me I could visit,’ she said in her soft voice.
Riley cupped his breasts and I tried not to laugh. Philip’s wife Majella had transformed herself over the past ten years so much that there wasn’t a part of her skin that could move voluntarily. Philip was a plastic surgeon and though he claimed it was only ever reconstructive surgery, Riley and I did wonder if it had become cosmetic ‘on the side’ for his wife, something my father would be appalled at. I always felt that as a result of Majella’s surgery, her daughter Jemima, following her lead, was completely without expression. When she was happy, she appeared serene; when she was angry, she was serene. She didn’t frown, didn’t smile too largely, her forehead rarely crumpled, just like her Botoxed mother. Jemima high-fived Riley on the way around the table to me. My grandmother tutted.
‘Hello, Puddle Duck,’ I said, giving her a big hug.
‘Can I sit beside you?’ she asked.
I glanced at my mother who looked confused and started to pick up place names and think aloud in that way that mothers do. Finally she said yes and Jemima sat beside me and Mum returned to adjusting the knives and forks, which were already perfectly laid out. She seemed distracted. Silchesters weren’t distracted.
‘Did the carpet company say who they would be sending out?’
‘I spoke to a man named Roger. He said he didn’t work late in the evenings but his son would come around.’
My heart lifted, then sank, then lifted, bobbing up and down as though it were a buoy in the high seas. Oddly I felt excited to see him, but didn’t want it to be here.
Mum continued to move perfectly placed knives and forks around the table. ‘How are the wedding plans going, Mum?’ Philip asked.
When Mum looked up she had a slightly pained expression but it vanished so quickly I had to question whether it had been there at all.
‘Everything is going very well, thank you. I ordered both your and Riley’s suits. They are sublime. And Lucy, I received your dress measurements from Edith, thank you. I chose a wonderful fabric and I really didn’t want to order it without showing you first.’
I hadn’t sent my dress measurements, that must have been Life, which annoyed me – and it made sense as to why I’d woken up with a measuring tape wrapped around my chest – but I was relieved I could give approval before it was ordered. ‘Thank you.’
‘But the dressmaker told me if I didn’t order it by Monday it wouldn’t be ready on time so I had to tell them to go ahead.’ She looked a little worried. ‘Is that okay? I did call and call but you were busy, probably with … what do we call him, dear?’
‘You don’t have to call him anything,’ I said dismissively, then, gritting my teeth, ‘I’m sure the dress will be lovely.’
Riley chuckled.
‘It will stain,’ my grandmother said, coming alive. ‘Mark my words, that fabric will stain.’ She turned to me, ‘Lucy, we can’t be seated with a guest without knowing his name.’
‘You can call him Cosmo.’
‘What can I call him?’ Riley asked.
Jemima laughed without moving her forehead. An astonishing feat of nature, as she hadn’t a drop of rat poison under her skin.
‘What kind of a name is that?’ my grandmother asked, disgusted.
‘It’s a first name. Cosmo Brown is his full name.’
‘Oh, that’s the man from the film …’ Mum started clicking her fingers as she tried to remember. My grandmother looked at her with further disgust. ‘Donald O’Connor played him in …’ She clicked, clicked, clicked. ‘
Singin’ in the Rain
!’ she finally said and laughed. Then, full of concern again, ‘He doesn’t have a nut allergy, does he?’
‘Donald O’Connor?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know, I think he passed away some years ago.’
‘From nuts?’ Riley asked.
‘I think it was congestive heart failure,’ Philip said.
‘No, I mean your friend, Cosmo,’ Mum said.
‘Oh no, he’s alive.’
Riley and Philip laughed.
‘I wouldn’t worry about him,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it just nice that we’re all gathered here together, regardless of whether he’s here or not.’
Riley caught the tone and leaned forward to catch my eye. I wouldn’t do it.
On that note Edith rushed into the dining room, her cheeks flushed. ‘Lucy,’ she said gently. ‘I wonder when your friend will arrive. It’s just that the lamb is now ready as Mr Silchester likes it and he has an important phone call at eight p.m.’ I looked at the clock. Life was ten minutes late and father had only allocated thirty minutes for dinner in his schedule.
‘Tell Mr Silchester that he can delay his phone call,’ Mum said sharply which surprised us all, ‘and he can eat his meat a little more well done than usual.’
We were all silent, including my grandmother, which was unheard of.
‘Some things are more important,’ Mum said, straightening her back and the silverware again.
‘Maybe Father can join us now and my friend can catch up with us later. There’s no point in waiting if he’s going to be much later,’ I said to Edith, giving her my emergency-eyes look, which I hoped she would interpret as
He’s not coming, heeeelp!
On that note the intercom at the gate buzzed.
‘That’s him,’ Mum said with excitement.
I looked out the window and saw Don’s bright yellow van with the slowly turning flaming red magic carpet that looked like it was on a spit at the gate. I jumped up and pulled the curtains to the three grand windows closed dramatically. ‘I’ll greet him. You all stay here.’
Riley studied me.
‘I want it to be a complete surprise,’ I said, then I ran from the room and closed the door. I was pacing in the entrance hall when Edith came out of the kitchen to join me.
‘What are you up to?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, biting my nails.
‘Lucy Silchester, I have known you all of your life and I know you’re up to no good. I have one minute to fetch your father so I need to know if I should be prepared.’
‘Fine,’ I hissed. ‘My life and I had a fight and he’s not coming today.’
‘Merciful hour.’ Edith held her hands to her head. ‘Why don’t you just tell them?’
‘Why do you think?’ I hissed.
‘So who’s this here?’ We heard the car stop in the drive, the engine cut out.
‘The carpet man,’ I hissed.
‘And why is that bad?’
‘Because I slept with him last night.’
Edith groaned.
‘But I’m in love with someone else.’
She moaned.
‘I think.’
She whined.
‘Oh, God, what am I going to do? Think, think, think, Lucy.’
Then I instantly had a plan. She must have seen it in my face.
‘Lucy,’ she said in a warning tone.
‘Don’t worry.’ I grabbed her hands and held on to them tight. I looked her dead in the eyes. ‘You don’t know anything, nobody told you anything, you are not responsible, it has nothing to do with you, it is all my decision.’
‘How many times in my life have I heard those words?’
‘And isn’t it always okay?’
Edith’s eyes widened. ‘Lucy Silchester, of all the things you have ever done, this is the worst.’
‘They’ll never know. I promise,’ I said in an attempt to calm her.
She whimpered and shuffled off to get my father.
I stepped outside and pulled the front door closed behind me. Don was getting out of his car and he looked up at me in surprise.
‘Hi, welcome to my country retreat,’ I said.
He smiled, but not as widely as he used to. He came up the steps towards me, and suddenly I had an overwhelming desire to kiss him again. I didn’t know what to say but from inside the house I could hear my father’s study door open and his footsteps across the hallway.
‘Lucy is outside greeting him now, sir,’ I could hear Edith saying breathlessly as she tried to catch up with him.
‘Fine. Let’s just get this nonsense over and done with, shall we,’ he said.
We both heard him.
‘I’m sorry about this morning,’ I said, genuinely meaning every word of it.