‘I don’t know, but they have that sort of arsey-bloke tone about them. Clearly it’s some old man dog-walker who doesn’t like me parking here. But it’s a public right of way in a woodland so he can’t stop me and I won’t be intimidated.’
‘Good for you. But do be careful.’
‘I am. You don’t need to worry about me,’ said Dixie, finding it hard to maintain her call-centre smile.
16
Nora loved her parents but they were like wasabi– best in small amounts. It was her dad’s birthday, which meant her mum would have been cooking all day and the house would be full of their friends and neighbours. The noise levels were already quite high when Nora got there and her arrival only added to the cacophony. Her mother welcomed her and announced to everyone that Nora had arrived like she was the entertainment. On some level she often felt like she was. She found her dad hiding in the garden.
‘Happy birthday, Dad.’ She threw her arms around him, and he hugged her back.
‘I am so pleased to see you. You are my most favourite person.’
Nora was suspicious. ‘Why?’
‘Because your mother, she tell me I can’t have a beer until Nora is here.’
Nora gave him a look. ‘I’ve got presents for you. They’re better than beer.’
‘Are they wine?’ he asked, looking hopeful.
Nora playfully thumped him on the arm.
‘I will love them whatever they are,’ he said, taking them from her. She hoped he was as good as his word because she’d put a lot of time and effort into the sweater vest. Her mother came outside to join them.
‘Ali, you have guests,’ scolded Una.
‘I know. That is why I am out here,’ said Ali, pulling a face.
But her mother was better practised at the art of communication using only a look, and the one she was giving them at that moment had them both bustling inside without further comment.
Ali perched on the arm of the sofa and Nora found a place to sit on the floor. Una shooed next door’s children out of the chair so she could sit there and they joined Nora on the rug but Nora still had a good view of her dad. First he opened her safe present. She could never go wrong with coffee. It was like a sacred ritual in their house. Ali nodded sagely at the coffee beans Nora had bought him and his favourite biscuits to have with his coffee. He opened his card and passed it straight to his wife, who carefully read every word of the verse. Nora had tried to explain that nobody really paid a lot of attention to the verses in cards but her mother didn’t agree. ‘If that was the case, then why are they there?’ her mother had argued. Nora had learned that a well-chosen card could have her mother shedding a tear, which always meant extra Brownie points for Nora. She was torn between watching her mother read the card and her father opening his next present.
Ali completed his task first. ‘What do we have here?’ he asked, as he carefully removed the woollen item from its wrapping paper. He held it up and studied it. His expression seemed to be still asking the same question. He looked around the garment to Nora for an explanation.
‘It’s a sweater vest. A tank top. It’s like a jumper but without any sleeves,’ she said. The many faces in the room looked at her blankly. ‘You can wear it over another top like a shirt.’
‘OK,’ said her dad. She could see he was trying hard to be positive about it.
‘I made it. I knitted it all myself.’ She wobbled her head. ‘With a bit of help from a friend but mainly I did it on my own. It’s the first thing I’ve ever knitted,’ she said to the assembled faces. ‘Try it on, Dad.’
Her dad’s expression changed to one of utter pride. He got his head and arms in all right but then it ground to a halt. Perhaps Nora had misjudged the sizing. ‘Give it a tug,’ suggested Lilian-from-next-door, who was sitting next to her father. She helpfully pulled the garment down. While the intention was to pull it down, it first needed to go over Ali’s rotund middle section– something Nora hadn’t accounted for. He had embraced life in Melton Mowbray and was a regular at Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe. She could see her dad was holding his breath. He looked like he was wearing a knitted corset and she feared for the sweater vest when he finally breathed again. There was a tear on her mother’s cheekbut Nora didn’t know if it was from the card or the state of her daughter’s knitting.
The rest of the evening was filled with chatting, laughter and many cups of coffee once they had managed to wrestle Ali out of his sweater vest without doing him or the top any permanent damage. Nora’s phone pinged with a text from Liam and she was about to read it when her mum flicked the light switch and plunged them all into darkness. Nora would have to read it later. Una carried in a cake with a single candle on top and started a round of a traditional Bosnian birthday song that only she, Ali and a couple of others there knew, so everyone else just sang happy birthday. Ali blew out his single candle and everyone clapped.
Nora had a quick look at her phone.
Hey how’s it going?
It was a good sign that Liam was messaging her unprompted. She fired back a quick reply.
Visiting my parents. How about you?
Slices of cake were passed around and Nora had just taken a large bite of her piece when her mother asked the dreaded question. ‘So, Nora, how is the husband-hunting going?’
Everyone stopped to listen. It was like those moments in werewolf films when the stranger walks into the busylocal pub and it goes completely quiet, only here there was cake and no mythical beasts. It was made worse by the fact that Nora needed to speedily finish her mouthful of cake before she could answer. There was a nanosecond where she considered revealing the 37 per cent rule but she dismissed it. Her parents would likely not understand but, more importantly, Nora did not want to reveal to them just how many boyfriends there had been.
She slapped on a smile, then worried that she might have chocolate cake on her teeth and stopped. ‘I’m not husband-hunting, Mum, and you know that. I’m fine as I am.’
