*
‘So lovely to meet you. Wow, Esther, you’re so like your dad … Can I take your jackets? This is Kim … Lorenzo … and Charlie, my son … nice to meet you, Miles …’ I’m aware I’m babbling as I hug each person in turn and thank James effusively for the wine and flowers as if he’d brought me a Tiffany ring. Nervous? Of course I’m not nervous …
‘Hope it was okay to bring him along,’ James murmurs with a grimace as we step away from the group. ‘I didn’t know he was coming. He justappeared…’
‘Like a genie?’ I suggest with a smile.
‘He just jumped into the car!’
‘Why are you talking through your teeth like that?’
‘I mean, I could hardly push him out—’
‘On the motorway? I think you were wise not to …’
‘No, I mean before we set off—’
‘James, it’sfine,’ I hiss. ‘Honestly. What difference does it make?’ I’m a little taken aback to see how much this is bothering him. He didn’t seem this tense, even when he was blowing up my parents’ dog’s nose. Was it really such a good idea of mine to push him into doing this today?
Assisted by Kim, I fetch everyone drinks. Lorenzo – thank God for easy-going Lorenzo – is already chatting in his usual jocular way to Esther and Miles: ‘So you’ve been dragged out to the sticks … Look at all this food; I thinkLauren’s been preparing for a famine …’
Charlie is hovering on the periphery and Esther is smiling rather stiffly. I’m determined to push any preconceived ideas I have about her firmly out of my head. So, she’s been difficult in the past, leaving her father in a state of blind panic at the airport. But never mind that. The whole point of today is to get to know each other a little.
‘It’s lovely to meet you at last,’ I tell her as I hand her a glass of wine.
‘You too,’ she says. She’s astoundingly beautiful, not in a modelly way exactly; her face is more interesting than that. She has striking hazel eyes, a smattering of freckles across her upturned nose and wavy reddish hair tumbling all the way down her back. She seems a little distant, although perfectly at ease. Charlie, I notice, is still hanging back.
‘I love your dress,’ I offer. She’s wearing a floral shiftin navy and violet with a light blue cardi thrown over, plus flat tan boots and delicate jewellery; the kind of casual, quirkily put together look that just works, and that I could never emulate.
‘Thanks. It’s just an old thing from a market …’ There’s some chatter about where Esther lives, and where she grew up, and then Kim skilfully draws Charlie into the conversation, far more effectively than I ever could, as he’d just resist my attempts. Soon he’s joining in. He’s trying, anyway. He’s standing there with a beer (he doesn’t drink much) being polite. And James is good with him. I realise this sounds as if I regard Charlie as a child who can’t handle adult company. He can, of course. But having realised how very reticent he is, James seems to have settled at just the right level with him; friendly and coaxing him out of himself, without being overbearing.
Miles is standing a little way back, clutching a glass of red wine and gazing around my kitchen in an arched way, with what seems like a hint of bemusement. But maybe he’s just feeling out on a limb among these strangers. While I know James isn’t crazy about him, and that he’s been shitty to Esther in the past (and, actually, I’m not one hundred per cent sure about this guy myself), I want him to feel relaxed in my home. So I pour myself a glass of wine and breeze over to him.
He seems pleased when I ask what he does for a living. ‘I’m in the music business,’ he says.
‘Oh, what d’you do?’ I ask, unprepared for the floodgates that open; it’s all gigs, sets, clubs I’ve never heard of (of course I haven’t; it feels like two hundred years since I last went clubbing) and how you ‘get a feel for the mood of the night. You don’t play crowd-pleasers,’ he asserts. ‘You’re taking your audience on a musical journey …’
I’m really having to focus to maintain an expression ofrapt interest. His receding dark hair is quite possibly dyed, his face not unhandsome but definitely lived-in. He’s wearing a leather thong with a tiny silver cross at his open-necked shirt, and I’ve spotted what looks like a very old, smudged tattoo of a snake wound around a naked woman on the back of his left hand. I’d rather be chatting to Esther, trying to get to know her, but there’s no chance while he’s in full flow. On and on he drones, barely pausing apart from to snatch a leaf from the salad bowl as Kim carries it past him. Of course I don’t mind. It’s only a bit of rocket. But it seemed a bit entitled, grabbing at it like that.
I catch James’s eye and we exchange a look. We can do this now, condensing an entire conversation into just one glance. I’d forgotten it was even possible to communicate in this way. I used to try with Frank, giving him a look across a crowded room to say,Take it easy, you might think you’re hilarious and charming but you’re hammered already, being a pain in the arse.But he’d be too off his face to notice.
Now Miles is describing a night he used to do at some club near King’s Cross. Clearly, I should have heard of it. ‘But I had to stop,’ he explains. ‘Couldn’t do it anymore.’ He shudders visibly.
‘Why?’ Kim asks, joining us now.
‘People would come up to me with requests.’ I try to look suitably appalled, as if he’d said,People would come up and slap me.
‘Isn’t that allowed?’ Kim asks, deadpan. ‘Requests, I mean?’
‘It’s not weddings I do,’ Miles retorts, then asks half-heartedly what I do for a living, as if my answer couldn’t possibly be of interest to him.
‘You make recipes?’ he clarifies.
‘That’s basically it, yes. D’you cook at all?’
‘No, we have things delivered from a great place, everything calorie-counted and perfectly balanced nutritionally …’
‘You mean all the time?’ I ask.
