Leaving the old town now, I follow the long, straight pathway that leads out of town. Clouds are starting to gather on this warm June evening. Vince will probably be home from the festival by now. I hope he’s taken Jarvis out for a walk. He’s more settled in the evening if he’s had some proper exercise.
As I reach The Glade I perform a mental run-through of what’s in our fridge, and what might be pulled together for dinner. There’s some chicken pie left over from last night, and oven chips in the freezer. It’s hardly Ottolenghi but it’ll have to do. My feet are still pinching as I spot Dr Kemp and his wife Agata – she of the perfect macarons – digging out moss from between their patio slabs. They wave in greeting and I wave back. I can’t think of Dr Kemp as Lenny as, humiliatingly, I’d had to see him about my terrible bloating shortly after we’d moved here. At least, back in London, the GPs had been interchangeable and wholly anonymous. Here, the very man who described ‘the build-up of gas in your gastrointestinal tract’ had been at our door the previous evening with a welcome bottle of wine.
As I turn into Sycamore Grove I’m figuring that I need to throw a work outfit into the wash, as I have another hotel shift tomorrow, and also clean the bathroom as it was looking a bit grotty this morning and Vince won’t have troubled himself with it. Obviously, person-with-penis is exempt from cleaning the loo and the zone around it. And now I’m remembering that I’ll also have to finish the final chapter of Vince’s book from the notes he’s given me. Zoe, his editor, is expecting it tomorrow. The whole book, that is – done and dusted. So as well as working tonight I plan to set a 5a.m. alarm in order to give it a final check-through.
When I’m not at the hotel I work for Vince (‘Notforme,’ he insisted, when he first suggested the arrangement. ‘I mean,withme. It’s not like I’ll be your boss. It’s just, there’s so much to do now with everything taking off.’) As well as managing Vince’s diary, social media and sundry admin – plus fielding the trolls and crazies and anyone else he can’t be bothered to deal with – I also help to write his books.
‘You mean you actuallywritethem,’ Tash said, laughing, when we spoke about it recently – which I guess is true. What I do is gather together the various thoughts and brain meanderings he’s jotted down on the backs of envelopes and Post-it notes. Then I knock it all into some kind of order, so people other than Vince can understand it.
Of course, Vince is meant to do this. ‘But you’re so much better at detailed stuff,’ he reckons. ‘I’m more of a broad-strokes person.’
The only aspects I don’t manage are Vince’s comedy bookings and TV appearances. He has an agent for that. You could call me his PA – but he prefers ‘back end’. As in, ‘Speak to Kate about that. She takes care of the back end.’
Now I’m aware of the sound of chatter and laughter coming from one of the back gardens in our street. Sounds like a jolly gathering is happening. Next door, perhaps, at Gail and Mehmet’s? I imagine we’ll be invited – perhaps Vince is there already? – and try to ready myself for switching into a sociable mood. Recently, I vowed to myself that I’d say yes to everything in my effort to make friends. Contribute to the bake sale? Clean a Portaloo with my tongue? I can do that! Then, as the noise grows louder, it becomes apparent that it’sourback garden it’s coming from.
Vince’s voice cuts through the hubbub and there’s a gale of laughter in response.
‘Oh, Vince, you kill me!’ someone shrieks.
I inhale deeply, ready to pin on a big, wide smile – because it seems we have a party going on.
*
I find everyone chattering high-spiritedly and clustering around my husband on our patio. ‘You had them eating out of your hand, Vince,’ Deborah announces.
‘That’s sweet of you,’ he says. ‘They were a very kind audience...’
‘No, youcharmedthem,’ insists Colin, a short and wiry recently divorced PE teacher who lives across the road. ‘Y’know, I never read books normally. But yours was a laugh.’
‘Glad you enjoyed it.’ Vince’s grin sets a little.
‘It’s the kind you read in the loo when you’re going to be in there for a while.’ He sips his beer and smirks.
‘Good to know, Colin. Good to know.’ Despite his abundant charm, Vince hasn’t managed to hide his disdain for this man. ‘And if you run out of paper,’ Vince adds, ‘you can always rip out a few pages...’
Laughter erupts and Deborah glances round, spotting me. ‘Here’s Kate,’ she announces in the kind of flattened tone she might use to say, ‘Here’s our taxi’ at the end of a fun night. I greet everyone with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. Judging by the wine and beer bottles cluttering the garden table, it looks like an impressive quantity has been downed already. Which is fine, of course. They’re celebrating a successful book festival, and I must join in and knock back a few drinks myself. It strikes me now how at home Vince looks here in his parents’ garden (it still feels like their garden) surrounded by people who love him.
‘Kate?’ he starts. ‘We should do some food.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. There’s plenty of crisps and Wotsits...’
‘Wotsits?’ Looking startled, he beckons me down to the bottom of the garden by his dad’s shed.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, frowning.
‘We can’t give them Wotsits,’ he hisses.
‘Why not?’ I only buy them at his request. He thinks they’re funny and ironic.
‘We need something more substantial than that.’
‘Do we?’ Next to the shed looms my late father-in-law’s unfinished water feature: two huge fibreglass orbs, like giant testicles resting in a shallow dish.
‘Well, yeah,’ he says, ‘or everyone’s going to be smashed, aren’t they?’
‘But I’m just back from work,’ I remind him. ‘Literally just this minute. I didn’t know people were coming round, or that I’d be expected to cater—’
‘It doesn’t have to be anything major,’ he insists.
