Serena hopes that will be the end of it but Iso insists on walking into dinner together. Jarvis, thankfully, is nowhere to be seen.
‘Is Dom here?’ Serena asks, hoping to move the conversation on.
‘No, he’s working, you know the score. But your man is the star of the show tonight, isn’t he?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘No? You Brits …’ Iso shakes her head, smiling to herself.
‘What do you mean?’
Iso always makes Serena feel on the back foot, as if she’s missing something. She possesses an effortless confidence that Serena resents. It’s as if Iso doesn’t need to pretend to be better than she is, which is mystifying to someone like Serena whose whole life is shaped by the projection of a cultivated image.
‘Oh, just …’ Iso says now. ‘You’re all so modest! You can never admit to liking the attention.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
She makes a point of absorbing herself in the seating plan, angled on an easel, the names written in copperplate.
‘It’s not a criticism,’ Iso adds hastily. ‘We Americans are far too brash.’
‘Yes,’ Serena says, scanning the list. Iso’s assumed intimacy is distasteful but she doesn’t want to be rude. One can’t be too careful and all that. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘There I am. Table one.’
‘OK Miss Fancypants! I’m on twenty-three.’
Iso squeezes Serena’s arm again. Serena, annoyed, withdraws it.
‘Nice to see you again,’ Iso says. ‘Perhaps we’ll catch up afterwards?’
‘Absolutely,’ Serena says. ‘Send my love to Dom, won’t you?’
Iso, already swishing away, swan-like, calls back over her shoulder: ‘I’ll be sure to.’
Her shoulder blades are fantastic, Serena thinks.
‘I’ll be sure to,’ she mimics under her breath as she winds her way through the outer tables to find her seat. She wishes she could stop comparing herself unfavourably to other women. Her judgemental nature is one of her most unlikeable characteristics but it’s too late to know how to change it. She has always been taught that life is a competition – for success, for love, for looks, for money, for status. So how could she not see her contemporaries as rivals?
She discovers she’s next to Richard Take, the irritating little man she did her best to avoid at the funeral.
‘Typical,’ she mutters. She is about to move the nameplates when she hears a jocular ‘Hello there’ and turns to find Richard Take himself.
‘Richard.’ Serena extends her hand, unsmiling.
‘How nice to see you again in more cheery circumstances,’ he says, taking it. He is wearing a black turtleneck underneath a jacket and his thinning hair has been closely cropped against his skull. One of those health-tracking things is on his left-hand ring finger. No doubt all part of his new image.
‘You find injured servicemen cheery?’
He looks aghast.
‘Gosh. No. I didn’t mean that. It’s terrible what these brave servicemen and … and … er, women, go through, isn’t it? And yet they never complain. They just get on with it. A lesson to us all in the spirit of resilience and good old British gumption, don’t you agree?’
She leaves a pause, then says: ‘So have you recovered from your time as a waste-disposal expert?’
Serena did not watch Richard Take on the reality TV programmeShit Happens!but Cressida and Hector were fans of the show. Cressida told her that one of the ‘most iconic’ moments was when Richard tried to unblock an industrial cistern and ended up covered in faecal matter.Apparently Richard had wiped the gloopy brown liquid from his eye mask and, with remarkable sangfroid, had then turned to the camera and said, ‘A little shit doesn’t bother me. After all, in Parliament I’m surrounded by them.’
‘It was sooooo funny,’ Cressida said, before going on to explain that Richard had now launched his own ‘merch line’ with T-shirts featuring the relevant freeze-framed moment and the tagline ‘A little shit doesn’t bother me’.
Hector was also impressed and now follows the former MP on TikTok. ‘He’s actually a decent bloke, Mum,’ Hector said. When she asked why, her eldest son replied, ‘He’s just who he is.’
