‘Someone helpful but unobtrusive,’ she continues. ‘Who does what needs to be done but doesn’t overstep.’
Cosima makes a disgusted noise. She drops her head and her hair swings forward, obscuring her face. Within minutes, Hector and Cressida are both on their phones and Bear has abandoned his chair in favour of the floor. Occasionally I feel his solid little torso brushing against my leg and have to resist the urge to kick him away.
‘Bear, what are you doing down there, old chap?’ Ben asks. ‘Get back in your chair, there’s a good fellow.’
‘Leave him be,’ Serena says. ‘He’s pretending to be a dog.’
‘He’s eight, Serena, not three.’
‘Oh piss off, Ben,’ she says, twirling a microscopic amount of pasta around her fork and chewing it for an interminable length of time.
‘Mummy! Swearing!’ Cressida screams.
‘Fuck off, Cressy,’ Cosima says.
‘Mummy! Oh my God, Cozzie, you’re literally such an NPC.’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘Non-player character,’ Cosima explains. ‘It’s a gaming thing. She doesn’t even understand it.’
‘I do!’ Cressida shouts. ‘Tell her, Mummy.’
Serena ignores her children and smiles vaguely. I wonder if she’s medicated.
‘Remind me,’ she says, leaning into me. ‘I have to tell you about …’
She mentions the name of a local aristocrat whose wife is rumoured to be having an affair with a senior royal.
‘… completely besotted, I’ve heard,’ she says.
‘Really?’ I say, riveted. ‘That’s certain to set the cat among the pigeons.’
‘The cat and the pussy,’ Serena says and I laugh. She’s very witty when she chooses to be.
Ben continues eating his pasta. A vein in his neck pops. I wonder if – delicious realisation! – he feels left out? He used to be like this when he lost a rugby match. You wouldn’t know he was furious until, hours later, he would punch the dorm wall until his knuckles bled.
The children carry on with their nonsensical squabbling. Bear knocks against a table leg and one of the open Coke cans judders then tips over, spilling into the salad. Serena leaves to smoke another cigarette, already breaking her ‘one a week’ rule.
I watch it all from the kitchen table. I have never wanted children. I got close with Lucy, but she had a miscarriage and I was secretly grateful for it. When we got divorced, she cited ‘irreconcilable differences’ but we both knew that was coded legalese for what I’d never been brave enough to call by its name. Over the years, as I came toaccept my own proclivities, I’d watched as gay couples got married and had babies via surrogate and felt nothing but scorn for their stupidity. Why try so hard to ape the worst examples of heterosexual ego? People only ever want children as replications of themselves. It goes awry because the children they then have are either mirror images and reflect something the parent doesn’t like about themselves, or baffling little monsters who bear no resemblance to their biological inheritance.
And they cost so much money, don’t they? I have long believed the ultimate status symbol is not private jets or stately homes or accounts with endless overdraft facilities at Coutts, but the sheer number of progeny a couple can produce, house, feed and send to public school. I know a wildly intimidating female hedge-fund boss who has six of the darn things. Six children! As if she’s a Tudor monarch.
The dumpy housekeeper walks through the door.
‘Excuse me, sir, but your guests are here.’
‘Ah, Jarvis!’
Ben rises immediately, scraping his chair on the tiles. Serena stubs her cigarette out on the patio, no doubt for the gardener to clear away in the morning, and wafts back indoors. I remember their gardener: stringy and muscular; bad teeth but an attractive, outdoorsy face. I wonder if it’s still the same one.
‘Is your gardener still—’
I am interrupted by the housekeeper clearing away the plates. Hector is now kicking the fridge door, Cressida is shouting at her older sister and Bear is wailing about a sore ankle. Cosima has slunk away to the sofa with a book which, when she turns the page, I am astonished to see isThe Communist Manifesto.
‘Enough!’ Serena says. ‘You can all go to your rooms.’
They scamper off, apart from Cosima who stays put. Serena links her arm through mine.
