Both of his parents stared at me, bewildered.
‘Your phone?’ Lizzie gave a terse smile. ‘But Callum said you didn’t have one.’
‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ I replied, staring daggers across the table. ‘Because that would be completely insane. Everybody has a phone.’
‘She has a flip phone for emergencies,’ Callum explained to his mother, barely missing a beat. ‘She doesn’t have a smartphone. Caroline doesn’t believe in social media.’
I nodded slowly. He had told me that, the social media bit at least. I quietly praised past me for leaving my iPhone back in the room.
‘It’s destroying society,’ I confirmed, trying to recall exactly what Joel had said the last time he deleted TikTok from his phone before putting it back three minutes later when he couldn’t find his crush on Instagram. ‘Turns people into mindless zombies with no opinions of their own.’
‘Lizzie loves a good dig around Facebook, don’t you? Likes to keep an eye on what everyone else is up to.’ Derek reached across the table for a bottle of wine, corkscrew in the other hand. At eleven forty-five in the morning. A man after my own Christmas holiday heart.
‘He says it like he hasn’t got his phone attached to his hand around the clock,’ she tutted. ‘I’m in full agreement with Caroline. We should have a phone-free Christmas starting now, how about that?’
Derek looked horrified.
‘But what about Nimbus?! They’re taking him up to his grandmum’s for the holidays, they’ve made him a wee Christmas jumper and everything. You know he’s never been on a plane before.’
‘You’ll survive one week without watching a stranger halfway around the world torture their cat for views,’ Lizzie said in a clipped voice. ‘What do you think, Callum? No phones while you’re home, concentrate on some quality family time. Especially since we’ve seen so little of you this year.’
The corner of his left eye twitched. ‘Sounds good to me, Mum.’
My eyes slid from Derek to Lizzie to Callum. It was impossible to say which of them looked the most annoyed. Five minutes in and Mission: Cock Up Christmas was going pretty well.
A door at the far end of the dining room opened and a bright-eyed older woman in a well-loved white apron backed in, an enormous platter of food in her arms.
‘Would you look at that, ye havenae starved,’ she trilled, placing it in the centre of the table with a flourish. Roast beef, roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips and Yorkshire puddings. I’d been expecting a sandwich and a cup of tea. My mouth began to water to the point I wondered whether it would be out of order to ask for a bib.
‘Callum, son, good to see you at bloody last.’ She squished his head against her body, muffling hisresponse and roughing up his hair into the bargain. ‘Mal got you back in one piece?’
‘Just about.’ He grinned up at her when she released him, his hair fluffed up in a staticky halo. ‘Fi, this is Caroline. Caroline, this is Fiona, Mal’s wife.’
‘If that’s the only thing I’ve got going for me after all these years, I should ask you to take me out the back and shoot me like a lame horse.’ She wiped her hand on her apron then thrust it in my direction. ‘Pleased to meet you, hen. Glad to see someone has taken up with this numpty despite his being such an ugly wee shite.’
I replied with the saddest, slipperiest handshake known to man.
‘Technically, Fi’s the housekeeper,’ Lizzie said as Fiona pulled her hand away in horror. ‘But she’s really part of the family.’
‘But they still have to pay me so, really, I’m doing better than the rest of them,’ she replied. ‘If you need anything while you’re here, you can always come to me. Derek and Cal are about as much use as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest. Excuse me while I go and get your lunch.’
‘Mine?’ I leaned across to Callum when she scuttled back into the kitchen. ‘Is this supposed to be all yours?’
‘We’ve done our best to accommodate your dietary restrictions.’ Lizzie’s mouth twisted into an uncertain line. ‘Maybe now the family chef is home, he’ll be able to help Fiona with some recipes.’
Something flashed between the mother and son, a dark look from Callum, a sniff from Lizzie. Even Derek paused in his mission to open the bottle of wine.
‘Here you go,’ Fiona sang as she returned carrying asingle, smaller plate. ‘Now, I’m no expert in vegan cookery but there’s no meat, no dairy, no eggs.’
As she put the plate down in front of me, Derek stared in my direction as though they’d just unveiled a new fifth horseman of the apocalypse: war, death, famine, pestilence and veganism.
‘No meat, no dairy, no eggs, no taste.’ He punctuated the sentence with the pop of a cork. ‘No offence, Caroline, love, but I never thought I’d see the day my son brought a vegan into this house.’
A vegan.
I glared at Callum. This was definitely new information.
‘So thoughtful of you to let your family know,’ I said, trying not to gag at the plant-pot-shaped pile of brown mush in front of me.
