Elsie looked at me and smiled. It was venomous, the smile of someone who had just engaged a worthy opponent. Around the table, all three of her family members reached for their wine glasses at the same time.
‘Well, don’t let us keep you, sounds like you’ve got a lot of important things to do,’ I said, returning her vile expression. ‘We can chitchat later when you don’t smell like you’ve been up to your elbows in cow shit all morning.’
‘Better to be up to the elbows than listen to it coming out of Callum’s mouth.’ Her eyes flashed as her dad snorted wine out of his nose. ‘Mum, please tell Fiona I won’t be here for supper, I’ve got important things to do.’
With that, she turned on her heel and left the room, the door swinging back and forth in her wake.
‘And now you’ve met Elsie,’ Callum said before taking another, much deeper drink as his mother dabbed at his father’s face with her napkin.
‘Only Rory to go and you’ve got the whole set,’ Derek said with a half-hearted attempt at a laugh. ‘How are you enjoying your roast? It doesn’t look halfas bad as the first one. Fiona was experimenting all day yesterday. I’m sure she’ll have it perfected by Christmas Day.’
‘Can’t wait,’ I replied as I forced down another regrettable mouthful. ‘Cannot bloody wait.’
Chapter Twelve
The moment I’d finished my sliced apple surprise, I feigned a migraine, excused myself from the table and locked my bedroom door on the McClay clan. Stationed in the comfy chair by the window, I tried to forget lunch and concentrate on my book, but instead of losing myself in the cosy ghost of Christmas past romance, my mind kept straying back to the events of the day so far and after every couple of pages, I found myself staring out at the mountains, wondering exactly what I’d done to offend Elsie McClay.
There were plenty of women out there who weren’t walking rays of sunshine, me included, so I never bought into the concept of a woman being a stone-cold bitch without grounds. I was sure Elsie had her reasons for behaving like we were in the middle of aReal Housewivesreunion rather than a friendly family meal but I’d have been much happier if someone had bothered to let me in on them before we met.
The fatal flaw in my ingenious plan to stay out of the way was revealed exactly one hour after I slammed my door shut. I was gasping for a cup of tea and there was no resisting the siren song once the thought had taken root.
After two wrong turns, I made it to the kitchen without encountering another living soul and after opening a million different cupboards, drawers and cabinets, managed to locate mugs, find the teabags and finally, the milk. Everything in this house was an ordeal, I wasn’t surprised Callum preferred his tidy little flat. Balmaclay was beautiful, no doubt, but this was altogether too much faffing around for a cup of tea. Before my landlord so rudely evicted me, I had a travel kettle in the bedroom for emergency cuppas. Between late nights and long shifts, sometimes it was too hard to roll all the way from my bed to the kitchen. I’d even considered putting one in the bathroom so I could freshen up my drink while I took a bath but I settled for a giant insulated travel mug instead.
‘What are you doing?’
Lizzie McClay stood in the kitchen doorway, jumper, gilet, ever-present silk scarf, lips brought together as though she’d walked in on me masturbating with her rolling pin.
‘You could help me by wearing a bell,’ I gasped, pressing my hands to my chest to hold my thudding heart in place. ‘You scared the life out of me.’
‘You’re making tea?’
She set a basket down on the huge table, a solid block of wood that dominated the farmhouse-style kitchen. Only it wasn’t farmhouse-style, it was literally a farmhouse kitchen. Weird.
‘Is that all right?’ I asked before catching myself. Caroline wouldn’t ask permission. ‘Because, yes, that is what I am doing. Making tea. For myself.’
It took every ounce of strength in my body to prevent me from offering to make Lizzie a cup. Asking a Brit not to offer another Brit tea was like expecting Desi not to make snide comments during an episode ofLove Island, denying a psychological imperative, and almost completely beyond our control.
‘I wouldn’t have thought it was good for migraines,’ she said, breezing past me to take out her own mug and her own teabag. I tried not to stop breathing at the shame of it.
‘To the best of my knowledge, there hasn’t been a study that confirms a causal relationship between average tea consumption and migraines,’ I said, reacting as I always did, distracting myself with facts and stats. ‘Excess caffeine intake can cause them in some people, caffeine withdrawal can bring migraines on too. Some people think tea could actually help prevent them but there’s even less evidence to support that theory. Unfortunately.’
‘Sounds like you’ve done plenty of research.’
More research than the average massage therapist.
‘If you were a migraine sufferer, you would understand.’ I held the back of my hand against my migraine-less forehead and let my head loll back dramatically. ‘It’s a debilitating and often misunderstood illness. Nausea, vomiting, fatigue, numbness, visual disturbances, it goes on.’
‘I see.’ Lizzie loosened her scarf as she stared me down. ‘But you’re well enough to make tea.’
‘I suffer through it,’ I replied in a hero’s whisper.
This was my first real test. One on one with my fake boyfriend’s real mother, caught in her kitchen, hand in the proverbial cookie jar, and if she’d been three minutesearlier, it would’ve been the literal biscuit tin but thankfully I’d managed to stuff two non-vegan chocolate digestives into my mouth and three into the pocket of my hoodie before she appeared.
Other people’s mothers always made me anxious. My personal experience was so minimal, I didn’t know what to expect. Desi’s parents moved to New York with her dad’s job right after she started university, so she almost always went to them rather than the other way around, and Joel had almost as little to do with his family as I had with mine. Attitudes towards queer kids might be changing by and large but not quickly enough when it came to his parents. The thought of anyone rejecting my kind, generous, beloved best friend made me so mad. But I’d heard other people’s mothers were their greatest champions. Lionesses ready to fuck you up for looking at their cub the wrong way, mama bears just waiting for an excuse to claw you to death for mistreating their precious little baby. I glanced down at Lizzie’s neat but sharp nails. That wasn’t a farm manicure. She could do some damage there if she wanted to.
‘Where’s Callum?’ I asked, mashing my teabag against the side of the cup then dumping it in the sink.
The corner of Lizzie’s mouth twitched. The spent teabag had barely struck the stainless steel before she swept in, scooped it out and transferred it to the bin.
