We kept it up.
She kept up ruffling.
I was just beginning to worry that we’d picked the wrong teenager to get into a battle of wills with, but six ruffles later,Spud did us a solid by bouncing off onto the floor, at which point Jaz sat up and said, “Fine,” in a tone that suggested it was anything but.
We said goodbye to Spud, who definitely seemed like he’d miss Jaz more than me or Oliver, and got into the car with all the enthusiasm of two middle-aged gays and a teenager who hated them. Oliver, reverting to his role as natural driver, took us off in the direction of Pucklethroop-on-the-Wold.
“Your mum a lesbian then?” asked Jaz conversationally when we were far enough onto the motorway that talking to us became marginally less boring than ignoring us.
I twisted in the passenger seat so hard and so fast that I hurt my neck. “Sorry, what?”
“Well, she lives with another woman. Anyway, isn’t it genetic?”
“That’s complicated,” said Oliver at once. Nobody could deliver an authoritativeThat’s complicatedquite like Oliver.
“Which?” asked Jaz.
“Both,” I replied. “Mum and Judy are sort of…they’re sort of really good friends?”
“So sheisa lesbian.”
“No, I meanreally,really good friends.” I realised that wasn’t helping. “I mean, it’s not a euphemism.”
From what I could see with my head still at a weird angle, Jaz was looking incredibly blank.
“It’s like…” I grasped for language she might understand. “It’s like they have a queerplatonic relationship, except they’re both straight.”
I’d thought it was a bit of a long shot, but Jaz came from an unprecedentedly queer-literate generation, so she just said, “Ohhhh,” and then, “why didn’t you say that in the first place?”
Conversation was mercifully light after that, partly because Oliver had put on the first season ofIn the Dark, one of the few truecrime podcasts he was okay with, and even Jaz wasn’t quite willing to talk over an in-depth analysis of a historic child abduction.
When we pulled up on Old Post Office Road, Mum and Judy and Judy’s many, many dogs were already waiting for us. And I suddenly, and retroactively, agreed with Jaz that she should have stayed home because this was going to beunbearable.
“Luc, mon caneton!” Mum rushed down to the car to embrace me in a full-on French kiss-on-both-cheeks kind of way. “And Oliver, and you must be Yasmine.”
“Jasmine,” corrected Oliver.
“Jaz,” corrected me.
“Yeah,” said Jaz.
“Hullo,” called Judy from the doorway. “Would come down and press the flesh and so forth but thing is, can’t actually be buggered.”
Mum turned to look at her heteroplatonic life partner accusingly. “Judy, you could be buggered to come all the way to the door. Why not be buggered to come a few steps further and make our guests feel welcome?”
“What can I say, I’m feeling a very specific level of buggery today, and no amount of buggering about is going to make a buggering bit of difference.”
“Can youplease,” I begged, “stop sayingbuggerandbuggervariants. Jaz is going to think you’re incredibly weird.”
“I am sure Jas does not mind.” Mum pronounced Jaz’s name with a softJat the front and anSat the end in a way that made it sound officially twelve percent cooler. “Do you, Jas?”
“I’m fine,” Jaz murmured. It was the kind ofI’m finethat could mean anything fromI am actually finetoI am six seconds away from a total fucking meltdown.
This had, however, played right into Mum’s hands. “You see. She is fine. She says she is fine. Judy can bugger all that she wants.”
“Good to know,” said Judy. “Now come on, let’s get inside. As my ex-husband used to say, it’s cold enough out here to freeze the tits off a cardboard nun.”
I was this close to demanding to know who the hell this husband had been and what exact context he’d said that in, but since itwasprobably cold enough to freeze the tits off a cardboard nun, I didn’t want to be hanging around outside any longer than was absolutely necessary.
