Once we were inside, we settled down in the living room, where Jaz pointedly said hello to every member of the household with more than two legs. I think she’d probably meant it as an insult, but if that’d been the plan, she’d picked a terrible strategy, at least where Judy was concerned.
“Beautiful girls, aren’t they?” she said. It wasn’t really a question. “That one’s Eugenie. She’s soppy and dull as a post but an absolute love deep down.”
Jaz whispered a soft “Hey, Eugenie” to the dog but otherwise ignored everybody.
“So.” Mum clapped her hands, all business all of a sudden. “Who is hungry?”
“Oh no,” I tried, “we forgot you were cooking and we’ve just had our dinner.”
Oliver gave mebehaveface. “Lucien is teasing, Odile. I assume you’ve made the special curry again?”
“Of course I have.” Mum looked maliciously overjoyed. “I know how important it is to you both.”
“We’ve been looking forward to it all week,” said Oliver. The worst of it was he wasn’t even really lying. Well, he was lying about thewepart. But Oliver had developed a masochistic fondness for Mum’s special curry. I think it made him feel like part of the family.
Still, I glared at him. “Oliver. We’ve been together for five years. You can stop pretending to like Mum’s special curry. It’s shit, and we all know it’s shit.”
Jaz looked up from the dogs. “How come he gets to talk like that and I don’t get to talk like that?”
“Youdoget to talk like that,” I reminded her. “You tell me I’m shit all the time.”
Oliver’s mouth drew into a thin little line. “Or equivalently,neitherof you get to talk like that and we should all be polite and grateful to Odile for hosting us this evening.”
“Do not worry, Oliver,” Mum told him. “I know he loves my special curry really.”
“I really don’t.”
“Thenwhy,” asked Mum with a pedantic triumph more appropriate to somebody about a tenth of her age, “do youalwayscome over on special curry night?”
I was low-key aware that Jaz had been silent through all of this, but I tried not to second-guess what that meant. “Tradition. And intense self-loathing.”
“Well, whatever you may think, I am going to carry on making the special curry exactly the way I have always made it, although if anybody wishes to assist me in the kitchen, they will be most welcome.”
I passed. As did Oliver. It had taken him a couple of years, but he’d eventually managed to overcome his good-guest instincts and leave Mum to commit her gastronomic crimes alone. Which worked out better for all of us.
Jaz, though, did not pass. Which confused the fuck out of me. While she cooked a fair bit at home, it was only ever for herself and usually at two in the morning, having refused to eat dinner with us. So when she (and the dogs, who, like Spud, had found a new favourite, the fickle bastards) followed Mum out into the kitchen, I wasn’t sure how I was meant to react. Whatever passed for my parental instincts were telling me that this was aGive her spacemoment, not aKeep an eye on hermoment. And, for once, I trustedthem. Especially because I’d learned the hard way thatKeep an eye on hermoments often turned intoMake her feel backed into a cornermoments.
“So,” Judy said brightly. “How’s married life treating you?”
“We’re not married,” Oliver pointed out.
Judy waved a dismissive hand. “Pish posh. Civilly partnered life. Same thing.”
“Much as it always was,” said Oliver, “only now if one of us dies, the other one will actually have rights.”
“Very much my experience,” Judy agreed. “Last thing you want is for one of you to be found decapitated on a yacht in the Azores with ninety pounds of cocaine and a defrocked bishop and the other one not be able to do a damned thing about it.”
Oliver and I gave each other weary, knowing looks. “This is where we say, ‘Yes, but that isn’t likely to happen,’” I tried, “and you tell us it actually happened to one of your husbands, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be silly.” Judy looked almost affronted.
Still in visiting-the-in-laws mode, Oliver went full contrition mode. “I’m sorry, Judy, we shouldn’t have presumed.”
“Weweren’tmarried,” Judy went on. “That’s sort of the point of the story. Made it very tricky with the authorities.”
“But the Azores-cocaine-bishop-decapitation thing…” I prompted.
“Back in ’74. Don’t remember much of it. Bit of a wild time, if I’m honest.”
