Blowing It (29 page)

Now – important things: what to wear. The day was a hot one, the lunch was to be a casual garden barbecue to celebrate Mac’s return to health and to home. Manda opened the wardrobe and chose her newest dress, a simple sleeveless bluey-grey strappy number she’d bought that week in Whistles. Very demure. And it would so exactly match the present she had for Ilex. Whether he decided he still loved Manda or not, he’d so completely, utterly, adore what she had chosen for him.

So easy, a barbecue, Lottie thought as she sat beneath the sunshade, idly stirring the dressing through the salad. Ilex, Mac and Sean were standing around the fire, wielding spatulas like daggers and occasionally poking at the food that was sizzling over the coals. The lamb and chicken kebabs were being turned so competitively often they were practically being spit-roasted. It was such a prehistoric male thing, the fire and the food ritual.
Whoever
had first confined fire to safe, closed-in quarters had a lot to answer for, in Lottie’s opinion, effectively trapping several centuries of women into domestic servitude.

‘What do we do about Manda?’ Clover whispered to Lottie. ‘Is she definitely coming or not? I thought she’d be here by now.’

‘She said she was coming. We’ll just shove up the bench a bit when she gets here. Unless …’

‘Oh don’t say she won’t come … I’d so love Ilex to be happy again.’

Like you, Lottie almost said. Clover looked radiant – about five years younger, softer. Lottie recognized that look. She remembered she and Kate used to giggle about it on the road with Charisma, the mornings after they’d stayed in a hotel more lusciously appointed than usual. They’d meet up in the reception area for the check-out and murmur ‘POG’ at each other – an acronym for post-orgasmic glow. Sorrel had recognized it too, had summed it up with typical conciseness when she’d found Clover and Sean making coffee in the kitchen late that morning and had blurted out, ‘Ugh, per-lease! You’re all loved-up!’

‘I was going to say, unless they just disappear together. They might prefer to go off on their own.’

‘But that would … No, Manda wouldn’t do that. She knows this lunch is all about Dad coming home.’

‘
And
it’s about Sorrel and Gaz and Millie
finishing
their exams,’ Lottie reminded her. ‘Clover … Mac’s illness …’

‘Oh Mum, I do know. I know it was such a close call.’ Clover reached across and took Lottie’s hand. ‘But we’re all here and we’ll all take care of you. Imagine how it would have been if we hadn’t all been able to be here with you?’ That wasn’t what Lottie meant at all; but just now there wasn’t time.

‘Ah … well, OK,’ she said instead. ‘We’ll maybe talk about that later. Food’s ready. I’ll go and call Sorrel and the others and I’ll get the rice and the courgettes while I’m in there.’

Oh lordy, Lottie thought as she picked her way across the uneven terrace, why did Clover have to make things so complicated?

‘You’ll have to have your blood checked
three
times a
week
? How long for?’ Sean asked Mac over lunch.

‘God, that’s, like,
sooo
rough? You won’t have any left,’ Gaz said, looking queasy at the thought. ‘How much do they take?’

‘An armful,’ Lottie and Mac said both together, spluttering laughter. All the younger ones looked at them, blankly.

‘A line from Tony Hancock? “The Blood Donor”?’

‘Oh. I saw that. Once. I think.’ Gaz didn’t look convinced.

‘No, really, it’s not that bad,’ Mac reassured him. ‘They only take a tiny bit to check the clotting levels and make adjustments. And it’s just for a few
months
, till everything’s stabilized. Maybe even less.’

Clover looked worried, Lottie thought. She hoped she wasn’t going to become ridiculously morbid over Mac’s illness. If she started treating her parents as if they’d suddenly morphed into old, frail people, they were all going to come to grief, one way or another. Mac was going to get better and real life would gradually come back. She and Mac had no intention of becoming frozen into a sad still-life of inactivity and over-anxiety. There would be changes – but ones they’d chosen, not, thank the president of the immortals, had forced on them.

Ilex felt a bit like a spare part. Never before had he seen Clover so tactile with Sean. The two of them sat together, hardly able to keep from touching each other. It should have been something he was happy about but instead it made him feel the loss of Manda even more. Sorrel and Gaz were bickering at the table like an old married couple and Millie looked perfectly happy not to be attached to anyone. Not that he’d even consider … she was only eighteen, for heaven’s sake.

He got up from the table and carried plates into the kitchen, simply to escape from the very awful suspicion that, given the horribly lonesome way he was feeling right now, he’d soon have to stop himself asking Millie out to the Feathers that night, simply to have someone to pour his soul out to over
a
couple of pints. What were you supposed to do with yourself at thirty-seven when your girlfriend hated you, had (justifiably) taken over your flat and you’d slunk home to Mummy and Daddy? He looked in the mirror over the rusty Aga and made an L for loser sign on his head. And in the mirror, he caught sight of a beautiful girl with long sleek hair the colour of cappuccino. Manda was in the room, holding a cardboard box.

‘I hope I’m not too late,’ she said. She sounded slightly breathless, the way she did – and he so wished he hadn’t thought of this – during sex.

‘For lunch?’ he asked her, thinking at the same time, What a crass response.

She shrugged. ‘Lunch, anything really.’ Oh Lord, she was as edgy as he was.

‘I’m glad I found you in here. I thought this was going to be easy but as I drove in I was a bit … worried.’ She smiled and chewed at her bottom lip, a sign he recognized as pure nerves.

‘Worried? You? What do you have to be worried about? I’m just so … happy to see you … um … if that’s all right.’ It sounded mad, he knew, but if he said the wrong thing he might frighten her away again. He was barely convinced she was real, that she’d actually turned up in the Holbrook House kitchen and was now alone with him. Manda and this box that had holes in the top.

‘Um … I got you something. A present.’ She held out the box. ‘Be careful with it, it’s fragile and …
well
, just be gentle. Put it on the table to open it, just in case.’

Oh please, Ilex thought, don’t let anyone come in and break this up. He pulled the top of the box apart and inside was a small chunky grey kitten, looking up at him with huge, round, deep blue eyes. It immediately began both miaowing and purring at the same time, trying to climb out to get to him. It wore a black velvet collar and a chrome name tag.

‘Oh, Manda – it’s just so … cute! I can’t believe you’d—’

‘Well, I had to give you an answer,’ she said, rather rushing her words and looking at him intently. ‘And it’s yes … um … I’d like us to have a cat.’ There was a silent moment while he relished the ‘us’, brutally interrupted by a whirl of teen activity as Sorrel came hurtling into the room.

‘Mum says where’s the cheese. Oh wow! Look at this!’ Sorrel went up to Ilex and took the kitten out of his hands.

‘Oh Manda, it’s so
sweet
! Hello, baby kitty-cat, aren’t you just the cutest?’ She stroked and patted it, fondling its triangular ears. ‘Come on, we must show the others!’ And she was gone, clutching the little cat.

‘No, wait! Don’t go yet! Sorrel, there’s something else Ilex needs to see!’ Manda chased after her. Ilex followed, and they found Sorrel out by the table, cooing over the kitten and showing it off to the rest of the gathering.

‘Oh and look, it’s already got a little name tag. Let’s see what it’s called.’

‘No! Sorrel, stop right there!’ Manda reached over to grab the kitten but Sorrel was already reading.

‘Ooh it’s called … It’s called
Yes
. What kind of a name …?’ she asked, looking at Manda with a mystified expression. She then turned the name tag over.

‘Oh-oh, er, for you, I think,’ she said, handing the kitten back to Ilex.

‘There wasn’t meant to be an audience,’ Manda hissed at Ilex, hiding her face in her hands. ‘God, I’ve done this all wrong!’

Ilex, conscious of the gaze of ten silent and tensely wondering people, looked at the kitten’s tag: on one side the word ‘Yes’ was engraved but on the other, and he realized that Manda knew him so well, she understood he might need to be reminded of the question, it said, ‘I will marry you.’

‘Oh God, another two loved-up ones,’ Sorrel groaned as she turned away from the appalling sight of them kissing. ‘How can they do that
in front of people
? Can’t we, like, go off to Australia tomorrow, Gaz, get away from all this?’

‘You don’t mean that,’ he teased her. Gaz could, she knew, mention – also in front of everyone – that she looked suspiciously tearful, but he wouldn’t. She appreciated that.

* * *

It was coming to the end of a lazy afternoon. Sophia and Elsa had found a couple of old Badminton racquets and were down on the lawn trying to hit a ping-pong ball to each other while side-stepping a group of hens that had strayed from the orchard. Their shrieks and giggles were the only intrusive sounds. Clover and Manda were quietly discussing tulle and silk and whether veils were unbelievably naff or merely ironic, Sean was reading the sports pages and Ilex was dozing on a lounger with his kitten on his lap. Lottie was pretty sure he wasn’t actually asleep though – as more and more expensive-sounding wedding items were mentioned, his foot twitched with understandable cash-stress.

‘We need to tell them some time soon,’ Mac murmured to Lottie.

‘I know. Over lunch would have been ideal but it all got a bit hi-jacked, didn’t it? Not that I minded, obviously. Shall I send Sorrel in to get some champagne? We should do a proper toast to Ilex and Manda. And Clover made a chocolate cake.’

‘Did she?’ Mac laughed. ‘I’m surprised Sean let her out of bed for long enough! And yes, it’ll have to be soon. Isn’t the agent phoning at five? We’ll have to have told them by then in case we’re not the ones who take the call. Then we’ll cop it, especially if it’s Clover.’

Lottie rounded up Gaz and Sorrel and the three of them went into the kitchen to sort out tea, champagne and cake.

‘OK – first of all,’ Mac said, when everyone had a glass in their hands, ‘huge congratulations to Ilex and Manda. Here’s to them having a long and happy life together.’

‘Are you supposed to have alcohol, Dad?’ Clover looked close to panic-stricken as Mac drank.

‘A centimetre of Bolly won’t hurt,’ he told her. ‘I won’t have more than that though, I promise. For now anyway. But look, Clover, everyone … I really don’t want to be treated like a fragile museum specimen from now on just because my blood went a bit iffy. It’s being fixed. I’ll be back to the real me in a few months.’

‘Yes, but … I mean it changes things, doesn’t it? Like, you won’t be able to go off racing round the world now, will you?’ Clover went on. ‘You’ll have to take things more easily.’

Mac laughed. ‘“Take things easy”? Clover, sweetheart, that’s the sort of thing you say to someone of ninety-six, and even if you say it to me then I’ll tell you it’s patronizing! Anyway, the thing is … I wanted to tell you that a song we did years ago – “Target Practice” – it’s got itself a part in a bloody great film. Doug phoned this morning and it’s definite. So, we thought we’d go ahead with a few more idle plans, me and Lottie.’

‘Wow, a movie! Does that mean we’ll all be mega-rich again? Coo-well!’ Sorrel leaned across and hugged Mac. ‘So does that also mean I can—’

‘Hey wait! Don’t go giving me a shopping list just
yet
, please! Just be glad you should be able to get through university without loading yourself up with debts.’

‘She probably still will,’ Ilex said. ‘Students never have enough cash flow. You can’t expect her to resist a cheap loan. And they can make sense, in a borrowing—’

‘Well actually, I
do
expect her to resist,’ Mac interrupted. ‘I’m not having her mortgage her soul to some government loan-shark scheme if she doesn’t have to.’

‘Anyway, the point is, we’ve sort of decided what we’re going to do about the house,’ Lottie interrupted.

‘The house? What,
this
house?’ Sean asked. ‘You don’t need to sell it now, do you?’

‘Well no, but that’s not the point. We still intend to get out in the world and do the travelling we’d planned.’

‘But how can you? What about Dad? You can’t do long-haul flights,
any
flights, with embolisms! It’ll kill him!’ Clover looked close to tears. This, Lottie thought, wasn’t going as well as it should.

‘Well, you’re right, Clover, it could have killed me if I’d gone last week. Probably would have. But it didn’t, because we didn’t. And in a year from now it should be fine. Better, safer even than before because it’ll all have been sorted and medicated, do you see?’

‘We have to do this,’ Lottie insisted quietly, ‘while
we
can. Just as you all must do the things you want to do – don’t put them off till it’s too late and they’re just impossible.’

There was a silence, interrupted by the phone.

‘I’ll get it!’ And Sorrel was out of her seat and racing into the house before Lottie could catch her. In a moment she was back, clutching the phone. ‘Mum? It’s someone called Harry from the estate agent’s for you?’

Lottie took the phone and, before she spoke, caught sight of Clover sitting with her head down, hands over her eyes. She’d looked just like that as a teenager, when Lottie caught her out lying about staying with a girl from school when really she’d stayed at her first boyfriend’s flat. So – Harry. That explained the Jimmy Choos and the lack of underwear at the hospital. One for her to forget about, definitely.

‘Harry? Hi. Any news?’ Mac reached across and took Lottie’s hand. ‘What, both of them? And they’re really prepared to wait that long? Brilliant! Thanks, I’ll call you back. Just got to talk about it for another minute.’

‘And? What did he want? What’s going on?’ Ilex demanded.