Summer at the Lake (28 page)

But no sooner had Floriana arrived and was removing her hat and coat, Mum had pounced and pointed in horror at the scar on her head, demanding to know how it had happened. Explaining as briefly as she could, Mum had been appalled.

‘But why didn’t you tell us you’d been in an accident?’ she had cried, at the same time dragging Floriana into the sitting room where the light was better and she could get a closer look. It had probably been on the tip of her tongue to say it wasn’t too late to apply some arnica. Arnica and a nice cup of tea were Mum’s two weapons against anything bad life could throw at her.

‘It was hardly an accident at all,’ Floriana had said, studiously avoiding any eye contact with her sister who was almost certainly giving her the
What-did-I-tell-you-about-not-worrying-Mum-and-Dad?
look.

Mum’s interrogation hadn’t let up until she’d extracted a full confession from Floriana and the news about Seb spilled.

‘Getting married, is he?’ Dad said now in the hush created by Mum’s sudden and meaningful silence. Ever since their falling out, Floriana had insisted, a bit dramatically she could now see, that Seb’s name was never mentioned in her hearing and, to their credit, her parents had respected her wishes. Though what they said and thought in private was another matter. She knew, however, only after Mum had let it slip last year, that they had sent Seb a birthday card. They didn’t hear back from him though.

‘That’s a turn up for the books,’ Dad went on awkwardly, giving an excellent impression of a man who’d been given a very hot potato to hold and was passing it from one hand to the other in the hope of dumping it on somebody else. ‘I didn’t really have him down as the marrying kind.’

‘Who’s getting married?’ asked Clare, looking up from the game Thomas was playing on his Nintendo and which he’d allowed her to watch over his shoulder, so long as she didn’t put her thumb in her mouth and make the squelchy sucking noise he particularly hated. ‘Can I be a bridesmaid?’

‘No you can’t,’ Ann snapped. ‘It’s just some silly old friend of Auntie Floriana’s.’

Crestfallen at her mother’s harsh tone and forgetting her brother’s rule, Clare slid her thumb into her mouth and sucked on it so hard the action could have cleared a blocked sink.

‘Eu-
uw
,’ Thomas said, jabbing his elbow into her chest. ‘That’s
so
gross.’

‘Take your thumb out of your mouth!’ Ann barked. ‘How many times do I have to tell you, you’re not a baby?’

Thumb-sucking had been outlawed
chez
Brown since the New Year, but Clare’s addiction to it was showing no sign of weakening. Her face crumpling ominously, she mumbled into her thumb that she wasn’t a baby.

‘Yes you are!’ Thomas taunted. ‘You’re the grossest baby on the planet!’

The crumpled face gave way to full-blown disintegration and Clare began wailing while simultaneously walloping Thomas on the top of his head and proving, if proof were needed, that she was far stronger than any baby.

‘Mu-
um
,’ Thomas yelled, giving his sister another vicious poke with his elbow, ‘make her stop!’

The volume of Clare’s crying now at fire alarm level, her brother gave an almighty shove that knocked her off her feet and, toppling backwards onto the coffee table, she knocked flying the bowls of nibbles that Mum had put out in readiness for when they sat down to watch Dad’s blockbuster DVD.

‘Bloody hell, you two, can’t you behave for two seconds without kicking off, I’m trying to send an email.’

‘Paul,’ Ann reprimanded her husband, ‘don’t you dare swear at the children like that! And I thought we were having a BlackBerry-free day?’

‘This is important.’

‘Isn’t it always!’

‘It’s all right, everybody,’ Mum said with a calmness that was distinctly at odds with the speed with which she had thrown herself onto the floor to pick up the mix of popcorn, olives and crisps before it was ground into the carpet. A SWAT team wouldn’t have reacted faster.

‘See what you’ve done,’ Ann hissed.

‘How am I to blame?’ Floriana asked incredulously. Stupid question. Of course it was her fault. It always was in Ann’s eyes.

Her sister glared at her. ‘If you hadn’t started on about Seb’s wedding this wouldn’t have happened. Don’t just stand there, go and fetch a cloth! Better still, get some kitchen roll and a dustpan and brush!’

The commotion dealt with and the carpet saved, and on the pretext of helping, Floriana was in the kitchen with her father – the two of them enjoying a sneaky and recuperative glug of Dad’s home-made damson liqueur while the kettle boiled. ‘I take it the news about Seb’s impending nuptials was a surprise to you?’ he said above the noise of the kettle rumbling like a jumbo jet about to take off.

She nodded.

‘Will you go?’

‘I don’t know. He came to Oxford to see me a few weeks ago to twist my arm.’

‘He’s keen then, really wants you there?’

She shrugged, unable to answer.

Pouring them both another measure of the liqueur, her father said, ‘Come on, drink up quick before your mother finds us and tells me off. I’m on a strict diet now, limited to just one glass of alcohol a day.’ He patted his stomach. ‘I’ve put on nearly a stone.’

Floriana scoffed. ‘You look fine to me. Better, perhaps. You were whippet-thin before.’

He smiled. ‘Would it be so very awful for you to go to Seb’s wedding? I’ve no idea what went on between the two of you, but don’t you think it would be an opportunity to accept the olive branch he’s offering? You two were so close, it’s a shame to lose a friendship, especially one that was so important to you both.’

She shook her head, feeling sorry for her father; he’d always liked Seb, had secretly seen himself as a bit of a father figure for him. ‘The wedding’s in Lake Como,’ she said, ‘which pretty much means I can’t go.’

‘Why?’

‘Moolah, Dad.’

The kettle now boiling, he switched it off and made a pot of Mum’s favourite Earl Grey tea. He then refilled it to make coffee for Paul and a decaffeinated tea for Ann. ‘We could always help you out, you know that.’

‘What, and have Ann accuse me of not being able to stand on my own two feet?’

‘She wouldn’t need to know.’

Floriana drained her glass of liqueur. ‘Now you’re sounding worryingly like Seb.’ She explained about Seb’s terrible idea to pay for her to go.

‘Goodness, that’s very
terrible
of him. What a swine to offer such a thing.’

‘Don’t be a tease, Dad, you know what I meant. I can’t accept his charity.’

‘It’s hardly that. More like a kind gesture. As I said before, it must mean a lot to him to have you there. You’re his oldest friend. Who knows, he might not have any friends now who mean half as much to him.’

This wasn’t the first time Floriana had heard this; Esme had said much the same, then more recently, when she’d had dinner with Adam, he’d made the same remark.

‘Are you sure you’re not using money as an excuse?’ her father said, hunting in the cupboard for Ann’s box of decaffeinated teabags. ‘There are some amazingly cheap deals on flights these days.’

‘It is an issue, but not an insurmountable one,’ she conceded. During dinner with Adam, and to prove a point, he’d gone online with his mobile and shown her what she could expect to pay. She’d argued that by the time she’d made her mind up the cheap deals would have all evaporated. ‘Even more reason to book now,’ Adam had maintained.

‘So, it’s not just the money,’ her father said, ‘and you didn’t see me do that,’ he added when he gave up rummaging in the cupboard and put a lethally caffeinated Tetley teabag into Ann’s mug. ‘What then is really holding you back?’

‘Any chance of those drinks appearing this side of Easter?’ Ann said, poking her head round the door of the kitchen.

‘On their way, on their way,’ Dad said, hastily blocking Ann’s view of the mug and teabag that was, if she were to believed, likely to keep her up all night. Which would be a just punishment in Floriana’s view, given the way Ann had spoken to her earlier. Honestly, her sister was as grouchy as hell these days; just what was her problem? Apart from the obvious – two squabbling kids and a husband who was fast turning into a boring middleaged grump. Always quick to rush to anybody’s defence, Mum claimed Paul worked too hard, that he was never off his mobile or dealing with some pressing problem or other from the office. Privately, Floriana reckoned Paul deliberately kept busy to escape the constant barrage of diktats from Ann.

Hugging Clare on her lap while they watched the DVD of Mum and Dad’s trip of a lifetime, Floriana thought of Esme’s own trip of a lifetime to Italy when she’d been a young girl.

It was a fortnight since that evening when Floriana had listened in rapt attention to her elderly friend’s story. How tediously dull her own life story would sound in comparison.

‘Look!’ squealed Clare, uncorking a soggy wrinkled thumb from her mouth and pointing at the television screen that was showing a swimming pool, a row of sun loungers and a jacuzzi. ‘There’s Nanna in a bubbly bath!’

‘So it is,’ Floriana said. ‘Hey, nice work in the jacuzzi, Mum, and would that be a glass of champagne in your hand?’

‘It certainly is. And before you ask, my face is pink from the sun, not from what I’m drinking.’

Floriana laughed. ‘Of course, Mum, perish the thought we’d think anything else. And who’s the gigantically huge man with you?’

‘That’s Jim Romano, he’s a district attorney from Chicago. We often had dinner with him and his wife. She called him Big Jim.’

‘I bet she did,’ Floriana said with a laugh.

‘Why’s he having a bath with you, Nanna?’ asked Clare.

‘
Ssh!
’ Ann hissed from the sofa, where next to her Paul was surreptitiously fiddling with his BlackBerry.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ Floriana whispered in her niece’s ear as on the screen Big Jim grinned a toothy smile for the benefit of the camera.

It was probably the association of an Italian-sounding name that had Floriana’s thoughts drifting from her parents’ cruise back to Esme’s time in Italy. To her dismay, and just at the crucial bit in the story, Esme had abruptly broken off with an awkwardly murmured apology, saying she was too tired to talk any more. Floriana had respectfully left shortly afterwards and had telephoned the old lady the following day to check that she was all right. ‘I’m fine, my dear,’ Esme had said, ‘just suffering from a surfeit of nostalgia.’

Much as she was intrigued to know what happened next in Esme’s story, Floriana hadn’t wanted to push her luck, though she was guilty of speculation and discussing it with Adam, concluding that Marco really must have been the love of Esme’s life and that was why she had never been married.

Watching her mother posing for the camera – now in full evening wear and with another glass of champagne in hand – and listening to her father’s affectionate and amusing commentary, Floriana reflected on their own romantic story – they’d met as teenagers at school, dated a while, split up, then a few years later, the way Dad always described it, he’d found himself drawn back into Mum’s gravitational force field and that was that, there was no one else in the world for him: Mum was the true love of his life.

Floriana couldn’t help but think of Seb. Was he her one true love? He had never actually been a boyfriend, but undoubtedly she had never felt for anyone else what she had felt for him. Would she ever? Was there a second chance out there for her, another Seb?

Or was she destined to grow old and alone like Esme? And would that be so awful? Catching the threatening looks being exchanged between Ann and Paul as he continued to defy her by using his BlackBerry, Floriana thought spinsterhood really wouldn’t be that bad an option.

Steve had assured him it would be a laugh. Which begged the question: what the hell passed for a laugh in Steve’s world these days? Root canal work?

Not so long ago Steve would never have contemplated a place like this for a drink, but whether or not he was having an early mid-life crisis, he was now a proud member of Oxford’s latest lounge bar in George Street, an establishment aimed at the city’s so-called elite party crowd. It boasted, of all things, a ‘fair door policy’ to ensure like-minded people could safely rub shoulders with the select few. What a joke that was, Adam thought as he surveyed the assembled bunch of alpha males suited and booted and the ranks of girls who were trying too hard in their false eyelashes and towering heels.

‘Right,’ Steve had said when Adam had told him on the phone about Jesse, ‘no more crying into your Adele CDs, let’s get you party-hearty and back out there!’

Party-hearty was the last thing Adam felt as he tried to chat with the two girls who had latched on to them when they’d arrived. ‘We’re in with these two,’ Steve had said with a wink. ‘Got ourselves a couple of Kardashians and make no mistake! Grab those seats over there while I get the drinks. I’ll let you choose which of the girls you want. But only this once, mind.’

Getting drinks was no mean feat; the bar was five deep in places and Steve had been there an age, leaving Adam to talk to the two girls. From the little conversation he’d got from them so far, he reckoned they were merely biding their time until something better came along. Apparently there was some soap star currently in a play at the Playhouse and who, it was rumoured, favoured the club – perhaps they were hoping to snag him?

Above the noise of music that was pounding the foundations of the building, one of the girls was saying something to Adam. He put his hand to his ear, indicating for her to repeat what she’d said. He caught the words
Take Me Out
. . . had he watched it last Saturday? His expression a rictus of feigned interest and feeling like a hard-of-hearing, befuddled uncle that was being humoured, he said, ‘No, sorry, I must have missed that.’ At least he knew what programme she was referring to – he’d accidentally watched part of an episode one evening while waiting for Jesse to dry her hair before going out. These two girls struck him as ideal contestants.

With that line of conversation thoroughly dried up, they tried another. Shrieking at him, the one he thought was called Shelly wanted to know if he knew anything about the DJ here tonight. Was he any good? They’d heard R ’n’ B was his thing. Adam silently groaned – the ageing deaf uncle had now morphed into the bewildered grandfather fumbling for a Werther’s Original in the pocket of his cardigan.