The Birthday Party (13 page)

It had not been one of his finest moments.

Now he was dry, dry as a bone, and the trampoline had long been disposed of. But if he wished for anything it was to have
that time back. He had tried to make it up to them since, but how could you compensate for all those years of self-indulgence?
He’d been a selfish bastard, and he didn’t deserve them. Or rather, they hadn’t deserved him.

If any of his daughters fucked up their lives, it would be his fault. His fault and no one else’s.

He shook himself out of his reminiscence. There was no point in looking backwards. He’d punished himself enough, and if he
thought too much about his past, it sent him into a depression that could take days to recover from – a dark, black
hole that was probably the reason he had turned to drink in the first place, because he’d always been prone to introspective
self-doubt and gloom. The nation had only ever seen the flipside, the charismatic extravert party animal. They had no idea
of the self-loathing, the lack of confidence, the fear …

He hadn’t had any counselling or therapy to dig him out. He didn’t want to be brainwashed into some other more sinister dependence.
He’d seen other alcoholics spout shrink-speak, and it appalled him. He determined to figure it out for himself. If you couldn’t
fix yourself without the help of others, then you weren’t really fixed, in his opinion. You were still using them as a crutch.
Not for him weekly meetings in a draughty church hall. He valued his freedom too much. He wanted to be him, not a puppet on
a string. He couldn’t deny that it worked for some people, and he didn’t diminish their achievement. It just wasn’t his thing.

It had been a hideously rough ride – for him and for Delilah – but he’d made it. He didn’t make it easy for himself, either.
He didn’t ban alcohol from the house or the dinner table or avoid friends who drank. What was the point? He had to train himself
to keep off the booze with temptation right under his nose. It was the only way to be properly cured.

Though, of course, you never were. The urge never left you. Even now he could picture the bottles of white burgundy lined
up in the fridge, dewy with condensation, the crystal jugs full of Pimm’s – so innocuous, so deadly, so inviting – that would
be served on arrival, the crate of beer chilling in the larder for the more casual guests. It would only take one sip …

He had his visualisation. He only had to remember the expression on Violet’s face that day, and he was able to hold back.
He had any number of pictures to choose from, and they all worked. In his bleakest moments, he replayed them to himself in
chronological order: wasted at Sports Day, falling over in the dads’ sack race while the horrified headmistress looked on;
him and his mates taking over the bucking bronco at Coco’s Wild West birthday party – they thought it was
hilarious, but the children hadn’t; making a pass at Tyger’s best friend’s mother in his own house – the mother hadn’t minded,
but her husband had put him up against the wall. Why the fuck had no one ever told him what a twat he was all that time?

They had. Of course they had. It was just that he had never listened.

Never mind. That incarnation had been banished for good. Today’s Raf was clean, sober, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He looked
in the mirror, decided on just two buttons undone on his shirt, and went downstairs to find his wife.

Delilah was back in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches to the food, talking on the phone, and all the while trying
to keep her nails dry. The manicurist had arrived at half seven to reapply the pale pink varnish she favoured, and had finally
got to her at ten. It wasn’t that Delilah was a princess and couldn’t paint her own nails; she just knew that unless she booked
someone to come and do them she wouldn’t bother and would let them chip. As a television chef, the state of her hands was
important – she had to keep them looking as good as the rest of her.

Raf dropped a kiss on her neck and got one blown back at him in return as she patiently explained to the food editor of a
national magazine why a particular photo could not be used in a recipe spread – ‘No one’s flaky pastry turns out like that
in real life. It’s giving the reader a false expectation. It should look rough and ready not perfect …’ – and ran a blowtorch
over some individual rhubarb meringue pies. Raf grinned and went to help himself to a coffee from the overworked Gaggia. No
one did multi-tasking like Delilah. She was probably thinking about something completely different while she talked and worked,
would hang up the phone and be onto the next thing. Would he merit a moment of her time? he wondered, piling two spoons of
brown sugar into the inky depths of his espresso.

Finally, she was finished. She slung her iPhone onto the
worktop. Sometimes he thought she was surgically attached to it. He wondered what she thought would happen if she missed a
call; did she fear the end of the world would come if someone was put through to voicemail? He imagined her reaction if he
had dropped
her
phone into a vase of flowers. Complete meltdown, probably.

She came over and kissed him, holding her arms exaggeratedly out to the sides, still worried about smudging her nails. Their
lips brushed, lingered. Raf felt the urge to pull her into him, to bury his face in her neck and smell her tangerine-scented
hair. God, he was lucky. Even after twenty-five years he found her irresistible. It was rare they got the chance for any chandelier-swinging
these days.

Doug the Pug scuttered in, his nails clattering across the limestone floor. He looked up at them anxiously, his eyes bulging,
his breath coming fast. Raf let his wife go, laughing.

‘Ok, little man. I’ll let her go.’

‘I’ve got to get on, anyway.’ Delilah tested her nails against her top lip, and decided they were dry.

Raf rolled his eyes. ‘Honestly, do I have to make an appointment?’

‘Tomorrow,’ promised Delilah. ‘Tomorrow we have a clear diary, no guests, no commitments, phone off the hook. I promise.’
Her eyes sparkled as she looked at him. ‘What do you want to do? Anything. Absolutely anything.’

‘Do you know what I want to do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. With you.’

‘Then nothing it is. I promise.’

‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ Raf smiled good-naturedly and opened the fridge, pulling out a large tub of natural yoghurt
and some blueberries. ‘Are the girls all coming?’

‘I’ve got no idea. Polly hasn’t been able to get hold of any of them. You know what they’re like.’

‘They’ll turn up.’ Raf was pretty certain, but he nevertheless felt the curdle of fear a parent gets when their offspring
are out of their control. He had been devastated when Delilah had
decided the three girls should move away from home. She had insisted they needed to stand on their own two feet, not least
because she and Raf deserved their own space after all this time. He had protested volubly. It was cruel to push them out
of the nest. He loved peering into their bedrooms at night when he couldn’t sleep, watching them breathe, wondering what they
were dreaming. He loved the energy they brought to every mealtime – maybe not breakfast, when they didn’t usually appear,
or if they did they were bleary-eyed and grumpy, but his favourite time was dinner, when they regaled him with scandal and
anecdotes and asked for his opinion on matters of total insignificance to the world at large but which fascinated him, because
they mattered to his girls. Two years on he had got used to the relative quiet and emptiness; it was unusual for him and Delilah
to be totally alone at The Bower, but the decibel level had definitely gone down quite a few notches.

Never mind. In an hour or so they’d all be here, in a flurry of hair and perfume and sunglasses and laughter, and he could
reassure himself that they were all right, his beautiful girls.

Delilah felt guilty, pushing her own husband away, but she needed to clear her head. Lunch for twelve, or however many it
was, she could do with her eyes shut, but she had so many things whirling around her brain.

Her editor had phoned yesterday, to see if they could pull the publication of her next book forward. She was already up against
it, but she knew they wouldn’t have done it without good reason. The timing of a book was crucial – it depended on what marketing
slots were available in the book stores and, even more importantly, the supermarkets, and what other books were scheduled
to come out at the same time. She didn’t want to run up against another Nigella or Delia and be competing for the same slots.
And this one was going to be marketed as the ideal Christmas present: ‘The Only Cookery Book You’ll Ever Need.’

It had been conceived as Mrs Beeton for the twenty-first century – a cookery book for life, with everything from how to wean
a three-month-old to preparing a funeral tea. It included detox plans, how to fill your freezer, how to stockpile for Christmas,
nourishing recipes for students – in short, a recipe for every possible eventuality in life. It was nothing groundbreaking
or new, but it was to be beautifully photographed, with spaces for the reader’s own notes, and a link to Delilah’s website
where a shopping list for every recipe could be downloaded and printed out. It was going to be a weighty tome, almost an encyclopaedia.

Compiling it was an arduous task. Delilah was a perfectionist, and although she had a team of people who checked and double-checked
each recipe, she still wanted to do it for herself. She also hated repeating anything she had done in a previous book – it
always annoyed her when other chefs did that – so unless a recipe was a classic, like Victoria sponge or
boeuf bourguignon,
everything had to be new. She never wanted to be accused of churning out the same old stuff under a different guise.

Pulling publication forward was going to put her under a lot more pressure. In theory it was only three weeks, but in reality
it gave her less time to polish, to perfect, to go over what she had already done. So she knew promising Raf a day of undivided
attention tomorrow was unfair. She would have to put in at least three hours’ work, drafting out the final outline so her
editor could go over it on Monday and then approve it. Maybe she could get up at five and fit it in then, before he surfaced.
He wouldn’t even know.

Her work was often a source of tension between them. He didn’t understand why she had to drive herself so hard, but she had
created an empire that wouldn’t run itself. It was Brand Delilah, so everything had to have her stamp, her approval, her touch.

‘You should delegate!’ he would complain, but people were buying
her
, she would point out. How could she delegate?

Besides, she worked best when the pressure was on. The more she had to do the better she thrived. She knew that to anyone
else it looked like an insane way of life, but the only way she kept going was through momentum. Which was why she was standing
here now peeling the shells off three dozen quails’ eggs. Just the top halves, so that each egg was sitting in a little jagged-edged
cup. Of course she could have got someone else to do it, but while she was making sure that each egg was perfect, she could
think about the next chapter. She loved the contrast of the pale blue speckled shell against the shiny white. And they would
look gorgeous piled up on a platter with radishes and baby carrots, ready to dip into celery salt and home-made aioli.

A family day. Today was going to be a family day. And tomorrow was going to be Raf’s. She walked past him with a handful of
shells to put in the compost bin and dropped a kiss on his head. He looked up from his paper and smiled. As she planted the
shells on top of the coffee grounds and banana skins, she thought to herself how lucky they were. They were a great team.
That was how you made a showbiz marriage successful. Teamwork.

T
he April sun shone in through the window on a tangle of white linen and golden limbs. Its rays nudged gently at the eyelids
of the bed’s occupants. One girl slumbered on sweetly; the other drifted into consciousness, frowning slightly as she came
to. It was her room, definitely, she could tell by the bough of cherry blossom outside the window. But something wasn’t quite
right … There was an unfamiliar arm around her waist and a scent she didn’t recognise, sweetly delicious. As she breathed
it in she found her head swimming, her heart beating faster. The memories were drifting back. And the body beside her told
her it hadn’t been a dream.

Violet looked down at the dark hair spread out on the pillow next to her. She was astonished to find that she didn’t feel
panic, regret, remorse … or disgust. She tried to analyse what she did feel and her mouth turned up at the corners into a
secretive smile. Turned on. She felt totally, fizzily, meltingly horny. And she wanted more.

Violet had never even thought about sex with a girl until last night, but suddenly she wanted to touch Justine all over, bury
herself in her softness. She reached out a tentative hand. If her recollections were correct, last night had been all about
her. When Justine had finished, Violet had fallen asleep in her arms, exhausted. Now, she wanted to give Justine the same
pleasure. She reached out to trace the outline of her breast, trailing her fingertips lightly over the skin, circling the
nipple. Justine stirred slightly.

‘Mmmm …’ Her murmur of appreciation encouraged
Violet to be more adventurous. Her eyes opened, and they smiled at each other. Complicit. No embarrassment. Moments later
they were in each other’s arms, kissing languidly. Violet ran her hands over Justine’s hips, slid it between her thighs, slightly
unsure, then tentatively touched her. Justine gave a gasp, arched her back, pushing herself against Violet’s fingers, definitely
wanting more. She explored the wetness, found the little nub, began to rub it gently, circling it as it swelled. She watched,
fascinated, as Justine drifted off, her eyes half closed, her breathing slightly shallow. Neither of them spoke as Violet
stroked and teased, judging the pressure needed by Justine’s reaction, sometimes barely touching her at all, her fingertips
dancing with a pianist’s grace.