by Rebecca Reid
‘… as bad as I had expected.’
Poppy was filled with an overwhelming desire to rip down all the leaves and flowers and candles in the dining room. She had gone too far. What had she been thinking? Of course they wouldn’t be impressed. She should have given them a casserole at the kitchen table, wine from Waitrose, and a shop-bought pudding. Forced them to think that she didn’t care, that she was at home here, that she knew how to behave in a house like this. That’s what Dilly would have done.
‘… do you think she knows?’ she heard. It was another woman’s voice. It must be Cordelia. What was the start of that sentence? Did she know what? Poppy couldn’t catch the rest. Dilly must have got up from the dressing table and gone to the other side of the room. Poppy took a long drag on her cigarette. What didn’t she know? What was it that they were sitting upstairs talking about, thinking how stupid she was not to understand?
‘Poppy?’ She heard Drew’s voice. Picking up her glass and grinding the cigarette butt into the ground, she forced a smile.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘I was having a sneaky fag.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, I’m fine.’
Drew caught her arm and pulled her back. ‘What’s wrong?’ he repeated.
She shook her head.
‘Please tell me,’ he asked.
It occurred to her how few times Drew had asked anything of her, how rarely he had ever pushed her to talk about things she would rather not talk about. She could ask, she supposed. But what would she even say? She had heard someone, she didn’t know who, saying that someone else, maybe her, didn’t know something. It was hardly an accusation. ‘It’s not a big deal,’ she said. ‘I just think your friends might think I’m …’ She trailed off.
‘Think you’re what?’
‘Tacky,’ she said quietly, looking down at her feet.
‘Did one of them say something?’
Poppy shook her head. ‘No, no. It’s me. I’m being stupid.’
Drew wrapped his arms around her. ‘I can’t wait to see what you’ve done.’
If Drew’s expression of delight was fake, then he deserved an Oscar for it. He drank in every detail of Poppy’s decoration and then threw his arms around her. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘You are so clever.’
‘Told you so,’ said Gina. ‘Drink, Drew?’
Drew had been wrong about Gina, Poppy decided. It was because he’d never worked in a job like theirs, never had to straddle that middle ground between family and servant. But Gina did it brilliantly, filling up the glasses and passing around the canapés they had made that morning. She glanced at her watch and then caught Poppy’s eye. Yes, Poppy said to her silently. They’re late.
Ralph, Drew, Gina, Poppy and Cordelia’s husband Mac, who had apparently got bored of waiting for her to be ready, were standing on the terrace sharing Poppy’s contraband cigarettes when Emma and Cordelia came down.
‘Are you smoking?’ asked Cordelia, catching sight of her husband with a Marlboro between thumb and forefinger.
‘Whoops!’ He laughed, dropping the cigarette and covering it with his shoe.
‘He was just holding it,’ said Ralph, also laughing.
‘For you?’ asked Emma, arms folded across her boyish chest.
‘I think we’re in trouble,’ said Mac, pulling a silly face.
‘Not at all,’ said Emma. ‘Is there any chance I could have a drink?’ she asked, looking at Gina.
‘Of course,’ she said, striding into the dining room to find two more glasses.
‘It looks lovely in there,’ said Cordelia, looking back into the room. The sun was setting and the jars of candles glowed gently. ‘I’m afraid we’re a little underdressed.’ She gestured at her pale blue trousers and white blouse. ‘I didn’t realize it was quite so … formal.’
Poppy took a slug of champagne and gave Cordelia a wide smile. ‘Oh God, we don’t worry about things like that here. You can come to supper in your pyjamas if you like. I probably would have done, if it weren’t for the fact that Drew prefers me in dresses.’
Drew came up behind Poppy and wrapped his arms around her waist. ‘Actually, darling, I prefer you in nothing at all.’
‘Drew!’
CHAPTER 34
Poppy hadn’t eaten much of her supper. She was too consumed with watching the others eat and panicking that it wouldn’t pass muster. But everyone had made appreciative noises and the buttons on Mac’s shirt were straining over his stomach, which she had decided to take as a win.
‘So, Poppy,’ said Cordelia across the table. ‘How are you finding life in the country, really?’
‘I love it,’ she said.
‘You’re not bored?’ asked Emma. ‘Ralph and I spent the summer at our place with the kids – it’s a couple of miles from here. We thought it would be wonderful but honestly, they were just bored rigid. It went like Lord of the Flies after about a week. We all had to flee back to London for phone signal and PlayStations.’
Everyone laughed. Apparently they were all going to ignore the suggestion that Poppy was of a comparable age to Emma’s teenage children.
‘Poppy’s been working like a Trojan,’ said Drew. ‘You haven’t had the chance to be bored, have you, darling?’
‘It’s been amazing though,’ she said. ‘And I couldn’t have done it without Gina.’
Gina looked up from her plate and grinned. ‘You didn’t really let me do anything but I love you for saying that.’
‘And the house is finished now?’ said Cordelia.
‘Looks pretty finished to me!’ Mac tipped the bottle of red wine into his glass, not offering it to anyone else. ‘Looks like a hotel.’
‘A fucking fancy one,’ said Gina. ‘I can’t believe how much you transformed this place. Honestly, you should have seen some of the décor before. It was like a time warp. You could have charged for it, like a museum.’
Poppy caught her eye and gave her a grateful look.
No one replied to Gina. The knives and forks were loud on the plates.
‘So what will you do, now that you’ve finished the house?’ said Emma, who was apparently fascinated by Poppy’s plans for the rest of her life.
‘God,’ said Poppy. ‘Big question. I don’t know.’
Emma smiled kindly at her. ‘Drew says you’re thinking about training in interiors?’
‘Maybe. I’d love to do up other houses. But I’m not sure if I want to go back to studying.’
‘Back?’ said Mac.
‘Poppy was at Durham,’ said Gina.
‘Really?’ asked Cordelia.
‘Yes,’ said Poppy, putting her glass down. She must be a little bit drunk because her teeth felt numb. ‘I can read and write and everything.’
Drew and Gina burst into laughter and, seconds after them, so did Ralph and Mac. Cordelia gave a tight smile, but if you’d covered her lips you’d never have known that she was smiling.
‘She’s funny,’ said Ralph, talking to Drew. ‘You didn’t tell us she was funny.’
‘It wasn’t on the press release?’ asked Poppy.
‘She’s good at lots of things,’ said Drew. He looked shy. This mattered to him, she reminded herself. Them liking her mattered to him. Poppy slipped her hand into his lap, squeezing his leg. She shouldn’t drink much more. It would only be a couple of glasses of what Gina called ‘fight petrol’ before it was almost impossible to resist the temptation to tell Dilly to go fuck herself. She shifted in her seat, sitting up straighter.
‘What did you read at university?’ said Ralph.
‘History.’
‘History? Really?’ Emma sounded impressed.
‘Arabella is thinking about reading History,’ said Cordelia. ‘She’s choosing her options for GCSE. Perhaps she could pick your brains about Durham?’
‘It was such a long time ago,’ said Poppy. ‘I’m sure it’s changed a lot.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Ralph, ‘these places never change. I
t’d be good for her to chat to you – she never listens when we go on about our college days.’
‘Maybe,’ said Poppy. She looked at her glass of wine. If she knocked it over she could jump up, make an excuse to get away from the table.
‘You must have been in the same year as Ralph’s cousin’s daughter. Didn’t she do History?’ said Emma.
‘Yes!’ said Mac, smiling. ‘What’s she called? Sophie King?’
Poppy’s hand shook on her glass of water. Sophie had been in her tutorial group. She tried to catch Gina’s eye, urging her to send the conversation in another direction.
‘Can you imagine how in demand she was as a nanny?’ said Drew. ‘With a degree from such a good university.’
‘Well, not a degree,’ said Poppy quietly. Better they heard it from her. Better they were embarrassed enough that they didn’t get in touch with this cousin and start asking questions about her, picking at old scabs.
‘What?’ asked Dilly.
Poppy couldn’t meet Dilly’s eye. She squeezed Drew’s leg again, this time asking him for help. ‘I didn’t graduate,’ she said.
‘You didn’t?’ asked Cordelia. ‘But you just said …?’
‘I didn’t finish,’ she replied, looking down at the tablecloth. ‘I dropped out after my second year.’
‘Still, two years is a long time …’ Drew faltered. Was he embarrassed for her, or embarrassed by her? Emma and Cordelia made a sort of sighing noise, as if suddenly everything made sense, as if order had been restored to the world around them.
‘Didn’t you know that, Drew?’ asked Dilly, clearly enjoying herself. ‘You said degree?’
‘Much of a muchness,’ said Drew.
‘More wine?’ said Poppy, picking up a decanter of wine, blue-black in the half-light.
‘She worked for Hengist Henderson and his wife Amanda,’ said Gina from the other end of the table. Poppy watched as the two women perked up. ‘Do you lot know him?’
‘Yes, worst luck,’ said Emma. ‘That must have been interesting.’
‘Nightmare,’ answered Gina, speaking for Poppy. Poppy got to her feet, slowly circling the table topping up glasses. It was a view she’d seen from this angle so many times. Empty places, a tablecloth dotted with drops of red wine and candle wax. ‘Amanda’s on so many pills she practically rattles. Isn’t that right, Pops?’
She’d have to sit back down. Standing up was a tactical withdrawal, a sign of weakness. Gina was keeping it afloat; she had allowed her a few essential seconds to compose herself. But that was over now.
‘So was he,’ she said, sitting down and pushing her face into a smile, forcing her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Little blue ones mostly.’
The table tittered obligingly.
‘The night I met Poppy,’ said Drew, his voice quiet. The rest of the conversation dropped. How did he do that? ‘Those vile people had kicked her out of the house.’
‘Why?’ asked Emma.
‘I’d asked her not to come home six hours late again, because it upset the kids. And Drew rescued me.’ She looked over at him. ‘I was sitting on the side of the road wearing someone else’s shoes, and he whisked me away.’
‘And then you rescued me back,’ he said, as though there were only two of them in the room.
‘It’s true,’ said Ralph, breaking the spell. ‘He was a bloody train wreck before he met you.’
‘Really?’ The idea of Drew being anything less than perfect was mad. ‘A train wreck?’ She looked to Drew. ‘You didn’t tell me you were a train wreck.’
‘He wasn’t a complete mess,’ said Emma.
‘Oh come on,’ said Mac.
‘All right, he was quite a mess.’ She laughed. ‘We used to take it in turns to go and see him, to make sure he was eating – all he ever did was work. Eighteen-hour days at the office, no social life. Barely had time to see us at the weekends. Almost never came over to visit.’
‘We caught him on a conference call at the back of the church at Maya’s christening!’
‘Drew!’ Poppy put her arms around him.
Drew’s skin was pink under the olive tone. ‘They’re exaggerating.’
‘They’re not,’ said Ralph.
‘I think we should have a toast,’ said Gina. ‘To Poppy. For doing all of this.’
Poppy fixed her gaze on her napkin. There were crumbs in it. She couldn’t look up as she heard the clink of glasses and her name chanted, but she allowed herself a small, embarrassed smile.
CHAPTER 35
The jars of candles were just pools of wax now, and the last of the light was gone. Only the little lights twisted in the garlands of leaves and the pillar candles on the tables were left. The tablecloth was stained and Drew was standing by the open doors, smoking a cigarette.
‘Shall we get coffee?’ Poppy asked Gina.
Gina nodded. ‘And pudding. Hold tight, guys, this is going to blow your mind.’
‘Oh really?’ asked Mac. ‘I must say, the food has been quite amazing.’
‘Wasn’t it? Mind you, no surprises there, Poppy did work in a kitchen when she was growing up.’
‘Did you?’ asked Drew from the doorway.
‘Yes,’ said Poppy. ‘Nothing fancy though, just the French place on the local high street. Most of it came in frozen.’
‘You didn’t know that, either?’ asked Cordelia. ‘You need to start paying attention, darling. Doesn’t sound like you know anything about your new wife at all!’
Before Poppy could answer, Gina did. ‘It’s part of their whole Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind thing.’
No. No, no, no. It had all gone so well. The food had been perfect, the conversation mostly OK. She hadn’t embarrassed Drew, or said anything stupid, and if she stayed here long enough and kept smacking down the snarky little comments then they’d probably start to accept her eventually. Surely it wasn’t going to fall apart now?
‘What?’ asked Emma, turning away from Ralph. This conversation was clearly more interesting than school fees or second ponies or whatever it was they had been talking about.
‘Gina, can you help me with these?’ Poppy got to her feet, taking one empty water jug in one hand and gesturing to the other.
‘Their deal thingy,’ Gina went on. Was she doing this on purpose, or was she just drunk? Poppy caught Drew’s eye across the table. His lips were tight with frustration. ‘Shut her up’ his expression seemed to say. ‘I can’t’ she tried to tell him, silently.
No one was trying to hide their curiosity any more.
‘What deal?’ asked Mac.
‘It’s not a deal,’ said Poppy. ‘It’s just …’ She trailed off. What was the end of that sentence? What was she supposed to say? She looked up through the glass above her head and to the night sky above. The stars here were astonishing, like crushed diamonds on navy velvet. ‘It’s just something Drew and I decided. We don’t ask each other about things that happened before we met. How many of us want coffee?’
‘I’ll get the pudding,’ said Drew, getting to his feet. ‘Gina, will you help me with the bowls?’
‘I’ll come,’ said Poppy.
‘No,’ said Drew. ‘You’ve done so much this evening. Gina doesn’t mind, do you?’
From the way that she stuck her bottom lip out it looked like Gina did mind, very much. She gave him a nasty sideways look as they left the room together. Why was she being like this?
‘I’m probably being very slow here,’ said Cordelia. ‘You’ll have to help me out. You and Drew don’t ask each other about anything that happened before you met?
‘Um,’ Poppy said, ‘yeah. That’s about the size of it.’
Silence fell around the table for the first time that evening. It rang in Poppy’s ears and she wished ardently that she had put some music on in the background.
‘So you’ve got no idea about each other’s pasts?’ Cordelia said.
Poppy was starting to lose her temper. The swipes at each other earlie
r had been one thing, but this was turning into a ritual humiliation. Cordelia was a guest. She should act like one.
‘You make it sound very 007,’ said Drew, coming back into the room. ‘I’m afraid it’s nothing as exciting as that. Only that Poppy and I agree there’s no real benefit in quizzing each other about every broken-hearted disaster that happened before we met, so we agreed not to. We focus on the here and now.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Emma, almost under her breath.
‘I’ve never thought that total disclosure towards a spouse about every little thing that one has ever done is the way to make a relationship work,’ said Drew.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Drew,’ said Emma, ‘you know that’s rubbish. Honesty is the most important part of a marriage.’
Poppy traced his stare, across the table, right into Emma’s eyes. ‘I’m surprised to hear that you’re such a stickler for honesty, Emma,’ he said. Poppy watched as Emma pushed her hair back from her ears and pulled it around on to one side, twisting the ends around her finger. She could see now – this was why they paid Drew the mega-bucks. Because he could work out exactly where to apply pressure and how hard to push. ‘Gina,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Weren’t you supposed to be helping?’ Poppy asked.
‘He was just in my way.’ Gina gave a laugh which sounded fake. ‘Easier to do it myself.’ Poppy knew that smile. It was the ‘fuck you’ smile that they gave their bosses when they suggested a last-minute Saturday babysitting slot. ‘I’ll just go and get dessert wine and some clean glasses.’
