‘Leave it!’ Penny says, more sharply than she intended. She’s realising that yesterday’s argument isn’t forgotten after all. She’s still primed to react badly. ‘Leave it until I’ve finished, please,’ she adds, more softly.
‘But if I keep things tidy, it’ll make it easier for you,’ Victoria says, glancing over at the packaging from the mince, dribbling its red blood cells on to the kitchen table.
‘Stop!’ Penny shrieks, crossing the kitchen and snatching the sponge from Victoria’s grasp, then lobbing it over her head at the sink. She misses and it bounces off the window, leaving a soapy mark in the middle of the pane. ‘I can’t stand people fussing around me while I’m cooking, OK?’
Victoria is just about to admit defeat when Marge’s voice comes from the doorway. ‘You just can’t stand that your sister’s better at something than you are,’ she says. ‘You just don’t like that she’s shown you up by cleaning the place properly for once.’
Penny and Victoria turn to face their mother.
‘What?’ Penny whistles incredulously.
‘I think Mum’s right, to be honest,’ Victoria says.
Penny opens her mouth to speak and then closes it again when words fail to materialise. ‘Right, that’s it,’ she finally says, physically bustling Victoria towards the doorway. She can almost convince herself that she’s joking.
‘I wish you could just make a bit more effort to get on with everyone, Penny,’ Marge says. ‘You’re so brittle these days.’
‘Both of you, out!’ Penny shouts, tremblingly pushing them out of the kitchen and then squeezing the door closed behind them. ‘Out! Now! Before I scream.’
The door closed, Penny takes a deep breath and tries to calm herself. As she turns back to the kitchen, she sees that the onions are burning, the grey, acrid smoke rising into the air.
Only two people dare to enter the kitchen that morning.
Sander, looking confused, stoned and inappropriately amused, informs her that, ‘They’re leaving.’
‘Leaving?’ Penny replies, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘Uh-huh,’ Sander confirms. ‘I don’t know what happened, but I think, if you spoke to her, she’d stay.’
‘Nothing happened,’ Penny says, struggling to disguise the lie, deciding as she speaks to admit nothing.
‘Vicky seems to think something happened.’
‘Oh, she’s just being silly,’ Penny says. ‘She can’t take a joke, that’s all.’
‘They’re really leaving,’ Sander tells her.
‘But I’m cooking for eight, here,’ Penny says, running her fingers through her hair, then regretting it. They smell of onions.
‘I know. That’s why you need to go and talk to them. They’re putting their bags in the car right now.’
Penny looks up at the ceiling for a moment then declares in a falsely casual voice, ‘Oh, you know what, Sander? If they want to leave, then just let them bloody leave. I’m done with grovelling.’
Sander clears his throat and backs out of the room. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘If you’re sure. I’ll, um, leave you to it, then. It’s a shame, though.’
Ten minutes later, it’s Bertie who opens the door. ‘I just wanted to say goodbye,’ he says.
‘Bye, Bertie,’ Penny replies flatly. She’s busy peering inside the oven. She’s wondering if she can freeze half of the lasagne, despite having cooked the mince from frozen.
‘Um, Aunt Penny,’ Bertie says. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’
Penny frowns at the lasagne, then straightens. ‘Yes?’ she asks briskly.
‘I was wondering if I could come and live here,’ Bertie says. His expression is strange, almost theatrically earnest.
‘What?’
‘I was wondering if I could come and live here with you,’ he says. ‘It’s so much nicer here.’
Penny furrows her brow. She feels like he’s speaking a foreign language to her. Considering the context, his words don’t seem to make any sense. ‘What?’ she says again.
But then Bertie looks around the room and Penny follows his gaze and sees what he’s seeing: the renewed griminess of the kitchen, the empty tomato tins in the sink, the grated cheese on the worktop, the bloody wrapper on the table – a desolation that Penny has, she admits to herself, quite wilfully created.
‘You cheeky little sod,’ she says, waving her hands at him in a shooing gesture. ‘Get out, go on! Bugger off back to your hygienic little flat in London, the lot of you. I’m sick to death of you all.’
Bertie looks soulfully at his aunt and then, with drooping shoulders, he turns and leaves.
Martin drives in silence. He tries to concentrate on his driving, on the physical sensations within his body, on the reflections of the countryside as they sweep across the polished bonnet of the BMW, on the luxurious smell of leather that drifts from the oh-so-comfortable seats of the new car. He is furious with Penny for ruining the weekend and knows that if he allowed his mind to stray that way – which he won’t – he could be furious with his wife as well.
Victoria, for her part, is on the edge of tears. She stares from the side window at the occupants of the cars they overtake, at the trees streaking past, and she waits, like a scared child, for someone to pass comment.
Bertie, feeling shaken and inexplicably scared, has plugged himself into his iPhone and is listening to Will Young. Marge, for the moment, is holding her tongue.
It’s not until they see the first signs for the Medway services (which they still for some reason refer to as Farthing Corner) that anyone speaks.
‘Can we stop at the services?’ Bertie asks, yanking out an earbud. ‘Only I’m starving.’
Martin runs his tongue across his teeth and turns to look at Victoria for a response, but she merely shrugs. He considers saying, I would have preferred a slice of that lasagne to a floppy Farthing Corner sandwich, but restrains himself.
‘I think we had better,’ Marge says. ‘I could do with a wee.’
Martin turns back to face the road. ‘Settled,’ he says, then, ‘Limp sandwiches all round.’ Despite his best efforts, the words have slipped out.
‘I’m sorry, OK?’ Victoria says, sounding not very sorry at all.
‘I wouldn’t have any regrets if I were you,’ Marge says, finally deciding to chip in. ‘If you hadn’t argued before lunch, you would have argued during it.’
Victoria sighs and turns back to the side window.
‘You know how they eat around there,’ Marge continues. ‘You know how much mess they make. And you know how it drives you insane.’
‘Yes, thanks, Mum.’
‘And after all that work you put into cleaning the kitchen as well. It was like she was messing it up on purpose, almost.’
Victoria nods silently. She imagines saying, Word, one of Bertie’s newer linguistic tics, picked up from all the American TV the kids watch these days.
‘The last time I was there,’ Marge says, ‘that cat was all over the dinner table. We came in to eat and it was sitting on my plate ripping lumps out of the chicken.’
Victoria imagines this and literally shudders.
‘They didn’t even mind,’ Marge continues, ‘and Max and Chloe have no more table manners than the bloody cat. Max is forever dipping his fingers in the serving bowls. Why he can’t just serve himself . . .’
‘Gran! ’ Bertie protests.
‘I’m merely stating the truth. You behave far better than they do, Bertie. Am I right, Vicky, or am I right?’
But Bertie only hears the beginning of the phrase. He has plugged his earbud back in and turned the volume of the music up to a near-deafening maximum.
‘You’re totally right,’ Victoria replies.
‘They eat like animals in that house,’ Marge says. ‘Animals!’
‘They do.’
‘Do you remember calling her Piggy Penny,’ Marge asks, with laughter in her voice.
‘That was you, not me,’ Victoria replies.
&
nbsp; ‘Oh no. You definitely started that one.’
‘You still do call her that,’ Martin comments. ‘And you call Max and Chloe the piglets.’
‘Well, it’s not unfitting,’ Victoria says. ‘As any mealtime will demonstrate.’
‘They eat like pigs,’ Marge says. ‘You’re right, Vicky. They really do.’
Once Chloe and her friend Amy have arrived, Penny calls the family to the table.
‘Where did everyone go?’ Chloe asks, eying the set table suspiciously.
‘They had to leave early,’ Penny tells her.
‘Why?’
‘You’d have to ask them,’ Penny says.
‘It’s because Mum called Aunt Vicky a bitch,’ Max mumbles.
‘What did you say?’ Penny asks, shocked by her son’s insolence.
‘Well, you did.’
‘How dare you!’ Penny says. ‘I never said anything of the sort. I don’t talk to my sister like that. So take that back.’
Sander clears his throat and raises one finger. ‘Hey, honey,’ he says, nervously. ‘You know I’m not that keen on contradicting you. But as you’re effectively calling Max a liar, I do feel I have to point out that you did say that. We all heard you say that. You shouted it.’
Chloe glances at Amy, restrains a smirk, and then, even though she personally didn’t hear the infamous phrase being spoken, she nods gravely to confirm it as truth.
Penny stares at Sander and opens her mouth in outrage. She licks her lips, takes a deep breath and, finally, staring at her plate, says, ‘Then I’m sorry, Max. I’m sorry for contradicting you, and I’m sorry for saying it.’
Max shrugs. ‘It’s cool,’ he says. ‘But if I called Chloe a b—’
‘Max!’ Penny interrupts. ‘Don’t push it, OK?’
‘Your mother’s right,’ Sander tells him. ‘The secret in life is to quit while you’re ahead.’
Max bites his lip, pulls a face and nods. ‘OK!’ he says emphatically.
‘So did they really just leave because you argued?’ Chloe asks. ‘That’s lame.’
‘Oh, this was not any old argument,’ Max says, quoting a well-known advertisement. ‘This was an M&S argument.’
‘Max!’ Penny says sharply. But even Max can see that she’s restraining a smile.
Chloe rolls her eyes at Amy, who giggles.
‘My mum argues with my aunt, too,’ Amy says.
‘Right,’ Penny says. ‘Now, if we can just move on.’
‘Did anyone decide about Chr—’ Max starts. But Sander is blinking slowly at him and shaking his head, so he drops the subject. ‘Hold the Christmas!’ he says, raising one hand and grinning broadly.
The meal, which was intended to be an extended, relaxed, semi-luxurious affair, gets reduced to the strict minimum and, while Penny loads the remaining lasagne into a series of Tupperware containers and freezes it, Sander sets the kids up with a film in the lounge.
Finally, dragging Penny and one of the unopened bottles of Prosecco away from the messy kitchen, which he says he will clean up later, they head upstairs to their bedroom.
‘God, she’s even tidied up in here,’ Penny remarks.
‘Maybe it was your mum.’
‘No. This is definitely Vicky’s work,’ Penny says, looking at the polished rows of perfume bottles on her dresser.
‘You need to relax,’ Sander tells her. ‘Maybe you need a joint.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Penny concedes. ‘I think I do.’
When Sander has returned with his little wooden box and skinned up and lit the joint, he hands it to Penny and rolls on to his back beside her.
‘She really is a bitch, you know,’ Penny says. ‘I don’t just imagine it all. I don’t make it all up.’
Sander shrugs. ‘I didn’t say you do,’ he says. ‘But other than having a stupid point of view on the Syrian crisis – which probably half of the population of this country would share – I’m not sure what she did to upset you, to be honest.’
‘It’s not what she says,’ Penny says, speaking through smoke. ‘It’s the way she says it. It’s like every single phrase has a little dig built in. That’s the trouble. They come back and bite you once the conversation is over. You run the conversation back through your mind once she’s left, and all the digs come back and nip you on the heels like a herd of rabid chihuahuas.’
‘A herd of chihuahuas?’ Sander repeats, sniggering.
‘A pack, then,’ Penny says. ‘Whatever. You know what I mean.’
‘I do,’ Sander says, still grinning as he takes the joint from Penny’s hand.
‘It’s like the cleaning,’ Penny says. ‘I’ve got nothing against her spending her weekend cleaning my house, if that’s what rocks her boat. Really, nothing. But then she walks in and says, “Ooh, this is all looking a bit out of control. Would you like me to help you get it back under control?”’
‘Did she really say that?’
‘Pretty much. Even Bertie had a go, the smug little fucker.’
‘Bertie?’ Sander repeats, grimacing. He’s pretty used to Penny slagging off her sister, but when she spreads the blame to her nephew as well it makes him feel distinctly uncomfortable.
‘Yes! He came in at the end, purportedly to say goodbye. But do you know what he said to me?’
‘Nope.’
‘He asked if he could come and live here.’
‘Really?!’
Penny shakes her head exaggeratedly. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not really. He was just being a snide little dick. He looked at the messy kitchen and said – in this really goody-two-shoes little voice, right? “Oh, Auntie Penny, please could I come and live here, Auntie Penny? It’s sooo much nicer than home, Auntie Penny.”’
‘Wow,’ Sander says. ‘And you’re sure he wasn’t serious?’
‘Of course he wasn’t serious.’
‘Well, you know,’ Sander says. ‘Don’t blame the boy. It’s not his fault.’
‘I know,’ Penny agrees. ‘You’re right. But it was completely uncalled for. It was smug and condescending and totally unnecessary.’
‘It will just be stuff his parents say,’ Sander says. ‘You can’t blame people’s children.’
‘Yes,’ Penny says. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right.’
Sander rolls on to his side and slides one hand between Penny’s thighs.
‘And I’m not sure what makes you think I’m in the mood for that,’ Penny says.
Sander wriggles towards her and begins to nuzzle her neck. ‘Mm?’ he says. ‘Aren’t you? In the mood for that?’
‘Not really,’ Penny says.
But encouraged by the laughter in her voice, Sander continues. He kisses her cheek, then her neck. He pulls back her blouse and nibbles at her clavicle. ‘They say that it’s a very good stress reliever,’ he says.
‘Is that right?’ Penny asks, reaching down to take Sander’s chin in her hand so that she can turn his face towards her for a kiss. ‘Is that what they say?’
It’s just after five and Penny and Sander have barely begun to clean up the kitchen when the landline rings.
‘Can you just ignore that, please?’ Penny tells Sander. He is already moving towards the handset and his capacity to be distracted from anything that resembles a chore drives Penny crazy.
‘Sure,’ Sander says, checking the display on the handset before returning it to the shelf. ‘It’s only your mum, anyway.’
Penny sighs and wipes her hands on her jeans as she hesitates. ‘Oh, what the hell,’ she says, crossing the room. ‘Give it here.’
‘Hi, Mum,’ she says, sounding exasperated before the conversation has even begun. She’s pretty sure her mother is going to tell her off about the argument again. In fact, she’s not even sure why she chose to answer the phone. Some kind of Pavlovian reaction, no doubt. Some kind of umbilical whiplash.
‘Hello,’ Marge says brightly. ‘It’s just a quick call to let you know I got home OK.’
‘That took a while,
’ Penny says, glancing at her watch.
‘Well, we stopped off to get a bite to eat, didn’t we? Everyone was starving.’
Penny clears her throat. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That happens when you storm off just before lunch.’
‘Don’t be like that,’ Marge says. ‘Of course, we realised in the car that we hadn’t spoken about Christmas at all.’
‘Who realised that?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Who brought up Christmas?’
‘Oh. I did.’
‘Right. OK.’
‘I suppose you don’t want to think about it right now, do you?’ Marge says.
‘No. You’re right. I don’t.’
‘OK, then.’
‘I’m actually thinking of cancelling Christmas altogether after that little performance.’
‘Oh, Penelope. You can’t do that.’
‘If it’s going to be anything like today,’ Penny says, ‘I can. Just watch me. And please don’t call me Penelope.’
‘Why? It’s a perfectly good name.’
‘A perfectly good name which you never ever use.’
‘Only because you don’t like it.’
‘You’re right. I don’t.’
‘Anyway, that would be a bit selfish, don’t you think?’
‘Selfish?’
‘Yes. We always spend Christmas together.’
‘So maybe I’m thinking we should try something different this year,’ Penny says, now addressing both Sander – who is staring at her in surprise – and her mother.
‘Oh, that’s not an option, and well you know it. You know how difficult Christmas is for your sister – how difficult it is for all of us. Plus, I’d have to choose, wouldn’t I? I’d have to choose one of my daughters over the other. And that wouldn’t be fair.’
‘Sure,’ Penny says. ‘Well, you’d have to be invited first, wouldn’t you, Mum? We might want to spend it completely on our own. So that might simplify things for you.’
‘Oh, you cheeky girl,’ Marge says, forcing herself to treat the remark as a joke. ‘But I know what you mean. She can be difficult. In fact, she was saying pretty much the same thing in the car.’
‘What same thing?’
‘Oh, you know, about . . . I mean, you won’t quote me on this, will you? She’d never forgive me. But she was saying that perhaps it would be better to organise things differently this year as well.’
The Bottle of Tears Page 7
