The Sunday Lunch Club

by Juliet Ashton

  Before Anna could speak, Isabel bounded out of the spare room. Her effort to look as if she hadn’t noticed their entwined hands didn’t convince Anna.

  ‘I loved having them here, but I’m glad they’re gone.’ Luca took the pile of serving dishes out of Anna’s hands. ‘So I can do this.’ He homed in on her, arms about her, mouth on hers. He was warm, solid, and he tasted of lunch.

  Washing-up vs Luca was no contest. Lying on the bed, they discovered they were too full of food to make love.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Luca.

  ‘Ssh.’ Anna was perversely pleased. It felt like a milestone. They were tacitly accepting there would be plenty of other opportunities. Prioritising sleep over sex felt like a couple-y thing to do. So long as it doesn’t happen too often.

  They snoozed, and the light in the room changed from pearly to grey. Stretching, they moved about the flat, setting it to rights, clearing away stray glasses, debating what to watch on Netflix.

  Anna yawned. She deserved this delicious Sunday evening, just her and Luca and a romcom. She deserved a night off from the letter.

  ‘Oh, I forgot.’ Luca came up behind her at the sink. ‘This must have got swept up with my stuff when I was at your place.’

  A presentiment warned her as he reached into his leather satchel. She wanted to say ‘No!’ She wanted him to leave it in the bag until the next morning, but she said nothing and Luca brought out a long narrow envelope.

  Chapter Six

  Lunch at Maeve’s

  NIBBLY THINGS

  BAKED POTATOES, SURPRISE FILLING, BEANS À LA HEINZ

  ANGEL CAKE AND CUSTARD

  Dear Anna,

  Contacting you is against the rules, isn’t it? But they’re not my rules, and as I don’t respect you I don’t have to respect your rules.

  You might wonder why I’m contacting you and I don’t have a real answer. I suppose I want to try and finally get my head around your cruelty. You’ve done your best to forget me but how can I forget you?

  I am the victim of your selfishness and I REFUSE to be quiet about it any more.

  Yours,

  Carly

  The worst thing about the letters – and this was a hotly contested competition; everything about them disturbed Anna – was the fact that they were hand-delivered.

  This Carly person had stood outside Anna’s house, looked at her curtains and the pansies dying in her window boxes and the white-painted brick facade and the glossy red front door. She’d have heard Yeti’s berserk barking and the scritch-scratch of his claws on the hall floor the moment the letter box clattered.

  Maybe I was in the house at the time.

  Pottering. Stirring soup in a pot. Showing swatches of fabric to Sam out in the shed.

  The lack of a postmark, or a surname, or return address, took the power out of Anna’s hands.

  Sam ended his phone conversation – a long, loud, numbingly dull powwow with their Romanian factory manager – and swivelled his chair to face her. He’d suggested a chair race earlier, and when Anna had demurred, he’d agreed that, yeah, maybe she was right, being pregnant and everything.

  The baby didn’t stop her racing him. She loved beating him on the course they’d worked out around the desks. It was the letters. They had outgrown their outline, trickling into all the corners of her day. She shoved them into a drawer and attended to him, picking up the conversation interrupted by Romania.

  ‘I know she’ll want to Instagram it all.’ Sam was planning how to ask Isabel to move in with him. It had to be a ‘production’, because ‘Issy loves that kind of thing’.

  ‘Mm, nice,’ nodded Anna, as Sam wondered aloud whether to leave a trail of rose petals through the flat.

  ‘She likes those mini blackboard things,’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘What if I chalk it on one of them?’

  ‘Yeah. Could do.’

  ‘Or maybe go to our favourite restaurant – that French place with the courtyard garden – and get the waiter to put a house key in her champagne?’

  ‘Sounds nice.’

  ‘I read about a guy who took half of the food out of his fridge, half the covers off his bed, half the furniture out of his rooms, and led his girlfriend through the house, saying “Without you I’m living half a life.” Is that a bit much? Not sure where I’d put the furniture.’ Sam sat back, tapping his pen on the desk. He stopped suddenly. ‘Are you even listening?’

  ‘Why are you asking me of all people when I’ve already said I think it’s too soon? Isabel strikes me as a woman who spooks easily. All this fuss might make her dart away, like a deer.’

  ‘I’m asking you of all people because I ask you about everything, Anna. Also, because I’m out of practice at being in love, and you’re my spy in the land of women. You don’t have to support me, but it’d be nice if you at least pretended to be glad that I’m happy again after all these years on my own.’

  The dressing-down was deserved. Anna felt ashamed of her inability to lift her eyes from the letters. ‘You’re right. I’m a moody bitch. Blame the pregnancy. Let’s have a break for lunch and we can plan how—’

  Already on his feet, Sam gathered documents into the magnificent man-bag of weathered leather Anna had made just for him. ‘I’m having lunch with the sales director of Selfridges, remember? Then I’ve got the afternoon off, so I’ll see you Sunday at Maeve’s.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I’m going to be late.’ Sam fended off Yeti’s goodbyes and left.

  Anna could have said that he should keep his question simple and to the point; if Isabel was ready, then she was ready, but if not, it would be easier for her to explain why in a normal setting without all the well-meaning razzamatazz.

  But I didn’t say any of that. Instead, she’d sounded disapproving. Unsupportive. Sam deserved better from her.

  Without him, the shed felt lonely. Her ear constantly cocked for the slap of the letter box, Anna was grateful when Yeti laid his long snout on her lap and looked up at her as if he understood.

  Sometimes we do things behind our own backs.

  There was a valid reason for Anna to pull down the steps to the attic and clamber up in her slippers as Luca slept off a Chinese takeaway in front of a chattering television. Somewhere in a cobwebbed corner sat a family photograph. Maeve would adore it; it would be the perfect offering to bring to lunch the next day.

  The picture was easily found, but Anna didn’t leave the claustrophobic A-shaped room. She knelt by a sturdy old suitcase gone brittle with age, and unsnapped the clasps. This was a ritual she went through once a year; the rest of the time she pixelated the boxy shape whenever she had to poke around the attic.

  Newspapers. A different title every year. The Sun; the Telegraph; the Express; The Times; the Sunday Times. Even though they spent their life in airless quarantine, the older papers showed their age. No longer white, they were the colour of dead skin.

  They crackled at her touch. In 2004, the headline told her, the war in Iraq was in full deadly swing. The newspaper on the bottom of the case, dated 1994, shouted about Hurricane Gordon, which claimed lives in the Caribbean before heading for the United States. There were murdered toddlers, a suicide bomber, and in 2005 bird flu was everybody’s big fear.

  A reality star lied about her nose job in 2015, and a tiger cub was born in captivity in 2003. Eleventh of November rolled around every year despite Anna’s fear of the memories it dragged up from the dead earth.

  She wondered what Carly had in store for her when it rolled around again.

  Downstairs again, eyes dried, nose blown, Anna woke Luca as she dropped Peking Gourmet Styrofoam boxes into a bin liner.

  ‘S’leave that. I’ll do it later,’ he said. He sat forward, muted the television, dipped his head to see her face behind a shroud of hair. ‘Annie?’

  Luca could hear Anna even when she wasn’t talking. She shook her hair out of her eyes and dredged up a smile.

  ‘Do you want to—’ he began.
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  ‘Talk about it? Nah.’ She threw him a prawn cracker. ‘You’re not a therapist here, Luca. Relax.’

  Yeti was especially invited by Maeve, so Anna had to restrain him on her lap all the way to Brighton in Luca’s passenger seat. Driving duties generally fell to him and Anna didn’t contest it; she preferred to look out of the window and daydream, whereas he relished the changing of gears, the nipping down short cuts. It was an outlet for his Italian brand of masculinity in a world which preferred its men docile.

  Growing up in a house governed by her father’s moods, Anna had never gravitated towards traditionally butch men. Luca was male, not macho; he didn’t expect her to be fluffy or air-headed or to cook his dinner. When it was just the two of them, they found their roles naturally. In the kitchen. In the car. In the bedroom.

  Thinking of the bedroom made Anna shift in her seat. It was vulgar to rate partners sexually but Luca demanded it; sex with him was the best she’d ever had. That was partly down to her. It was a team effort. She smiled at that.

  ‘You’re thinking about sex,’ said Luca, glancing from her to the tarmac of the A320.

  ‘What? Shut up. No.’ Anna sank into herself.

  ‘You always smile that naughty smile when you’re thinking about us being together.’ Luca laid a hand on her leg. ‘I’m thinking about it too. The last time. The next time.’

  ‘Stop,’ said Anna. There was lunch to get through. Meeting Paul. Talking to Storm about Boston. Checking to see if Neil’s Botox had relaxed. ‘It’s hours before we can . . . be together.’

  ‘Anticipation,’ said Luca, ‘makes it all the better.’

  ‘Fill up on the nibbly things,’ whispered Anna as Luca hovered over the breadsticks and guacamole. ‘They’re usually the best part of the meal.’

  The cottage was minuscule, one of those period properties that make you wonder if England was populated by hobbits in past centuries. The square kitchen at the front, its window giving onto a typical narrow Brighton lane, could only accommodate one person at a time, but it was Maeve’s habit to lay out the appetisers on the worktop.

  Wedged in together, wolfing grissini, they’d opened the bottle Luca had brought in preference to the cloudy organic brew provided by Maeve.

  ‘What do you think of him?’ asked Anna furtively.

  ‘Him who?’

  ‘Paul, of course.’ Men could be so slow.

  ‘Seems nice.’

  ‘Yes, he does.’ Anna was almost disappointed. She was so accustomed to Maeve choosing creeps that Paul baffled her. ‘He’s too nice,’ she said.

  ‘What are you basing that on?’

  ‘Nothing,’ confessed Anna. She didn’t have a feeling or a suspicion or a hunch. It just couldn’t be true that a man like Paul could come along after a conveyor belt of brutes.

  They could hear him, talking to Neil and Santi about his property development company.

  ‘He sounds normal,’ said Anna. ‘I can’t imagine him talking to Maeve about planning regulations, or equity funding loans.’

  ‘Lovers don’t talk all the time,’ Luca reminded her, kissing her on the nose.

  ‘He’s funny, too.’ Anna wasn’t used to liking her sister’s men. ‘Plus he’s nice to Maeve. Did you notice how he helped her set the table?’ That simple fact had almost moved Anna to tears; she blamed those handy hormones, but it was something that went deeper. It was an acknowledgement of how easily she bruised on behalf of the people around her.

  ‘Mm-hmm.’ That noise was an early warning signal that Luca was bored of the conversation, but Anna ignored it.

  ‘You’re a therapist. You know people. What do you make of him? Is he an axe murderer under that dull exterior?’

  ‘I’m a therapist, not a mind reader.’ Luca put a finger to her lips. ‘Shush. When you mention my job, it usually means you’re about to ask me something about Josh and I can’t tell you anything more than you already know. He’s not a type or a diagnosis, he’s your brother. I can’t turn him into a dramatic reveal like you get in the mystery books you read.’

  A kerfuffle at the door announced Dinkie. Josh held her arm as she was ushered into the doll’s house like a visiting empress.

  ‘I’m grand, leggo of me!’ Dinkie waved away her grandson and walked, with a bandy chimpish gait, to the only armchair Maeve owned. It was, like most of her furniture, covered with a crochet blanket. ‘Lovely!’ breathed Dinkie as she sat.

  In full summer plumage, Dinkie wore a cotton dress, and a poppy bobbed hopefully on her squashed straw hat. ‘All together again!’ she whooped. She liked, she often said, to have all her chicks around her.

  One of them was running down the stairs, barefoot, hollering, ‘Din-kie!’ Maeve was tousled; she’d never mastered dressing up. Only one eyebrow was pencilled in and her jumpsuit was not quite done up. Her gypsy glamour didn’t need perfection; she was a whirling hub of noise and colour and life. ‘I want to sit on your lap,’ she cried, ‘like I used to!’

  ‘You’re too big for that, love, and I’m too old.’ Dinkie’s spirits were always raised by Maeve’s nonsense; there were two bright dots of colour on her pale, papery cheeks. She turned to Anna. Her favourite, according to family lore; Dinkie laughed off any such idea.

  But it’s true, thought Anna. Somehow her grandmother could make a pet of Anna without hurting the others’ feelings.

  ‘Sure, you’re barely showing,’ said the old woman. ‘Your mother was like that. Carried you all at the front.’

  Anna nodded, awkward hearing this talk in front of Luca. He’d bent to kiss Dinkie’s hand, unfazed. Dinkie was – God help us all – flirting with him. ‘Oi, Grandmother,’ said Anna. ‘Hands off my fella.’

  ‘If I was thirty years younger . . .’

  ‘I, unfortunately, wouldn’t be born yet,’ said Luca.

  ‘Jaysus, you little go-boy,’ shrieked Dinkie, delighted. Even more than a compliment, she loved an insult; the Irish are funny that way.

  The room had shrunk. That’s how it felt to Anna. It had, of course, remained the same size, but with Neil, Santi and Paloma added to it, the sitting room was stretched to capacity.

  ‘It’s so sunny,’ said Josh. ‘Why don’t we eat outside?’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Maeve.

  ‘Why not?’ Neil wanted to know, a glass in one hand and the last, fought-over breadstick in the other.

  ‘Rats,’ said Maeve, with a What can you do? wobble of her head.

  ‘Let’s leave it at that.’ His youngest sister’s unorthodox ways were a mystery to Neil; he tried to keep it that way. Rats! He mouthed the word at Paloma and showed his teeth and she screamed happily. The perfect audience for her show-off daddy, she held out her fat arms, bare today in mint green dungarees, and pumped her legs.

  ‘She wants you!’ said Anna.

  ‘Put her on the floor, Santi,’ said Neil, turning away, embarking on animated ‘Hello’s and ‘How are you’s with Luca.

  ‘This floor?’ Santi frowned at Anna, who shook her head in agreement. Maeve believed hoovering the rug made her a plaything of the patriarchy; Yeti constantly found delicious amuse-bouches in the weave.

  ‘Here. I’ll have her.’ Anna reached out and took Paloma, a warm dumpling, heavy and wriggling, from Santi. He looked depleted. ‘Bad night?’

  ‘She’s had a growth spurt. She doesn’t nap as much, and now she’s waking up about four a.m. . . .’ Santi’s broad shoulders drooped. ‘I never thought it could be so exhausting—’ He stopped suddenly, brought his tanned hand to his mouth. ‘Sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t, when you are . . .’ He gestured to her body, then did a double take. ‘You are pregnant, aren’t you, querida? Where’s the bump?’

  ‘It’s there, I assure you.’ Anna pulled her striped cotton dress tight around her, Paloma on her hip. ‘Doesn’t your husband take turns getting up at night with the baby?’

  ‘Sweetheart,’ said Santi, ‘you’re his sister. Why do you even ask this? He snores like a cerdo all through her cri
es.’ He leaned closer. ‘He wears a satin sleep mask.’

  They both gave that the snigger it deserved as a foil platter of baked potatoes hit the borrowed table Maeve had somehow squeezed into the room. Turning to Paul, she said, ‘Honeybun!’ and Storm went into an almost terminal cringe. ‘Who’re you texting?’

  ‘Making a note,’ said Paul, ‘to get those rats sorted.’

  Maeve unleashed a look of triumph on the others. See! it said. ‘Eat, eat!’ she barked.

  ‘But Sam and Isabel aren’t here yet.’ Anna sat sideways, refusing to hand back Paloma until Santi had taken a few mouthfuls.

  ‘He texted. Running late, he said, and to start without him.’

  ‘What’s the surprise filling?’ Josh was noticeably more breezy at Maeve’s. Anna supposed the no-rules, no-expectations atmosphere suited him better.

  ‘Ah. Yes.’ Maeve was leaning over folk, banging down rusty cutlery. ‘It surprised even me, to be honest.’ She screwed up her mouth. ‘There is no filling. I forgot.’

  There was groaning. There was abuse. There was a croaked ‘Leave her alone, you maggots!’ from Dinkie.

  ‘So it’s just baked beans?’ asked Neil, one hand protectively over his stomach.

  ‘I love baked beans,’ said Paul. He was so crisp and neat he could have come straight out of a box. Anna could smell fabric conditioner and shampoo from across the table. Paul was straighter than straight, and Anna liked him for unbending enough to see the good things in Maeve. To willingly enter a house where no cup was properly washed, where making the beds involved leaving the duvet on the floor. Perhaps he loves her, thought Anna.

  ‘I forgot to get baked beans, too.’ Maeve was unapologetic, foraging for salt and pepper in a drawer with no handle.

  Sam appeared, in long shorts and a battered hat that Anna had tried to throw out many times when they were married. He was brought up to speed on the food situation, but his sense of humour was slow kicking in. ‘Oh. Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and freshen up.’

  ‘What’s ailing him?’ Dinkie bent over her plate, looking down the table at Anna.