The Sunday Lunch Club

by Juliet Ashton

  ‘Nonsense.’ Anna put her face nearer the laptop; Yeti recoiled slightly. ‘Storm’s still the same boy. He’s still your boy. Just because he doesn’t admit it doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss you, silly. And yes, this place is amazeballs, but he hasn’t decided yet.’

  ‘I used to think about how free I’d feel if I didn’t have Storm.’ Maeve was red-nosed, defiant. ‘Yes, bad-mother alert. But I did. When I was stuck indoors for nights on end, reading him stories and playing fucking Lego, I used to fantasise about being able to do what I wanted when I wanted. But now he’s not here and I don’t know what to do without him . . .’ Maeve toppled sideways onto Yeti and bawled.

  Yeti let her. He was good that way.

  ‘Listen.’ Anna cobbled together some wisdom; there was usually some lying around. ‘Whatever happens, I’ll be beside you. One hundred per cent. You have me. You have Paul. You’re going to be all right because you’re strong, Maeve. You’re made of pure steel under all that cheesecloth. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ sniffled Maeve. She’d gone small, voice and all. ‘Storm’s a bit like me, isn’t he?’

  ‘His nose is yours, and so is his heart. Both a touch too big.’

  London was eight hours of recycled air and dreadful food away. As Anna unbuckled her seat belt, she did a mental inventory of what would be waiting for her: a hungry Yeti; a pile of Artem tasks; the letters. She’d managed to downsize them while she was on another continent; this Carly didn’t seem to be asking anything of her. Perhaps she wouldn’t hear from her again.

  As the plane effortlessly hoovered up miles, Anna felt in her bones that Carly wasn’t done with her. There would be a pile of letters on the mat; one of them, she felt sure, would be handwritten, brutal.

  ‘I can never get properly comfy on an aeroplane seat.’ She fidgeted and twisted, pulling at the neck cushion she’d bought in Departures and now hated.

  ‘Especially now you’re pregnant, I guess.’

  It was one of the few times Luca had directly referenced the baby. Anna didn’t respond. He didn’t add anything. Eventually, she said, ‘Thanks for my perfume.’

  They’d dallied in duty-free. ‘I was surprised you chose that one.’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ Anna took a self-conscious sniff of her wrist.

  ‘I love it. But it’s very vanilla-y. I thought you’d go for something more floral.’

  ‘Vanilla has meaning for me.’

  ‘Reminds you of cakes?’

  ‘Well, that too, but . . . I’ll tell you another time.’ Anna pivoted. ‘God, by the time we left I felt like asking if I could live with Clare and Alva.’

  ‘They’re good people.’ Luca took the neck cushion from Anna and said, ‘Consider this an intervention,’ and tossed it under his seat.

  ‘Alva could never have built that life with Maeve. She gets itchy around status symbols. She’s a Romany at heart.’

  ‘It’s quite stark, their dynamic.’ Luca explained when Anna made a face. ‘Alva’s the adult and Maeve’s another child. He never complains or refuses – possibly because he’s scared she’d restrict access to Storm.’

  ‘She wouldn’t.’ Anna sounded more sure than she was. Would she? ‘I had a good chat with Alva after Sunday lunch.’

  ‘I noticed. I left the two of you alone. I taught Margot how to jump into the swimming pool.’

  Says the man who doesn’t like children. ‘He told me he knew all about the affair she had, the one that finally broke them up. Yet he’s never brought it up with her. Maeve thinks she got away with that.’

  ‘See? He’s indulgent. She’s naughty. That’s their pattern. Thank God they didn’t stay together.’

  Anna lacked the courage to ask about their own pattern. Perhaps we won’t be together long enough to establish one. At the moment, though, it was colourful, pleasing to the eye. ‘I couldn’t put up with infidelity.’

  ‘These days, there’s so much opportunity . . .’

  ‘Are you saying you understand people who stray?’

  ‘I’m saying exactly that. It’s my job, Anna! I’m not condoning it.’ Luca laughed.

  Anna didn’t. She preferred him in romantic mode to worldly mode. ‘I hope Storm doesn’t regret his decision.’

  ‘Storm knows his own mind.’ Luca took Anna’s hand. His fingers were tight, warm, male, around her own. ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Me OK,’ said Anna.

  And she was. For now.

  Chapter Eight

  Lunch at Neil and Santiago’s

  HOME-MADE MEZE: CHARGRILLED AUBERGINES/HUMMUS/TARAMASALATA

  STUFFED PEPPERS/ARTICHOKES/LABNEH/PERSIAN RICE SALAD/SLOW-COOKED LAMB/SPATCHCOCKED GARLIC CHICKEN

  BAKED FETA

  TIRAMISU/BAKLAVA

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘Neil! Hi, what can I—’

  ‘You’ve got to get over here.’

  ‘Eh? I’m in my dressing gown, Neil. What’s the rush?’

  ‘I’m expecting the whole Sunday bloody Lunch sodding Club in two hours and Santiago’s gone missing.’

  ‘Missing? Like, abducted?’

  ‘No! I mean he’s . . . not here. He’s not answering his phone. How can he do this to me? It was his idea to ditch the caterers and do the food ourselves this time!’

  ‘He was right – it’s more personal when you go to the trouble to do it yourself.’

  ‘Will you keep to the point! I’m going crazy here. The food’s not even half done. Paloma is, well, she’s being Paloma. How can I cope with an eight-month-old child and prepare the house and the food and me? Oh God, she’s crying. Shush, shush, my darling, yes, Daddy’s here. Oh God, Anna, she won’t stop. Is she ill?’

  ‘Probably hungry. Or wants to play.’

  ‘Play! Are you mad, woman? There are peppers to stuff.’

  ‘Sod the peppers. Roll on the floor with your daughter instead.’

  ‘With my back? Anna, I beg you, come over and save me.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From Paloma!’

  When Anna put down the phone, she turned to Santiago. ‘What do you see in him?’

  They laughed. For quite a long time.

  ‘I feel bad now,’ said Santiago, as the laughter ended in a long, happy sigh.

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t.’ Santi’s eyes were so dark they seemed black, and now they creased with cheerful wickedness. ‘It’s about time Neil got to know his own daughter.’ He sat up, excited suddenly. ‘Do we have time to visit Dinkie?’

  They did. As she hurried through the pastel hallways of Sunville, trying to keep up with Santi, Anna wondered if all Spanish men were so soppy about the elderly. She hoped he was typical, but so much about Santi was a one-off. His ability to stand back and let Neil shine without ever competing, his nonchalance about his looks, his rock-solid reliability.

  After scolding them for turning up before she had a chance to make herself ‘decent’, Dinkie extracted every last syllable of gossip from them. She wanted to know how Maeve was; ‘She hasn’t called me in a while. All that business with Storm . . .’ She cheered up when she heard the latest about Neil. ‘You mean to tell me he’s looking after the baby all on his own?’ Dinkie put her hands to her face. ‘Jaysus, I don’t know which of them to feel more sorry for.’

  From the outside, the enormous white cube of a house flanked by neon emerald lawns was serene. Inside, Paloma’s wails bounced off the artwork and the porcelain floor tiles. She’d already colonised the glacial spaces of the house Neil had spent years planning and building: a playpen sat beneath the limited edition Warhol prints; a potty had rolled under the white grand piano. Now Paloma was overriding the built-in sound system with her sobs.

  ‘What?’ Neil was desperate. On his hands and knees, he was ape-like on her rainbow rug, looming over her as she sat, disconsolate, noisy. ‘You’re not hungry. You don’t want to wee-wee. You’ve made it very clear how you feel about Teddy.’ Teddy had been crammed into he
r play oven. ‘Is it Papi? Do you want Papi?’

  ‘Papi,’ said Paloma through her tears. It was her one word, used for most things, like her feet, or her stuffed elephant, but mostly for Santi whenever he came near her.

  ‘Yes, darling, yes,’ said Neil in the shushy-wooshy voice he used for the baby, adding darkly in his normal tones, ‘I want Papi too. So I can wring Papi’s neck.’

  How could Santi do this to me? was all Neil could think as he jiggled Paloma in one arm and attempted to chargrill aubergines with the other. Even without the bother of Paloma, he’d had doubts about getting it all done in time.

  She’d stopped crying. He stared at her, surprised. ‘Thank you, darling,’ he said.

  ‘Garsmuz,’ said Paloma. Or that’s what it sounded like. She giggled at him.

  Neil giggled back. Then shook himself. This was all very well, but it wouldn’t spatchcock the chicken.

  ‘Don’t feel you have to hang around, Sheba,’ said Anna. It hadn’t escaped her notice that the woman lurked after bringing tea and non-home-made cake.

  Sheba made a movement, then stopped, as if unsure of the wisdom of what she was doing, before leaving the room on silent feet.

  ‘She doesn’t say much,’ said Anna. Probing. Dinkie was constrained around the carer; Dinkie was constrained around very few people.

  ‘When we’re on our own, Sheba’s a regular chatterbox.’

  That sounded double-edged to Anna. ‘We can ask for somebody else to look after you if—’

  ‘Will you whisht?’ Dinkie’s sharp eyes didn’t meet Anna’s. ‘So that’s what this visit is about.’ She rubbed her arm, a nervous tic. ‘You’re checking up on me.’

  ‘Sí,’ nodded Santi. ‘We worry about you, abuela.’

  ‘That makes me sad,’ said Dinkie. ‘You don’t want to make me sad, do you, chicks?’

  Being one of Dinkie’s chicks was membership of a very special club.

  ‘I don’t buy this change of heart,’ said Anna. ‘One minute you’re crying, the next you’re saying, “Oh I didn’t mean it.” ’

  ‘You can leave right now,’ said Santi, energised, forceful. ‘You can come back to our spare room. I will make empanadas for you.’

  ‘Hear that, Dinkie?’ Anna laid her hand on her grandmother’s; the skin lay over the bones like freckled rice-paper. ‘Just say the word.’ Santi’s generosity was moving; evidently it was Neil who’d insisted that Dinkie be Anna’s responsibility. ‘Or you can live with me. From right now. This second.’

  The door opened. Without knocking or greeting them, Sheba was there. ‘Time for aquacise,’ she said, her voice a honeyed African mumble, her face disconcertingly blank.

  ‘Tell them, Sheba,’ said Dinkie, from her Dralon throne. ‘I’m happy here, aren’t I? I’m grand.’

  ‘She is grand,’ said Sheba robotically.

  ‘We’d better make a move.’ Anna rose reluctantly.

  ‘Take care.’ Santi bent to kiss Dinkie on her forehead. She swooned slightly into him.

  Anna’s feet took her sluggishly over to the photo of Grandpa. So many pulls on her heart. She didn’t want to leave Dinkie, but she had to rescue Neil. And Luca would be waiting for her. And Maeve had been in a strange mood since the Boston trip. And nobody knew if Josh was even attending the lunch. And Sam – well, Sam was a ball of unhappiness, his misery visible, like a personal fog. ‘Don’t get up, Dinkie,’ she smiled. The photograph was on its side; she righted it, tenderly.

  ‘I’ll get up if I like,’ said Dinkie defiantly, swaying slightly. ‘ “Don’t get up,” she says, and me saying goodbye to visitors.’ She squinted at Anna in the doorway. ‘Are you sure you’re pregnant, chicken? Where’s the bump?’

  Anna pulled her silk blouse tight around her. ‘If I wear a really loose dress, the baby could pass as a heavy lunch,’ she smiled. ‘If I wear a tight dress, there’s no doubt that I’m preggers. Today I’m kind of ambiguous.’ Anna stroked the frame of her grandfather’s photograph. ‘I’m glad you’ve got Grandpa here.’ Emotion crept into her voice. ‘He’ll make sure you’re all right.’ She took the photograph over to Dinkie, and closed the old lady’s fingers over it.

  Sheba lingered. The door closed behind Anna and Santi, and they hurried towards the automatic doors and the outside world.

  In the dim room, the blinds half drawn, Dinkie and Sheba didn’t speak, until Sheba said, low and bitterly, ‘Did you tell them, old lady? Did you?’

  The aubergines were ashes. The arctic kitchen was blemished with the corpses of dishes left to burn or spoil. A red wine ring stained the marble; That’ll never come out, thought Neil as he changed Paloma’s nappy on the butcher’s block.

  A chubby foot knocked a bottle of extra virgin olive oil that Neil had brought back from Capri in hand luggage. It glugged expensively over the floor. Neil was not the sort of man who knows where the dustpan and brush is kept, so he simply threw a towel over the whole mess, reaching over and keeping one hand on Paloma’s tummy so she didn’t roll off as well.

  A flower arrangement delivered earlier sat in its box, blooming invisibly. The witty place cards were blank. The ice, delivered earlier, was now a bag of water. The CD of middle-brow background music had been swapped for nursery rhymes. The host was still in his dressing gown.

  ‘You can’t be just one baby,’ he muttered, as he inserted Paloma’s arms into the sleeves of her third dress of the day. Dress one was splattered with sick. Dress two was huffily rejected. ‘You have to be twins to cause this much fuss.’

  ‘Papi,’ said Paloma. She clapped. ‘Papi Papi Papi!’

  Neil sat on the floor, a pile of broken glass on one side of him, Paloma wriggling on her alphabet mat on the other. He wanted to dive into a vat of wine and stay there until Santi came home and the baby was clean with her hair brushed and her skin smelling of talc.

  ‘How,’ he said aloud, ‘does Santi do this so effortlessly?’ Santi was never to be found on the floor, surrounded by chaos. His partner floated through the days, broad shoulders taking everything the baby could fling at him, laughing off every spill or tantrum.

  As Santi wasn’t there, Neil found himself asking the question Santi always posed: Why do you call me your partner when I’m your husband? Santi would brandish his wedding ring, Spanish eyes flashing.

  ‘Why do I do that, darling?’

  Paloma had no answer, but she held Neil’s gaze. He felt emboldened by her attention, and answered his own question. ‘I never thought I’d have a husband. I had to pretend to be straight at school. And at home. My dad’s old-fashioned. My mum . . .’ Neil realised he didn’t know his mother’s views on sexuality. ‘Well, your grandmother stands shoulder to shoulder with your grandfather on everything, so . . .’ Neil took Paloma onto his lap. She was soft with tiredness, her limbs as floppy as her teddy’s. Stroking the dark question mark of hair that lay flat over her forehead, he said, ‘There was no gay marriage when I was a boy. Gay men didn’t have children. They made a different life. They were discreet. Or else they were woofters, wearing tight trousers and making double entendres on Saturday-night telly. I didn’t recognise myself in any of those people. I wanted to be in love.’

  Paloma was warm and heavy. Neil cradled her close and spoke in a soft, lullaby voice. ‘I didn’t dare look for love, though. Instead, I had lovers; it’s not always the same, darling. I was born out of place in my family, in my culture. I didn’t want to be a poofter; I wanted to be a man. I wanted to be me. But I wasn’t me, I was this ridiculous guy who drifted through nightclubs and came home on his own. Until I met your dad. Your papi.’

  Santiago Cortes had been literally head and shoulders above the other waiters at the tapas bar where Neil took his dates. The reaction Neil had to him the first time he saw him happened afresh each time Santi showed him to his table; eventually Neil recognised it as something more than lust. Lust isn’t endlessly renewable.

  ‘So, one night, I took the plunge and asked him out for a drink. Do you know what
he said?’

  Paloma sucked the belt of his dressing gown.

  ‘He said, “No gracias.” Well, I don’t ask twice so I ignored him after that. The sod didn’t notice. So, one night, when I’d had a couple of sangrias . . .’ No need to tell Paloma he meant a couple of jugs. ‘I asked him why he’d said no. After all, I spent a fortune in that place, so he must have known I’d show him a good time. He said he didn’t want to be one of many. But he winked, Paloma. Papi winked. So I said, what if I promised not to see anybody else, would he consider dinner? He accepted before I got to the end of my sentence.’

  They had dinner. Santi more or less moved in after dessert. They were naked for three days, and recovering for three more. Neil kept his word: Santi was his one, his only.

  Neil was jolted back to the present by Paloma sticking her finger in his eye. This was one of her main hobbies.

  ‘Ow!’ He held her hand, kissed its palm, said, ‘I have one hour to slow-cook a lamb. Is there a patron saint of Frazzled Dads I can pray to?’

  Dinkie looked out of the window.

  ‘Hey, Missy Piper!’ Sheba clicked her fingers. ‘I’m talking to you!’

  Dinkie remained silent. A tear trickled through the ridges of her cheeks and dropped onto Grandpa’s sepia face. ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Leave me alone.’

  Sheba sat heavily, crossed her legs.

  Dinkie bowed her head.

  Anna dozed on and off, her head lolling, as Santi stopped and started the car in the Sunday traffic jams. ‘Where are they all going?’ she asked sleepily. Anna was glad to be out of her house. Working from home meant that she was never far from the letter box. Never far from its distinctive clang when a leaflet or a circular fell through it.

  Or a letter.

  Waiting for number three – if there was a number three – kept Anna on edge. The necessity of keeping her anxiety from Luca and Sam only added to the stress.

  Worse, however, was the thought that there would be no more letters. That Carly would recede. The two women were locked into something. Carly had set in motion a set of cogs and wheels that must grind on to a conclusion.