The Sunday Lunch Club

by Juliet Ashton

  ‘His poor wife,’ said Isabel, with feeling.

  ‘Don’t.’ Maeve was agonised. ‘He painted our relationship as a good thing for their marriage. An escape valve.’

  ‘At the same time,’ Neil pointed out, ‘as he was dangling a future in front of you. The man’s a git.’

  Yeti stirred in his bed, let out a yawning huff. Storm bent and tickled him. The boy could be forgiven for saying ‘I told you so’, but he’d said nothing.

  ‘His wife,’ said Anna, ‘deserves some honesty, too. He’s treating her like an ailment, not a person.’

  ‘Did you mean what you said?’ Maeve looked quizzically at Anna. ‘About me?’

  ‘Of course.’ Anna could tell that Maeve doubted her. ‘Every word, Maeve. Cross my heart.’

  Maeve nodded, chock-full of emotion.

  Anna was perturbed. Doesn’t she know how much I worry about her? The trouble with worry is it can manifest as disapproval. She closed her eyes for a moment. Life had held up a mirror to her most unflattering angles lately.

  She heard Josh say, ‘Guys . . .’ and Anna sat up, alert. He was doing it.

  He faltered. All eyes were turned his way. Words stuck in his throat.

  ‘Josh has something to tell you,’ said Anna. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Should I open another bottle of wine?’ Maeve stood up.

  ‘Yes,’ said Josh. ‘And bring me an extra-large glass.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lunch at Josh’s

  SAUSAGE AND MASH

  VIENNETTA

  The park was wintry, bare. Yeti, a connoisseur of bins, stopped to savour one. Anna stood and waited, her tummy a hillock beneath a fake fur which no longer buttoned up.

  Mid-December already. Christmas on the tip of everybody’s tongue.

  The weeks marched relentlessly on, dragging Anna through the calendar towards her due date. At first she hadn’t registered that the twenty-fifth of December was Christmas Day. A day of turkey and arguments for most people, but a new beginning for Anna.

  There had been nothing from Carly. It was over, their brief reunion. But it can never be over. Love doesn’t work like that.

  Yeti stuck close to his mistress. He’d lost confidence since his accident, but his need for Anna had escalated. She indulged him. Perhaps it was guilt at leaving him home alone with the side gate open, or perhaps it was maternal juices flooding her body. Whatever it was, the end result pleased both dog and woman enormously.

  Loyal, faithful, always pleased to see her – he greeted her like a returning soldier every time she went to the loo – Yeti would sit up with her during night feeds.

  The woman Anna visualised giving these night feeds, or bathing the baby, or pushing a buggy, didn’t look anything like her. When she imagined the baby, out of her womb and in the real world, Anna imagined a self-assembly shelf unit with no manual.

  Ankles puffy, legs begging for mercy, Anna turned for home. The sexy bloom of her first trimester had given way to a Soviet housewife look.

  ‘Yeti,’ she said to her companion, ‘don’t let me check my phone right away, OK?’ She always checked it, and he’d never called.

  After Anna had apologised to Luca she’d entertained a timid hope that she might have rattled his cage. That he might miss her. That he’d think, ‘What the heck, might as well!’ and turn up at her door.

  That hadn’t happened.

  She checked her phone, swore at it, and plodded upstairs with a bag of diminutive clothes. Taking care, conscious that it felt like play-acting, Anna folded each tiny Babygro and placed it neatly in the new mint green chest of drawers in the spare room.

  It was time to accept and move on. Luca wasn’t a big love. He was a fling. Delicious. Fleeting. Like summer.

  Time to focus on the birth. ‘It’s thee and me, pardner,’ she said to her bump, closing a drawer with her hip.

  Drawing on a socially acceptable face with the help of Mac and Bobbi Brown, Anna recalled a time when Luca had opened up about his work. He saw so much disruption and angst. ‘There have been deaths,’ he’d said, gravely. He’d told her he was fiercely protective of his own ‘clean page’; ‘It’s so easy to mess up, to invite unhappiness in.’ He wanted to live cleanly.

  A super-pregnant woman amounted to a scribble on that page.

  She was the last to arrive. A bombardment of ‘hello’s and ‘at last’s almost knocked her off her feet.

  Paloma was walking. More of a totter, but she did a high-speed circuit of the room in soft new gold boots.

  There was applause for the baby’s virtuosity. Paloma fell over. Everybody applauded again.

  It was exactly what Anna needed.

  ‘I’ve mastered sausage and mash.’ Josh was very proud of his new accomplishment.

  ‘A sausage,’ said Neil, poker-faced, ‘is man’s best friend.’

  If Dinkie got the joke, she didn’t let on. ‘No, darlin’, no.’ She refused to take Paloma. ‘She’s too wriggly today.’

  See? Neil’s glare at Anna was eloquent. He retired to the other end of the studio flat. Which wasn’t very far.

  Sam searched out condiments. Maeve was on mash duty. Isabel rummaged for glasses. Santi went out to buy something to pour into the glasses. The Sunday Lunch Club was ticking over nicely, but something had changed.

  They all knew about Josh.

  Neil had been the most shocked. He’d kept repeating ‘Bloody hell’, in a contemplative way, while the others leaned in and asked questions.

  ‘Josh, you’re my little brother!’ Maeve had whimpered. ‘Not my little sister.’

  ‘He’ll still be him, Mum.’ Storm hadn’t understood the consternation. ‘Or her, I mean. Still the same person. God, you old people, you’re so prejudiced. There’s a transgender boy in my class. He was a girl and now he’s not.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘Still a dickhead, though.’

  ‘I’m trying to get my head round it.’ Maeve appealed to Josh for understanding, knowing she’d receive it.

  ‘It’s taken me my whole life to get my head around it.’ Josh had absolved her. He’d absolved all of them, freeing them up to say countless inappropriate things.

  By the time the twittering ceased, they’d decided on three basics.

  Firstly, it didn’t matter. Well, it did matter, but it made no difference to how they felt about Josh.

  Secondly, they’d support him. And find out all about transgender issues. (Josh had done his best to look pleased at that, but Anna could tell he foresaw an awful lot of explaining in his future.)

  Lastly, Dinkie must never know.

  Maeve, surprisingly, had started that particular ball rolling. ‘Dinkie’s too old to handle this,’ she’d said.

  ‘And too Catholic,’ Santi had added.

  ‘Look at how she treats poor Paloma.’

  Anna had interrupted Neil to say there was nothing remotely poor about Paloma.

  ‘Shut up, Anna. Dinkie can’t accept an adopted child of two men so we can’t expect her to get her head around Josh turning into a woman.’

  Taken to its logical conclusion, this meant that after the surgery (which Neil insisted on paying for) Josh would have to stay away from his grandmother. Nobody wanted that.

  ‘It’s unthinkable,’ Anna had said, firmly. She assumed that Dinkie would accept Josh. With some soul-searching, possibly, and certainly with a great deal of anxiety for her grandson’s chances of getting into Heaven. She couldn’t agree that the news would blight Dinkie’s remaining years. ‘You make it sound as if she’s about to keel over!’ That thought frightened Anna too much for her to allow it houseroom.

  ‘So you brought Sheba?’ said Anna to her grandmother as they sat, watching the others pull sausage and mash together. Sheba was setting out chairs, her face closed as ever.

  ‘Yes.’ Dinkie scrutinised Anna’s expression. ‘You don’t like her.’

  ‘I don’t trust her. There’s something going on between you two.’ Anna put her mouth close to Dinkie�
�s ear. ‘I can get you out of Sunville. Just wink at me, and I’ll take you home right now.’

  Sheba stood over them. ‘Come.’ She held out her hand to Dinkie. ‘Let me seat you at the table, Mrs Piper.’

  The woman had impeccable timing.

  Viennetta unites people in a way that nothing else can.

  Storm had thirds. Anna, watching his elbow work as he cleared his plate, knew that soon he would stop attending Sunday Lunch Clubs. He’d be independent, making his own plans for Sundays. With girls. Anna gulped; she hoped life would be kind to him. That his heart would remain in one piece. Although her own battle-scarred heart wouldn’t be half as useful if she’d led a sheltered, calm life.

  Josh leaned over her, collecting dishes.

  Anna scrutinised his face. Not a hint of stubble. He was morphing, transforming, into what he saw as his true self. She wondered what would be left of the ‘old’ Josh. He can’t wait to leave Josh behind, but I’ve always loved him just as he is.

  ‘I invited Luca,’ he said.

  ‘Did you?’ Anna kept her expression ambiguous. Her heart hadn’t got the memo, however, and began to sprint.

  ‘He refused. Said it was too complicated. I kept on at him, but no dice.’

  ‘S’fine.’ Anna had to say something, and that was what she came up with.

  A hand on her arm took her attention. ‘I hear Dad called you,’ said Neil in an undertone. With the others engrossed in noisy crosstalk, he and Anna could discuss their father without being overheard.

  ‘He was ranting.’

  ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘It was terrible, Neil.’ Anna recalled it verbatim. First Neil’s a nancy boy and now this? What’s wrong with the men in this family?

  ‘I don’t know, Dad,’ Anna had answered. ‘What is wrong with you?’

  There’d been no answer. Alan Piper wasn’t accustomed to being challenged.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ Anna had added conversationally, ‘that the girls let you down, too. We’re such a disappointment.’

  ‘I don’t like your tone, young lady.’

  ‘I’m not young, Dad. I’m forty. I have a child of twenty-four and another on the way. I don’t need your approval, which is just as well as I’d never get it.’ Into the shocked silence, Anna had said, ‘You had no right to change my note to Bonnie, Dad. No right whatsoever.’ She sent a heartfelt plea across the ocean. Apologise, Dad! If he said sorry it could kick-start the healing.

  The line had gone dead.

  ‘He rang me right after,’ said Neil. ‘Some choice vocabulary came out. I’m “bent”, apparently. “Queer”. Oh, and no son of his. Which, as you can imagine, comes as a relief.’

  They laughed. Wearily. But they managed to laugh.

  ‘How did you leave things with him?’ asked Anna.

  ‘I told him goodbye.’ Neil seemed at a loss. ‘I’ve had enough. Now that I’m a dad myself, I know how hard you have to work to make children feel wanted and appreciated. Dad set standards for us that had nothing to do with our happiness, or our fulfilment. He wanted us to live a life that wouldn’t upset the neighbours. It’s time I cut ties.’

  They held hands, like they used to do when they were tiny. It was a bittersweet moment in the midst of an ordinary Sunday Lunch.

  It wasn’t the last one that day.

  ‘I have an announcement.’ Dinkie had to say it twice before the lunchers quietened down. ‘Will youse whisht! I have a feckin’ announcement.’ She looked to Sheba, who nodded, and Dinkie said, ‘I’m leaving Sunville.’

  ‘But you said—’ began Maeve.

  ‘I know what I said, but the truth is I hate that place. Full of old people. I’ve never aquacised in me life and I don’t intend to start. Don’t get me started on the breakfasts. Sheba here is me only consolation.’ She held out her hand and Sheba jumped up, took it. ‘She comes in when she’s supposed to be off duty to make sure I’m OK. She reads the paper to me when I lose me glasses. She’s the best friend a person could hope to have.’

  Sheba’s impassive face cracked, and she smiled. It was a neon slice, transforming her face. She even spoke. ‘It is my pleasure,’ she said, in her ripe accent.

  ‘So,’ said Dinkie, silencing the mouths that opened, ready to question and gasp and add their two penn’orth. ‘I’m moving in with Josh. I’m spending the money I would have wasted on Sunville on a nice two-bedroom flat for the two of us.’

  ‘But—’ Maeve made an urgent face at Josh.

  ‘Dinkie knows all about my gender reassignment,’ said Josh. He had a look of cheeky triumph; he’d trusted Dinkie and been proved right.

  ‘Sure, I don’t understand it,’ said Dinkie, mildly. ‘But chopping off his bits is his business. If that’s what it takes to make my grandson happy, then so be it. His soul won’t change, will it? That has no gender.’

  There was a stupefied hush, broken by Neil’s best Head of the Family voice.

  ‘Listen, let’s not rush into—’

  ‘Too late. Sit down.’ Dinkie was imperious. ‘Josh will need somebody to look after him while he recovers from surgery. Who better than his grandmother? And Sheba has agreed to help out. She’s leaving Sunville, and working for me. She’ll pop in, do her magic, but from now on she won’t have to wear a horrible tunic.’

  ‘I hate that tunic,’ growled Sheba.

  They all laughed. Relieved. Puzzled. But aware that something wonderful had happened.

  ‘They know it’s a fairy story, right?’ Neil stood by Anna’s car, leaning in to say goodbye. ‘It’s Dinkie who needs looking after, not Josh.’

  ‘Dinkie won’t admit to ageing, but by pretending this move is for Josh’s sake, she gets to escape Sunville and Josh gets a permanent home. Win-win.’

  ‘Except an old lady is now in the care of a man-child who forgets to pay his electricity bill.’

  ‘It’s time Josh had responsibility. I can tell he’s looking forward to it. He’s not a child, he’s a man. Soon he’ll be a woman. We have to allow our baby brother to grow up. We have to believe in him.’

  ‘I sound like Dad, don’t I?’

  ‘You sound like you, Neil. But on a bad day.’

  ‘We haven’t sorted out Christmas yet.’

  ‘All I know,’ said Anna, buckling in, ‘is that no way are we having lunch at my place.’

  Giving birth is the perfect excuse to duck out of festive duties.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lunch at Anna’s

  SMOKED SALMON TAPAS

  ROAST TURKEY, WITH ROAST POTATOES, BACON-WRAPPED CHIPOLATAS, STUFFING, CARROTS, PEAS/MUSHROOM AND TARRAGON STRUDELS WITH MADEIRA SAUCE

  CHRISTMAS PUDDING WITH BRANDY BUTTER

  T’was the season of glitter and snow and enormous fowl. The turkey was ‘resting’ – the quaint term always made Anna imagine it with a cocktail and a Jackie Collins novel – and the hostess was wilting.

  She couldn’t even blame anybody else. It had been her decision to host Christmas. Anna knew, just knew, that the baby wasn’t ready to show its face, due date or no due date. Sitting around waiting made the minutes tick by like sludge, so, one group email later and she’d been knee-deep in red napkins and paper hats. It was a reaffirmation of Piper togetherness in the face of her father’s frostiness. He’d turned away from his grown children, and her mother, loyal as ever, stood shoulder to petty shoulder with him.

  One day, Anna hoped, her mum would challenge the tyrant, and be frank with them all about what her blind allegiance had cost her. But Christmas Day was not that day.

  Somewhere among the cards hanging like bunting was a cartoon of Santa getting stuck in a chimney with the message ‘From Mum and Dad’ neatly written inside. No kisses. No asking after the baby. Thanks to Storm, there was a card from Yeti, with an inky paw print. But nothing from Carly.

  I should have sent a card to Carly. Anna flip-flopped on this thrice a day. Luca would approve of her original decision not to reach out. It was scant comfort. Here she was
on Christmas Day with neither of them near.

  It was, felt Anna, her duty to respect Carly’s silence. Robbed of the chance to show maternal love in more usual ways, she did her best with this opportunity. It wasn’t easy, but then it wasn’t supposed to be.

  Potatoes ticked over in the oven. Peas and carrots waited their turn on the worktop. Yeti prowled, now the size of a deer, and with a distinctive mince since his accident. Anna lumbered around the table, tweaking the crackers and rotating the mini poinsettia at each chair. Her physicality seeped into everything she did; her size had altered the way she walked, sat, thought.

  An oversized teddy, the size of a toddler, stood drunkenly against the fridge. Dylan had delivered it yesterday, en route to the airport. Peru, this time.

  ‘So you won’t be here for the birth?’

  ‘Is that a problem?’ Dylan looked apologetic. The level of apology more suited to forgetting to return a borrowed book. ‘I mean, it’s not like I could do anything.’ He’d assumed a look of horror. ‘Unless you want me to be with you when it comes out?’

  Anna had valiantly managed not to laugh. Dylan in the delivery room! ‘My sister’s my birth partner. We’ve been practising the breathing and stuff. I just thought you might . . . well, I’ll email you afterwards.’

  ‘Tell me if it’s a dude or a girl.’

  ‘Er, yeah.’

  Beyond the kitchen window, the shed was wreathed in fairy lights. They flickered, disco-fast, which might induce a fit in one of her guests, but it was too drizzly and grim for Anna to venture out and change them. No cleansing, festive snow had fallen on Anna’s suburb, only persistent chilly rain.

  The to-do list stuck to the fridge accused her. Anna wouldn’t admit she’d taken on too much. Instead, she ploughed through her chores, an apron over her ‘best’ maternity dress, feeling like a spangly marquee. Usually she pranced around in high heels on Christmas Day, relying on the anaesthetic qualities of Prosecco to see her through, but today her feet were in slippers.