The Adults

by Caroline Hulse

  Patrick strode across the room. He did a dramatic about-turn and strode back to where he was. He waved his hand in front of his face in a jerky movement. “Just get them to call me. Please.”

  Patrick jammed the phone back in his pocket. He hitched up the knees of his trousers and sank on the sofa opposite Alex, legs wide apart, radiating energy. He picked up his laptop and started jabbing at the keyboard with excessive force.

  Alex felt her eyes watering from the onions Claire was chopping, making it hard for her to read. She watched Matt head into the bathroom. There was a wall between the two rooms and Matt had shut the door, but Alex could still audibly follow every stage of his piss: the waterfall, the petering, the drips, the flush.

  Matt came back into the main room and smiled at Alex.

  She smiled back.

  Would it have been too much to have stayed in a place where they could get more than four meters away from each other?

  “Patrick?” Claire said.

  Patrick continued looking at his laptop screen.

  Claire put her knife down on the kitchen counter. “Patrick.”

  No response.

  Claire walked over to the sofa and stood over him. “Patrick.”

  Patrick flinched. He pulled the screen toward him. “I hate it when you creep up on me.”

  “I didn’t creep! You just weren’t listening to me when I was trying to get your attention. I don’t understand how you can get so entranced by Facebook anyway, it’s all fluff.” She waved at the screen. “Who’s that?”

  “She’s someone I used to be at school with. She’s in the lodge next door, a complete coincidence. Matt and I met her earlier. Matt’s invited her for a drink tomorrow.”

  “How funny! Were you friends at school?”

  “She was in my drama class.” Patrick paused. “She was one of the popular girls, we didn’t really move in the same circles.”

  Matt snorted. “She wasn’t in the model airplane club, then?”

  Patrick deliberately kept his gaze on Claire. “What did you want me for?”

  Claire paused. “It’s gone.” She walked back to the kitchen area. She took a swig of her wine and restarted her chopping.

  “I remember the popular girls at school.” Matt grinned at Patrick and perched on the edge of the dining table with a seriousness that suggested he had much to impart on the topic. “Gemma Cooper, she was the main one.” He flicked his head back, tossing his hair off his face. “Her brother played for the Forest youth team. Walshy got off with her once, on the memorial bench in the park. We could none of us believe it.”

  Claire laughed. “You watched?”

  “ ’Course we watched! For a bit anyway. It was an event!” Matt turned to Alex. “Can you believe Walshy got off with the most popular girl at school? He had all the chat back then. He didn’t just get off with her either. He also got”—he glanced at Scarlett—“never mind.”

  When Scarlett looked away, Matt mouthed blow job.

  Patrick slammed his laptop shut with a bang.

  “Not that we watched that bit. Looking back, I can’t understand the attraction. She had a dodgy perm. And a big hair bump on the top of her head, thick with hairspray.” Matt shook his head. “Gemma Cooper. Not thought about her in years. I’ll have to mention her to Walshy, though it will probably only make him depressed. To think how far he’s fallen.”

  * * *

  —

  Later, they all sat round the dining room table.

  Alex ate a forkful of pasta. “Lovely, Claire. You’re a very good cook.”

  Claire gave a friendly wave of dismissal. “It’s just pasta.”

  Alex stabbed another pasta twirl. “With a sauce made from scratch, though.”

  Matt grinned at Alex. “I tell you something, Claire. She’s a good cook in the main, but she’s rubbish at puddings. She always makes them with too much fruit. I mean, where’s the pudding in that? Where’s all the sticky toffee and chocolate fondant?”

  Alex put her knife and fork down.

  Matt bent his head down, still chewing his pasta.

  “I think you meant to say ‘Alex,’ Matt,” Patrick said. “Not ‘Claire.’ ”

  Matt stopped eating. “What?”

  “You called Alex ‘Claire.’ ”

  “Did I?” Matt made eye contact with Alex. “Really?”

  “Yep,” Alex said.

  “It must be because you’re both here.”

  “OK,” Alex said.

  “Like when you get off the phone from your brother and you call me ‘Simon.’ ”

  “I know. It’s fine.”

  “Everyone does it. My mum even calls me ‘Karen’ when my sister’s been over.”

  Alex’s phone rang and she looked at the screen. “It’s Ruby.” She tried not to look like she was getting up too keenly. “I’ll take this outside.”

  She hurried out of the lodge and answered the call.

  “How’s it going?” Ruby asked.

  Alex walked quickly, wanting to get well away from the lodge. “You win.”

  “I win?”

  “This trip’s awful.”

  “Oh, Al. Don’t say I win!” Ruby sighed. “How is it awful?”

  “Oh, let me count the ways.” Alex bumped down on a bench opposite the lake. “So, firstly, Scarlett hates me because I killed a pheasant.”

  “Right.” Ruby paused. “In anger, or…?”

  “Patrick ran it over. He was just looking at the poor thing afterward, hesitating like a squeamish kid at what he had to do. And the pheasant was in pain.”

  “And you stepped in. Good for you.”

  Alex looked at the surface of the lake. How could everything be so calm round here when she felt like this? “Patrick resents me for it, I can tell. That man’s a nightmare, Rubes. He keeps trying to compete with me. It’s like…everything’s a chance to prove he’s good enough. To someone, anyone. He’s mental.”

  “He sounds like my stepdad. We just let him win at everything for an easy life.”

  “I tried that when we were racing down the river ride, but it was impossible. How do you get to the age of forty-three without understanding the simplest fluid dynamics?”

  There was a pause. “You were racing him back?”

  Alex coughed. “A little bit. Maybe. I stopped as soon as I realized what was going on. After—”

  “After?”

  “Nothing.”

  There was another pause. Alex looked down at her shoes.

  “So what about Claire?” Ruby spoke more slowly than usual, like she was taking extra care with her words. “What’s she like?”

  “She’s just perfect. So wonderful and thoughtful.” Alex didn’t need to take care with her words. The right words were there, all bunched up and ready to crash out. “She loves cooking, it’s just so fucking relaxing, apparently. And she put the milk in a jug on the table at breakfast. A jug.”

  There was a pause. “Right.”

  “I mean, who uses a jug? I thought that was just something people did only on telly. See? Perfect. She made nonalcoholic cocktails so I didn’t feel left out. She’s so fucking nice.”

  “Is that sarcasm?”

  “No! That’s the worst thing about it! She’s, like, way too nice, always smiling and being so reasonable. She even bought me a spa voucher.”

  “Really? You’ve met this woman before, right?”

  “And she stayed back from family golf today because Matt told her I don’t like fish and she’d prepared this massive fish meal and she had to make pasta instead—but not from a sauce, no-o-o, she chopped garlic and everything—and I just feel like she’s the grown-up and I should be sitting at the child’s table with Scarlett and Posey, you know?”

  “Right.” There was that
care in Ruby’s voice again. “Take a step back for me. Who’s Posey?”

  “Scarlett’s imaginary rabbit.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone.

  “I must have told you about him,” Alex said.

  “I think I would have remembered.”

  “Posey hates me. He keeps making snide comments, saying I’m a pheasant-murderer. And he called me fat.”

  Silence again. “Right. And you know he says these things…how?”

  Alex scuffed her feet impatiently along the path. “By how Scarlett reacts.”

  “You’re not fat.”

  “Well, obviously, and I’m not a murderer either. But Scarlett acts like she’s the one trying to reason with him, telling him they don’t know I’m definitely a murderer and I might be safe around rabbits because there’s no proof I’m not and—”

  “Come home. Please come home, Al. I’ll ditch my folks and you can be with me and Kevin. I’ll let you feed him his special Christmas sausages and everything.”

  Alex didn’t normally enjoy spending time with Ruby’s flatulent dachshund, but even that sounded like a good option right then.

  “I can’t,” Alex said finally.

  “Why not?”

  “Because if I flounce out in a huff, it’ll be worse next time I see them all.”

  “Oh, Al.”

  “And the worst thing, Rubes? Every day, I feel even more like I want a drink.”

  “You’ve done so well. You can’t have a drink because of this car crash of a holiday.”

  Alex didn’t say anything.

  “I hope Matt’s giving you a ton of grateful neck massages. He knows he has the most patient girlfriend in the world, right?”

  Alex didn’t reply.

  “Al?”

  Alex still didn’t answer.

  “Al? Is Matt being a knob?”

  Alex scraped her foot along the path again. “He’s been to this forest place before. With Claire and Scarlett. He suggested the place to Claire. And…he didn’t tell me that.”

  Ruby let out a whoosh of air. “Fucking hell, Al.”

  “He didn’t lie about it either. He just…didn’t mention it.”

  “I can see why you’re a bit…fraught.”

  “It is fair I’m a little pissed off about it, right? I’ve thought about it a lot, and it feels like it’s fair.”

  “You know I like Matt, but…thoughtless is not the word. What a dick. Come home, Al, and speak to Matt later. You don’t have to put up with this shit.”

  “Look, I’ve got to go.” Alex clicked her phone off. She couldn’t stand the sound of Ruby’s sympathy. It was so much harder to hear than her sarcasm.

  Alex sat on the bench for a while longer. She knew she should head back to the lodge, but couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

  The worst thing was, she hadn’t even told Ruby her other fear. That the whole thing might have been Matt’s idea—and, if it was, that he’d lied to her again and again.

  But she couldn’t tell Ruby that. Because she didn’t want to hear someone else reacting on the outside like she was reacting inside, right now.

  She knew that once she said it out loud, that would definitely make it real.

  33

  Patrick had been disappointed to find out they weren’t having fish for tea after all. But he didn’t say anything, because he was polite like that.

  It was because of Alex, of course. And now Alex had taken a call during the meal and had been half an hour already—which, considering all the effort Claire had put in making a back-up meal, was really rude.

  Once they’d cleared the dinner table, Patrick sat back round it with Scarlett, Claire, and Matt.

  Scarlett offered everyone pieces of her advent calendar, but Patrick declined. He had a few months before his Ironman, but he still had to be careful. Patrick opened the Monopoly box and started counting out the money. He always liked to be the banker. It felt right that way.

  Scarlett put two counters on the board. “Posey likes to be the iron.”

  “We’re not playing with Posey, Scarlett.” Claire took a decisive swig of wine. “Not tonight. It’s family time.”

  “But Posey loves Monopoly. He’ll get upset.”

  “I said no,” Claire said quietly. “Put Posey to bed, please.”

  Scarlett narrowed her eyes.

  Patrick watched with distaste as Matt stuffed two advent chocolates into his mouth at once.

  “Or how about,” Matt spoke thickly through the chocolate, “Posey and Scarlett play together on the same team? You can still be the iron, together?”

  Claire shook her head at Matt. But she didn’t tell him off for undermining her, Patrick noticed.

  Scarlett gave Matt a nod and turned to the side. “You can sit back down, Posey.”

  She pulled out a chair and tucked it back under the table—a chair that, presumably, had a rabbit on it.

  The front door slammed and Alex walked back in. She looked cold.

  Patrick couldn’t help noticing that, on seeing Alex, Scarlett immediately stopped offering round chocolates and, instead, hid her advent calendar under the table.

  “Everything all right?” Matt asked Alex.

  “Fine.” Alex slid back into what had become her usual chair. “It was just Ruby wanting to chat. You know how she bangs on. Are we playing Monopoly?”

  Patrick handed Alex her money. “I’m banker.”

  Alex rubbed her arms briskly to warm them up. “OK. I haven’t played for thirty years. But bring it on.”

  Matt turned to Scarlett. “Have you got any more of those chocolates, chicken?”

  But Scarlett shook her head.

  * * *

  —

  An hour into the game and Patrick had managed to pick up two stations, plus the Electric Company, and one of the three green streets (which were his favorite).

  Bingo!—he’d just landed on another green street. Two out of three. He could feel it now. The game going his way.

  Patrick picked up the green card and placed it in front of him. He fanned out his money, ready to pay for the property.

  He was conscious Alex was watching him. She’d been distracted at first, reading through the Monopoly rules and studying all the cards, but now she seemed to be paying attention to the game.

  “You’re buying Regent Street as well?”

  Something in Alex’s voice—an incredulity—made Patrick pause.

  “You know the greens are the worst value on the board, right?”

  Patrick jiggled his legs under the table. He looked down at his money again. He re-counted out three orange notes and, with a flourish of his hand to show it was the correct money, placed the notes in the bank.

  “I’m just trying to help,” Alex said.

  Patrick licked his lips. “Why do you think they’re the worst on the board?”

  Alex indicated the Monopoly rules next to her. “I’ve just done a quick analysis of the board and house prices. It looks like all the streets on the first half of a side can’t possibly be as good value as the streets on the second half. And the green ones seem to have the worst buy-to-rent ratio of all, and they’re expensive, so from a cash flow perspective…”

  Alex stopped talking.

  Patrick looked down at his two beautiful green cards, Regent Street and Bond Street. He straightened the cards on the table, so the edges lined up neatly.

  “I was just…trying to help you win.”

  Patrick didn’t say anything.

  “So, tell me.” Alex gave a try-hard smile. “When’s that Ironman thing again?”

  Damn it!

  Patrick glanced at Claire. “April.”

  Claire stared at Patrick, expressionless.

  “What’s Ironma
n?” Matt asked. “Is it like a marathon?”

  Patrick glanced at Claire and back. What choice did he have? “It’s a 2.4-mile swim, then a 112-mile bike ride, then a marathon.”

  Claire said nothing.

  “All in the same day?” Matt said. “No way.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve booked an Ironman,” Alex said. “It’s impressive. Like an impressive punishment.”

  Claire didn’t look at Patrick. “Booked?”

  Helplessly, Patrick turned to Alex. “It’s a bucket list thing.”

  Matt leaned back in his chair. “Easier to swim with dolphins.”

  “I think that’s the point, Matt,” Alex said.

  Matt leaned farther back. He held on to the table, lifting the front two chair legs off the ground. “Pat’s gonna be a bloody Ironman!”

  Patrick flinched.

  “Can we get on with the game, please?” Scarlett said. “Posey’s not enjoying it. He’s not feeling comfortable. What’s that?” She looked at the air and nodded. “Posey really wants us to be on our own.” She pushed her chair out. “ ’Scuse us. We’re going to the bedroom.”

  Matt watched her leave. “Scarlett’s got a bee in her bonnet about something.”

  “It’s me,” Alex said.

  “Let’s just leave her to calm down for a bit,” Claire said.

  “While Scarlett’s up there, I’ll just go for a quick walk and a smoke.” Matt rubbed his hands together. “I rolled up earlier. Fancy joining, Claire?”

  “Smoke?” Patrick said. “As in…cigarettes?”

  “Quite like cigarettes,” Matt said with a smile. “Fancy joining?”

  Patrick coughed. “No, thank you.”

  Claire got up. “Just a quick one, then.” She turned to Patrick. “Can you ring us if Scarlett comes back?”

  Patrick just stared at her. He couldn’t quite believe it.

  Claire was about to do drugs. On holiday with her daughter.

  “You coming for a walk, Al?” Matt asked.

  Alex gave a tight smile. “I might read in the bedroom for the rest of the night.” She picked Ulysses off the table next to her. “I’m really into my book.”