Joan had offered to find Lily and Eleanor a table in the dining room for supper but, without even consulting her daughter, Lily knew the suggestion wouldn’t go down well. When she got back with Moira’s prescription, Eleanor threw the packet onto the bed and marched across to push open the bedroom window. ‘The smell of that man’s cooking is appalling!’ she said. ‘It hits you when you walk in through the front door and the whole building stinks of school dinners. I can’t believe people choose to eat here.’
‘We don’t actually have any choice,’ said Lily. ‘Granny has been told to stay in bed, so we’ll be eating up here and personally, I’ll be grateful for whatever the Campbells decide to give us.’
‘I won’t,’ said Moira. ‘Eleanor’s right. The food here is a bit shit.’
‘Too bad,’ said Lily. ‘We’ll have to put up with it for a couple of days.’
‘Well, I won’t be joining you.’ Eleanor sniffed. ‘The menu at the Roxborough sounds wonderful – I looked at the Specials board earlier and there’s fresh rainbow trout with ginger and scallops on the menu tonight. I’ll definitely be eating there.’
‘Good,’ said Moira.
Although she didn’t particularly want to spend the evening listening to her daughter criticise her actions and list her faults, Lily wouldn’t have minded a decent meal this evening. Despite being well and truly over yesterday’s colossal hangover, she’d been more hungry than usual all day. It was a long time since she’d drunk so much, but she vaguely remembered that this was what happened after you’d pumped your system full of alcohol. This afternoon she’d eaten all of the packets of biscuits on the tea trays in both bedrooms, and had also worked her way through a jumbo bag of Haribo she’d found in the glove compartment of the campervan. The bag was already open and had been in there for a while, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. She was still hungry now, but couldn’t leave Moira alone, so for her it would have to be supper in the room again. But, as she said goodbye to Eleanor, she couldn’t help hoping the rainbow trout wouldn’t be quite as delicious as it sounded.
‘It’s shepherd’s pie this evening,’ Archie announced later, as he carried in the two trays. ‘With green beans, petits pois and carrot batons.’
‘These are just sticks of carrot!’ said Moira, prodding the vegetables with her fork.
‘That’s what a baton is,’ Lily said.
‘So, why don’t you call it a carrot stick?’ Moira asked Archie.
‘It’s a culinary term, dear lady. Used by chefs who are used to catering for the most discerning palates.’
‘That’s not you, then. How ridiculous. If I was you, I wouldn’t bother using fancy names for bog-standard vegetables.’
Lily grimaced at Archie apologetically as he backed out of the room, but he just smiled, clearly not offended. The Campbells were certainly getting the measure of her mother. Either that, or they were so thick-skinned they had absolutely no idea when they were being insulted.
While Moira was still picking over the remains of her meal, Lily texted Gordon.
His reply pinged in almost immediately.
She tapped out:
It didn’t sound as if he’d taken her advice and confided in anyone else about what had happened with Hilary, which was a shame because she was sure it would help him to talk. Another reply pinged in straight away.
‘Huh, charming!’ Lily muttered to herself. Gordon was a good ten years older than she was, and she wasn’t impressed that he was being so negative about her own chances of happiness. She felt like texting back and hinting at her unexpected night of passion with a stranger, but that would be cruel – there was no way she could tell him about Jake when he was at such a low ebb.
She got up and went to draw the curtains across the bedroom window, staring out across the car park at the spotlights cast onto the pavement by the streetlights. Poor Gordy; it must be awful to find yourself alone again so suddenly. Oliver came into her mind, with his huge stomach and red wine-stained lips. Seeing him alone and out of his depth in his messy, filthy house had been depressing, but it must have been much harder for Moira to process. There was a man who had let himself go, who didn’t seem to have anyone who cared enough to help him get his life back on track. Did her mother feel guilty about the fact that her former friend was now in such a bad way? Even all those years ago, when they’d apparently been so close, he hadn’t been her problem. But deep down she might feel as if she’d let him down.
There was no way Lily was going to let that happen to Gordy. As soon as they were back in Brighton, she would go round to check he was taking proper care of himself, then drag him out of his empty house to drink cocktails and do a bit of dancing and generally remind him that his life was far from over, and he had the right to throw caution to the wind and behave like a man half his age.