Chapter Six

RORY HAD EMAILED ME a list of items to bring for our country weekend with his parents. It included wellington boots, a waterproof coat and something ‘smart’ for the evening. This panicked me into borrowing a strapless red dress from Mia.

‘Is it not a bit… red?’ I said, looking doubtfully in her full-length mirror that night. The waistband of the dress was so tight I felt like a ketchup bottle. Would I explode if I sat down? Perhaps I simply wouldn’t be able to sit all evening.

‘I know what I’m doing, Flo,’ Mia replied. ‘They’ll be the sort of people who wear black tie on the weekends and you don’t want to feel out of place, do you?’

Still, at least the red dress distracted me from the Percy debacle.

That evening, I packed it along with an old pair of wellies and a dusty Barbour that I found buried on the coat stand in the hall. Plus six pairs of knickers, two bras, one pair of pyjamas, two pairs of jeans, four different types of top that ranged from casual T-shirt to frilly peasant shirt, two jumpers, my plain black dress from Whistles (what if they went to church on Sunday?), and three pairs of shoes. Converse, black pumps and red heels to go with the dress.

These provisions meant that I arrived at King’s Cross on Saturday morning dragging a large suitcase behind me as if I was off to the South Pole for several months instead of Norfolk for one night. Still, better to be prepared. You never want to run out of knickers.

Rory laughed when he spotted me under the departures board. ‘Let me take that,’ he said, reaching for the bag.

‘Where’s your stuff?’ I asked. He had nothing with him. Just his satchel hanging over one shoulder.

‘Keep various bits and pieces at home. Christ, this is heavy.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Anything for you. Right, come on, platform eleven. Let’s go before the plebs get all the seats.’

He set off for the ticket barriers, booming ‘Excuse me, sorry, sorry, excuse me!’ at other travellers before I could tell him off for being a snob. He stowed my bag and we found a table nearby. I sat by the window while Rory took off his tweed jacket, folded it and slid it carefully on top of his satchel in the overhead rack. He sat with a book on Margaret Thatcher he’d retrieved from the satchel and rubbed a hand up and down my thigh.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘Yep, all good.’

‘I mean about the dog situation.’

‘Oh, that,’ I said. We’d texted about it the previous night but I’d tried to play it down. ‘Yeah, fine. I mean, there are now ninety bajillion photos of me grimacing like a gargoyle on the internet but hopefully people forget these things.’

‘I blame that character you work with. What’s he called? Jack?’

‘Zach.’

Rory scowled. ‘How did he allow the situation to get so out of control?’

‘Well, he was at the back of the room, so he cou—’

‘And did you see the way he looked at me?’ he interrupted. ‘When I mentioned what I did? I suppose he’s some sort of communist.’

‘I think Ruby’s quite keen on him.’

‘Surely your sister has more taste than that?’

I opened my mouth to reply and then looked out of the window, unsure who I should defend.

‘Anyway,’ Rory went on, his voice more conciliatory, ‘I just wanted to make sure you weren’t too humiliated. But let’s forget it all and have a decent weekend. I’m thrilled you’re here.’

‘Me too,’ I replied, although I was nervous about meeting his parents, especially his artistic mother. ‘Has nice mother,’ I’d written on my list. ‘What’s your mum like?’

‘Like? What do you mean?’

‘You know, what’s her deal? Are you close?’

Rory scratched his chin. ‘She’s quite eccentric. Her father, my grandfather, was a reasonably famous portraitist so they had a bohemian upbringing – illegitimate siblings, wine at breakfast, affairs with the nannies and so on. But I adore her. As will you,’ he said, squeezing my leg, ‘don’t worry.’

‘I’m not worrying,’ I lied. ‘And what about your dad?’

‘He’s also mad. Very English. Practically stitched into his red corduroys.’

‘Ah, so that’s where you get it from?’ I teased. Rory looked like a posh chimney sweep today, in a navy wool waistcoat over a light blue herringbone shirt, with navy trousers and a pair of suede ankle boots.

‘Maybe,’ Rory conceded, sliding his hand down my leg and pinching me around my knee.

‘Ouch!’ I said, and dived for his leg to do the same but he caught my wrist.

‘Nice try but you’re not that strong.’

‘Oww, all right, time out,’ I said, and he released my wrist. I settled back against my seat again. ‘What did your dad do?’

‘He was in the army, then left and went into the City, and now is mostly concerned with killing things. Pheasants, fish, our neighbours.’

‘Is that why they live in the country?’

He shook his head. ‘No, it’s my mother’s childhood house. She was the favourite child so it was left to her, which caused an almighty row in the family and now nobody speaks to one another.’

‘Families, huh?’ I said, leaning my head against his arm. Hearing that his were as barking mad as mine was strangely comforting.

‘Mmm.’ Then he tapped his book. ‘You happy if I read this?’

‘Oh, sure.’ Although I felt a slight pang of disappointment at this. I’d imagined my first minibreak weekend with a man would be a glorious, exhilarating adventure where nobody else in the world mattered (especially not Margaret Thatcher), and in between bouts of euphoric sex where I came every time, we’d discuss the big issues in life: religion, potential children’s names, our favourite flavour of crisps. I know I’d written ‘must like reading’ on my list but I didn’t mean he had to do it all the time.

I turned away to watch through the window as London slid by, counting the carriages of an old train as we passed it. If there were an even number, his parents would like me and I wouldn’t embarrass myself. ‘One, two, three, four, five…’

‘What are you doing?’ Rory asked, head lifting from his book.

‘Nothing,’ I replied quickly, glancing across the aisle through the other window where there were no old trains and nothing to count. No counting this weekend, Florence Fairfax. Keep that madness locked down.

Almost two hours later, we caught a cab that smelt of fried onions from Norwich station.

‘It’s about twenty minutes,’ Rory told me, before talking to the driver for the entire journey. About the weather, about the football, about the local MP who neither of them liked.

‘He talks a load of old squit,’ said the driver, before catching my eye in his mirror. ‘Excuse my language,’ he said.

I shook my head and smiled at his reflection as Rory rattled on. You could put him down on the moon and he’d find someone to chat to. He’d charmed everyone in the shop on Thursday night. Well, nearly everyone. But Zach hadn’t even given him a chance. He’d just assumed the worst about Rory and stubbornly refused to change his mind. And then he’d been busy flirting with my sister. I wondered, yet again, whether anything would happen between them and glanced at my phone. I hadn’t heard a peep from her since Thursday evening and she’d been out last night. Maybe with Zach? Maybe, right now, Zach was waking up in my house and playing hunt the tea bag in my kitchen? I narrowed my eyes at the thought as we slowed down and the taxi pulled through an old metal gate with a sign on the front of it: Rollmop Manor.

We crunched along a gravel drive, flanked by lawn, before the driver stopped. All I could see through the window was a front door surrounded by stone pillars.

‘That’ll be £18.50 please,’ he said and I tried to pay since Rory had bought our train tickets.

‘Definitely not,’ he said, passing a twenty to the front. ‘You’re on my tab.’

‘I’m always on your tab,’ I said. I felt guilty. Our bill was constantly uneven because Rory paid for everything: for coffees, for dinner. For taxis. For bottles of wine and bunches of peonies.

‘I hope so,’ he replied, kissing me briefly before opening his side of the car. ‘Chop chop, let’s find the matriarch.’

I climbed out, grateful for fresh air after the onions, and was about to stretch when a grey blur hurtled across the lawn and jumped at me so I staggered, nearly falling to the gravel. ‘JESUS CHRIST IT’S A WOLF.’

Its paws were on my shoulders so I skipped back a couple of steps to try and free myself. ‘Help, Rory! Help me. How do I get it off?’ I shrieked.

‘Merlin, get down!’ Rory said, but he was laughing. ‘It’s not a wolf, you big wimp. It’s my mother’s greyhound. Merlin, here, boy.’

Merlin dropped his paws and trotted to Rory. My heart was thumping against my chestbone and I felt stupid. Why had I become some sort of dog magnet? I eyed Merlin warily as he thrust his head under Rory’s hand. He was the size of a small pony. How much did that thing eat?

I brushed the dog hair off my chest and glanced up at the house. It looked old, built from pale yellow stone with two storeys of sash windows running across it. In the middle, around the front door, was a circular porch with pillars either side, ivy knotted around them. An old-fashioned pram with a large hood and silver wheels was parked to one side.

The door opened. ‘Welcome, my darlings,’ cried a woman in a purple kaftan. Her white hair was plaited over one shoulder and she was barefoot. Eccentric dressing clearly ran in the family, I thought, suddenly feeling very urban in my jeans and ankle boots.

Rory stepped forward first. ‘Hi, Mummy,’ he said, kissing her on both cheeks, before looking over his shoulder. ‘This is Florence.’

I smiled and walked around the other side of Rory to greet his mother, trying to avoid Merlin and ignore the fact that my boyfriend had just called his mother ‘Mummy’.

‘Good to meet you, Mrs Dundee.’

She waggled a finger at me. ‘I can’t bear being called that. It makes me feel so old. Elizabeth, please.’

‘Sure,’ I replied, awed by her elegance. Up close, Rory’s mother looked like an old Hollywood star. The corners of her blue eyes crinkled when she smiled but her skin still shone like butter.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said, ushering us through the door. ‘Are you hungry? Lunch is ready. Goodness, what a big bag. Are you staying all month?’

‘No, sorry, I just wasn’t sure what to bring so OH MY GOD…’ I jumped as the door swung closed behind us, revealing a looming polar bear standing on its hind legs.

‘Ah yes, that’s our bear. Bi-polar, we call him. My great-great grandfather shot him on an expedition he made to the Arctic in 1894. Rory, take Florence’s bag upstairs and we’ll go and see about drinks.’

‘Right-o,’ said Rory, making for a curved staircase which ran up from where we were standing. I gazed around me. The hallway looked like a posh junk shop. Under the curved staircase was a dusty grand piano. Against the opposite wall was a grandfather clock, ticking but telling the wrong time. And in between, facing us, was a large fireplace puffing clouds of grey smoke. It made me feel cold. If possible, it was colder inside than it had been outside.

‘This way,’ Elizabeth beckoned me. ‘The kitchen’s warmer.’ She moved like a ghost, gliding through a doorway into a large kitchen which looked out on to the lawn behind the house. Her three cats were lying on the kitchen table in a patch of sun.

‘Your cats!’ I said. ‘What are they called?’

‘Pablo, Claude and Frida. After the artists. We give everything very silly names here, I’m afraid. There’s a peacock stalking around the garden called Salvador. What would you like to drink? I’m making a jug of Bloody Mary.’

‘Lovely.’ The kitchen was warmer but it was also an Aladdin’s cave of crap. Beside an Aga was a laundry basket exploding with socks and shirtsleeves. Silver dog bowls and saucepans dotted every surface as if catching leaks. I glanced upwards. There was a brown watermark shaped like France on the ceiling. On one side of the sink was a stack of newspapers piled so high it looked in danger of cascading to the floor at any second. On the other was a fruit bowl which contained only brown fruits. Brown apples, brown pears, withered grapes and bananas that seemed to have passed the brown stage and gone black. I sniffed. Above the smell of overripe bananas and dog, I could also smell burning.

‘Right, what can I do?’ said Rory, coming through the doorway. ‘Where’s Daddy?’

Daddy? Oh no.

‘Shooting,’ replied his mother. ‘And you can fetch the sherry for me, then take the partridge out of the Aga. Killed only last weekend!’

‘Lovely!’ I said again, trying to sound enthusiastic.

An hour later, I was still hungry. Rory had been right about the eccentricity. Having served us each a tiny, charred bird on a plate with nothing else, no vegetables, Elizabeth fetched a lump of cheese from the fridge. Next, she’d retrieved two bottles of red wine ‘from the cellar’, blew the dust off them and set them down on the table.

As a result, I felt that discombobulating sense of being drunk while it was still light outside.

‘I’m going to walk the cats,’ she announced, standing up.

‘Florence, my darling, feel like a stroll?’ said Rory.

‘You don’t want to walk with me,’ replied Elizabeth. ‘Why don’t you show her round the garden?’

The mystery of the pram was revealed while I stood under the porch minutes later, trying to slide my feet into the wellingtons. It was a challenge after four glasses of wine.

Elizabeth, wearing a khaki mackintosh over her kaftan and a silk headscarf tied under her chin like the Queen, appeared from inside carrying all three cats and dropped them gently into the pram, before lowering the hood as a new mother might to protect her baby. ‘See you in a bit,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘The Battenbergs are coming for dinner so drinks in the drawing room at six!’

‘I did warn you,’ said Rory, as Elizabeth pushed the pram down the drive.

‘I like her. She’s different.’ I wasn’t just being polite. Her whimsical, devil-may-care attitude was refreshing. As she trudged through the metal gate at the end of the drive, it looked like she was taking a new granddaughter out for a spin. If anyone peered under the hood they’d get a heck of a shock, although presumably they were used to the sight round here.

I looked at Rory and laughed, before clapping a hand over my mouth. He’d put on a tweed coat and tweedy hat which made him look like Sherlock Holmes. Tufts of blond hair poked out from under the ear flaps.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ I mumbled, still laughing from behind my fingers. ‘I just didn’t know I’d be playing Watson while you solved a mysterious crime on this walk.’

‘Florence Fairfax, you are going to pay for that,’ he said coolly.

‘What do you mean?’

In less than a second, Rory had wrapped his arms around me and reached inside my coat to tickle me. I hated being tickled.

‘Oh my God, stop!’ I screamed, wriggling free and running down the path around the house towards the lawn. The wine made me clumsy but I staggered through a narrow gap in a hedge before he caught the hem of my coat and pulled me to the grass.

‘Nice try,’ he said, his arms pinning mine.

‘That hat is ridiculous.’

‘You have red-wine teeth,’ he replied.

Our noses were almost touching and we were being drunk and absurd. But I liked it. This felt more like the romantic weekend I’d envisaged. Two people locked in their own bubble, laughing together as if life in that moment was entirely perfect, nothing else necessary.

He kissed me and put his hand back inside my coat, then reached under my jumper and wrapped his cold fingers around my ribcage.

‘Fancy it?’ he asked, grinning at me.

‘What? Out here?’

He nodded and I could see from the intensity of his stare that he meant it. Also, I could feel his erection against my leg.

‘What about your parents?’ I craned my neck to look back at the house but it was hidden by the hedge. I’d unwittingly run into an enclosed section of the garden, surrounded by the hedge, where herbs were growing in pots and in neat clumps along a flowerbed.

‘They’re not here,’ Rory whispered, lowering his head to kiss me again. ‘Don’t you want to?’

‘Yes, I do. I really do. But it’s just…’

‘What?’

‘I’ve got a wet bottom from the grass.’

‘I can solve that.’ He rolled over, pulling me with him, so that his back was on the ground and I was on top of him. I reached back to feel my jeans.

‘Yeah, knew it. I’ve got a wet bum.’

‘So take them off,’ he said, before he put his hand to the back of my head and pulled me in for another kiss. I wanted to, I could feel myself yielding. But, still, we were outside, lying next to his parents’ hedge and it was four in the afternoon. I thought they had scones in the country at teatime, not sex in the herb garden. And Merlin the giant dog would presumably lumber along any minute and try to join in.

‘Come on,’ he coaxed, ‘do it. Take them off for me. Nobody’s here.’

So, not wanting to seem uptight, I stood and leant to peer through the gap in the hedge at the house. No sign of human or dog. I unzipped my jeans and peeled them down as Rory undid his flies.

‘I’m not doing it with that hat on,’ I said, as I tugged my jeans over my ankles and dropped my knickers on top of them. Rory removed his hat and flicked it like a frisbee over the hedge.

I lifted one leg over him and knelt down, sniggering as I felt the damp grass against my skin. ‘This is a very bad idea,’ I said, as I reached between my thighs and held his erection, before slowly guiding him into me.

‘No, it’s not. It’s a fucking exceptional idea,’ Rory groaned, as I started rocking on top of him. It felt pretty strange at first, given I was still wearing my waterproof coat. From the waist up, I looked like a countryside rambler; under that, well, I was probably blue and pimply given that it was a cold October afternoon and the sun had dropped behind the hedge. But my initial fears subsided after a few moments and disappeared completely when Rory licked his thumb and reached forward to rub me with it.

‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ I repeated, as he circled it again and again around my clitoris.

‘Look at me,’ he instructed whenever I threw my head back at the intense heat of the pleasure, so I’d drop my chin again and look straight at him.

Moments later, I felt myself start to contract around him as he moved inside me, faster and faster, his hand speeding up simultaneously, pushing harder between my legs.

‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ I gasped, so the words became one. ‘OhmygodohmygodohmygodOHMYGOD.’

‘Oh my God, COWABUNGAAAAAAAAA!’ said Rory, thrusting his head back into the grass as we came together.

‘Oh my gosh!’ came a different, more surprised voice, as a man’s head poked through the gap in the hedge. ‘Sorry, old bean, I heard voices and thought you might have lost this.’ The man tossed Rory’s hat towards us and vanished again.

‘Ah,’ said Rory, glancing at the hat, which had landed next to my bare knee. ‘Florence, you’ve now met my father.’

I was embarrassed for various reasons when I came downstairs with Rory for drinks later that evening. Largely because I’d been caught rolling around on top of him in the herb garden. But also because Mia had got it wrong about the strapless red dress. Everyone else in the drawing room looked liked they were off to a Quaker meeting: men in corduroy trousers, women in muted dresses with long sleeves. I looked like I was going to the opera. Plus, the hourglass cut of the dress pushed my chest so high my cleavage practically started at my chin. I felt wretched. And cold. According to Rory, his father only put the heating on if the garden pond had frozen over.

‘Daddy, meet Florence, Florence meet Daddy,’ Rory said, introducing us as soon as we walked in.

‘Hello, Florence. Mortimer Dundee, how do you do? I hardly recognize you with your clothes on!’

‘I think the less said about that the better,’ Rory said quickly. ‘How was shooting?’

‘Bloody good fun. Now what are you both having to drink?’

Pulling open a cupboard door behind him, Mortimer revealed a mirrored drinks cupboard with bottles of jewel-coloured spirits.

‘Gin and tonic, I think,’ said Rory. ‘Florence?’

‘Could I start with a water?’ I felt as if I’d only just sobered up from lunch.

‘A water?’ boomed Mortimer. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ He leant in so close that I could see tiny red spider veins spreading either side of his nose like a road map. ‘Perhaps you need to rehydrate after earlier, eh?’

He roared at his own joke before turning back to the drinks cupboard. I breathed as deeply as I could in my dress and wished I’d written ‘nice parents’ on my list, instead of focusing on the mother.

‘And you remember Octavia?’ Rory said, one hand on my back as I turned to see the blonde from the House of Commons.

‘Course, hello, I didn’t know you’d be here!’

‘I wasn’t going to be, but then my parents said they were coming for dinner so I’ve abandoned London to join the party,’ Octavia said. The red lipstick was back on and she was wearing a pair of black jeans and a black silk shirt which made me feel even more out of place – a painted Russian doll.

‘I saw the pictures of you and that dog, so funny!’ she added, smirking at me like Cruella de Vil. ‘Quite the celebrity.’

‘What’s this?’ asked Mortimer, handing me a tumbler of water and Rory his gin and tonic.

‘Oh, Morty, it’s hilarious. You must see. Florence is an internet sensation.’

‘Is she now?’ he said, leering at me from behind his eyebrows.

‘No, I promise I’m not, it was just a silly mistake. A dog wh—’

‘Rory, sweetheart, hold this for me,’ interrupted Octavia. She handed her glass to him and pulled her phone from her jeans pocket.

‘Look, Morty, isn’t it brilliant?’ she said, holding it up so we could all see the screen, my gurning face and Percy wrapped around my leg like a baby koala. ‘He’s a famous Instagram dog and Florence was interviewing him last week…’

‘I was actually interviewing his owner,’ I said, trying to regain control of the situation. ‘She’s a Japanese poet, very successful, her second book’s just coming out and she—’

‘And Florence was up on stage,’ went on Octavia, ‘and he started rogering her leg. Isn’t that hysterical? The pictures went everywhere. My whole office were crying with laughter about it.’

‘Oh, I’m so glad,’ I said, with a tight smile.

‘What’s this?’ asked Elizabeth’s tinkly voice behind us.

Octavia turned to another gaggle of people standing beside the fireplace: Elizabeth, along with two others I assumed were Octavia’s parents. He was wearing a sleeveless maroon jersey over a pink shirt and had the jowls of a middle-aged UKIP supporter; she looked like Patricia, a helmet of perfectly brushed brunette hair sitting on top of a taut, joyless face.

‘Oh, Mummy, Daddy! You must see. This is Florence, Florence, these are my parents, Lord and Lady Belmarsh.’ She held up her phone for them and explained the story all over again to hoots of genteel laughter.

I looked to Rory for support but he just grinned and rolled his eyes at me, as if Octavia was a small and unruly child. I felt like someone had forced a poker down my throat and was stoking the embers of last week’s humiliation.

‘Well, well, well, Florence, you do seem irresistible!’ said Mortimer, still looking at me as if I was a rib of beef.

Luckily, there then came the sound of a gong and Elizabeth announced dinner. I drained my water and put the glass back down in the mirrored drinks cupboard with such a noise I worried the shelf had cracked. Luckily not.

The dining room was dim, the only light coming from several candles strung along the mahogany table. The candlesticks were made from deer antlers and, on the wall, several foxes’ heads with sharp incisors snarled down at us. I looked from the heads to an oil portrait hung from the wall behind Mortimer (alas, I’d been placed next to him). The portrait was a nude, a pale-skinned woman sitting on a rock beside a pool of water, leaning forwards to wash her hair in it. You could see the crease of her bottom.

Mortimer followed my glance. ‘That’s Elizabeth, you know.’

‘What?’ I flicked from him back to the white bottom on the rock.

‘Done years ago,’ he said, as he stuck his finger and thumb into his mouth to retrieve a piece of gristle. ‘It was her wedding present to me.’

Dinner wasn’t much better than lunch. Elizabeth, tonight in a red kaftan with jewelled slippers that curled at the toes, had carried a large porcelain dish through from the kitchen and announced that we were having game pie. She’d passed plates of this around the table and we’d helped ourselves to vegetables from bowls in front of us.

I managed two mouthfuls of the pie but it was stringy, tasting much as I imagine rat might. In the dark, I looked down at my plate again and tried to hunt for my next mouthful. Something small and spongy rolled under my fork. An eyeball?

‘And what do you do with your time,’ Morty asked, ‘apart from terrorize poor dogs, ha ha!’

‘I work in a bookshop,’ I replied, giving up on the pie and lifting a forkful of mashed potato to my mouth. Couldn’t go wrong with mashed potato. ‘That’s why I was interviewing this Japanese poet. Because she’s pretty well known and has got her sec—’

He didn’t let me finish. ‘Oh, a bookshop. So you’re in trade?’ I might as well have told him I worked in a brothel.

The potato was cold.

‘You know the one, Daddy. Frisbee in Chelsea?’ interrupted Rory from the other end of the table.

‘Oh, I simply adore Frisbee,’ Elizabeth interrupted, clapping her hands together. ‘How wonderful. I’d love to work in a bookshop.’

‘I know it,’ barked Lord Belmarsh. ‘Looks like a charity shop from the outside.’

‘It’s actually a very special place,’ I replied, spearing a small piece of cabbage on my plate in the hope that it was edible. I’d eaten almost nothing at lunch and was now well into my third glass of red wine. If I couldn’t eat this cabbage I feared an embarrassing accident. ‘It’s been there since 1967.’

‘But she’s not going to work there for ever because she’s writing her own book, aren’t you, darling?’ said Rory.

The cabbage disintegrated in my mouth. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be there, to be honest,’ I replied. ‘I really love it.’

‘But you want to be a writer instead of selling other people’s books,’ he urged, and it seemed, briefly, as if Rory was a pushy parent, encouraging me to say the right thing in front of everyone else; that he too was ashamed I worked in a shop.

‘Both, if I’m lucky,’ I replied with a smile around the table. I felt like a performing seal.

‘When are you going back tomorrow, darling?’ Elizabeth asked him.

‘After lunch?’

‘Oh good. I thought we could all go for a ride in the morning. Do you ride, Florence?’

Mortimer leant towards me. ‘She means horses, my dear.’

‘I used to, yes,’ I said. ‘But not for years. My French grandmother had a very small, very obstinate pony called Winston that I used to ride into the village and back to get croissants in the morning.’

‘Wonderful! We’ll go out for a canter after breakfast in that case. Oh dear, Morty, look, there’s a vole,’ she added, pointing to the skirting board where a small dark object scuttled along the carpet.

‘A vole!’ shrieked Lady Belmarsh.

‘Oh, Mummy, stop fussing, it’s not going to bite you,’ said Octavia.

I wondered if I could trap it and eat it.

‘Morty, go and get Pablo, he’ll catch it,’ said Elizabeth, putting her napkin on the table. ‘And if everyone’s finished, shall we go through and sit soft?’

We went back to the drawing room for coffee served in thimble-sized cups. I drank three, mostly to warm up and quieten my hunger pangs, but also to dilute the red wine. There was a box of After Eights on the coffee tray so I had several of those too, scrunching the black paper sleeves in my fist to hide how many I ate.

‘Rory tells me you and he grew up together,’ I said to Octavia, who was sitting next to me on the sofa.

‘Yes! He was my first proper kiss when we were thirteen,’ she replied, before turning and pointing towards the windows. ‘It was here, actually, during a party one summer. He whisked me into the herb garden and had his wicked way.’

‘Ha! The herb garden, that’s funny,’ I murmured, glancing across the room to where Rory was in discussion with Lord Belmarsh. It wasn’t funny, obviously, but I didn’t want to let her know that. ‘And you’re going out with Noddy?’

Octavia’s head fell back against the sofa and she laughed. ‘Noddy! God no. I love him but not like that.’ She paused and glanced at Rory. ‘No,’ she said lightly. ‘No boyfriend at the moment. I’m all free.’

Then she lowered her voice, almost to a whisper, and leant in closer. ‘But don’t worry, Rory and I wouldn’t work.’

‘Really? How come?’ I squeaked, unable to think of a sharper reply.

‘I’m too challenging for him,’ she said, with a flick of her red nails. ‘He needs someone more docile. Someone who’s not going to outshine or threaten him. Someone who’d make a good political wife. Someone, perhaps, a bit like you.’ A smirk danced on her lips as I groped for a reply. Why did other people often seem to have such quick retorts at moments like these while my own mouth flapped like a guppy fish? I was too stunned to come up with anything clever.

‘I, er, I mean, er, I think it’s bit, er, early for that,’ I stuttered eventually. ‘I mean, we’ve only been on a few dates and I’m actually not that do—’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,’ she carried on, glancing back at Rory. ‘I can tell he likes you. And he’s been told he needs to find a wife before being given a seat so you could easily end up married, living in this house.’ She settled back against the sofa and spread her arms out across it.

I tried to process what she’d just said. I felt like a tiny alarm bell had just gone off inside my skull. ‘Sorry, he’s been told he needs to find a wife?’

Her red mouth formed a perfect circle in surprise. ‘Oh, didn’t you know? You mustn’t worry too much. It’s all political shenanigans. But the party does tend to prefer candidates who can demonstrate family values so Rory’s been unofficially instructed to get married.’ She paused and smirked again. ‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’

‘Right,’ I murmured, gazing at the fireplace in front of us. ‘No, no, he hasn’t mentioned anything.’

‘Hector, darling, I think we should go home and let the dogs out,’ said Lady Belmarsh.

‘Quite right,’ replied Lord Belmarsh, standing up. ‘We should be orf, but thank you, Dundees, for a terrific dinner.’

I stood with Octavia and murmured goodbyes like a robot.

‘So lovely to see you again, Florence, and see you in London, I’m sure,’ she said, with another smile. Unbelievable. The woman would take gold in every category of the Smirking Olympics.

Rory, his parents and I stood in the porch to wave them down the drive.

‘That was bloody marvellous, and delicious pie, darling,’ Mortimer told his wife as we went back inside.

Suddenly, I felt so tired I could barely stand.

‘Rory, take poor Florence upstairs, she looks exhausted,’ instructed Elizabeth.

‘Knackered, I’ll bet,’ added Mortimer.

‘Yes, Mummy,’ said Rory, ‘but are you all right, darling? You look awfully pale.’

‘Mmm, fine,’ I said faintly.

‘I’ll run you a bath,’ he said. ‘How about that?’

I nodded silently before we said goodnight to his parents and walked up the curved staircase. What to say? How to say it? Was that what I was? A box marked ‘wife’ for him to tick? A project?

I decided I’d have a bath and broach the subject in the morning. I was too shattered now. The combination of red wine and coffee was making me both drowsy and jittery. Obviously there was almost no hot water in this arctic house so I lay in the tepid, avocado-coloured bath and counted the flowers up and down the curtains. And by the time I tiptoed back down the corridor in a scratchy towel to our bedroom, Rory was already asleep.

I woke the next morning with a cold nose. Our bedroom was freezing. At around 3 a.m., when I wondered if I’d survive the night, I’d scrabbled in the dark for two jumpers and a pair of socks. I’d considered putting several pairs of knickers over my head as a hat before deciding that it might alarm Rory. I exhaled with my mouth open and saw my breath hang in the air, then pinched my thumb and my forefinger around my nose to try and warm it.

‘What are you doing?’ said Rory, opening his eyes.

‘By dose is cold,’ I said.

‘What?’

I removed my hand. ‘My nose is cold.’ Then I sniffed and smelled fish. ‘What’s that?’ I asked, fearing that I might have to eat whatever Elizabeth had murdered in the kitchen.

‘Kippers. Daddy always has kippers on a Sunday morning,’ he said, leaping out of bed, flashing his bottom at me. But not even that could cheer me up. The conversation with Octavia had been the first thought that wormed its way into my brain when I woke, making me feel deflated before I’d even opened my eyes.

He’d already pulled on a pair of trousers and was buttoning a shirt at the foot of the bed. I couldn’t bear to extend an inch of bare flesh from under the blanket.

‘Come on, lazybones,’ he said, pulling the bottom corner of the blanket and whipping it off. The sudden cold made me shriek and curl into a ball on the mattress. ‘RORY! I hate you, that’s so mean.’

He laughed as he headed for the door. ‘As if you could hate me. I’m heading to the kitchen but come down whenever you’re ready.’

I sat up and looked around the bedroom for my bag. My mouth still tasted of baked rat. I needed to brush my teeth, get dressed, go down to the kitchen and forage for a piece of toast. They must have toast. You couldn’t screw up toast.

Twenty minutes later, I followed the fishy stench back down the long corridor, the stairs and into the kitchen.

‘Morning!’ cried Elizabeth, standing over the Aga. Rory and his father were sitting at one end of the kitchen table, the cats stretched across the other.

‘Morning, Florence, I trust you slept well?’ asked Mortimer. He was clearly an advanced-level pervert since even this sounded like an innuendo.

‘Yes, thank you,’ I fibbed.

‘Have a seat,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Would you like a kipper? I’ve saved you one.’

I waved my hands quickly at her. ‘No! I mean, no thank you. Just a piece of toast would be great.’ I pulled out the chair next to Rory, sat and felt Merlin’s wet nose push at my forearm. I patted him lightly on the head in case the others were watching, then twisted my body away.

‘I’m afraid I’ve received a boring email from the office,’ said Rory, putting a hand on my leg. ‘There’s a developing situation in Algeria which means I need to go back up after breakfast. Do you mind?’

‘Oh no! That means no riding,’ said Elizabeth. ‘What a pity.’

‘That is a pity,’ I said, trying to sound sad.

‘You’ll have to come back for a gallop another time, eh?’ said Mortimer, over the top of his paper.

I smiled thinly at him as Elizabeth dropped a piece of toast on my plate. ‘There you go, butter and jam on the table.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, reaching for the butter dish. Oh. It was covered in dog hair. I peered more closely. Or cat hairs, plus a couple of human hairs for good measure. I scraped around the hairs, looked at the jam jars in front of me and decided to stick with butter.

Rory continued tapping at his phone, Mortimer read his newspaper and Elizabeth hummed while shuffling pots around the kitchen so I sat eating my toast and stared through the French windows. I’d talk to Rory on the train. I wasn’t sure how to start the conversation but I’d think of something.

This, I decided, with another crunch of hairy toast, was why life without boyfriends was easier. I’d been all right on my own and now I was in a pickle. I liked Rory. I felt a small kick of pleasure inside me every time I remembered that I had a boyfriend, every time I mentioned him to someone. Sure, not very feminist, but it made me feel more normal, less alone. And yet here I was, weakened by him because his behaviour had influenced my own mood. Or maybe that was just what a relationship looked like? I pulled a hair from between my lips and flicked it from my finger to the floor. If I got back to London without dysentery it would be a miracle.

Luckily, because it was a Sunday morning, the train was almost empty. We sat at a table and Rory optimistically slid his book on Margaret Thatcher out from his satchel.

‘Can I talk to you about something?’ I asked, forcing myself to get the sentence out. I knew, once I’d said those words, that other words had to follow them, although I still wasn’t exactly sure what those words would be.

‘Hmm?’ he said, not taking his eyes off the page.

‘Do you want to marry me?’

He turned towards me with a grin. ‘Florence Fairfax, are you proposing to me on the 11.03 to London King’s Cross?’

‘No, sorry, that’s not what I meant, I’m not proposing.’

‘I think you are,’ he said in a mocking tone. ‘That sounded very much like a proposal to me.’

‘I’m not proposing! Listen, I’m being serious – it was something Octavia said to me last night.’

A ripple of alarm passed over his forehead. ‘What did she say?’

‘She said that you were only going out with me because you’d been told you need to get married for your career, for a seat,’ I said, as quickly as I could, as if getting the words out faster made them less painful. ‘That someone had told you to find a wife, and that’s why you’d picked me.’

Rory closed his book and put it on the table so Margaret Thatcher glared back at me. ‘I’m sorry she said that.’

‘It’s true?’

He sighed, turned, looked away from me through the window and I felt a black surge of anguish. OK, never mind. We’d break up, and that was sad, but Marmalade would be waiting for me at home. And it had been a diverting few weeks. And at least I could say now that I’d had a boyfriend, even if it was only for three seconds. That would shut Patricia up. And I’d probably cry for several months but I’d finally get over it, maybe when I was in my mid-forties. And then I might seriously think about signing up for a nunnery. Were nunneries listed on Google? I’d look when I got home.

‘Course it’s not true,’ he said, turning back a few moments later, just as I was wondering if I had the right shaped face for a wimple.

‘So why did she say it?’

‘Because she’s jealous and always thought she and I would end up together,’ he said, with a sigh. He took both my hands in his. ‘And yes, it’s true the party used to prefer that candidates were married. Solid family men, that sort of thing. But not any more. Come on, Florence, you’re better than this, it’s not 1919.’

I rolled my lower lip through my teeth. ‘So she made it up?’ I asked, frowning.

He shrugged. ‘That’s the only thing I can think of.’ He glanced away from me, down the aisle at an approaching rattling. ‘Look, here comes the man with the trolley. Do you want anything? Can I buy you a restorative cup of coffee? I think I might have one.’

I wasn’t sure I could concentrate on coffee while my brain was still whirring.

‘Hello, my good man,’ Rory said to the short man in a regulation waistcoat pushing the trolley through the train. ‘Could I please have a cappuccino, hold the chocolate.’

‘Don’t do them,’ he replied in a surly tone. ‘We do white coffee or black coffee.’

‘Ah, of course, what a terrific choice. Well, in that case a white coffee please. Florence?’

‘Er…’ I looked at the man in the waistcoat as if he’d help me out and sell me the secret to a straightforward relationship instead of a coffee that tasted like puddle. ‘No, I’m good, thanks.’

Rory tapped the card machine and took his coffee – ‘Magnificent, thank you so much’ – before putting his free hand over mine.

‘Ignore Octavia,’ he said. ‘She’s a troublemaker sometimes.’

‘I will, I just wanted to ask,’ I replied.

‘Don’t be absurd, of course you should ask,’ he said, kissing my head before releasing my hand and immediately opening Margaret Thatcher.

When we arrived at King’s Cross, Rory caught a cab to his office. I took the Northern Line home, inconveniencing every other person on the Tube with my suitcase.

I found Mia and Hugo on the sofa discussing wedding canapés. Mia was cross-legged with her laptop balanced on her knees, Hugo was lying flat along the rest of it, his gangly legs dangling over the sofa arm like a cadaver.

‘What do you think, Flo, if you had a choice between the venison carpaccio with fig compote or partridge tart with horseradish cream?’ she asked.

‘Please, no more partridge,’ I said, releasing my suitcase. ‘Rory’s mother murdered several of them for our lunch yesterday.’

‘Course, his parents!’ shrieked Mia, shutting her laptop screen and dropping it on Hugo’s torso.

‘Owwww, Mia, that really hurt,’ said Hugo, clutching his stomach.

She ignored him. ‘How were they? I’ve been tits deep in crab cake and scallop goujons since yesterday; tell me everything.’

‘It was kind of hilarious,’ I replied. I needed a quiet afternoon to go over it in my head. The house. His parents. Nearly being ravaged by a wolf. Actually being ravaged by Rory in the herb garden. The food. Octavia’s conversation and my talk to Rory on the train. I looked down as I heard a ‘mewl’ to see Marmalade sitting patiently at my feet.

‘Hi, pal,’ I said, scooping him up and scratching under his ear, never more grateful to see him.

‘Hilarious how?’

‘Mad,’ I replied, as Marmalade buried his face in my neck. ‘Eccentric. Like, they live in this huge posh house with dogs and chickens, even a peacock, but it looked like a squat inside. Well, maybe not a squat. But it was pretty old and run-down. Curtains that looked like they’d been put up 900 years ago, an extremely casual attitude towards voles and a whole room for boots. Boots! And no heating.’

‘That’s posh people for you, they spend all their money on horses.’

‘They do have horses.’

‘Exactly. But you liked them? His parents?’

‘Yessssss,’ I said slowly. ‘They were just quite… different.’

‘Don’t worry. I loathed Hugo’s mother when I first met her.’

‘What?’ interjected Hugo, pressing his head back into the sofa to glance up at Mia. ‘I thought you liked them?’

‘I do now,’ she replied, running a soothing hand over his forehead before looking at me and mouthing ‘No, I don’t.’

‘All I’m saying to Florence,’ she went on, ‘is that it doesn’t matter if you don’t love the parents straight away. There’s all this pressure about meeting them for the first time but sometimes other people’s families are even worse than one’s own.’

‘Where’s Ruby?’ I asked.

‘Dunno. Haven’t seen her all weekend. Have you invited Rory to the wedding yet?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m sort of waiting for the right moment. I just… didn’t want it to seem too much.’

Mia rolled her eyes. ‘You’re fine, you’ve just been to stay with his parents.’

‘He must come,’ added Hugo, ‘it’ll be like having the abominable snowman or the Loch Ness Monster there.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Only that they’re also exceptionally rare beasts, a bit like your boyfriends, ha ha!’

Mia punched Hugo in the arm and made him whine again.

‘Oh hey, would your friend Jaz be up for doing our hair?’ she went on. ‘I’ve booked a make-up artist called Mel so that’s sorted. She’s amazing, she did the Royal wedding. But I still need someone to do hair.’

‘For you?’

‘You, Ruby, Mum and me. I’ve got a mood board. Look.’ She reached for her laptop so I quickly picked up my suitcase again. Couldn’t face looking at 742 different hairstyles right now.

‘I’ve got to go unpack all my knickers,’ I said, ‘but I’ll text her and ask.’