‘What cheapskates, not giving us prosecco,’ Claudette Penze-Weedell said, back in their house and removing her hat and coat. ‘Honestly!’ She was slurring her words.
‘My love,’ Maurice replied, hanging his coat on the hook next to hers. ‘That was Pol Roger, a very classy champagne – it was Winston Churchill’s favourite, I read somewhere. Personally, I thought it was absolutely the badger.’
‘Hmmmph,’ she grunted, heading for the kitchen. ‘More like the mole’s urine if you ask me. I’m ravenous. How rude they didn’t give us anything proper to eat – they could have had some decent canapés at least. Nuts, crisps, sausage rolls and mince pies, all shop-bought – and she a professional caterer – you’d have thought they’d have made more of an effort, wouldn’t you?’
‘Give them a chance, they’ve only just moved in – I thought they were very kind inviting us at all, on their first full day in their home.’
‘That’s your problem,’ she said, opening up the freezer and searching through the contents. ‘You always let people walk over you. That’s why they’re all lah-di-dah, lording it over the estate in the grand house while we’re here in our little serf’s cottage – when we could have been there.’
‘I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink, dear,’ he said, from the hall. ‘This is hardly a serf’s cottage – we paid seven hundred and fifty thousand for this house, I’d like to remind you.’
‘And now I’m going to have a proper drink,’ she said defiantly. She lifted up a frozen Tesco Finest fish pie. ‘Would you like that?’
‘With peas.’
‘You always want peas.’
‘I like peas.’
‘They are so common.’ She pulled out a second item. ‘We’ll have green beans.’
‘Very good, my dear.’
‘I can’t believe the size of their house. How much bigger than ours is it?’
‘Quite a lot bigger.’
Angrily, she removed the packaging, pierced the lid of the fish pie and placed it inside the microwave. ‘Command, microwave on, please. Full power, twelve minutes!’
The cooker whirred into life.
She removed a bottle of prosecco from the wine fridge, opened it and poured herself a large glass and carried it through, unsteadily, to join her husband. ‘I just do not understand. Why did they not make that house the show house? I thought a show house would surely be the best property on the development?’
‘I thought we liked this house very much, my dear,’ he said as the television came to life.
‘I did,’ she said. ‘Until tonight.’ She swayed a little, then hiccupped. ‘But we don’t look out onto the lake.’
‘I do believe we looked at the property on the plans and it was quite a bit above our budget.’
‘Hmmmph.’ She sipped her drink. ‘Now, this is what I call nice. That Winston Churchill always had a cigar in his mouth. Probably numbed his taste buds – that was why he liked that muck they served us tonight.’
‘I thought it was very nice – and extremely generous of them,’ Maurice said.
‘There’s another thing. Didn’t they clearly say there was no one else in the house, Maurice?’
‘Yes, I think they did.’
‘Well, I saw someone – a woman walked across the hall.’
Maurice didn’t mention the woman’s face he had previously seen at the window.