FIVE

MANDA WASN’T THE only one with a wedding on her mind. Lottie found that memories of her own and Mac’s came to her as they all ate lunch together (and surprisingly delicious the lamb had turned out to be, considering the vicious stabbing it had been treated to. It must have had a tenderizing effect). It was the paired-off arrangement of her children at the table that made her think of it: Manda within hand-patting distance of Ilex, Clover across from Sean and the stringy, pallid Gaz smirking unsubtle sexual complicity down the table at Sorrel. The long-ago wedding day had been a perfect one: as sunny as any loved-up teenage bride could want – at least weather-wise. Her mother had worn a huge mushroom of a hat in a fate-tempting shade of unlucky green – defiantly eager to hex this marriage in the hope that her daughter would eventually come to her senses and settle with a solid civil servant. The Revd Cherry had bravely overlooked the way Lottie’s scarlet and purple Ossie Clarke dress bulged like a full-sail spinnaker over the lump that was very soon to be Ilex. He’d managed to welcome in the many parishioners who’d turned up uninvited to the service ‘to wish them well’, so they said, but really to see their bossy vicar get his comeuppance by having to marry off his pregnant daughter to a hairy, dissolute rock musician. He’d even chivvied press photographers off the graves outside the church without entirely losing his temper. He must truly have been in a mood of profound relief, Lottie recalled, for back then wayward girls were such a dire responsibility for a parent. What to do with them? How to deal with a girl who refused point blank to turn out just like her mother? And yet now, what seemed only a few brief years later, here was Lottie, assembling her own family round the scratched old elm table and being pleased that the lamb was the right shade of pink. For several seconds she had a flash of utter unreality, half-wondering who all these people were who seemed to have originated via herself and Mac. Where had they come from? Because in her head she was still an eighteen year old all geed up about life’s possibilities and couldn’t be anywhere near old enough to have produced a grown-up family, plus partners and children. And what unlikely people they’d turned out to be, with their proper occupations (Ilex with a slick Chelsea office suite and two assistants) and ordered family lives (Clover colour-coded her bedlinen). Lottie’s parents would have been thrilled, right through to the next generation with this pair of almost unnaturally pink and tidy granddaughters. Impossible ever to imagine Sophia being busted for smoking dope at school or Elsa throwing paint round her bedroom (across furniture, carpet and all) in the manner of Jackson Pollock, as Lottie had. Would these little girls ever take off on a Friday night, not to the pub as planned but hitching lifts in lorries to Scotland on a whim to see a band? And what staggeringly well-mannered children they were, Lottie thought as she watched the girls sitting prim and straight in their matching polka-dot Mini Boden dresses and tidily eating the lunch she’d prepared. Surely they weren’t stunned to silence because for once they were eating in Holbrook House’s rarely used dining room instead of in the haphazard muddle of the day-to-day kitchen? It was certainly a quirkily imposing room – a mixture of dark wood panelling, blood-coloured paintwork and many unfathomable splashy abstract paintings (left over from Lottie’s short-lived phase as an artist), none of which should give a qualm to a pair of lively under-tens. How come they didn’t shout or squabble or slop their food about or knock over their drinks? They did not wield their knives and forks awkwardly like medieval daggers; they didn’t whinge about not liking garlic and they never forgot to say please and thank-you at the appropriate times. Much as she loved them, Sophia and Elsa reminded her of Midwich Cuckoos – small perfect aliens planted in a community to unnerve the residents. They certainly unnerved Lottie. Clover (who as a seven year old herself had eaten all her meals under the table, convinced she was really a poodle puppy) must have painstakingly drilled Table Manners into these two from the day the breast-feeding stopped. Lottie caught Manda studying the children from across the table as if taking in exactly what a four and seven year old should be like. They’re not all like this, Lottie wanted to tell her; this isn’t even close. Go hang out in any shopping mall, look over the fence of your nearest primary school, see the tantrums and the rampaging and the off-the-scale energy. Not that Manda would. When (if) Manda had children they, just like these two, would be hurtled between Tumble Tots and Monkey Music and Kodali violin and be fed on Baby Organix and the wholesome, child-friendly recipes of Annabel Karmel. And Lottie would sadly acknowledge that when she and Mac volunteered to take them on their customary muddy annual adventure with their tepee to Glastonbury, Manda would be ready with well-rehearsed reasons as to why not, just as Clover always was.

‘Manda, more potatoes?’ Lottie, feeling as if she was playing the role of Granny Perfect, offered the extra ones to her putative daughter-in-law before she asked anyone else. If Manda thought this counted as a comment that she needed fattening up, well, it wasn’t a million miles from the truth. Manda’s body hovered between pin-thin and skeletal. Also it seemed logical to start the offers of seconds with the one who looked the hungriest as opposed to what her own mother had done, which was to begin with the biggest and greediest male – her own husband. The Revd John Cherry had never said no either, especially not on a Sunday when the preparation of this ritual lunch was a frantic business crammed in by Mary Cherry between Family Communion and Evensong. Why no one had ever considered moving the full-scale roast beef extravaganza to Monday or Saturday and serving up a simple soup and salad on Sunday was beyond Lottie. She’d suggested it once, on a day when her mother had yet again raced out of church, pushing past the vicar’s usual gaggle of fond old ladies lined up to congratulate him on his sermon, to baste the joint and shove the Yorkshire puddings into the temperamental Aga.

‘Don’t be ridiculous! It’s Sunday lunch.’ Mary had looked at Lottie in amazement as if her daughter had questioned why Christmas had to be in December. ‘Sunday lunch – that’s the point!’

‘No more for me, thanks. I’ve had loads!’ Manda held up a long skinny hand and fended off the dish of potatoes as if terrified by such proximity to carbohydrates.

‘No you haven’t.’ Sorrel pointed her knife at Manda’s plate. ‘You’ve had two tiny ones. And you can’t be on a diet, so maybe you’re—’

‘Sorrel! Pass the potatoes down to Sophia, will you?’ Lottie interrupted hurriedly.

‘I was only going to say …’

‘Yes, well, please don’t.’

‘Candida.’ Sorrel grinned at her mother and at Manda. ‘I was only going to say you might be avoiding potatoes because you’d got a yeast infection. It’s called Candida albicans. I looked it up.’

There was a short silence while everyone worked out how much of an embarrassment factor this carried. About 98 per cent, was Lottie’s guess, recalling gynaecological plain speaking from some Guardian article or other. Still, at least Sorrel hadn’t said ‘pregnant’. Manda would be aware enough of her biological clock without people like Sorrel carelessly setting it chiming. At past thirty Manda must have lots of friends who were producing babies. The poor girl was probably thoroughly sick of being invited along to baby showers, turning up each time clutching a beautifully wrapped gift and having everyone say, ‘Hey, maybe your turn next, Mands!’

‘You thought I was going to say “pregnant”, didn’t you, Mum?’ Sorrel declared triumphantly. Lottie groaned.

‘Potatoes are nothing to do with yeast infections,’ Manda said calmly. ‘I’d actually be completely fine with potatoes if I had candida. But I haven’t. Thank you for your concern though, Sorrel.’

‘Isn’t candida something to do with thrush?’ Clover asked Manda, who looked so startled Lottie wondered if eyeballs really could drop right out.

‘Yes, but you can get it right through your digestive system as well as up your fanny,’ Sorrel explained breezily. ‘It’s not just sexually transmitted, you know.’

‘I definitely haven’t got anything like that,’ Manda blurted. ‘I’m very well. Peak condition, in fact.’

She smiled nervously around the table, at all the faces that now gazed at her, as if waiting to hear her deny each of a long list of unpleasant and deeply personal symptoms and possibly proffer a signed-off appointment card from her local genito-urinary clinic.

‘Thrush! Perlease, I’m still eating!’ Sean shuddered, his loaded fork poised halfway to his mouth.

‘She still didn’t answer the pregnant bit,’ Sophia hissed loudly across the table to Sorrel. ‘Not actually. Are you having a baby, Manda?’ The child stared, bright-eyed and waiting. As, by now, were they all. Poor Manda was brick-scarlet. Lottie looked at Ilex – the one person who possibly should have been expected to come to her rescue. He was beyond helping, deep in murmured conversation with Gaz. She caught the words ‘offside’ and ‘penalty’.

Manda hid her face inside the twin curtains of her flat brown hair and stared down at her empty plate, trusting the personal speculation would soon move on to someone else. She considered saying that yes, actually, she did think she might be pregnant. Maybe this way Ilex, if he actually could be arsed to listen, would be kick-started into commitment mode, but then that would very nearly be as bad as having to ask him to marry her. She didn’t want her magical special day to come about under any hint of pressure, though how much longer she could leave it before giving in and pushing him right into it she really didn’t know. As they’d arrived at the house she’d had a good sneaky look at the front porch, checking it for wedding photo potential. Close to perfect, was how it appeared to her, although it needed a lot of tidying up. It would take more than that idle part-timer Al to get the garden sorted. They should get Green Piece in and give it a total makeover. Weeds pushed through the gravel in clumps, roof tiles needed replacing and the rampant passion flower scrambling up the walls could use a serious trim. Some tubs and hanging baskets of trailing white fuchsias and surfinias would help to soften the look. If all else failed, she could get the nursery to send round fully grown white-flowered climbers in pots. And roses. Of course there must be roses, for a wedding.

‘No, of course I’m not pregnant, Sophia,’ Manda said, sounding close to defeat.

‘Is that because you and Ilex haven’t been doing mating?’ Sophia persisted, her voice so clear and loud that even Gaz and Ilex looked up.

‘What’s mating?’ Elsa chipped in.

‘Bloody good fun, that’s what it is.’ Sean chortled.

‘Sean! Pas devant les enfants.’ Clover leaned across the table and hit her husband’s arm sharply.

‘That means you can’t say things in front of the children. Jakey’s mum’s always saying it,’ Sophia explained to her little sister. Lottie marvelled at the child’s worldly wisdom.

‘Still doing the French classes, are you, Sophia?’ she asked.

‘Oui.’ Sophia nodded.

‘Je pearl fronzee,’ Elsa chipped in.

‘Fantastic,’ Lottie told her. ‘What brilliant girls you are.’

Poor kids, did Clover ever give them time to lie on the lawn and watch the clouds drifting over?

Sean interrupted. ‘Is no one having these potatoes? Cause if they’re going begging …’ He didn’t wait for an answer but leaned across towards Sophia and scooped up a crisp roast potato in his fingers.

‘Daddee! I was saving that one!’ Sophia leaped from her seat and ran out of the room, sobbing dramatically. Oh good, Lottie thought, feeling immensely cheered. The child shows signs of being pretty normal after all.

‘Sorry, princess!’ Sean called after his daughter. ‘Think of it as leaving you more room for pudding! So, Mac, how’s the mighty herb project coming along? Cornered the market in minority mints yet?’

Mac groaned. ‘Don’t bloody ask. You won’t believe how fast a polytunnel full of parsley can drop dead if you water it in a heatwave.’

‘So why did you?’

‘Good question,’ Lottie said. ‘The hose was on a timer and something must have tripped. Just about every leaf was sun-scorched and useless. Restaurants can’t use anything less than perfect so we were stuck with a glut, only good for compost.’

‘Tastes the same though.’ Mac shrugged. ‘I made the most amazing green mayonnaise with it.’

‘Brown, you mean,’ Ilex interrupted. ‘Wouldn’t it be, with scorched leaves?’ His parents’ in competence at matters of simple business practice never ceased to stagger him. How many failed ventures had they ploughed their enthusiasm and loads of cash into during his lifetime? He hardly dared add them up. There was probably a club for people like them – hundreds of ex-musicians with a string of doomed hobby-careers. They could all get together and chat about their trout farms and nightclubs and pheasant shoots and where did it all go wrong? If Mac and Lottie had only re-trained as something sensible when the music faded away instead of relying on short-lived enthusiasms and the comfort of twice-yearly royalties, they could be winding themselves down towards a nice quiet retirement, all nest-eggs hatching nicely. Instead, it looked like all funds had flown the coop long ago. And was this really the first time he’d noticed how run-down the house was looking? Tired was the word that came to mind, bordering on the exhausted and clapped-out. The curtains in this rarely used room – once glorious rich gold devoré velvet – were saggy and dulled. The Moroccan kelims would have proved a sound investment if they’d been preserved safely hanging on the walls rather than on the floors where they’d become scuffed and threadbare from a lifetime’s worth of sharp-clawed (and often incontinent) cats and dogs. It needed a sharp injection of serious funds, and fast, before real rot set in and the whole thing fell down.

‘The green mayo was all right,’ Mac protested. ‘I chucked in a couple of drops of food colouring from a bottle at the back of the larder. Could have packaged the stuff up, given it a fancy label and flogged it, no trouble. In fact, it gave me an idea.’

Ilex looked hard at his father, trying to work out whether he was joking or not. You could never tell with Mac. When he and Lottie had attempted to run a restaurant they’d had quite a lot of trouble understanding the concept of Health and Safety. Mac had had a huge row with the visiting inspectors over the wolfhound-of-the-time dozing in its basket in the corner of the restaurant kitchen, pointing out to the outraged clipboard-toting official that it was either that or being on the wrong side of yet another set of authorities for leaving the poor creature slowly stewing to a certain death outside in the hot car.

‘What kind of idea, Dad?’ There was a certain amount of dread in Clover’s voice. ‘Please don’t say it’s another restaurant?’

‘God no! I’d never do that again. You have to be nice to people all the time!’ He laughed. ‘Though I suppose I could sit back, keep out of the way and not try to be hands-on …’

‘What, and just, like, count the money? Sounds cool.’ Sorrel nodded.

‘Nah – there wouldn’t be any money. Never is, not in food. The more rules and regulations, the less cash. And chefs are such prima donnas. I’ve had enough of those to last two lifetimes.’ Mac reached across for the wine and poured some into Clover’s glass and then his own. ‘No, I just thought, what about doing a range of herbal sorbets? You could package them up all arty-tarty and flog them off in upmarket delis. Got to be a winner because they’d be frozen – they’d keep. That way I wouldn’t get stuck with a glut and be at the mercy of those bloody up-their-own-egos chefs.’

‘You know, Mac, that’s not such a bad one.’ Lottie also refilled her glass and offered the wine to Sean who, mindful he’d be driving his car-full of family, looked at it longingly before passing it on to Sorrel. ‘We could have a competition for the package design – get some of the students down at the art college to do it – much cheaper than hiring some rip-off company.’

‘Mum, slow down! That’s just so typical!’ Clover interrupted, laughing. ‘There you go, straight to the fun bit before you’ve even given a thought to marketing and demand and a business plan! Can’t you and Dad ever think things through first?’

Lottie looked with amazement at her agitated daughter. ‘Think what through? Hey, lighten up, will you, Clover! It’s just an idea. We’re only at the playing-with-it stage!’

‘Mum, you’re always at the “playing-with-it” stage,’ Ilex said, leaning across the table and tenderly patting his mother’s wrist. He had to back up his sister here. If someone didn’t slow them down to a sensible pace right now, Mac and Lottie would soon be in full possession of a run-down food-processing plant and a warehouse full of unsold tarragon ice-cream rapidly heading for its Destroy-By date.

‘Ooh, you know sometimes I can’t believe you and Clover are really our children!’ Lottie got up and started collecting plates. ‘You’re so … straight! Where’s your imagination? Your vision? Where’s your sense of rebellion and your natural-born anarchy?’

‘Anarchy doesn’t get the bills paid, Mum,’ Ilex pointed out primly.

‘Or the children into a good school,’ Clover joined in.

‘Which is your rebellion – pathetic as it is,’ Sorrel pointed out to her sister. ‘Mum and Dad are old hippies who somehow got away with never having proper jobs so obviously your idea of rebelling was to go the other way.’ She looked carefully at her older brother and sister and added, ‘Of course you can rebel too far. I mean, Ilex, for Chrissake, you’re an estate agent. Like, how deadly is that?’

‘I am not an estate agent! I’m a property management consultant!’

‘Same difference,’ Sorrel snorted, pushing her chair away. She collected up the remaining plates and followed Lottie to the kitchen, calling as she went, ‘Whatever name you give it, Ilex, you’re still a no-life nine-to-five office slave who’s scared to leave home without a tie!’

‘And I suppose you think a few months backpacking is going to make you an authority on the romance of a wanderer’s life?’

Sorrel came back into the room and treated her brother to a pitying smile. ‘Well, at least I’m going somewhere. You and Manda never do any travelling.’

‘We go away. We went to Italy last September, and then to Bruges to the Christmas market. Or doesn’t that count?’

‘Yes, but it’s not travelling. It’s just a holiday. You knew exactly where you’d be from day one to when you came home and where you’d stay and everything. Travelling is when you really get the feel for how people live in the places you go to, not just hanging out in some tourist complex. It’s an adventure, the possibilities of the unknown!’

‘Sounds like being on tour with Charisma.’ Mac chuckled. Lottie came back in, carrying the rhubarb and apple pie. ‘Remember Cairo, Lotts?’

‘Oh I remember Cairo,’ she agreed, preparing to slice the pie. Was Clover on a diet this week? Probably. ‘Rats, dysentery, the wrong airport and two deported roadies. We should go there again. What do you think?’

‘Hmm. Put it on the list,’ Mac murmured to her.

‘Happy memories, then, if you’d go again.’ Sean laughed. ‘Sounds like my idea of hell.’

‘Yes but we …’

‘… were young.’ Ilex finished for his father. ‘And rich, by then. It’s not like you really had to worry.’

‘I wouldn’t worry now,’ Mac said, shrugging. ‘Rich or not. I mean, now I’m older I don’t much care what goes wrong on a trip. I know the worst that can happen is going to be the airline overbooking or a strike somewhere or crap food. If you sit tight with something to read, it usually works out. It’s you lot in the middle that get in a flap, expecting everything to run hitch-free all the time. You fall to bits and look for someone to sue if something goes a bit pear-shaped. You want to be “kept informed”. For God’s sake why? What’s the rush all the time?’

‘There could be bombs or the plane could crash,’ Gaz pointed out, helpfully.

‘Oh cheers, Gaz, thanks. Just when we’re planning a round-the-worlder.’ Sorrel prodded him hard in the ribs. ‘It’s all right for Dad, he’s not gonna be doing that, is he?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ Lottie said. ‘Actually, we were sort of vaguely thinking maybe we should have a gap year too. Why do teenagers think it’s something invented just for them? God knows, we deserve one after raising you lot. Thirty years of child care is about the same as the longest life sentence.’

‘Was it that bad?’ Clover looked hurt. ‘You must have liked it at the time, or after me and Ilex there wouldn’t be Sorrel.’

‘No, darling, of course it wasn’t. I was joking. It’s just been a long time since we didn’t have anyone to think about but ourselves. Obviously with Sorrel being so much younger it was like having two goes at it.’

How frighteningly easy it was to shake Clover’s security, Lottie thought. Where had that fragility come from? She hoped it wasn’t Clover’s babyhood, when she and Ilex had spent several months being ferried round the USA and Europe in tour buses. Which was worse? It was that or leaving them at home in the care of a nanny. You didn’t do that, back then. You let them dance in rock-festival fields and wear daisies in their hair and have their faces painted like fairies. They paddled in warm oceans, thrived on a multi-national diet and slept under soft, antique patchwork as the bus rolled on to the next city. Possibly, in these over-careful days, all that would qualify for a care order.

‘Now Sorrel’s about to leave school and go travelling,’ Lottie continued, ‘what’s to stop Mac and me packing up and travelling too? Apart from holidays, it’s a long time since we’ve seen the world. Maybe we’d like to have another look before it’s too late. See what’s changed.’

The pie was now all sliced. Big bits, little bits, they could choose, help themselves. It didn’t look particularly thrilling, very matt, very wholemeal, very worthy. She should have gone with the egg – let the thing sparkle. She could have decorated it, been artistic with pastry leaves and swirls of icing sugar. She pushed the pie-plate towards Clover, who took a tiny sliver but waved the cream on past in the direction of Manda.

Sorrel laughed. ‘Yeah, but you can’t have a gap year, Mum, I mean, not you and Dad.’

‘Actually, why can’t we?’ Mac asked her. ‘Wouldn’t you rather we went off travelling than stayed here trying to market frozen coriander? Nice pie, Lottie. You on a diet again, Clover?’

‘You wouldn’t want to do that,’ Ilex said. ‘You’d hate it, hanging out in cheap hostels with scuzzy adolescents. Mum would worry they weren’t phoning home enough and Dad would keep asking if they’d downloaded any illegal Charisma on to their i-pods.’

Manda wasn’t eating any of the pie, Lottie noted. She could have dolloped a dozen egg yolks on it if she’d wanted to. Maybe the poor girl was worried – surely what Sorrel had said hadn’t upset her? Teenagers were always like that, deliberately chucking in something to shock. It was their function in a family. She could see Manda darting little looks at Ilex as if there was something on her mind that she wanted him to read. He wouldn’t, of course. He’d always been the type of boy (man, now, she reminded herself, and for a long time too) who needed everything spelled out for him. When his first girlfriend had tried in a kind way to dump him by suggesting they take a bit of time apart for seeing other people, he’d been phoning her after a month, utterly confident of getting straight back to full-scale romance thinking she’d be ready for him again now, having used the free time innocently going to movies with friends and catching up with homework.

‘Ah yes, but you see, Ilex,’ Mac was now explaining, ‘we wouldn’t be staying in cheap dives with “scuzzy adolescents” as you put it. We’d do it the five-star way, me and Lottie. Flash-packers, not back-packers, that’ll be us.’

‘Mmm, sounds good when you put it like that!’ Lottie agreed.

‘Cost you, that,’ Sean warned. ‘Doesn’t come cheap.’

Mac frowned. ‘Who said anything about cheap? When do I do cheap?’

‘But how …’ Ilex held his breath; perhaps he wasn’t going to have to worry about the old folks after all. A pension maturing, that must be it. Well, thank goodness – they’d been more prudent than he’d imagined. Not going to be the big old-age burden after all.

Mac grinned. ‘What’s the point of sitting on a load of cash if you don’t use it?’

Clover and Sean exchanged glances. ‘None at all, Dad,’ she smiled, ‘if you’ve got it, spend it.’ How reassuring that would be. Perhaps the little place in France (Spain? Portugal?) was a possibility after all.

‘Yeah, well, we’ve got it,’ Mac said, looking around the room. ‘Right here – this place must be worth truckloads. Should take us round the world at the front of the plane, wouldn’t you say, Lottie?’

‘Well, I hadn’t actually thought how much it would come to, exactly … but …’ She too looked around at the sagging curtains, the ornate plaster on the cobwebby ceilings that could do with an expert painter and the floors that in places creaked so ominously. Tatty but tasty, that was their home. ‘Yes, it should take us round the world several times over, I’d say!’

They were all looking at her as if she’d lost her last remaining senses. But if there were any pennies to drop in the collective junior branch MacIntyre brains, they were taking their time getting under way. It was – and who’d have thought it? – Gaz who finally got the words out.

‘What, you’d, like, flog your house, this house? And, like, blow all the cash? Wow, awesome!’ he said, reaching across Clover to spear the last big slice of pie.

‘But you can’t do that!’ Clover blurted out. ‘You couldn’t sell this house! It’s … it’s home! It’s the whole family … centre!’

Lottie and Mac smiled at each other; the surrounding expressions of horror were wonderful to behold, the tease was irresistible. ‘Sure we could! It’s our new, great idea.’ Mac shrugged. ‘Why not?’