despite myself.
‘What are you sniggering at, Woodford?’ Ben calls, from the other end of the table, forcing me to look at him fully for the first time since ‘nondescript’.
‘It’s Simon – he’s so laser-sighted, lawyer snarky.’ I wave my hand: ‘Don’t stop. Sorry. You were saying, “The One”.’
‘She doesn’t exist?’ Lucy prompts.
Simon sighs. ‘There’s a percentage of people on the planet you can be reasonably happy with. The One is in fact one of around six thousand. Then it’s down to who you cross paths with, and when. The period in the middle where you’re in control of your bladder and bowels. Being a member of the point zero zero zero zero whatever per cent club in six billion is still an accolade. Any woman who doesn’t understand that has a poor grasp of mathematics.’
‘Or a poor grasp of how lucky she is to be in your
I’m trying to bait Simon. He takes it as collusion.
‘Naturally,’ he agrees, and winks.
I catch Lucy looking revolted, interpreting the exchange as a betrayal of womankind. I get the feeling that quite a lot of things have been flying over her head at a distance that wouldn’t disturb her hairstyle.
‘Let’s call time of death on your popularity here, shall we, Simon?’ Ben says.
‘You’re a bunch of cynics,’ Simon says. ‘This is actually a rallying cry for romance.’
‘I don’t think what you’re describing is romantic,’ Ben says, tartly. ‘Everyone loses their novelty sooner or later. You have a better chance of happiness with someone you know well than an unattainable alternative you’ve put on a pedestal and pursued. Love at first sight and all that stuff is crap. It’s just the thrill of your imagination working on insufficient information. It’s that moment when someone can be anyone. Soon passes. And it’s all the worse because you’ve made disappointment absolutely inevitable.’
My eyes are inexorably drawn to Ben’s and he feels it, looking away, quickly.
‘Having high standards doesn’t mean you’re never pleased, it means you’re rarely pleased, Benji.’ Simon’s voice has become slightly brittle. Now Lucy isn’t the only one with a vague sense of things whizzing over her head.
I feel pressure to break the ensuing silence.
‘Here’s what I don’t get. A marriage where you’re madly in love for as long as it lasts and then go your separate ways is a failed marriage. Yet you can be together for decades and be miserable and it’s officially successful, by virtue of staying put. No one would say someone who was widowed had a failed marriage.’
‘Because marriage is supposed to be until death do you part. By definition you’ve failed if you’re apart and both still alive,’ Ben says, looking at me levelly. ‘Or one has killed the other.’
‘OK, well … the criteria still shouldn’t be so crude. “Successful for a limited period” instead of failed. And maybe “enduring” would be more appropriate than successful for the ones who are together but aren’t happy.’
‘Oh lord,’ Simon says. ‘You’re one of those people who thinks competitive sports should be banned from sports days, aren’t you?’
‘I’m one of those people who thinks sports days should be banned altogether.’
‘Sure you aren’t down on marriage because you’re not getting married any more?’ Lucy says, artlessly revealing ‘nondescript’ wasn’t the only information about me that got bandied.
This renders me speechless. It’s far too much, even for my blood alcohol level.
‘I’m not down on marriage,’ I say, in a small voice.
‘Who’s for coffee?’ Ben interrupts, brightly.
30
The next day, I have an important and considerably less nerve-shredding social occasion: I’m cooking a roast lunch for my three closest friends. Ordinarily I might regret peeling carrots when I could be getting nicely oiled in a gastropub, yet the dinner party has reminded me how glad I am to have friends who are neither a) Matt or b) Lucy.
Rupa’s palace appears well equipped at first, largely due to her pristine range cooker. On investigation it turns out this flat is the equivalent of those ultra-sleek modern hotels with nailed-shut cupboards and nowhere to put your sponge bag. Even my ingredients haul from Tesco Metro on the narrow counter makes the place look like a school’s harvest festival. As I sweat over the pans and flap the oven door open and shut and wish the chicken was less my skin tone and more Olivia’s, I reflect on how Ben’s wife floats around on a velvet cloud, rolling on castors. She didn’t break a sweat serving dinner for six last night, and it was all done with such confident élan. When I cook for people, I nervously watch them start chewing, preparing to apologise. And I can’t possibly accomplish it without stress. (‘Just chuck a rustic bowl of pasta in the middle of the table and invite everyone to dig in, what could be easier?’ THE PUB.) I catch sight of the ghost of my hassled face in Rupa’s glass splash backs and think how Olivia and I are more like different species than members of the same gender.
Confusingly, Rupa has an extravagant dinner service – white, square, edged in silver leaf – so the table setting is easy, but no utensils, and I left most of mine behind. When Caroline arrives, I have to rush back to stir the carrots with a bread knife and check the chicken’s firmness with a chopstick.
‘It’s fascinating to see a consummate professional at work in their natural habitat,’ she says. ‘Like a Heston Blumenthal gastronomic laboratory. Look! A foam!’
I catch a pan just as it boils over.
‘Ungrateful bitch!’
‘Haha. Are we waiting to see if Ivor’s wearing that ridiculous train driver hat so you have something to serve the mash in?’
She gives an evil cackle and grabs an olive from the dish on the counter, an unstoned Queen Green disappearing inside the sticky oval of her lip-glossed mouth. You know how everyone wears less constrictive trousers and a greasy ponytail on a Sunday, among their nearest and dearest? Not Caroline.
‘Cheers,’ Caroline says, holding up her wine and taking a deep swig. ‘Oh, it’s nice to get out of the house.’
She closes her eyes, leaning back.
‘Graeme could’ve come too,’ I say, secretly glad he hasn’t. He’s always restless, off home turf. He’d be prowling around inspecting the fittings and finding fault. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Graeme, as such, and obviously he’s a great fit with Caroline. He’s just a fit with all the parts of her that are most unlike me. We survey our mutual roles in Caroline’s life with a kind of benign befuddlement as to what she sees in the other.
Caroline’s eyes snap back open.
‘He’s so grumpy at the moment. Work’s getting on top of him. He spends all his time in the study or walking everywhere with the phone clamped to his head. I saw him at the bottom of the garden, trying to talk to someone when he was meant to be mowing the lawn. I had to get him to stop before we were sifting severed toes out of the grass cuttings.’
‘He’s very, er, driven,’ I nod.
‘I know. I wonder if we’re ever going to slow down, sometimes. We have the big house, the cars, the holidays. All we share is Newsnight and Waitrose Thai-for-two dinners. I’m ready for a change.’
Caroline and Graeme have agreed to start trying for a baby next year. Like the pair of ultra-organised executives they are, they worked out a schedule.
‘Well he’ll have to slow down if you get pregnant.’