said Judith, looking first surprised and then apologetic, as if she’d just realised her error. ‘Oh god of course you do, and it goes without saying that looking after children is probably the hardest job of all. I certainly wouldn’t have had another if I’d had to stay at home and look after them,’ she honked, loudly enough for her offspring to hear and therefore quite possibly need therapy in the future.
‘No, I mean, I do work. I have a job,’ explained Jennifer ‘And I look after the kids. I work at an estate agent’s on the high street three days a week.’
‘Oh god brilliant,’ said Judith lamely, ‘that must be really fun.’
Jennifer picked up the carvers and tried not to look menacing. She really needed to eat.
‘Those look good,’ said Henry, ambling over.
‘Right, well, why don’t you all sit down?’ ordered Jennifer with meaning, wanting them all just to get out of her face while she plated up. ‘Judith, get the kids sat down. We’ll do their plates first.’
‘Oh right,’ she said, looking startled at having been asked to do anything.
Jennifer didn’t care though. She was too busy trying to figure out if the chickens were definitely cooked through. To her alarm they looked a bit pinky inside and a bit…well…unappetising really.
‘So, what’s that then?’ Max asked, also looking mildly alarmed by the colour of the meat.
‘Oh, that’s just the pork they’re stuffed with. Don’t worry, it’s supposed to look like that,’ Jennifer assured him, secretly wondering if a night on the toilet lay ahead for them all.
‘They don’t carve very well do they?’ Max added, in a muted whisper.
Jennifer gazed hopelessly at the chickens which had sort of collapsed in on themselves and were looking less and less appealing by the second. Sort of like grey and pink mush.
‘Just get it on the plates,’ she muttered, feeling deeply stressed now and too pissed and hot to handle the situation. She was pretty certain it was just the pork stuffing that was lending them that strange hue so they were just going to have to go with it. Frankly she was past caring, though she did add as an aside, ‘But make sure you give the kids the bits from around the outside.’
Once the children had all been given their plates of food (which they unanimously declared they didn’t like before having even tried it) and their drinks (one beaker of juice being knocked over immediately as tradition required), the adults got on with helping themselves to lots of salad and potatoes.
‘You didn’t make these yourself did you?’ Judith asked Jennifer, looking slightly worried as she surveyed her plate of unidentifiable meat.
And here it was, crunch time, time for Jennifer to explain that no, of course she hadn’t made them and that yes, they did look a bit weird didn’t they? And this answer was on the tip of her tongue, and yet for some reason known only to the inner machinations of her befuddled brain, that isn’t what came out.
Instead, what she experienced in that moment might well be what happens to mass murderers when they hear voices in their heads telling them to do things. Or, to put it another way, the normal Jen, the one who was usually pretty down to earth about stuff, and who ordinarily felt strongly that not making other women feel less able was hugely important, was punched in the head, literally knocked out flat by the other part of her. That is to say, the part that felt belittled by Judith and who had been battling for hours with the desire to yell very loudly and directly into her smug face that actually she’d got a 2:1 in her degree and that giving up her career in order to play an active part in her children’s upbringing had been a choice (albeit one she struggled with sometimes) so shouldn’t be sneered at. The part of her who was exhausted by the daily grind, that was strung out, in need of a long holiday and some rampant sex, and who was also suffering from a monumental mid-life crisis and had been prescribed anti-depressants only a few weeks earlier. That Jennifer took over and said, after an unnaturally long pause ‘Yes I did…I did make them.’
At the other end of the table Max looked baffled and just stared at his plate.
‘Wow,’ said Judith tentatively. ‘They look really…complicated. How did you go about it?’
‘Well…’ Jennifer said gingerly, feeling suddenly drowned by her own lie. ‘I…er…bought them, boned them…and then stuffed them with pork and herbs before…kind of, tying them up.’
‘Right,’ said Judith and in that moment Jennifer knew that Judith knew that she was talking absolute bollocks.
‘Mum,’ piped up Eadie, looking miserable.
‘Yes, darling,’ said Jennifer, teeth gritted. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t like my beef. It tastes like cat poo. Can I have some toast?’
‘It’s chicken not beef and it’s please may I have some toast?’ replied Jennifer.
‘Please may I have some toast?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Jennifer faintly. ‘Anyone else?’
For a second Max looked sorely tempted but soon readjusted his expression when Jennifer glowered at him on her way to the toaster.
The rest of the meal was pretty torturous. Only Henry seemed blissfully unaware that he was eating something which resembled road-kill. Everyone else performed a sort of cutlery ballet-dance around their plate, consuming lots of potatoes and salad, and expertly leaving a pile of pinky grey mush to one side, with either their knife and fork, or a napkin, placed cunningly over the top.
After the meal Jennifer cleared away, scraping tons of discarded meat into the food recycling bin. As she did so, she wondered at what point she’d become so sad and pathetic that she couldn’t have admitted that she hadn’t made the disgusting food herself and that probably none of them should have touched it, in case they all got the chronic shits. When had she become the sort of person who cared what people like Judith and Henry thought anyway? When had she transformed into such a middle-class stereotype, desperately trying to impress? When had she turned into Max’s mother?
Much later that night as she climbed gratefully between the sheets, head thumping with a same-day hangover, she said to Max who was already half asleep, ‘The chicken was a bit weird wasn’t it?’
‘It was all right,’ he said, his eyes shut and his body turned away from her. ‘It just looked a bit like cat food. Why did you say you’d made it?’
‘Don’t know,’ she replied truthfully, staring at the ceiling, hot with embarrassment just thinking about it.
‘You did yourself a disservice anyway,’ he added. ‘Your cooking’s far nicer and I think Judith doesn’t cook much so it’s not like you needed to compete. She works too hard to ever get round to doing any domestic stuff.’
‘Oh, so now you’re having a go at me for not making something are you?’ she retorted defensively, because in truth she was feeling gradually more and more embarrassed that she’d passed off the stupid, dodgy looking ruddy chickens as her own creations. Her tone wasn’t helped by the fact that the mere mention of Judith’s name was starting to send shivers up her spine.
‘No,’ he sighed, now clearly wishing she’d shut up and go to sleep. ‘I’m giving you a compliment on your cooking really but I’m also saying I think they knew you hadn’t made it anyway.’
‘Really?’ she said, despite the fact she’d figured this out on her own, having it confirmed was mortifying, to the point where another bad night’s sleep was probably on the cards. ‘Why?’
‘Because you went weird and replied really slowly, so it was obvious.’
‘Oh god I’m so strange,’ she whimpered. ‘The thing is I’m very tired you know.’
‘I know,’ he said, and with that he fell fast asleep, as