God, please don’t worry,’ I begged. ‘Honestly! I’m starving – just dish it up.’
Mike slid the eggs on to my plate.
‘What about me?’ Jess demanded.
He held out the empty pan. Jess looked as if she might cry, but that was nothing new. ‘Have some of mine,’ I offered. ‘I’ve got loads.’
‘No, I’ll make some more,’ said Mike. ‘It’ll take two secs. Hold tight, Jessica. Don’t cry.’
‘I’m not going to cry! Jeez!’
Tom helped himself to another piece of toast.
‘You OK there, Sparky?’ said Rosalie, smiling at him.
‘Sure am,’ said Tom.
The phone rang. Tom, Jess and I glanced at each other guiltily, knowing that none of us had any intention of getting up to answer it.
Mike shouted, ‘Someone get that, will you? I’m breaking eggs in here.’
I relented, and ran through into the hall, hugging myself in the sudden cold as I picked up the handset.
‘Hello?’ I said.
‘Lizzy? It’s me.’
‘Georgy!’ I yelled. ‘I’ll take this into my room, hold on.’
‘Good – but hurry up. I can’t talk for long. Uncle Clive’s just arrived and we’re all going to do handbell ringing in a few minutes. Oh, God, get me out of here.’
The purpose of any best friend worth their salt is to listen with apparent fascination while you rant about on a number of subjects, in this case 1. our families and how mad they were (Georgy’s Uncle Clive and Aunt Matilda – who makes corn dollies – were contenders, but I won, hands down); 2. men, and the hieroglypthic language they speak (won that one, too, with my tales of David’s reappearance by the grave); 3. random Christmas presents (Georgy is a glamorous girl who runs a top hotel in central London: her aunt gave her a single hyacinth bulb in a plastic bag – nice); and 4. what we were wearing to our friend Swedish Victoria’s Pikey New Year’s Eve Party.
But since Georgy isn’t really a part of this story, and since our conversation would have been of no interest to anyone but ourselves, I felt a bit strange when I put down the phone twenty minutes later. For the first time since I’d come back to Keeper House, I felt myself peeling away from home life, and wanting to be in my flat, chatting and watching TV with Georgy over a glass of wine. It’s good to feel like that, though – I always arrive at Keeper House dreading having to leave, and the desire to embrace my normal life can come as something of a relief, an affirmation that I am a rational twenty-eight-year-old, not a crazed dumped person, marooned at her parents’ home, still in her pyjamas at eleven a.m. on Boxing Day.
I went back downstairs, where Mike was lighting a fire with the ecstasy of a ten-year-old. Tom and Jess were eating their eggs in companionable silence, while Rosalie gazed into the garden, hands folded in her lap, perhaps imagining herself as Queen Elizabeth I or the gracious hostess of some elegant soirée, gliding through the halls in a silk dress, Mike adoringly at her side.
The fire crackled and Mike rocked back on his heels to take a gulp of coffee. I ran my hands through my hair and bit one of my nails. I glanced at Tom, who looked relaxed and happy, and felt content again.
Rosalie turned to him. ‘You must come and stay with us in New York. Mike’s moving into my apartment, and it’s pretty big. You’re so welcome. I want to see you all over there before the year’s out – hey, we’re family now, aren’t we?’
It’s funny when I look back at that scene now. In a few days everything would change, and at that moment I had no clue of it, no clue at all.
By the end of Boxing Day, I wished Tom had taken up Rosalie’s offer immediately. His new-found desire to help others and reveal the truth had accomplished the following:
1 Chin had threatened to kill him.
2 His mother had offered bodily violence against him.
3 He had made my mother cry.
4 And – this was a stroke of genius – he had probably managed to split up Chin and Gibbo.
I’m not sure where it all went wrong. I can see that after unburdening yourself as Tom had done, you might want to help others help themselves, and I can also see that he had imagined touching tableaux of grateful relatives kissing his hands and thanking the Lord he was gay for it had shown them the path to their own happiness. What I’d forgotten was that Tom is, and always has been, disastrously tactless. He has all the strategic acumen of – well, I’m not too hot on military history and it’s been a while since I last read Asterix the Legionary – let’s say, a really bad general. He means well, but he can’t bring all the cohorts and squadrons together in a satisfactory way.
Tom’s first course of action was to try to embrace Rosalie – both literally and figuratively – into our family. Because she’d been the first to speak up after his ‘shock’ announcement, he clearly now looked upon her as a worthy recipient of the most intimate family confidences. By the time the walkers came back we’d rustled up some lunch and, as we tucked into our turkey leftovers, Rosalie asked Chin why she’d cheated on her fiancé Bill with his best friend, then asked Kate whether she’d had any side effects from her hysterectomy.
Chin gaped, and Kate said, no – but the up-side was that she’d never have any more children like Tom.
After lunch Tom sloped off with his NBF Rosalie to watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
‘God,’ breathed Chin, as she prowled around the sitting room, pursued by an emollient Gibbo, ‘doesn’t she have any tact?’
Kate stopped pacing in front of the fireplace. ‘I blame Tom,’ she said. ‘Well, I blame her too, but I especially blame Tom.’
‘Poor Tom,’ said my mother, absently, on the verge of going to sleep.
‘It’s just so…rude,’ said Chin.
‘Well, yes,’ said Mike, helplessly. ‘Rosalie seems to absorb information like a sponge…’
‘Well, tell her to mind her own business in future, OK?’ Chin fumed. ‘And, Kate, you can tell your son not to be such a blabbermouth.’
‘And you, Chin,’ said Gibbo, from the corner of the room, ‘can stop sleeping with your fiancé’s best friends.’
I shrank back into the sofa. Brave Gibbo. Brave, stupid Gibbo, we hardly knew ye.
‘How dare you?’ Chin hissed, advancing on him. ‘For your information, even though it’s none of your business, I wasn’t engaged to Henry when I slept with Bill.’
Dad raised his eyebrows and retreated behind England’s Thousand Best Churches.
‘Oh, right, right…’ Gibbo nodded. ‘Well, that’s OK, then.’
‘You—’ Chin spluttered.
Gibbo raised a long, looping eyebrow. ‘What, Ginevra?’ he said coolly. Suddenly I saw where the balance of power lay in the latest Chin relationship, and I liked it.
‘Oh, forget it,’ Chin said, and grinned. ‘You’re right. Nobody’s perfect.’
‘With the possible exception of the bloke who invented the Norton Commando,’ said Gibbo, and went back to his motorbike magazine. Chin sat down next to him, beaten but happy. She tends to be the stroppiest girlfriend in the world, which is why the cruel record executives and suave men-about-town always dumped her, but now she just sat there quietly