Chapter Remy #7
‘There you are!’ Her mum looked less than happy.
It occurred to her then that she’d not called to request the big table under the window, figuring they’d give them the best table they had available and that, for a large party, it would likely be the one they wanted.
Harper held her grandad’s hand. Bertie was selecting leaflets from a rack of information on the wall and studying them like an old man on a walking holiday. It made her laugh.
‘Right. Let’s go in, shall we?’ Midge rubbed his palms together. He loved a good roast.
‘We would’ – her dad spoke slowly, his eyes darting towards his wife who looked a little pale – ‘but they can’t find our booking.’
She felt all eyes on her as a warm blush of discomfort rose on her chest and neck.
‘It’s under my name.’ She smiled, knowing there would be a simple solution.
‘We tried that.’ Her dad widened his eyes at her.
‘Well, I definitely made the booking.’ She felt the first flash of fluster. ‘Have you tried under the name Hughes, our surname?’ She smiled at the woman with the clipboard.
‘Hughes . . .’ The woman ran her pen down a list. ‘Nope. Nothing.’
‘Okay.’ Remy moved closer to her, hoping she might be able to have this conversation without the scrutiny of her entire family breathing down her neck. ‘I definitely made the booking. I emailed you.’
‘This is a printout of all the emails for today.’ The woman was unflinching as she raised her clipboard. Remy remembered that dealing with issues and making people feel better when things went wrong was her actual job. She took a breath and painted on her smile.
‘I am sorry about this mix-up. It’s my dad’s birthday. There are nine of us. My name is Remy. R.E.M.Y.,’ she spelled, ‘or maybe I put it under my parents’ name, Brett? Ruthie Brett? Or my dad’s? Den, or Dennis?’
‘I’m sorry.’ The woman looked up at her with an expression that spoke more of irritation than remorse. ‘I have no booking for nine people under any name.’
‘Did I get the time wrong? Are we early?’ she pressed, desperate to find the booking.
‘No. Nothing at all. I’ve checked.’ The woman looked over her shoulder, as a couple entered the already overcrowded foyer space.
‘Right, well, in that case, can we please have a table for nine. For lunch. For . . . for my dad’s birthday!’ She smiled widely, showing they were friendly forces, friendly forces who needed to catch a break, and who deserved a bloody table.
‘I’m sorry. We’re fully booked. No tables free at all. You could try again for next week?’
‘Well, it won’t be his birthday next week, will it? And we are all here now!’ Remy felt her blush intensify.
‘And Ashleigh, our daughter, is coming all the way from London, just for this. She has her own business.’
Remy turned to look at her mother but chose not to speak, knowing this was not the time or place to inflame the situation.
‘I don’t know what to do.’ She stared at the woman as the words left her mouth. ‘I honestly don’t know what to do. I’m sure I emailed. I composed the email. Did I send it? I thought I’d sent it. But did I?’
The woman sighed. ‘Look, I just can’t help you.’
Remy turned to look at her husband.
‘Right.’ Midge spoke to the crowd. ‘First let’s move so these people can get in.
’ The family parted, and the couple walked through the gap between them like sheepish participants in a country reel.
The man lifted his hand in a reticent wave, as if it were his fault they would not be getting their gnashers into roast beef and Yorkshire pud.
‘What’s plan B? We could try and find somewhere else?
We could go into the centre of Salisbury and try our luck? ’
‘It’ll be heaving.’ Dennis put the kibosh on that idea.
‘What about if I go and buy some hot chickens and fresh bread from Sainsbury’s and we can do hot chicken sandwiches at your house, Mum?’ Remy took her lead from Midge and went into solution mode.
‘We could go to the cathedral and see the Magna Carta!’ Bertie held up a leaflet.
Sophie laughed.
‘Hot chickens? She’s coming all the way from bloody London!’
Remy knew it was bad when her mum said ‘bloody’, but at least she hadn’t pointed her finger. Yet.
‘Could I ask you to move outside, do you think?’ the woman asked. ‘It’s just that we are expecting guests. Guests with bookings.’
The downcast troupe made their way into the car park, while Remy continued to fret. She had been wondering earlier how long the warm, fuzzy glow of joy she’d felt at Sophie’s marvellous triumph might last. It was apparent that this was the moment it faded, if not disappeared entirely.
Shit. She had messed up.
Catching Midge’s eye, she felt the bloom of tears.
It was all her fault, all of it. This realisation turned her once more into her seven-year-old self, without confidence in her own decision-making or her ability to get a task done, knowing it was the small details that could wreck not only a neighbourhood, but a birthday too.
It was as they clustered like a bunch of hungry nomads in the car park that her sister’s shiny Range Rover pulled into the tight space.
‘It’s Ashleigh! Ashleigh’s here!’
Her mother squealed with more emotion in her voice than those women who saw tears coming from the eyes of the Holy Mother’s statue at Lourdes.
‘Hello, family!’ Her sister waved as her window wound down. ‘Where am I supposed to park?’
‘You look like my mum!’ Bert shouted. It always blew his mind. ‘But shinier!’
‘None taken,’ Remy quipped.
‘It has been said before.’ Ashleigh shot her a look, and Remy smiled, because it was true. Ashleigh, her identical twin, was now a younger-looking, shinier version of her. Remy also smiled because her twin was home.
Her twin was home, and theirs was a connection that was beyond the material, and it ran deep.
Ashleigh
‘Don’t be long!’ Her mum waved from the front door. ‘We’ll do pressies and cake after we’ve eaten!’
‘We’ll be as quick as we can!’ Remy replied from the passenger window. She smacked the dashboard and shouted, ‘Drive! Drive! Drive!’ as soon as they left the road.
Ashleigh laughed. ‘That bad?’
‘Mum is driving me frickin’ crazy!’
‘Well, in fairness, you did mess up the booking and therefore spoil everyone’s weekend, not to mention ruining Dad’s birthday.’ She made a clicking noise with her tongue.
‘Do you think she’ll let that rest any time soon?’
‘Nope.’ This was nice, easy, just chatting to her sister. A lovely reminder of how good it felt to be together, reunited.
‘I’m dreading it already. She’ll probably cut me out of the will, and I was really looking forward to getting my hands on Great-aunt Bet’s trifle bowl.’
‘God, that trifle bowl! Do you remember when it sat on its own special doily on the table, like an Oscar! To be admired by all!’
‘I do. Bless her.’ Remy sighed. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, Ash, I’m pleased to see you, you know I am, but my God, she goes like a loon before you get here.
I heard her asking Dad if he thought they should get the front path jet-washed.
I had to explain that even you probably had moss between your paving stones in that fancy house of yours in London. ’
‘I don’t, actually. I have a man that takes care of things like that. And I am now definitely going to ask if they’ve seen the state of their front path when we get back.’
‘Please don’t. She’ll make Midge get out there with a scrubbing brush and bowl.’
‘Good old Midge.’ Ashleigh liked her brother-in-law enormously, knew how much he did for her parents and how happy he made her sister.
He had brought back her spark after those awful, awful years when Remy seemed to have faded, closed down.
The terrible attack and then her short marriage to Jamie Aller.
Jamie Aller! Ashleigh would never forget the moment she’d met him, barely able to disguise her look of horror, knowing he wasn’t smart enough, committed enough, not in any way enough for someone like Remy.
Her sister’s words had resonated, yet Ashleigh knew she’d never say how alienating and upsetting it was to be so considered a guest, a rarity, highlighting how much their lives had drifted apart and how much of a novelty her return.
Whose fault is that? The question rattled in her thoughts.
‘Shame Archie had a work thing, although with hindsight, having to abandon him at Mum’s or let him come with us in search of food . . .’
‘He’d be fine! He does muck in, Remy. He’s great with Evie.’
‘I didn’t say he wasn’t!’ Her sister’s voice had gone up a little.
‘We both know it’s what you don’t say that is always the most telling.’
‘That might be true,’ Remy conceded. ‘I guess it’s just a bit odd for me, odd for us that we don’t really know Archie that well.’
‘Of course you know him!’ There it was again, that alienation thing.
‘Yeah, but do we? We see him at Christmas and maybe on the odd visit once a year, but we never really spend any time with him. I couldn’t pick up the phone to him, wouldn’t call him for a chat or to check in. It’s always via you.’
‘I wouldn’t call Midge,’ she fired in her husband’s defence.
‘No, but you could, and you’d chat, and it would be fine.’
‘So you’re saying you wouldn’t want to chat to Archie?
’ Ashleigh felt the flare of self-consciousness.
The trouble was, it was true: Archie was a little aloof with her family and it bothered her more than she could say.
Just another aspect of her marriage that didn’t compare well to Remy’s.
Her isolation last night during dinner, that feeling of impotence and not knowing how to make it better, how to get closer to Evie and to communicate with Archie without rowing had all rippled through her.
‘It’s more that I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me, and he doesn’t know my kids or Midge. And I don’t think he’s a bad person. I like him! But I don’t think he minds that he doesn’t know us all. I always get the impression that he has enough people and doesn’t need any of us.’