Her brother-in-law
Harry has been part of this family since before he could grow facial hair.
He still can’t grow much – and besides, his boss looks down on beards.
So, he sits, scratching his bare chin through another strained silence.
It’s rare that the Cowan siblings are all at the same table.
When were they together last? His own wedding.
Someone else’s funeral. The mood at the table is funereal now, as if Kitty were actually dead, instead of sitting on the other side of this circular table, sucking all the air out of the room.
‘Don’t say stuff like that.’ Cee sits at her mother’s side like an unhappy heir, speaking curtly into her mother’s ear.
‘What?’ Kitty says. ‘We were all thinking it, Cecilia.’
Harry would never dream of contradicting his mother-in-law, but he can almost guarantee that no one else at the table was thinking what she had just said about the Eastern European waiter.
Kitty wouldn’t have chosen a pub. She’d have chosen somewhere with white tablecloths and waiters who button their shirts up to the top.
But the place had been selected as neutral territory by Clara and her new boyfriend, who has the privilege of meeting the family for the first time today.
Harry is relieved by the prospect of an ally.
He’s scared of the Cowans. Even his own wife, with her tight fists and her even tighter ponytail, terrifies him at times.
Augie is sitting on the other side of Harry with his head down and his hands in his pockets, as if willing himself into non-existence.
Cee’s mother sits stiff-backed in an equally stiff-backed wooden chair, curling her lip, scanning the place for something to complain about.
‘They really should clean the tables,’ Kitty says, raising one sharp finger. ‘It’s the bare minimum.’
‘Mum,’ says Cee, rubbing her tight forehead. ‘You can’t click at people.’
‘I’m not clicking at people,’ Kitty huffs. ‘I’m clicking at the waiter.’
Harry smooths his napkin into his lap, despite the fact that they haven’t even ordered food yet. Cee refolds her own napkin on the table, then checks the thin gold watch on her wrist.
‘She’s late,’ Cee declares.
‘Clara’s always late,’ Harry says.
‘She’s bringing an Italian,’ Kitty says. ‘They’re not exactly known for their promptness.’
‘He’s not Italian,’ Cee says, making that face again. ‘Is he?’
‘They just went to Rome, Kitty,’ Harry says.
‘Dirty place,’ Kitty says.
Cee rolls her eyes. ‘It’s Naples you didn’t like.’
‘It’s all dirty,’ Kitty says.
‘Quite right, Kitty,’ Harry says.
‘Stop sucking up,’ says Cee.
‘Where on earth are they?’ Kitty says.
‘I liked Naples,’ Augie adds, quietly.
‘Sweetheart,’ Kitty says, turning to Augie. ‘I forgot you were here.’
Augie shrinks back into his oversized jumper. Kitty doesn’t get a chance to dig in further, because the heavy wooden doors are swinging open and Clara is entering with all the usual fuss, dragging her boyfriend behind her.
‘You’re late,’ Cee says, tolerating a kiss on the cheek. ‘We don’t all run on your schedule.’
‘If we ran on your schedule, we’d be here before the pub opened,’ Clara replies.
Before they’d arrived, Kitty had been wondering aloud what it is that Sebastian is supposed to do, and where he went to school to learn to do it.
When Cee had explained that he’s an actor, Kitty had rolled her eyes.
Another one, she’d said, like she’d ever been allowed to meet the last one.
If Martin was here, Harry knows that he’d ask Seb when he’s going to get a proper job, after a handshake firm enough to crumple his knuckles.
Harry has been there. He’s had the interrogation.
Now he works for Martin. Or, for people who work for Martin.
‘Neck tattoos,’ Kitty says, mock-quietly to Cee, with lips so pursed that she looks like she’s having the juice squeezed out of her. She takes in Seb’s thick jacket, his heavy stubble. ‘He looks like a gang member.’
Sure, Seb doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d tag along on one of Harry’s bi-weekly Battersea Park run-club-cum-rugby-socials, but he greets Harry warmly, apologising for their lateness in a way that Clara never would.
While the sisters begin bickering, Seb introduces himself to Augie, then, finally, Kitty.
She’s still staring at his jacket, the threadbare patches on the elbows.
‘Is it cold in here?’ Kitty says. ‘I’ll fetch the waiter.’
She goes to raise her hand, but Cee stops her. ‘Don’t you dare.’
Seb takes his seat with a confused kind of smile, while Clara slips into place between him and Augie. Between Seb and Kitty, one chair remains.
‘Where’s Dad?’ Clara asks.
‘Working,’ Cee and Augie answer, in unison.
Clara grits her teeth. ‘It’s the weekend.’ She collects herself, does her best to look unbothered. ‘Isn’t the empty chair a little on the nose?’
Harry catches Seb’s eye, gives him the first of many exasperated looks he’s planning to share.
‘Don’t start showing off, darling,’ Kitty says to Clara. ‘Not every day is the Clara show.’
Seb looks at Clara. Clara looks at Cee, who looks at Augie, who looks at Clara. No one says anything, and so Seb looks at Harry. He’s seen nothing yet.
In the meantime, the waiter arrives and takes their orders, and Cee is soon trying to engage the table in a conversation about a science experiment in Switzerland, a particle collider that’s about to be turned on.
Clara says that they’re going to cause a black hole which will swallow the universe and everyone in it, and that if they do, it’s what we all deserve.
Cee says that it’s not like Clara to be dramatic, that progress can be a good thing even if it isn’t done by poets.
Augie stares into the varnished wood. Kitty looks bored, so she steers the conversation off course.
‘Sebastian,’ Kitty says, enunciating the name like it has an unpleasant taste. ‘What does your father do?’
Clara looks mortified, but Seb answers honestly, proudly.
He does not know that the best stories to tell Kitty are the ones that Kitty wants to hear, and that these stories don’t usually involve fish-and-chip shops.
The more comfortable Seb seems, the harder Kitty’s face becomes.
She turns her eyes to Clara, who is talking quietly to Augie, their blond heads bent together, and the sight seems to wound her.
Kitty is hard, yes, but she’s also brittle.
Like meringue. Or toffee. Harry likes food, but not metaphors. As his wife says, Clara is the poet.
‘You’re looking well,’ Clara is saying, to Augie.
‘Thanks,’ Augie says. ‘I didn’t—’
‘Look at you two,’ Kitty says, white wine in her voice. ‘Whispering away.’
Augie, as if ordered, stops talking. Clara looks like she’s going to say something else, but she swallows the words down.
‘How are you feeling, Mum?’ she says, instead.
The question catches Kitty off-guard. She dabs at the tight corners of her mouth with her own napkin. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I mean, in general,’ Clara continues. ‘About the—’
‘This is hardly the forum.’
‘Yes, but I wanted to—’
‘Don’t put me on the spot.’
Clara sighs. Kitty folds her napkin carefully.
‘Do you know about Clara’s new short film?’ Seb says, and even he doesn’t seem sure who he’s saying it to. He clearly hasn’t yet worked out that there’s no point swimming against the current. ‘She’s about to start shooting. The script is so good.’
Clara stays silent. Augie continues to stare into the tabletop.
‘Oh, not this again,’ Kitty says.
‘This?’ says Clara, unable to resist the bait. ‘My life?’
‘We never should have indulged you,’ Kitty says.
‘You never did.’
‘I suppose those cameras bought themselves?’ Kitty shakes her head. ‘You don’t know how lucky you were. Your father—’
‘Isn’t here,’ Clara spits.
Cee groans. ‘Clara, do we really have to—?’
‘Stop it, Cee,’ says Clara.
‘Stop it, Cecilia,’ says Kitty, at the same time.
‘I’m not a child,’ Cee barks, hands raised. ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.’
‘Where did we go wrong?’ Kitty says, looking over the table. ‘Not a proper job between the three of you.’
‘I’m a sous chef,’ Cee snaps. ‘Not a fucking pot wash.’
Kitty whips her head towards her. Her glare could burn you to a crisp. ‘Don’t you dare use that language with me.’
Cee sits back, scolded. She folds her arms, tucks her hands beneath her armpits. Harry pats her leg. His own leg is jiggling, and his mouth is dry. On the other side of the table, Seb’s mouth has popped open in something like horror.
‘Perhaps there’s still hope for this one,’ Kitty says, nodding towards Augie with something like tenderness. ‘If you two can keep your claws out of him.’
Augie says nothing. Clara is chewing the inside of her cheek.
‘I have a job,’ Clara says. ‘Not that you’ve ever taken an interest in it.’
‘You have a hobby,’ Kitty says. ‘And we thought you’d have grown out of it by now. If Martin was here—’
‘He’s not dead,’ Clara says with a bitter laugh. ‘He decided not to come.’
Kitty will not be stopped. ‘If Martin was here, he’d ask you how you plan to support a family on whatever pittance you earn from this little vanity project of yours.’
Seb raises an eyebrow.
Clara actually seems speechless for once. She picks at the base of her thumbnail. ‘I’m twenty-five,’ she says, eventually, quietly.
‘And you won’t get any younger,’ Kitty says. ‘I was pregnant at your age. For all the good it did me.’
‘I don’t want—’ Clara begins. Her face has gone red.
‘Clara’s boss thinks very highly of her,’ Seb cuts in.
Harry raises his own eyebrow, now. He’d never stand up to Kitty.
Clara smiles tightly at Seb, as if to say, stay out of this. Then she turns her mother’s fierce gaze back on her. ‘I don’t want your life,’ she says, firmly.
‘Clara,’ says Cee, a warning in her voice.
‘There’s no danger of that,’ Kitty replies, venom seeping into her voice ‘At this rate, I’ll be dead before I’m given any grandchildren.’
‘Even if that’s what I wanted,’ Clara says, ‘why would I let you anywhere near them?’
And that does it. Kitty slams her cutlery down on the table, so hard that everyone jumps.
Cee looks at Clara, gives a short shake of her head.
Augie sighs into his lap, compromising his near-invisibility.
Harry has spent the last several minutes playing white noise inside his own head, trying to imagine himself in a happier place. The silence is deafening.
Harry could kiss the waiter who ends it.
‘How’s the food?’ the waiter asks.
Kitty hasn’t touched anything on her plate. Neither has Cee. Harry snorts, holds his nose, tries to turn it into a cough.
‘Horseradish,’ he says. ‘Delicious.’
The waiter looks confused. Cee has her eyes closed.
Clara sits back in her chair, defeated. She was always getting into scrapes, Cee constantly having to peel her off the floors of house parties or hospital wards when they were younger.
Right now, Clara looks as small as she did back then.
Cee opens her eyes, snaps into older-sister mode.
She changes the subject, leads their mother down a different path.
‘I should have cooked,’ she says to Kitty, prodding an anaemic-looking roast potato. ‘I wish you’d let me cook.’
‘Don’t frown,’ Kitty replies. ‘It’s not attractive.’
And so they eat in silence, Clara’s eyes trained on the door, Seb staring around the table like a deer in headlights, or a lamb on its way to the slaughter, or whatever metaphor Clara might use for an unprepared boyfriend being blooded into the brutal sport of a Cowan family lunch.