Chapter Twenty-One
Freya
Maya was arriving at seven o’clock, and I didn’t know who was more nervous: Dolly, Joe or me. It had been my idea to invite Maya for dinner so we could get to know her, but it had quickly dissolved into a bit of a disaster on a few fronts. Firstly, as it turned out, Maya was vegan, so all of Joe’s tried-and-trusted dinners were null and void. Secondly, Dolly quickly decided the idea was terrible, doomed to failure, and that we should cancel immediately, but Joe and I ignored her and ploughed on regardless. Lastly, since the summer party, things between Joe and me had been decidedly frosty. We had spoken more about it, Joe had apologised a hundred times, and I had sort of forgiven him, but the atmosphere between us had changed. All the previous successes and little wins of the past few months seemed to have evaporated and now we were back to square one – awkward, uncomfortable and not quite sure where we were with each other. Not great for hosting a meal for your daughter and her first girlfriend. So, as I walked into the kitchen to see how dinner was going, I wasn’t surprised to get a rather negative response from Joe.
‘Fucking vegan shit tastes like sick,’ said Joe.
‘Anything I can do?’ I enquired sheepishly.
Dolly was upstairs getting ready.
‘Making Maya not a vegan would be a great start.’
‘Anything actually useful?’
Joe looked at me, sighed heavily, and then turned back to the stove.
‘Get me a beer?’ he said while poking the vegan lasagne with a fork like someone trying to see if something was dead or not. It did look like it had been hit by a car.
‘Right. On it!’ I said, trying to remain positive.
I wanted this to go well for Dolly. We had let her down at the party, and I didn’t want to do it again. I had offered to help with dinner, but Joe had said it was probably better if he did it alone, and that he would be fine. There was a time when Joe and I would have cooked this together. We used to be quite the double act in the kitchen, and we had in the past whipped up more than one dinner party together and quite a few Christmas roasts. However, now we were separated and with the tension between us bubbling away, it seemed Joe preferred to work alone.
‘Here you go,’ I said, passing him a beer. ‘Are you sure I can’t help?’
‘I’m fine,’ Joe demanded with all the certainty of someone who definitely wasn’t fine.
‘I suppose I’ll just get ready then.’
Joe ignored me and walked across to the fridge and took out a bag of salad, clearly not in the best headspace to greet Dolly’s girlfriend. I walked up the stairs, and then poked my head around the door of Dolly’s bedroom.
‘You all right, love?’ I asked.
Dolly was sitting on her bed, looking at her mobile phone.
‘Yeah,’ she replied, but much like Joe, it wasn’t convincing.
I walked across and sat next to her.
‘A penny for your thoughts,’ I said, and Dolly looked across at me.
‘Are you and Dad going to be all right tonight? I don’t want tonight to be another summer party fiasco. Maya’s had enough family stuff to deal with, and the last thing she needs is to walk into our house with you and Dad being all weirdly passive-aggressive.’
‘I promise tonight will be better.’
‘You promised last time, Mum. I’m sorry but I just don’t trust you two at the moment.’
‘Then we’ll just have to show you how mature and perfectly charming we can be!’ I said, and finally a smile broke out on Dolly’s face, cracking through her stubborn teenage resistance.
‘Okay, well, you’d better be,’ said Dolly, and I gave her a hug.
‘Just you wait. Tonight we’ll be on our best behaviour.’
‘Promise?’
‘With a capital P! Right, I need to get ready,’ I said, standing up. ‘See you downstairs?’ Dolly gave me a thin smile before returning to the security of her phone.
I went to our bedroom and quickly got changed, brushing my hair and putting it up, before I went downstairs. I needed to make sure that when it came to Dolly, Joe and I were on the same page. I needed him to realise that while things between us had been tense and uncomfortable, we couldn’t be like that around Maya. It required a frank, straightforward conversation. It was time to be honest with each other because I wasn’t sure how many more chances Dolly would give us – and how many more we deserved.
‘The lasagne tastes like utter dog shit, but I don’t have time to make anything else,’ said Joe when I walked into the kitchen. ‘So be prepared.’
‘Can we talk?’
‘About the vegan lasagne? I don’t think any amount of talking is going to save it.’
‘Not about the lasagne. Can we sit for a moment?’
I walked across and sat at the table, and Joe followed me with his beer. I would need a glass of wine soon if I was going to survive tonight. We sat for a moment, then Joe looked at me.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked, taking a sip of his beer.
‘We can’t be weird with each other tonight. Dolly is worried it’s going to be awkward for Maya, and with her own parents already divorced, the last thing she needs is us causing a scene. After the summer party, when I think we can both agree that neither of us were at our finest, we need tonight to be perfect. For Dolly.’
‘I think we can handle one night together without having a raging argument.’
‘I know, me too, but Dolly is worried we can’t. I promised before the party that everything would be fine and look at what happened.’
‘I have apologised to you and Dolly multiple times. We’re okay now, aren’t we?’ said Joe, and he was right, we were okay, but there was definitely still an atmosphere between us, and I supposed it was up to me to make sure there wasn’t.
‘Yes we are and tonight is going to be great!’ I said with all the positivity and enthusiasm I could muster. I felt like a secondary school teacher trying to get pupils on board with a particularly boring school trip. Guys, this might look like just a small hill next to another slightly smaller hill but it’s actually a super important neolithic site! ‘Let’s try really hard to be, I don’t know, normal, okay?’
Joe laughed. ‘I’m not even sure what that is any more, Freya.’
‘Me either, but we have to try.’
‘Although no amount of smiling and polite conversation is going to save the lasagne, I’m afraid. It’s basically roadkill in a fancy oven dish.’
‘I mean, how bad could it be?’
Fifty-seven minutes later, we were all sitting around the dining table about to find out. Maya and Dolly were on one side, and Joe and I were on the other. We had all just taken a bite of Joe’s vegan lasagne. We looked across at each other, and there was a moment when none of us knew exactly what to say. It really was awful. It somehow managed to taste bland but also absolutely horrible at the same time. It wasn’t like anything I’d had before. I looked across at Dolly, who was trying not to screw up her face in disgust, and poor Maya didn’t know what to say. I looked at Joe, and it was up to me to break the silence.
‘Joe, you were right about the lasagne,’ I said.
‘Probably the most inedible, disgusting thing any human being has ever cooked?’
‘That’s right,’ I said, and then I looked across at Dolly.
‘Thank God you said something. Sorry, Dad, but it’s really bad. Worse than Trifle-Gate two thousand and seventeen,’ said Dolly before she turned to Maya. ‘It’s okay, you don’t have to eat it.’
‘I’ve actually had worse,’ said Maya.
‘I can’t imagine how,’ said Joe.
‘When I first became vegan, Mum made a shepherd’s pie that somehow tasted fishy, and not the good sort of fishy either,’ said Maya.
We all laughed, and if there had been an air of tension or awkwardness, Joe’s vegan lasagne had certainly broken through it.
‘Shall I just order some pizzas?’ I said.
‘Now that,’ replied Joe, ‘sounds like a cracking idea. I’ll put the vegan lasagne in the only place it belongs. The bin!’
After Joe’s vegan lasagne disaster, dinner relaxed into a nice, easy-going affair, and once the pizza arrived, everything turned out perfectly. Maya spoke about her plans and what she might do after sixth form. She hadn’t got into her first-choice university like Dolly and was thinking about taking a gap year and travelling. I did notice a look from Dolly while Maya spoke about her desire to head to Southeast Asia, and how her older sister had spent six months travelling throughout Asia, and then a year working in Australia. I wondered how Dolly felt about it because I knew she was set on going straight to Durham. Obviously, if Maya was going to be travelling for a year, it would put a strain on their relationship, and perhaps at their age it might be insurmountable.
After dinner, Joe served a delicious vegan apple crumble with vegan custard that more than made up for the lasagne. I served coffee, and afterwards, Dolly and Maya went upstairs to her room, and I helped Joe clear up. It had definitely been a success, and it had even brought Joe and me a little closer together again.
‘That went well,’ I said, on drying-up duty, while Joe washed.
‘It did, despite the vegan lasagne.’
‘Another beer?’
‘Are you having another wine?’
‘Fine, one more,’ I said, before I put the tea towel down, got Joe a beer, and poured myself a small glass of white wine. I returned to help Joe finish washing up.
‘Thanks,’ said Joe, taking a sip of beer before he washed up the last few items. ‘Just leave the rest of the drying up.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Let’s sit down.’
We took our drinks and sat down at the dining table.
‘What do you think of Maya?’ I asked.
‘I like her. Although I’m worried about what might happen when Dolly goes to university and Maya goes travelling. I’m not sure you can survive that much time apart at that age.’
‘Right? I mean, they’re only kids, but I’m worried about Dolly. It’s her first relationship, and they’re always the hardest.’
‘I remember my first girlfriend,’ said Joe, a hint of nostalgia in his voice. ‘Helen Gibson. We went out for almost a year, then she dumped me on my seventeenth birthday at a McDonald’s. It wasn’t a very happy meal for me.’
‘On your birthday? Ouch! I actually dumped my first boyfriend.’
‘Of course you did.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It’s you, Freya. Overachiever, great personality, and always the best-looking girl in the room. He was never going to dump you, was he?’
I felt myself blushing slightly. ‘You still think of me like that?’
‘Just because we’re separated, it doesn’t mean I can’t see what an incredible catch you are.’
‘You, too,’ I replied, and we both looked at each other, an atmosphere suddenly in the room that definitely hadn’t been there before.
Years of moments like that shot through my mind, and it made me so sad that we wouldn’t have that for much longer. And yet I also knew it was for the best because despite everything – and the warmth I still felt for him – it still didn’t replace the last eighteen months. It didn’t change all the nights we had stayed up until the early hours wrangling over where the passion had gone, and whether we might ever be able to find it again. It didn’t change the fact he had lied to me about seeing a therapist.
After a moment, there was a sudden noise in the hallway and Maya and Dolly appeared in the kitchen. Maya was leaving as they both had college work to do, and Maya thanked us for dinner, and we said good night. Dolly and Maya kissed at the front door, with Joe and I spying from the end of the hallway, and then Dolly came through into the kitchen.
‘Thanks for tonight,’ said Dolly. ‘It was really nice.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Joe and I said in unison.
Dolly smiled before she went back upstairs to her room, Joe and I finished our drinks, and then we moved instinctively to our own corners of the house, back to our strange new reality.