Chapter 1 #2
Seb doesn’t want to be publicly disloyal, but Rosie is of course being rude, so he shrugs, nods and shakes his head.
Abi is new in town and Rosie has taken it upon herself to show her the ropes.
Rosie has lots of friends and acquaintances in Waverly but none of them make her smile like this or pull her phone out to message when she really shouldn’t.
It’s like watching the first rumblings of love, and it makes Seb feel swampy with jealousy.
Seb still hasn’t met Abi even though her eldest daughter is at his school.
Abi had cancelled a meeting they’d arranged last-minute, and it occurs to him now that he should make an effort to rearrange.
That meeting with Abi might bring him a little closer to unlocking whatever is going on with Rosie.
From the sofa, Rosie looks up. ‘Sorry, I just had to reply to something…’
‘So it is Abi you’re texting?’ Anna asks, eyes still wide with disbelief to hide any genuine hurt she might be feeling.
‘Sorry,’ Rosie repeats, dropping her phone back in her bag. She glances briefly to Seb for backup; he smiles at her but she immediately looks away, back towards Anna, as she says, ‘Sorry, Abi was just asking about after-school clubs for Margot…’
‘Oh, well then.’ Anna crosses her arms under her large chest. ‘You should have said it was something so incredibly urgent. I honestly don’t get what all the fuss is about. I mean, Abi seems nice but…’
Rosie pouts out her bottom lip, gets up from the sofa and puts her arm around her friend.
‘Oh, Anna, don’t be jealous– you’re still my number one,’ she says in a soppy voice, too theatrical to be true.
The truth, which Seb knows, is that Rosie enjoys Anna, loves her in her way, but probably wouldn’t have chosen to be friends with her were it not for Seb and Eddy’s long-standing friendship.
‘Hmm,’ Anna replies, like she understands she will never see all of Rosie, but that’s OK because right now Rosie’s arm is round her. Seb watches Anna’s shoulders drop with relief.
Anna and Eddy are the same in that respect, needing constant reassurance. Their huge personalities, like fur coats, belying the sensitive, brittle little creatures inside.
Then Patrick turns to them, nose twitching, and asks, ‘Is that burning I can smell?’
‘Shit! The dauphinoise!’ Anna says, grabbing Rosie and pulling her towards the kitchen.
The rest of them shuffle around the table looking for their handwritten place cards. Seb is sitting next to Lotte, another parent from the school.
Lotte and her husband, Richard, are opening a new restaurant in town called PLATE (the capitals were Lotte’s idea) and Seb finds that Lotte is– as usual– in a chatty mood.
She grasps Richard’s hand, which is balled in a tight fist on top of the table, as she tells Seb how Richard poached an excellent London chef– ‘Diego someone, have you heard of him?’ Richard smiles reflexively but pulls his hand away from his wife and turns his attention back to Eddy, who is asking him something about the wine.
Seb makes sure he keeps nodding as Lotte chatters about tile options for the restaurant toilets, and he feels the rush as a great wave of loneliness rises up within him.
Rosie appears holding a platter of steaming pulled pork, she must feel him looking– she smiles briefly, like he’s an acquaintance she’s just spotted in the street.
‘Hope everyone’s hungry!’ Rosie says, leaning over the table to put the meat in front of Anna’s place at the head, next to a bowl of bean stew for vegetarians Patrick and Vita.
Lotte picks up a serving spoon to dish out the potatoes that Anna places in front of her as she asks Seb, ‘Has Rosie told you that we’re employing– on Diego’s insistence, actually– her new friend, Abi? She’s going to be our restaurant manager.’
‘Oh?’ Seb says, accepting a spoonful of sloppy, creamy and only slightly blackened potatoes. Rosie hadn’t told him– but that’s hardly remarkable, a bitter little voice reminds him inside.
‘Yeah,’ Lotte replies. ‘I wasn’t sure about her at first, I thought she had a bit of a too-cool-for-school vibe, but I think that was just because she’s from Hackney, you know? Tattoos, cropped hair, you know the type. Now, of course, I love her. She’s super cool.’
‘Give it a year or two in Waverly and that’ll change,’ Vita says across the table, holding up her plate to Lotte before turning, like a hunter spotting a deer in the woods, towards her husband. ‘Patrick, is that meat on your plate?’
Patrick pinks but doesn’t look up before sliding the small piece of meat on to Rosie’s plate next to his, muttering, ‘Sorry, sorry, V.’
Vita shakes her head at the table, as if she blames all the other carnivores for Patrick’s momentary lapse of judgement. Poor Patrick.
Anna whoops again. ‘Shit! The gravy!’
This time Seb stands quickly; he’s closest to the kitchen and needs a break. ‘I’ll get it.’
Anna blows him a kiss. ‘Love you, Sebbo.’
The kitchen is chaos. It looks like Anna’s used every utensil, every pan.
Seb spots the gravy bubbling on the hob, picks up a cleanish spoon, tastes, before adding more salt.
He goes to the cupboard for the cow-shaped gravy boat he remembers from Sunday dinners made by Eddy’s mum long before her dementia set in.
Just as Seb’s about to pour the gravy into the boat, the back door opens, and Blake appears.
At fifteen, his godson’s got the same body Eddy had as a teenager, before beer and a desk job filled him out.
Blake’s tall and solid; he seems to take up half the kitchen.
‘Hey, Blake,’ Seb says, meaty steam from the gravy billowing around him.
‘Hey, Mr… I mean, Uncle Seb.’ Blake kicks off his trainers without undoing the laces, leaving them and his sports bag by the back door. ‘Mum always forgets the gravy. Need a hand?’
Without waiting for an answer, Blake, sweet boy, holds the ceramic cow steady while Seb slowly pours from the pan.
‘Thanks, mate,’ Seb says when they’re finished. ‘How was football?’
‘Yeah, all right, one all. Greenwood did some dodgy sliding tackles, though.’
‘God, they’re still doing that? They were like that when your dad and I used to play them thirty years ago.’
Blake smiles and shakes his head, amazed by the vast swathe of time. ‘I thought football wasn’t around back then.’
‘Oh yeah, it was right after the ball had been invented, although of course all we had to kick were pig’s bladders, so…’
‘With your bare Neanderthal feet.’
‘That’s right.’ Seb laughs now, thinking how he’d stay here in the kitchen talking with Blake all night if he could.
From the sitting room Anna calls, ‘Seb! Gravy!’
Seb widens his eyes at Blake and Blake laughs again. With a flick of his head, Seb asks, ‘You coming in to say hello?’
‘You think I’ll ever hear the end of it if I don’t?’
‘Nope,’ Seb says, smiling.
Blake breathes out.
‘Come on, then,’ Seb says, picking up the gravy boat.
As Seb follows Blake back into the dinner party, Eddy looks up at them, his eyes glazed and shiny with wine. ‘What secrets has the spy been sharing with you, Blakey?’
‘Spy?’ Patrick asks, taking a bite of his bean stew as Seb places the gravy boat on the table and decides to say nothing. Lotte and Rosie turn to Blake, asking about his football practice. But Richard is one of those people who always dawdles a beat behind everyone else.
‘Why’s Seb a spy?’
Eddy stands, picking up the bottle, and starts refilling everyone’s glasses before he comes up behind Seb, squishing his cheeks together with one hand, and says, ‘Because no man can be so good and so bloody pretty, that’s why. It has to be an act.’
Seb pushes his hand away, saying, ‘Didn’t you used to think Anna’s dad was a spy, too?’
‘No, Grandad Mike always wanted everyone to think he was MI5 but actually he was just the local busybody…’
‘Eddy!’ Anna interrupts; she has always been defensive of her beloved dad. ‘He had good reason to be protective. You don’t know what it was like growing up in Ruston!’
Eddy wipes away an invisible tear and Anna rolls her eyes before turning to Vita, telling her the story of how she was raised just a few miles down the road in Ruston.
Once a lovely local fishing village, it was slowly destroyed by poor planning, a corrupt council and all the usual cruel accoutrements of poverty.
Her dad fought hard to protect the town he had been raised in, costing him his physical and mental health, before finally accepting defeat and moving to a tiny cottage in rural Hampshire.
Eddy ignores Anna and instead calls out to interrupt his son. ‘Blakey. Hey, Blake. Tell everyone, why is Uncle Seb a spy?’
Blake glances at Seb apologetically. ‘Oh, Dad and I just came by his office one day and he slammed his laptop closed as soon as he saw us. It was pretty sus.’
Seb’s throat tightens, he feels his smile shake, and he keeps his eyes on his plate of food in front of him.
‘No, you’re not telling it right, Blake,’ Eddy says as he puts the wine back on the table and sits down.
‘It was funny because Mrs Greene appeared and suddenly it all made sense to me. Mrs Greene isn’t who she says she is, she’s not a secretary but the boss, like…
what’s her name? N? The one from Bond? Anyway, she appeared in a puff of—’
‘Oh, I remember what I wanted to say!’ Anna interrupts, making everyone turn to her. ‘Did everyone see the news today? The story about the poor TV presenter– Max Harting? I mean, what a fall! He was basically a national treasure.’
Eddy throws up his hands in exasperation at being talked over. ‘Fine. Everyone ignore the birthday boy.’
So they do.
‘It’s his wife I feel sorry for. I always said he was gay…’ Lotte adds.
‘Oh, live and let live, I say,’ Anna returns. ‘He hasn’t done anything illegal. I mean, I bet the boy’s parents are pissed off, but they should just sort that out between themselves…’
‘I’m going to go up,’ Blake says.