Chapter 13
Meeting the Parents
The garden path is exactly as I remember it.
Neat. Oppressive. The kind of path that has never once had a weed in it because my mother would consider that a personal failure.
The rose bushes are trimmed to within an inch of their lives on either side.
The front door is painted the precise shade of tasteful burgundy that my mother spent three weekends selecting.
The train was delayed by forty minutes. Then a further twenty.
Then a further ten, for reasons the conductor described as operational difficulties, which I have always suspected is code for we have absolutely no idea.
I spent the journey wedged between a man who was eating something that smelled aggressively of fish and a woman whose phone was playing a podcast at a volume that suggested she wanted the entire carriage to benefit from it.
I am tired. I am slightly headachy. I am standing on a garden path in the gathering dusk, looking at a front door I have been dreading all day.
I’m wearing a shirt. And a beige sweater. My trousers are beige. I’m probably still not beige enough for my mother.
The sky, at least, is doing something spectacular. All deep orange and pink at the edges, the kind of sunset that looks painted. The kind that would be genuinely beautiful if I were anywhere else looking at it.
I take a breath of cool evening air. Right. Okay.
I ring the doorbell.
My mother opens the door before the sound has even finished. She looks me up and down in one swift, comprehensive sweep that takes in my hair, my jacket, my shoes, and my general existence, and finds all of it wanting.
“You look tired,” she says, which is her version of hello.
“Nice to see you too, Mum.”
“Come in, come in.” She steps back and waves me through with the urgency of someone trying to get a large, embarrassing object off the street before the neighbours notice. “Don’t stand there on the step.”
I step inside. The house smells like roasting meat and furniture polish and the particular floral air freshener she has used for as long as I can remember. It smells like childhood. Not entirely in a good way.
“You’re early,” she says, closing the door firmly behind me. “Your father isn’t down yet. James and Priya aren’t here yet either. Your aunt and uncle are in the sitting room.” She’s already moving towards the dining room, heels clicking on the parquet. “Come and help me with the napkins.”
So I find myself sitting at the dining room table, which has been laid with the good china and the tall candles and the napkins that apparently require folding.
My mother demonstrates the fold she wants.
It’s elaborate. It takes several tries before she’s satisfied with mine.
She watches me fold napkins with the expression of someone enduring a significant inconvenience.
“Did you get a haircut?” she asks.
“No.”
She makes a sound.
“James got a promotion,” she says, not looking up from her own napkin.
“I know. You mentioned it.”
“Senior analyst. At his age.”
“Mm.”
“He’s also thinking about buying a house. In Clifton.” She says Clifton the way other people say Paris. “He and Priya have been looking at a lovely Victorian terrace.”
“That’s great for them.”
She gives me a look. The look. “Are you still at that coffee shop?”
“Yes.”
“And the flat? Your uncle is coming back in April.”
“I know, Mum.”
“So you’ll need to sort something out.”
“I know.”
“I’m just saying.”
She’s always just saying. She has been just saying for as long as I can remember and she will be just saying until one of us dies and possibly beyond that, knowing her.
I fold another napkin. It comes out slightly lopsided. I refold it.
The doorbell rings.
My mother sets down her napkin and clicks off to the hallway. I stay at the table, smoothing out a crease. I can hear the door opening. My mother’s voice, bright with the particular warmth she reserves for people who aren’t me.
And then a man’s voice. Low. Confident. Smooth as anything.
I don’t recognise it.
I frown slightly, turning in my chair. Who else is coming tonight? Mum didn’t mention anyone. Maybe a friend of my aunt’s? One of Dad’s work colleagues?
“Adam!” My mother appears in the dining room doorway with an expression I have genuinely never seen on her face before.
Something between delight and confusion and a sort of dazed quality, as if someone has recently shone a very bright light at her.
“Why on earth didn’t you tell me you were bringing a guest? ”
I open my mouth. Close it.
And then the guest walks in.
He’s tall. Very tall. Dark hair, slightly dishevelled, falling across his forehead in a way that looks careless but is somehow perfect.
A suit that costs more than my monthly rent, possibly more than several months of rent, charcoal grey and exquisitely cut.
The suit is slightly disarrayed, the jacket not quite sitting right on the shoulders, the tie loosened just a fraction.
Like someone who has dressed impeccably but then been slightly shaken about.
His eyes find mine across the dining room.
They glow red.
Just for a second. Just long enough for me to see it.
Then they’re dark again, normal, warm and smiling, and he’s crossing the room towards my mother with a bouquet of flowers that he must have conjured from thin air because where else would they have come from, an enormous armful of white roses and eucalyptus that smells incredible.
“For the hostess,” he says, and his voice is Hex’s voice wearing a stranger’s accent. Slightly off. Slightly too smooth. “I’m so sorry I’m late. Dreadful time getting away from the office. You know how it is.”
My mother takes the flowers and actually giggles. My mother has never giggled in her life. “Oh, these are beautiful! Adam never mentioned he had such a charming friend.”
“Adam is very modest about the people in his life,” says Hex, turning to look at me with an expression of warm amusement that is entirely Hex and completely unnerving on a stranger’s face. “Aren’t you.”
It isn’t a question.
“I,” I say. “Yes. Very modest.”
My mother hugs the flowers to her chest and hurries off to find a vase, already calling out to my father upstairs.
I stare at the man standing in my mother’s dining room.
He stares back at me. His posture is slightly wrong, like someone piloting an unfamiliar vehicle.
His right hand keeps doing a small, involuntary twitch.
“Are you possessing someone?” I hiss.
“Yes,” grins Hex, through a stranger’s face.
“Hex!”
“He was just standing outside a pub looking bored. He’ll be fine.”
“He’ll be fine! How do you know?”
“I know he’ll have a lovely evening.” Hex gestures broadly around the dining room, a gesture that is slightly too large for the space and nearly takes out a candlestick. He catches it. Just barely. “Now stop looking at me like that. Your mother is coming back.”
She is. I can hear her heels. I shut my mouth and arrange my face into something that hopefully doesn’t look like suppressed hysteria and settle back into my chair.
The evening begins.
His name, apparently, is Sebastian. He works in finance. He has a flat in Mayfair and a house in the Cotswolds and a boat, though he’s modest about the boat, waving it off as nothing much. My uncle asks what kind and Hex names something that makes my uncle go very quiet for a moment.
James arrives with Priya, who is lovely and warm and clearly baffled by Hex in the nicest possible way. James takes one look at Sebastian and straightens his tie.
My aunt asks how Sebastian and I met. Hex doesn’t miss a beat.
“Adam rescued me,” he says, with a sincerity so complete that the whole table leans in slightly. “I was in a very dark place.” He pauses. “Quite literally, as it happens.” A small, private smile, directed at me across the table. “He held out his hand and pulled me out of it.”
I reach for my water glass and take a very long sip.
“That’s so romantic,” breathes my aunt.
“He’s remarkable,” says Hex warmly, and his red eyes catch mine for just a second. “I keep telling him so.”
My mother is watching me with an expression I don’t know how to interpret. Something complicated is happening behind her eyes.
The food comes out. My mother has cooked a roast, because she always cooks a roast for important occasions, and it’s genuinely excellent, because whatever her faults she’s a brilliant cook.
Hex navigates his cutlery with the careful focus of someone who has never used cutlery before but is not going to admit it.
He picks up the wrong fork first. He corrects himself smoothly.
He knocks his knife off the table and catches it before it hits the floor with a reflexive grab that is slightly too fast to be normal.
Nobody notices. They’re all too busy listening to him.
Because Hex talks, and when he talks people listen, and the things he says hover right on the beautiful, maddening edge of outrageous.
My uncle starts talking about his golf club membership, with the air of a man unveiling a masterpiece.
Hex listens attentively. “Marvellous,” he says.
“I find golf terribly relaxing. Though I prefer the courses in Scotland. The ones down here feel a little tame.” He tilts his head thoughtfully.
“I suppose once you’ve played the private island course outside Reykjavik, everything else is rather a step down. ”
My uncle blinks. “There’s a private island course outside Reykjavik?”
“Very exclusive,” says Hex pleasantly. “You’d have heard of it if you were on the list.”
James starts talking about his promotion. The new salary bracket. The corner office. Hex listens with every appearance of warm interest. “That’s wonderful,” he says. “Your first corner office is always special. I remember mine.” A pause. “Well. My first building, really. The office came with it.”
“Your first building?” says James.