Twenty-Nine
I’ve ended up agreeing to meet his parents, mostly because of my inability to think of a way out of it. I insisted I had to go home and dress more appropriately, though, so I rushed off at the crack of dawn, avoiding any awkward moments in the morning and buying some precious private time to think. But I’ve come up with nothing. His parents are expecting me, or rather, Anastasia, and I can’t think of a way out.
I commit to another layer of deception ruefully. While pacing back and forth in my room, I manage to scatter the contents of my entire wardrobe across the bedroom floor. There seems to be genuinely nothing suitable for visiting your boyfriend’s family under a total pretence.
The summer sunshine beaming through makes all my dresses look worn and about a decade too young for me. After a lot of costume changes and exasperated sighs, I go for the most wholesome look, an ivory number with a blue iris pattern. “That’s a little more Fulham parent visiting than Saturday night disco,” I decide, chatting to myself nervously and straightening the hem in the mirror. To compensate for the ever so slightly twee cut of the dress, I choose to pin my hair up in a flirty style I pretty much invent from scratch, neat if a little odd. I survey the plant I’ve acquired for Ryan’s mother one more time. It started as a sunflower but is looking like a steroid-pumped wilted daisy with every passing hour. My green-fingered attempts to restore it to its natural bloom have so far involved overwatering and putting a few dead leaves on the topsoil in the hope they may act as a shot of nutritious compost.
I take another look at myself in the mirror and start to have second thoughts. They’re ended abruptly by the gentle toot of a horn outside. Ryan’s as punctual as ever, damn.
After five minutes of speed rummaging to find the best footwear and bag, I rush out to him, flustered and hoping a winning smile can make up for keeping him waiting… again.
Ryan gets out of the car to kiss me hello. “You look great,” he says before glancing at the flower. “Who’s your friend?”
“It’s for your mum.” I clamber into the car and balance the plant on my lap. “It looked great in the store… but now it looks a bit like…”
“A triffid with the plague?” Ryan volunteers.
“Oh, it’s a disaster,” I panic. “Can we please stop somewhere so I can pick up something else? It looked great before, and I literally dug it up an hour ago. I mean… bought it.”
“It’ll be fine,’ says Ryan, generously ignoring the obvious fact that I got it from Sir John’s garden. “Mum loves an underdog and taking care of stuff. This can be her greatest challenge. And the pot’s lovely.”
“Maybe I could just get rid of the triffid and give her the pot?” I examine the gift as we drive along.
“That’d be reckless abandonment,” says Ryan. “It’ll be fine. It’s really sweet you want to make a good impression, but Mum and Dad are really relaxed. They’re going to love you. You don’t have to try too hard.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” I say, adjusting my hairpins.
“Well, you know you can be yourself,” Ryan says, “and that means being comfortable. Including with your usual hairstyle.”
Ignoring the tendrils of guilt encircling my stomach, I just point to my hair and say, “Don’t you like this one?” somewhat defensively.
“Well, it probably looked great on Princess Margaret.”
“Um, I wanted to look ‘proper’,” I say testily.
“You always look proper. But you don’t have to worry. We’re not going to Downton Abbey.”
I tentatively remove all the hairpins, and my hair falls loose, but unfortunately, it falls loose in pretty much every direction rather than in a sexy, tumultuous fashion. “Crap, I look like a mad woman,” I say in a panic, trying to finger-comb it into something decent.
I glance in the mirror again. “I’ve made it even worse,” I wail. It looks like every strand has fallen out with the other, and they’ve all decided to pull in opposite directions.
“You look just great,” Ryan assures me.
“I look like that woman out of Jane Eyre’s attic,” I cry, worrying that my appearance is punishing me for my horrific web of lies.
“Oh, I always preferred her to Jane,” Ryan assures, his lips curling into a smile.
“Hmm.” I’ve managed to corral my hair into something that looks more like a harassed woman in a storm, as an improvement over an escaped killer living in the woods.
As we get closer to Fulham, I can feel the butterflies of nervousness and the moths of guilt fluttering away together in my belly, having what feels like some sort of raucous party. The one thing worse than Ryan’s family not liking me is them liking me when all along they’re yet more people I’m dragging into my fraud.
The butterflies and moths start having midair collisions as we pull up in front of the house. It’s a little redbrick terrace on a well-tended street – the sort of place a lot of normal families bought in the eighties but where only the extremely wealthy can afford now.
My knees feel wobbly as I climb out, awkwardly carrying the mutant sunflower.
Ryan’s mum opens the door. A pretty woman with a soft Jamaican accent who barely comes up to Ryan’s shoulder. She hugs me and looks far more delighted at the gift than the triffid deserves. “Call me Joy,” she beams appropriately enough.
Inside, Ryan’s dad shakes my hand. He’s closer in height to Ryan, and he has Ryan’s intense stare. Gareth is quieter than Joy but has a warm smile and leads us into the kitchen.
Joy insists on placing the triffid alongside some beautifully cultivated houseplants on the kitchen windowsill.
She pours us some generous glasses of wine, and I warm to her even more. “We’ve been pestering and pestering Ryan to get you over here,” she chatters. “We’ve heard so much about you. Weeks we’ve been asking him, haven’t we, Gareth?”
“Well, she’s here now. Give the lad a break!” Gareth replies, handing me my glass.
“Well, it’s lovely to meet you both,” I say sincerely. They are both lovely. Joy is a bit of a wall of sound but seems happy to be teased about that by both Ryan and his father. Gareth has Ryan’s dry sense of humour – he says less, but it’s always funny when he does speak. He seems to sense I’m nervous and gives me a reassuring smile.
When we sit down to lunch, I feel Ryan’s hand gently touch my own under the table. We break the ice with talk of weather and traffic from Hampstead to Fulham, and then I warm up and start telling them all about the ghostwriting job with Sir John. They tell us about how much the street has changed since they bought the house, then dilapidated, as a young family in the eighties. Unfortunately, however, what they find fascinating about me are the Russian roots Ryan has apparently told them all about. “Anastasia is such a lovely name,” Joy says. “Is it after that poor lost princess?”
“Oh, I am, um…not entirely sure.” The less I say on this topic, the better.
“Oh, I remember reading all about it,” Joy nods sagely. “Horrible bit of history it was.”
“You didn’t read it. You watched the cartoon with the talking bat,” Gareth teases.
Joy giggles, “Well, as good as.”
We laugh and drink over lunch, and I decide I like them immensely. It means the butterflies are gone, but the moths have multiplied. Damn those moths of guilt.
Joy’s carefully laid-out lunch table reminds me of my mum’s immaculate approach to entertaining guests. All the best china gleamingly displayed. I’m going to have to be ultra unclutzy today.
“Joy, this all looks amazing! Thank you so much.”
“Oh, no trouble at all,” Joy beams again.
Ryan scrutinises his plate, “Mum, isn’t this Grandma’s china? I’ve never seen this out of the cupboard before.”
Joy shushes him and serves, and I’m now even more terrified of breaking something.
Freakishly for me, my clumsiness remains pretty much under control for the whole lunch, and there are no further trips down the rabbit hole into family history. Instead, I just talk about Mum and Dad, my writing dreams, and moving to Hampstead. Actual truths instead of elaborate tales. It’s amazing how easy digestion is when you’re not spinning several novel-length fibs.
Ryan teases his parents and me. They happily take revenge with some of the usual embarrassing childhood stories: Ryan thinking every guy with a beard was Father Christmas as a four-year-old; his scream-inducing phobia of Big Bird from Sesame Street ; being rescued by a fire crew in Hyde Park after over-ambitiously climbing to the top of a tree when he was eight and then being unable to get down.
“OK, OK, that’s enough,” Ryan pleads. He turns to me. “Your turn!”
So many anecdotes. Which one do I go for? Being taken to A they’ll have to come out eventually. And when they do, Ryan will be hurt all over again. I can’t do that to him. It’s time, I decide, to tell him the truth.
As Ryan drives me home, words of my draft confession churn through my mind. What to come clean about first? Faking an entire Soviet backstory or the fact that I’ve also been emailing him under the guise of an Agony Uncle? Which is the least bizarre? Which is the most forgivable?
Ryan glances over to me, “Strong and silent or bored and restless?”
“Sorry?” I say, jolted from my thoughts.
“Strong and silent or bored and restless?” he repeats. “That’s what you asked me when we met at the singles night, and I was being a bit quiet.”
I laugh despite myself. “Good memory. Sorry, I was just thinking.”
He frowns, “Was this too soon? Meeting my parents and everything?”
“No! No, it was lovely. They are lovely. I’m just a bit tired.”
“So, not too soon for parents?” Ryan persists. “You know how I feel about you?”
My heart pounds. How long have I waited for something like this from someone as amazing as Ryan? But all I can think is that he is talking about Anastasia. I respond with a distracted “hmmm” out loud.
Ryan glances again at me, saying much more sharply, “Well, I’d have thought the other night and wanting you to meet my folks would give you some clue.”
“It does, it does,” I say, suddenly tearing up, knowing I’m about to quash those feelings entirely. “I just…” I trail off. “Look, we’re here.”
Ryan pulls into Sir John’s drive. I climb out, my knees practically knocking with nerves. Ryan slams his own door shut as he steps out. I can tell he’s annoyed. His face is drawn.
He faces me, “If you don’t feel the same…” he begins stiffly.
“I do. I really do,” I say, desperately fighting back the threatening tears. “But I have to tell you, I have to tell you that…”
The front door opens, and Sir John barges up to us. I’ve never seen him move so quickly. He is waving at us with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader.
“There you are,” he booms, grinning and ignoring Ryan. “She called! I’ve been waiting for you all day!”
“Who called?” I ask, hastily wiping away the trace of tears with the heel of my hand.
“Ophelia!” Sir John practically shouts. “Ophelia called! Well, come on inside.”
I glance from him to Ryan helplessly. “You better go with him,” he sighs. Now, he’s just looking sad. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Come in, come in,” Sir John herds me to the kitchen. I use the walk down the hall to regroup and surreptitiously dab at my tears.