Chapter 8
8
TOM
I don t know what I was thinking when I suggested this fake-plus-one thing. It s a stupid idea.
I m effectively lying to my family. I mean, I didn t explicitly say that Nadia s my girlfriend, but that s clearly what they all think. That is what I very obviously implied.
And now Mum s taken Nadia inside and is going to make sure she gets into tennis kit, like it or not (I m guessing not, and I m also guessing that Mum will literally manhandle her into the kit if she objects), and then we re going to play tennis together and Nadia clearly does not want to do that. And then we re going to chat to my whole, entire family over the barbecue and I will eventually extract us but by that time we will have been tacitly lying to them for many hours.
And then there will be questions in the future. Which will be no less annoying than previous questions, just different. They ll be of the when are you moving in together and trying for babies; the clock s ticking genre rather than the when are you ever going to start a new serious relationship; the clock s ticking type.
And then if they like Nadia they ll be disappointed if they hear that we drifted apart.
And if they don t like her, well, that would probably be quite a good thing.
But realistically they will like her, because even though she clearly has quite different tastes in Sunday activities from my family, I think it would be really difficult to spend time with her and not like her. She has a very sunny personality. Like, my mum was looking quite frosty just now, and then she melted (as far as she does); she almost smiled at Nadia.
This feels like a mess, entirely of my own creation. I m such an idiot.
I m almost tempted to own up right now. I m really not enjoying the guilt.
You ve ruined all Mum s plans. My brother Jake is grinning next to me. She was going to invite the new neighbours to pop in later with their daughter who Mum was definitely planning to set you up with.
Wow. That would explain why she checked so many times that I was definitely coming this afternoon.
Yeah. Guessing she won t be calling them now.
Wow, I repeat, not sure how to deal with that information. Should I now be pleased that I brought Nadia or feel even worse about the implicit lying?
I can see Nadia in the kitchen standing talking to Mum.
Oh God. I think Mum s grilling her about something. Her moral compass? Her background? Does she want babies and if so how many and how soon? Who knows? It can t be good, though.
I m going in.
Hey. I walk a little too grenade-like fast into the kitchen and slightly skid to a halt. Mum and Nadia both stare at me. Hey, I repeat.
Mum smiles at me, kind of fondly, which alarms me.
What are we talking about? My fake chirpiness is utterly ridiculous, making me sound like an awkward sitcom character.
Jam, Nadia says.
I raise my eyebrows.
I m just describing my mixed berry compote recipe to Nadia, Mum elaborates.
Well there you go. Jam recipe sharing. I did not expect that.
Great. I look between them and decide they re looking dangerously chummy and that I will not be leaving them to it.
Let me write it down for you. Mum turns to get paper and pen from a drawer, and I shake my head slightly at Nadia as she smiles at me blandly.
Once the recipe s been written down and handed over, Nadia places it carefully into a pocket inside the large gold bag she s carrying, which I had assumed contained tennis kit, and then Mum says, I ll be back in a couple of minutes; I m just going to go and find some things for you.
I decide that we definitely shouldn t be talking about anything we don t want anyone to overhear because you never know who might pop up at any moment, so I leap straight into conversation with: Do you like cooking? Or baking? Or jam-making?
Yes. Especially baking, which is clearly not very healthy when you live alone, so I take a lot of cakes and biscuits into work for my colleagues. Nadia s answer is as stilted as my question was.
I have a colleague like that. The head of Biology. She s very popular, especially on Mondays. She s in her fifties and has four children and the youngest has just gone to uni. She says she s always baked on Sundays and can t stop but now she doesn t have enough people in the house to eat all her baked goods so we have to perform that service for her. She does this insanely good chocolate fudge cake. Also a ginger and pineapple one.
Nadia nods enthusiastically, clearly as happy as I am that we ve got some proper chat going now. Ginger and pineapple. That s such a good combo. I m going to try it. That empty nest thing must be so hard. It s almost enough to put you off having babies in the first place.
Nothing should put you off having babies, declares my mother. She s popped back up from nowhere and sends a hideously embarrassing wink in my direction, which I can only describe as roguish.
I laugh, because I would absolutely have to cry otherwise.
Nadia s laughing too, looking a lot less uncomfortable than I feel, and that would be because this is not her mother who we re having a baby conversation with while pretending to be dating.
Tom, why don t you come with us to help Nadia get changed, my oblivious mother continues.
Now Nadia isn t looking so comfortable, understandably. She has her mouth open and her eyes raised, and behind Mum s back is mouthing eek at me.
I mouth back that I will obviously turn my back, because I m not sure what else to do, in that I can t really refuse to go, and then we both traipse after Mum to a spare bedroom (there are quite a few now that my siblings and I have fully moved out).
Fortunately, it s en-suite, so Nadia can get changed in there with the door closed, which I point out in a whisper as soon as the bedroom door s closed behind Mum.
Good idea. Nadia whisks herself and the tennis kit into the bathroom and locks the door behind her with a very emphatic click.
Oh my God , she says loudly a couple of minutes later. There are muffled sounds and then she repeats, Oh my God. She opens the door and peeks round it. Okay. I don t totally know what to do about this. I don t actually mind about your family because I don t know them at all but I do know you and I have to beg you either to go and tell your mum that I have food poisoning or promise me that you will not look at me at all . If you do look at me you ll have to banish all memory of anything you see and never refer to it again.
We could do food poisoning. Or a terrible headache. Any illness would do. Now she s mentioned it, I feel like that would be an excellent idea. I would very much like to put an end to this stupid situation as soon as possible.
I would love not to wear this outfit. Nadia still has her whole body hidden behind the door. But I think it might be rude to your parents because it would be really obvious that the food poisoning and changing for tennis were linked and I think your mum might be offended, and the whole point of this – I think – was to keep your family happy?
She s right; I don t want to upset anyone. I mean, any more than they ll be upset in future when Nadia and I split up . We should stay for tennis and the barbecue and then leave and then I ll tell my family in a few weeks time that we ve split up and that I m not going to date again for a while. And there s a silver lining: that would get them off my back a little. They did hold off for a while after my ex-wife and I split up.
Yeah, I think you re right, I say.
Dammit. She s still just a door with a tilted talking head. She doesn t strike me as particularly vain or histrionic, so I m wondering how bad the tennis kit is .
Are you… ready to go? I check.
You know, I wouldn t mind not going for a while?
Um. Okay. I d stood up when the door opened but now I sit back down on the bed.
Nadia closes the door again and then quite a long time later – I think a good couple of minutes – says, Okay, I m actually going to come out now.
Great. I look up as the door opens, and then just stare.
Nadia screws her face up and says, So what do you think? She does a slowish three-sixty for me and I stare some more.
Tom?
Um. Crikey.
Exactly.
Um. I m trying so hard not to laugh it s almost physically painful.
What do you think is the worst bit? Nadia asks, very conversationally.
My answer is instantaneous. The frilly pants, no question. My mother has supplied her with a very short dress, which does not cover the frilly tennis pants that I vaguely remember women wearing for tennis when I was a child. They aren t unflattering, in fact weirdly quite the opposite, but they do look very, very peculiar. The dress is very tight and surprisingly low-cut for a tennis dress. Also, the… Yep. No, I cannot refer out loud to her cleavage. Also, I tell myself sternly, I really should not be noticing it at all. She is my fake girlfriend. It s hard not to notice it, though.
Nadia cranes over her shoulder to look at her bottom and then looks down at herself.
Then she sees herself for the first time in the floor-length mirror in the corner of the room.
My. Goodness, she says after a moment. She stares at herself again and suddenly laughs. Fuck it. Let s do it. I don t know them. It does not matter.
Are you sure? I ask. We could go down the food-poisoning route.
Nope, I m fine, I m doing it. Unless you don t want me to?
Well, I…
We stare at each other for a minute, and then my mother calls from downstairs. I don t want to interrupt you but just to let you know that you re on court next.
We do this weird thing where we both do a little nod at the same time, and then I holler, Coming, and off we go downstairs.
I try very, very hard not to find any humour in the way that as Nadia walks the dress rides up so that more and more of the frills are on show. The pants kind of remind me of some white chickens my grandparents had when I was little. Absolutely not what Nadia would want to hear right now.
* * *
When we get to the kitchen, Mum s eyes widen and she clamps her lips together for a second, before saying, Excellent. The shoes are just here.
The shoes are quite… large, Nadia says when she puts her first foot in. She looks up at us from where she s crouched on the floor. I don t have any words. Apparently nor does Mum (unusual). After a couple of moments, Nadia breaks the silence. Better for a shoe to be too big than too small.
Then, as I nod, she stands up, pulls her dress down as far as it will go, and sets off across the garden towards the tennis court.
I jog a few paces to catch her up and then say, Are you sure you re okay with this?
Totally. I m already looking forward to the excellent anecdote this is going to become.
Erm, good?
Nadia laughs. Honestly, yes. One more thing I need to mention, by the way, is that I really cannot play tennis.
Just flash your frills. They ll laugh so much they won t be able to hit the ball.
* * *
Our opponents are my cousin Josh and his husband Jameel. Josh is pretty good; I know that.
Just so you know, Nadia says cheerfully as she shakes hands with them, I can t play at all. You won t enjoy the match unless you re terrible too.
Don t worry. Jameel does a very pro-looking practice swing. I haven t played for a couple of years.
Oh, cool. That s cheered me up. Nadia doesn t seem to have clocked how good his swing is.
It becomes obvious on the second point of the first game (after Josh aced Nadia on the first point) that Jameel must have been bordering on Wimbledon-qualifying levels before he stopped if this is how he plays after two years out.
At the end of the first game, we switch ends (Mum s a stickler for taking matches very seriously).
I would love to be able to play tennis like you, Nadia tells Jameel.
Ha, thanks. I might have spent a bit too much time on a court and not enough time in the classroom when I was a kid.
Time very, very well spent, Nadia says admiringly, and he grins.
We lose the set six love and Nadia laughs all the way through, which makes the rest of us laugh too. When it finishes, the four of us walk off court (well, three of us walk and Nadia limps), and then Josh, Jameel and I accept strawberry- and cucumber-decorated Pimm s from my mother, while Nadia says she d love a drink but that she has to go and get changed first. We all look at her and, as one, nod, because, yes, it s clear that any sane person would be a lot happier out of that tennis dress and the frilly pants and into some more normal clothing.
She returns about five minutes later, walking barefoot across the lawn, and Josh suggests we all go and sit under a tree to cool down. Josh and I are six weeks apart in age and his parents house is only about a mile away, and we have a lot in common, interests and personality wise, so he s always been a very good friend as well as my cousin.
Jameel seems to have fallen under Nadia s spell when she congratulated him on his tennis and then he showed her how to do some basic strokes and she totally failed to get it but laughed and laughed about it.
I d love to learn to skate, Josh is now saying, and I m pretty sure Jameel would too. Why don t the four of us go sometime?
And, honestly, it feels even worse than the lie we re presenting to my mum. It s normal to lie a little bit to your mother; lots of people do, for everyone s sake. I mean, okay, they don t lie about their fake date, but equally there s definitely, at certain times in your life, a lot of economising with the truth to your parents, to protect their sensibilities. But I ve never lied to Josh, or he to me. I mean, I was the first person he told when he came out. And here I am sitting under a tree with him and his husband in my parents garden with a random woman I ve known for eight days pretending that she s my new girlfriend.
I do not feel good about myself.
Definitely, I say.
So we haven t asked yet how you two met, Jameel says.
Erm. I m slightly speechless.
There was a false alarm bomb scare at Waterloo last Saturday and we got stuck together for hours under the clock on the concourse, and we just got chatting, Nadia supplies. And ended up going for dinner afterwards with the others who were also under the clock, and talked some more.
Oh, wow, so it s very early days, Josh says.
Yeah, you get to know each other surprisingly fast in that kind of situation, Nadia continues. I m very grateful to her; I don t want to say anything because I don t want to feel like an even bigger liar than I already am.
Such a romantic way to meet, Jameel says. That clock s going to be your place.
Josh nods.
This is terrible. They re getting invested in me and Nadia as a couple.
Thankfully, Nadia says, Ha, yes, the clock. We re a walking cliché. So tell me about you two; how did you meet?
Even more of a cliché, Jameel says. Injury-free minor car crash. Which was his fault. But he still believes it was my fault.
Reminded of our conversation in the tapas place about meeting someone in a car crash, I instinctively look at Nadia, who s smiling at me, her thoughts clearly having gone in the same direction.
I need to hear the full details, she tells Jameel, laughing, and then she continues to question him, keeping the conversation firmly on them and not us.
As Nadia and Jameel chat, Josh leans close to me and says, You alright?
I hesitate, wishing I could just confess, and then realise that I can t. It would be ridiculously awkward and ruin the day for everyone. I just need to chalk this up to life experience. Do not do fake dating; it s stupid and farcical and rude to your family and friends. And I should fake split up with Nadia and move on.
Yeah, all good, I say. Just suddenly really thirsty for some water. We ve been drinking Pimm s since we finished playing tennis. Let me go and get us a jug and glasses. And I jump up and practically sprint across the garden towards the kitchen.
When I get back, the three of them are deep in a really serious conversation about why the ice cream section is near the start of supermarkets because it makes it even more likely for it to have melted by the time you get home. That s a very good question, actually, I realise.
We re all discussing whether it makes more sense to put chocolate or cheese near the tills, bearing in mind the necessity for cheese to be refrigerated (Nadia is very much a cheese woman it seems), when Mum calls Josh and Jameel over for their next match (yes, we are having rounds; family tennis tournaments are serious business for my mother).
You have a very nice family, Nadia tells me. Friends as well as relatives. And they all care about you a lot.
I nod. She s right. I should probably be more appreciative. Sometimes you can take the best things in your life for granted. And you shouldn t. And, also, you shouldn t lie to them. And if you do lie to them in a totally gratuitous, utterly ridiculous way, as I am doing, you should probably not make yourself feel better by owning up; you should probably slide out of the lie as quickly and as gracefully as you can without ever upsetting your relatives by telling them you did such a bad thing, and then learn from your mistake and never do it again.
So I lean back on my elbows and say, Yeah, I m lucky. Can t really imagine my life without them and I should probably just be grateful that they – Mum in particular – care enough to hassle me about my life plans as she calls them.
We re under the biggest tree in the garden and it s a hot afternoon, plus I haven t seen my family as much as usual recently because I ve been very busy at work with A-level and GCSE exam season, school trips, the usual summer busyness, so my relatives are keen to catch up with me and even keener to meet Nadia, so gradually everyone who isn t still being forced by my mother to play tennis comes over and joins us.
It s really nice, one of those family get-togethers where you just feel deeply, contentedly relaxed amongst people you ve known your whole life whose company you enjoy and who you know have your back.
Except, also, it isn t, because Nadia fits in really well with them, humour-wise, conversation-wise, everything-wise; no-one s talking to her only because they feel they have to because of me, she just slots right in, as though there was a little hole in our family group waiting to be filled by her.
And that is clearly awful .
I am awful.
I m lying to the most important people in my world.
I m an idiot.
You okay? Libby, my sister, asks me.
Yeah, sorry, just a bit tired. I realise I ve been staring into the distance, immersed in my guilty feelings.
Which is so stupid, because as I ve already decided, this is fine ; it was just a stupid idea, and I just won t do it again, end of. It will be fine .
I pull my attention back and focus on Libby and the others; I m going to stop thinking and get on with enjoying their company.
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, the tennis tournament is done and we ve all clapped Josh and Jameel (who played better and better the stronger his opposition got until he eventually admitted that he literally did qualify for Wimbledon as a junior player).
My father and his two brothers have been basically pretty much ignoring everyone else the whole time since we arrived because they ve been extremely focused on the incredibly important task of getting my dad s barbecue exactly right.
Food s up, he yells, and we all stand up to begin to make our way over to him.
Mum materialises at Nadia s side and says, Let me introduce you to my husband now he has some attention to spare. She indicates to me imperiously with her head that I should follow them and ushers Nadia in Dad s direction. Jim, this is Nadia.
Dad squints at her and says, Hello, Nadia.
Tom s new girlfriend, Mum tells him.
I manage not to wince and instead paste a smile on my face.
Hello, Nadia says. Thank you so much for having me. The food looks and smells amazing.
Dad preens a little. If I say it myself, barbecuing is very much my forte and you should try a bit of everything.
We all laugh and then, acutely uncomfortable about my deception, I say, That steak looks amazing. Nadia, what would you like? hoping to avoid any more chat.
A bit of everything, please.
Good choice. Dad s beaming at her. Where did you two meet?
Nadia trots out the Waterloo story, pretty much my entire family overhear, and we all agree that under the clock will indeed become our special place.
Once we ve done that, it s actually all good; I concentrate on the (very good) food and drink and the conversation and, yep, it s great.
It s even good when, after we finish eating, my mother suggests that we all take advantage of the warm evening and late sunset and go for a dip in the pool, and Nadia says she doesn t have a costume, and Mum obviously says not to worry she can borrow one, and Nadia, less obviously, says, extremely firmly, that she is fine thank you and will watch, and Mum, even less obviously, just says of course, she should do as she likes.
Because, as Josh and Jameel observed, Nadia really does fit very well into my family.
Which definitely does make the lie worse.