“So,” she said, the faintest of tremors in her voice. “Quick question. With scones, do you go with jam or cream first?”
Andrew considered the question.
“I’m not sure it really matters,” he said. “Not in the grand scheme of things.” Then he leaned across, took Peggy’s face in his hands, and kissed her.
Somewhere, he could have sworn he heard a duck quack.
— CHAPTER 20 —
It was fair to say, if you were to really drill down and examine the data, and then draw conclusions from said data, that Andrew was, to a certain extent, drunk. He was dancing around Imogen’s living room, with a giddy and giggling Suze, singing along raucously to Ella’s “Happy Talk.” They were, by now, the firmest of friends.
He still couldn’t quite believe what had happened earlier that day. The moment he’d taken Peggy’s hand and set off without knowing where he was going, it had felt like an out-of-body experience. The memory was somehow sharp and blurry all at once. They’d sat for a long time on the bench, their foreheads touching gently, their eyes closed, until Peggy broke the silence. “Well now. I’m not entirely sure I saw this coming.”
As they made their way back to the car Andrew felt like he’d been drugged. He spent the entire journey home trying to stop grinning. He watched the fields flash by, getting the occasional glimpse of the sea, sunlight shimmering on its surface. A sunny August day in England. Perfection.
“That was an eventful day, then,” Peggy said when they were back at Imogen’s, as if they’d just been for a ramble and come across an unusual bird’s nest on the ground.
“Oh, I dunno. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff for me all told,” Andrew said. He leaned across to kiss her but she laughed and gently nudged him away. “Give over, what if someone sees? And before you say anything, earlier it would just’ve been a pensioner on a bench, not . . .” Imogen or the kids, was the unspoken thought. The spell might not have been completely broken, but it was certainly damaged. Andrew was about to get out of the car but Peggy made an exaggerated show of looking around before leaning over and giving him a peck on the cheek, before quickly fixing her makeup in the mirror. It was all Andrew could do not to skip up the drive, Morecambe and Wise–style.
Dancing around the living room to Ella would have to do instead. Maisie, who up until now had been summarily ignoring them in favor of her novel, waited until the song was over before asking who the singer was. Andrew put his hands together as if in solemn prayer. “That, my friend, was Ella Fitzgerald. The greatest singer there’s ever been.”
Maisie gave the subtlest nod of approval. “I like her,” she said, with the tone of someone weighing in calmly to settle a fierce debate, before going back to her book.
Andrew was about to find a new tune (he was in the mood for “Too Darn Hot,” next) and, more importantly, get another lager from Imogen’s booze fridge in the garage, when Peggy appeared at the living room door and asked the girls to come and help her lay the table.
Andrew retrieved a fresh beer and flopped down onto the sofa, allowing himself a moment to take everything in. He let the music wash over him, listened to the animated voices coming down the hallway, and breathed in the delicious cooking smells drifting in from the kitchen. All of it was intoxicating. He decided this should be part of some governmental scheme: that everyone should be legally entitled to have at least one evening a year where they could sink down into soft cushions, their stomachs rumbling in anticipation of ravioli and red wine, listening to chatter from another room, and feel for the briefest flicker of time that they mattered to someone. It was only now he could truly see how deluded he’d been to think the fantasy he’d created could be anything more than the weakest facsimile of the real thing.
After he’d listened to “Too Darn Hot,” Andrew headed to the kitchen and asked whether there was anything he could do.
“You could give the girls a hand,” Peggy said. Andrew saluted back, but Peggy had turned away and missed it. She and Imogen were having to chop, peel and stir in close proximity, but, as if carefully choreographed, they managed to avoid getting in each other’s way. Andrew, on the other hand, now fully buzzed by the beer, quickly became an increasingly frustrating presence as he tried to help. There was something about being in another person’s kitchen that meant everything he was looking for seemed to be in a totally illogical place. So when he confidently opened the cutlery drawer all that was inside was a warranty for a sandwich toaster, and the cupboard that should have housed glasses contained just a novelty eggcup in the shape of a hollow-backed pig, and some birthday cake candles. “Andrew, Andrew,” Imogen said with an air of frustration as he tried to pull open a false drawer next to her, “glasses top left, knives and forks here, water jug over there, salt and pepper here.” She pointed out each item like a football manager on the touchline indicating who the defenders should be marking.
Table now laid, Andrew sat down at it with a fresh beer and some Pringles Suze had brought him (two in her own mouth poking out to make it look like she had a duck’s beak) and drank in the atmosphere. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was well kept but with lots of character—a bunch of flowers in a quirky vase on the windowsill, a print on the wall with a picture of a woman cooking and sipping from a glass with the caption “I love cooking with wine—sometimes I even put it in the food.” The windows had steamed up to reveal handprints and a wonkily drawn heart.
“I never know whether you’re supposed to eat the top bits of peppers,” Peggy said to no one in particular. “Don’t want to make people ill but don’t want to be wasteful either. I end up walking to the bin, nibbling on it till I get there, then chucking what’s left away.”
Jesus Christ, Andrew thought, unable to stifle a hiccup. I think I’m in love.
—
As the old drinking adage goes: beer before wine, then you’ll be fine; six beers before half a bottle of wine, then you’ll be dizzy and believe the story you want to tell to be much more important than anyone else’s.
“Yeah, so, yeah,” Andrew slurred, “. . . yeah.”
“You were in the kitchen?” Imogen prompted.
“Yes, Imogen, we were! But then we thought we’d check the bedroom because that’s where they usually leave their money if they have any—cash, you know, rolled up in socks or in a Tesco’s bag shoved under the mattress. So anyway, anyway, we went in there—didn’t we, Peggy?”