Andrew: “House.”
Peggy: “And.”
Cameron: “We.”
Meredith: “All.”
Keith: “Really.”
Andrew: “Hated.”
Andrew looked over to Peggy. Why was she staring at him like that? Did that mean she’d lost? And then he realized what he’d said.
Thankfully, Peggy came to his rescue, saying “having,” and the rest of the story went on until Cameron inexplicably started guffawing and the game was quickly brought to a close. The dinner itself passed uneventfully. Meredith delivered several courses, all of them seemingly varieties on the theme of hedge cuttings, which left Andrew starving. He’d worked his way through most of his bottle of Latvian wine, which was surprisingly nice (so he was a racist as well as cheap), drumming his fingers on the table as he listened to the others talking about a Scandinavian crime box set he’d yet to watch. Meredith prefaced her thoughts by saying, “This isn’t a spoiler,” before revealing the death of a lead character, two plot twists, and the dialogue from the final scene of the show in its entirety. He’d cross that one off his list, then.
Cameron had been his usual animated self, edging toward the giddy end of the spectrum. Andrew hadn’t thought his behavior particularly unusual, but when Cameron stood up to go to the loo he wobbled on his feet, grabbing on to a cabinet for support, before weaving unsteadily out of the room.
“He got here an hour early,” Meredith whispered gleefully. “Got stuck into the malbec like you wouldn’t believe. I think there’s trouble in paradise with Clara.”
“And where’s your feller tonight?” Peggy asked, just as Keith went to brush a crumb from Meredith’s sleeve. He withdrew his hand sharply but Meredith grabbed it, like a lion being fed a hunk of meat in a zoo, and slapped it down on the table, locking her fingers with his.
“Well, in fact,” she said, “I was—we were—going to wait until after the homemade profiteroles, but we’ve actually got something to tell you.”
“You’re shagging?” Peggy said, stifling a yawn.
“Well, there’s no need to be so crude about it,” Meredith said, a fixed smile on her face. “But, yes, Keith and I are officially partners. As in lovers,” she added, in case anyone thought they were about to float a company on the stock market.
The dining room door swung open and banged against the wall as Cameron staggered over to his chair. “What have I missed, then?” he said.
“Them two are ‘lovers,’ apparently,” Peggy said. Andrew went to top up her glass but she put her hand over the top and shook her head.
“Well, that’s, I mean, good . . . Good for you,” Cameron said. “Now, that’s what I call team bonding!” He laughed raucously at his own joke.
“Keith, would you mind helping me in the kitchen for a moment?” Meredith said.
“Yeah, sure,” Keith said, the familiar leer back on his face.
“I’m just going to get some air,” Peggy said. She looked at Andrew and raised her eyebrows.
“I think I will, too,” Andrew said.
“There’s a surprise,” Keith said quietly.
“What’s that?” Peggy said.
“Nothing, nothing,” Keith said, hands raised defensively.
The four of them stood and Cameron looked up at them, confused, like a little boy lost in a crowd.
Outside, Peggy produced a cigarette and offered one to Andrew, who accepted despite having no intention of smoking it. He lowered his arm, letting the cigarette burn, and watched Peggy inhale deeply.
“Cheek of that knobber Keith,” Peggy said, tilting her head up as she exhaled smoke. Andrew again caught a hint of her new perfume and felt like he might overbalance. He wasn’t sure why it was affecting him like this. He hummed tunelessly, the silence too much to bear.
“What?” Peggy said, seemingly taking this to mean he wasn’t in agreement with her about Keith.
“Nothing,” Andrew said. “He’s a knobber, like you said.”
Peggy exhaled again. “You haven’t . . . said anything to him, have you?”
“No, of course not,” Andrew said, cringing.
“Okay. Good.”
This was miserable. To hear the concern in Peggy’s voice at the thought of their secret coming out, knowing that her primary concern was jeopardizing her reconciliation with Steve, was torture. Should he tell her he’d seen Steve drinking as he’d driven off? Regardless of what had happened between them, surely she had a right to know if Steve was lying to her, especially if he was endangering the girls. Peggy was eyeing him suspiciously.
“Just so we’re clear, you’re not going to do anything silly, are you? No mad gestures inspired by those two idiots in there? Because believe me, that won’t work.”
This time, it was anger Andrew felt. He hadn’t asked to come and stand in the cold and be humiliated like this.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, “I wouldn’t dream of ruining things for you.”
Peggy took a final drag on her cigarette and threw it to the ground, crushing it with her boot heel, fixing Andrew with a steely expression.
“Just so you know,” she said, her tone so harsh it made Andrew take a step back, “this hasn’t been an easy week for me. It’s been pretty grueling, in fact, largely because I’ve spent the entire time doing what that moron Cameron would no doubt describe as a root-and-branch review of my marriage. But thankfully, for all the pain involved, it’s resulted in Steve cleaning himself up and deciding to be a husband and a father again. And that’s how things have to be for me. There’s no other option. It’s not my place to say, but if you’re not happy with Diane then maybe you need to have an honest conversation with her too.”
Andrew was going to let her walk back inside, but these last words had stung him too much and he couldn’t stop himself.
“I saw Steve drop you off earlier,” he blurted out. “With the girls in the car.”
“And?” Peggy said, her hand on the door handle.
“When you’d gone inside he took out a hip flask.”
Peggy bowed her head.
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said. “I just thought you should know.”
“Oh, Andrew,” Peggy said. “Did all that stuff we talked about before—about being friends, about being there for each other . . . did it not mean anything to you?”
“What? Of course it did.”
She shook her head sadly.
“Yet you’re fine with lying to me?”
“No, I . . .”
But Peggy didn’t stay to hear him out, closing the door firmly behind her.
Andrew stood listening to the faint strains of music and voices coming from inside. He looked at Peggy’s cigarette smoldering on the floor and realized he was still holding his own. He took aim and dropped his onto hers, then mashed them together with his heel.
—
For the rest of the evening he retreated into himself, picturing his Ella records and all the model train components he owned neatly laid out on the floor, debating what he could live with selling should he be the one to get sacked. There was Souvenir Album, maybe. It was probably the record he listened to the least. The DB Schenker Class 67 had seen better days, too, he supposed. It looked magnificent still but barely made it around the track without slowing to a melancholy stop at least a couple of times, no matter how much he serviced it.
Peggy sat glumly while Cameron, Keith and Meredith entered the stage of drunkenness where one-upmanship masquerades as badinage. There were boasts of drinking sessions, crowbarred anecdotes about meeting celebrities and, most alienating of all, talk of sexual exploits.
“Come on then, come on then,” Keith said, raising his voice above the others’. He had seemed unusually awkward earlier, before Meredith had made their affair public, but now he was relaxing into his old self, shirt untucked, tie loosened, like Mr. Toad on dress-down Friday. “Who here’s done it in public?” he said.
So far Andrew had gotten away with staying quiet and eating his food, occasionally smiling or nodding to give the impression he was engaged with the conversation. But now their plates were cleared and he had nowhere to hide. Keith caught his eye and Andrew knew instantly that he wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to embarrass him.