“Good luck!” she mouthed, giving him a double thumbs-up.
“Can I use the loo?” Meredith said.
“Yes, of course,” Andrew said.
“Where is it?”
“Um, good question!”
Meredith and Keith didn’t join in with Andrew’s forced laughter. “It’s just through there,” he said, pointing vaguely down the hallway, then scratching at the back of his head. Meredith went through a door and Andrew breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the bathroom fan come on. He showed Keith into the dining room and asked him to take Alex’s bag in with him.
“Should be some fun bits and pieces in there. Party stuff, you know?”
He patted Keith on the back, wondering when it was he’d become a back-patter, and dashed away to the kitchen.
Jim had his hands over his face and was muttering through his fingers.
“What’s happened?” Andrew said.
Jim took his hands away. “I’m so sorry, mate. I don’t know what’s happened, but I think in technical cooking terms, I’ve bollocksed it.”
Andrew grabbed a spoon and took a tentative slurp.
“Well?” Jim asked.
It was hard to adequately explain what Andrew’s taste buds had just experienced. There was too much information to process.
“Well, it certainly has a tang to it,” Andrew said, not wanting to hurt Jim’s feelings. His tongue was probing at his back teeth seemingly of its own accord. Wine, he thought. That was the answer. If they were drunk enough they wouldn’t care about the food.
He uncorked two bottles of merlot and headed to the dining room. As he came around the corner he was just thinking how ominously quiet it was—that it was the sort of silence that hung in the air following an argument—when he was met by a series of loud bangs. Startled, he felt both bottles slip from his hands. There was a moment where they all looked at the red wine spilling out onto the light blue carpet, and the falling streamers from the party poppers nestling in the resulting puddle, before everyone burst into life, offering different advice.
“Blot it, you need to blot it. Definitely blot it,” Peggy said.
“But only with up-and-down movements, not side to side—that just makes it worse, I saw it on QVC,” Meredith said.
“Salt, isn’t it?” Keith said. “Or vinegar? White wine?”
“I think that’s a myth,” Andrew said, just in time to see Cameron leap forward with half a bottle of white wine, which he deposited onto the carpet.
“He’s going to kill me,” Andrew breathed.
“Who is?” Meredith said.
“No one. Everyone, please just . . . wait here.” Andrew dashed back down the corridor and into the kitchen. He explained the situation to Rupert, who listened to his rambling, took him by the shoulders and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll sort it later. You need to give those people some food. And I rather think I’ve found a solution.” He pointed to the counter, where five frosted Tupperware boxes sat. They were all labeled with “Cannelloni.”
Andrew turned to Jim, about to apologize.
“It’s fine, do it,” Jim said. “They might’ve found my dish a bit on the . . . challenging side anyway.”
A period of relative serenity followed as they cooked the cannelloni in batches in the microwave and cleaned up the mess. Andrew even felt relaxed enough that when Rupert wryly observed the absurdity of what they were doing, and Alex joked that she couldn’t believe Andrew had talked them into it, he nearly dissolved into hysterics, having to shush the others good-naturedly. He periodically returned to the dining room to hand out breadsticks and olives, while Alex took on the role of continuity adviser on a film set, making sure he carried an oven glove over his shoulder and wiped a damp cloth on his forehead to give the impression of slaving away at a hot stove.
When the food was finally ready to dish up, Andrew felt the most composed he had that evening. The cannelloni wasn’t exactly awe-inspiring, and neither was the conversation, but it really didn’t matter. Civility was exactly what was needed, and thus far everyone was on the same page. Keith, who had been quieter than usual, and less inclined to sarcastic asides, related a story, falteringly, about a voicemail he’d received the previous week. A woman had seen in the local paper the story of a pauper’s funeral and had only then realized it was her brother, whom she’d not spoken to in years. “She told me they’d fallen out because of a table. They thought it was an antique passed down through ten generations. They’d fought over it when their parents died and eventually she came out on top. It was only after she’d seen that he’d died that she decided to get the thing valued, and it turns out it was a fake. A cheap knockoff. Barely worth a fiver.” Keith suddenly seemed uncomfortable in the reflective silence. “Anyway,” he said. “Just makes you think, I suppose. About what’s important.”
“Hear hear,” Cameron said. They were quiet after this, creating the inevitable awkwardness after someone’s said something profound, nobody wanting to be judged for bursting the bubble by following up with something trivial in comparison.
It was Peggy who broke first. “What’s for pudding then, Andrew?”
“You’ll have to wait and see,” Andrew said, hoping that the others weren’t beginning to get annoyed with all this vagueness when it came to the food.
He headed back to the kitchen and took in the scene from the doorway. Jim, Rupert and Alex were all huddled around the counter, where they were carefully adding strawberries and crushed pine nuts to bowls of something that looked genuinely delicious. Andrew stayed still for a moment, not wanting to announce his presence just yet. The three of them were hushed in their concentration, all working as a team, and Andrew felt the faint soreness of tears beginning to form behind his eyes. How kind these people were. How lucky he was to have them on his side. He cleared his throat and the others looked back, concern on their faces, smiles appearing when they saw it was him.
“Ta-dah!” Alex whispered, making up for having to lower her voice with some extravagant jazz hands.
Andrew brought the plates into the dining room and received some admiring oohs and aahs.
“Blimey, Andrew,” Cameron said through a mouthful of ice cream. “I didn’t realize you were such a whiz in the kitchen. This one of Diane’s recipes?”
“Ha, no,” Andrew said. “She’s . . .” He searched for the words. Something light. Something funny. Something normal. As he racked his brain, the memory came to him, crisp and clear, of Diane taking his hand and leading him away from the party, down the stairs, out into the snowy night. He shivered involuntarily.
“She’s not here,” he said eventually. He looked at Peggy. She was digging around with her spoon in her bowl, despite the fact it was empty, her expression betraying nothing.
Cameron was drumming his fingers on the table. He seemed to be waiting for them all to hurry up and finish, and Andrew noticed him check his watch surreptitiously. Peggy finally stopped pretending to eat and Cameron got to his feet.
“I actually have a few words I need to say to you all,” he said, ignoring the others’ exchanging nervous looks. “It’s been a challenging few months. And I think that sometimes the personal has got in the way of the professional—to some extent at least—for all of us at one point or another. On my part, I apologize for anything that I’ve done that’s not sat well with you. I know this, for example—these evenings—haven’t been to everyone’s taste, but I hope you understand it was simply an attempt to help bring us all together. Because, as you may have gathered by now, it was my feeling that top brass were much less likely to try and break up a strong, cohesive team in the event of cuts. That, I suspect, was naive on my part. And you’ll have to forgive me for that, and for not being as explicit with you as I should have been, but I was just trying to do what I thought was best. However, it turns out that the statistics—and it feels strange to say this, I promise you—are on our side. The number of public health funerals rose even more sharply this year than any of us were expecting. And I’m incredibly proud of how you have dealt with that as a team. In truth, to be completely blunt, I have no idea what’s going to happen next. A decision has been delayed on whether cuts are needed until at least the end of the year. Here’s hoping that isn’t the case. All I can promise is that, if it comes down to it, I will fight your cause to the absolute best of my abilities.” He looked at them all in turn. “Well, thank you. That’s it.”