Truly Madly Guilty(54)

‘Yeah, not bad, hey,’ said Vid. ‘Tell me, do you taste a little hint of something, like the idea of a flavour, you know, the dream of a flavour, and you just can’t quite put your finger on it?’

‘It’s sage,’ said Clementine.

‘It is sage!’ cried Vid.

‘My wife is so sage,’ said Sam. Tiffany chuckled and Clementine saw the pleasure on her husband’s face that he’d made the hot chick laugh.

She said, ‘Don’t encourage the bad dad humour, Tiffany.’

‘Sorry.’ Tiffany grinned at her.

Clementine smiled back and found her eyes drawn irresistibly to Tiffany’s cleavage. It was like something from a Wonderbra ad. Were those breasts real? Tiffany could probably afford the best. Clementine’s friend Emmeline would know. Emmeline had perfect pitch and an unerring eye for a fake boob. That glorious cleavage had to be as unnatural as this backyard. Tiffany adjusted her T-shirt. Oh God, she’d been staring for too long now. Clementine looked away fast and back at the children.

‘This strudel is very good,’ said Oliver, in his careful, polite way, wiping a fragment of pastry off the side of his mouth.

‘Yes, it’s excellent,’ said Erika.

Clementine turned her head. Erika had slurred the word ‘excellent’, just a little. In fact, if it were anyone else Clementine wouldn’t have used the word ‘slur’, but Erika had a very precise way of speaking. Each vowel was always enunciated just so. Was Erika a little tipsy? If so, it would be a first. She’d always hated the idea of losing control. So did Oliver. Presumably that was part of the reason why they were attracted to each other.

‘So now you’ve passed that test,’ said Vid. ‘I’ve got another one.’

‘I’ll win this one,’ said Sam. ‘Bring it on. Sporting trivia? Limbo? I’m great at limbo.’

‘He is surprisingly good at limbo,’ said Clementine.

‘Oh, me too,’ said Tiffany. ‘Or I used to be. I’m not as flexible as I once was.’

She put down her drink, bent her body back at an extraordinary angle so that her T-shirt rode up, and thrust out her pelvis. Was that a tattoo just below the waistband of her jeans? Clementine strained to see. Tiffany took a couple of steps forward and hummed limbo music as she ducked under an invisible pole.

She straightened and pressed her hand to her lower back. ‘Ow. Getting old.’

‘Jeez,’ said Sam a little hoarsely. ‘You might give me a run for my money.’

Clementine stifled a giggle. Yes, my darling, I think she would give you a run for your money.

‘Where are the kids?’ he asked suddenly, as if coming back to reality.

‘They’re right there,’ said Clementine. She pointed at the gazebo where Dakota and the girls were still playing with the dog. ‘I’m watching them.’

‘Do you do yoga?’ Oliver asked Tiffany. ‘You’ve got great flexibility.’

‘Great flexibility,’ agreed Sam. Clementine reached over and discreetly pinched the flesh above his knee as hard as she could.

‘Ah-ya.’ Sam grabbed her hand to stop her.

‘What’s that, mate?’ asked Oliver.

‘Bah! It’s not a limbo competition!’ said Vid. ‘It’s a music competition. It’s my favourite piece of classical music. Now, look, I will be honest with you. I don’t know anything about classical music. I know nothing. I’m an electrician! A simple electrician! What would I know about classical music? I come from peasant stock. My family – we were peasants! Simple peasants!’

‘Here we go with the simple peasants.’ Tiffany rolled her eyes.

‘But I like classical music,’ continued Vid, ignoring her. ‘I like it. I buy CDs all the time! Don’t know what I’m buying! Just pick them at random off the shelf! Nobody else buys CDs anymore, I know, but I do, and I got this one day, at the shopping centre, you know, and on the way home I played it in the car, and when this came on, I had to pull over, I had to stop on the side of the road because it was like … it was like I was drowning. I was drowning in feeling. I cried, you know, I cried like a baby.’

He pointed at Clementine. ‘I bet the cellist knows what I mean.’

‘Sure,’ said Clementine.

‘So let’s see if you can name it, hey? Maybe it’s not even good music! What do I know?’

He fiddled with his phone. Naturally the cabana had a built-in sound system that was linked to his mobile phone.

‘Who says only the cellist can enter this competition?’ said Sam. Clementine could hear him imitating Vid’s speech cadences without realising he was doing it. It was so embarrassing the way he did that, picking up waiters’ accents in restaurants and coming over all Indian or Chinese. ‘What about the marketing manager, eh?’

‘What about the accountant?’ Oliver followed the joke with heavy-handed jolliness.

Erika said nothing. She sat with her forearms perfectly still on the armrests of her chair, staring off into the distance. It was unusual too for Erika to disengage from a conversation like this. Normally she listened to social chitchat as if she’d be sitting for a quiz later.

‘You can all enter!’ cried Vid. ‘Silence.’

He lifted his phone as though it were a conductor’s baton and then dropped it in a dramatic swooping motion. Nothing happened.