The Perfect Girlfriend(9)
‘I don’t drink much,’ I say. ‘I’m not really that fussed.’
Everyone bursts out laughing.
‘What?’ I say. ‘It’s true.’ I look round the table of sage faces.
‘You won’t be saying you don’t drink a lot for much longer,’ says Alan, taking two gulps from his flute glass. ‘I give you six months. Tops.’
They can laugh and make assumptions all they like. I zone out.
As I walk 35,000 feet above the Atlantic operating the flight home, the only thing that keeps me going through the endless demands is the knowledge that this is all a means to an end. I have an uncomfortable moment when I am summoned by Alan via interphone to speak to a French passenger in first class who has some queries.
‘Can’t he speak English?’ I say.
‘She. Not very well. That’s why we need you.’
I walk up the aisle as slowly as possible, willing someone to faint and slump over the aisle or ask me lots of complicated questions. The problem is that I exaggerated my ability in French on the application form. I’m barely GCSE standard. However, I took a gamble and only scraped through the mercifully short oral by cramming with a Teach Yourself audiobook a few weeks beforehand and by pretending I had a bad cold on the day. It was such a relief to walk out of the exam room that I forgot to think long-term. I saw it as another hurdle cleared, not as a potential future problem.
I smile as I’m introduced to Madame Chauvin, an elderly lady, who smiles up at me from her seat expectantly and launches into a long speech.
‘I can handle this,’ I say to Alan, who is hovering obsequiously nearby.
He shrugs and disappears through into the galley.
I learned one sentence off by heart in French, which I repeat. ‘Je ne parle pas très bien . . . I don’t speak French very well. Could you speak more slowly, please?’
She frowns, then smiles again and slows down her speech.
I crouch down near her seat, so that hopefully no one else can hear. I catch the words bagages and Paris. I think.
Still grinning, I say, ‘Pas de problème,’ in a voice barely above a whisper and offer her a café au lait.
She opens her mouth, but I pat her on the arm and say, ‘You’re welcome,’ in French, stand up and leave. Before I escape back to economy, I ask the galley crew to make her a coffee with three biscuits, preferably chocolate.
Alan, who is leaning against a counter, tapping his iPad, stops and peers through his glasses at me.
‘What did Madame Chauvin want?’
‘She was concerned about her baggage making a connecting flight to Paris.’
‘Oh. Is that all?’
‘Well, she also misses her grandchildren and is looking forward to seeing them. She’s been away for a long time visiting other relatives. I’d better get back, I haven’t completed my bar paperwork yet.’
I walk swiftly through business class, then premium class until I reach the safety of the rear cabin. The sea of economy faces is a welcome relief, but I don’t properly relax until we land. Every time the interphone rings, my heart leaps in case ‘The French Speaker’ is summoned again.
After landing, I return home briefly to dump my bags, shower and change before I catch the train to Dorchester. I send Babs a message, asking her to collect me, then close my eyes for a little doze on the train. She is waiting for me at the station in her red Mini.
‘I think I’m going to sell the cottage,’ I say to her as we drive past it. ‘I’ll have to hope that someone loves the whole Hansel and Gretel, fairies, flowers and toadstools in the merry forest-style theme, though.’
‘I agree, my love.’
I’d expected a list of objections, all stacked up like planes awaiting air traffic control. My mother had been given the house by my grandparents, both of whom had died before I’d reached my first birthday. Barbara was married to Ernie at the time and they were happy in a modern, detached house where ‘everything worked’.
‘I’d been on at her for years to sell, but she vehemently refused. The cottage was for a family, and as for the grounds . . .’
‘. . . a jungle, from what I’ve seen through the window.’
Amelia liked to buy mixed packets of flower seeds, tip them all together in a huge bowl, then stand in the middle of the garden and throw handfuls into the sky and watch in joyful anticipation as they rained down haphazardly. Of course, some grew; bursts of colour among the random weeds and grass, until they were strangled or gave up the fight after long periods of warm weather with no water.
‘She was never going to heal here, alone, surrounded by memories,’ Babs says softly, almost to herself.
‘She had me,’ I say.
I don’t mention the succession of unsuitable men after Dad left.
‘I did keep an eye on you,’ says Babs quickly. ‘I made you soup and apple crumble. And you knew that my home was an open house when it came to you.’
Occasionally words fail me. Soup and bloody apple crumble. Birthday cards from Father. My family are like the Waltons. Amelia resigned from maternal responsibility when I was awarded a drama scholarship at a boarding school, an institution that prided itself on its values. The Latin for light and truth – lux et veritas – was carved into a wooden panel in the dining area. When not in school uniform, my unfashionable clothes and childish Disney pyjamas ensured I was even further set apart from the queen bee and her friends, with their matching silk pyjama sets and designer sweaters, trousers and shoes.