Don’t You Forget About Me(26)

‘I don’t think holding out was here or there with Robin. He pulled the whole doesn’t believe in being faithful to one person thing, like he thinks he’s in the Sixties. We were merely ships, passing in the shite.’

Our eyes flicker to Milo but Milo is whispering something to Paploo.

‘Sorry,’ I mouth at Esther.

‘Careful. He’s like a bloody Mynah bird at the moment,’ she hisses. Then more loudly: ‘What a timewaster. You’re thirty. Of course you want more commitment than that.’

She says this the way Mum does, hoping that by asserting it, it’ll make it true. I go into mutinous teenage mode, because they’re making me feel like a scutter.

‘I don’t know if I want a proposal or whatever, but yes, maybe more devotion than having ess-ee-ex with other women would be nice.’

Esther drums her fingertips on the arm of the chair.

‘Who are you looking for? I struggle to picture him. I know he’ll have to be different, somehow.’

She sounds like Rav. Am I being obtuse, trying too hard? Showing off? Dad once told me I was a natural show-off who hates being the centre of attention: ‘a paradox you will have to resolve one day’. Not a day Dad hung around long enough for.

‘I strongly suspect Mr Georgina doesn’t exist,’ I say, lightly. I take a handful of pistachios from a leaf-shaped china boat on the coffee table, and pick at a shell. ‘I think that’s why I went for a wild card instead.’

‘I am sure he does exist. It’s just …’

Here it comes. There’s no tail without sting, with my sister.

‘… There’s what you think being in love is when you’re nineteen or twenty and then what it actually is when you’re a grown-up, and these are two different things. But some of us keep looking for the first version long after we should’ve let it go,’ Esther says. This lands hard, particularly with last night fresh in mind, and I say nothing.

‘Well, what I thought love was going to be, perhaps, I know you weren’t like that,’ Esther adds, completely misreading my silence and everything else too. I know she means well. ‘What I’m saying is, lower your expectations. Being “in love” is a contented kind of bored with each other. You’re not going to find someone who sets you on fire and is also a good idea and you know why? Because being on fire isn’t a good idea. It’s destructive. When anyone describes love nowadays they usually mean lust.’

I start laughing weakly and put my hand over my mouth so I don’t spray shards of nut.

‘What’s funny?’

‘Lower my expectations. I found Robin up to his plums in someone else. Lower than that? Should I start writing to lifers in prison? Dear Peter Sutcliffe …’

Even Esther snorts.

Milo says, while lowering a net trap full of pistachio shells: ‘Plum. Pluuuuums.’

‘Milo! Remember what we said about repeating things? Auntie Georgina was talking about plum crumble. Weren’t you?’

‘Entirely. That well known autumnal dessert, plum crumble.’

‘Crumble,’ Milo says. ‘Plum crumble. Plumble.’

‘Yes!’ Esther says, emphatically. ‘Plumble! Awww … Anyway.’ She shakes her head, gives a beatific Mum Mode smile. ‘What’s that Ewok called?’

‘Shipshite.’

I did say to Esther, once Milo had been given a thorough debriefing, surely it’d be worse if he was repeating the name of the Yorkshire Ripper. She was not mollified.

After we’ve sat in and are making monsters of ourselves over the roast potatoes – there’s some sort of witchcraft going on involving a semolina crust – a large vehicle pulls into the driveway. I see the man at the wheel get out and start unfolding a wheelchair. Moments later, the bulky, octogenarian form of Nana Hogg is helped into it.

Mark’s paternal grandmother is feared and despised in equal measure by Esther, due to her habit of being exorbitantly, lavishly rude. Esther claims she’s senile but I’m not sure she isn’t just cantankerous and decades into the Do I Look Like I Give A Fuck years. An outing from her care home is a chance of anarchy.

Due to a sense of duty and deference to her age, no one has considered not inviting her to Sunday lunches. Esther loathes her but I enjoy her hugely. Probably because, unlike everyone else, I don’t have a respectable fa?ade for her to tear down.

‘I didn’t realise she was coming today!’ I say, brightly.

‘Mmmm,’ grimaces Esther, looking up at the clock. ‘Only an hour and a quarter late, lucky us. She thinks she’s Princess Margaret.’

‘She’s had trouble with a water infection, she’s slow to get going,’ Mark tuts, as he heads to the door. The only time he’s publicly critical of Esther is when she runs Nana Hogg down.

I mean, she’s his granny so he’s going to be defensive, but Mark is an incredibly nice person anyway. Mild, kind, sees the good in everyone, always interested in others, in a self-effacing rather than nosy way.

When Esther first told me she was seeing someone on her accountancy degree ‘and I think he’s the one!’ I was like: ruh roh, he’ll be at worst a ruthless bastard and at best a crashing bore. She had a taste for mean jocks at school. Thank God, given he turned into husband and father of her child, that Mark is lovely – witness his job-giving generosity with me. He wears hand-stitched moccasin slippers around the house and yet I would lay down my life for him.