The Saturday Supper Club Read online

  ‘I’m here,’ I heard Joe shout from the garden. ‘Outside.’

  I smiled as I walked out and saw the blond, skinny, six-foot man that is Joe up a ladder, twisting fairy lights around the branches of the apple tree. He took off his dark-rimmed glasses, closed his eyes, rubbed them briefly, then climbed down and kissed me full on the mouth. His body, pressed up against mine, was baked warm from the sun. I put my arms around him and leaned into his chest, glancing up at the tall, dark, puffy clouds forming in the sky.

  ‘Are those lilies for me?’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen such an enormous bunch.’

  ‘They’re to wish you luck for tonight,’ he said. ‘And to thank you for helping me out at such short notice. You’ll be glad when I’m an international media tycoon.’

  ‘I like you how you are, thank you,’ I said, holding Joe tight. ‘You know, you don’t have to buy me so many flowers. I could open up a florist instead of a cafe. Actually, maybe that would be a wise move, considering the mess—’

  ‘If I stop buying you flowers that florist near the Underground will go out of business,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t be responsible for their downfall. Besides, I’m buttering you up so that you’ll marry me. It’s all emotional blackmail. I’m not totally selfless.’

  Joe asked me to marry him, or alluded to it, almost every day. But it was always done like this, in jest, flippantly, never seriously. I’d got used to not reacting or saying something sarcastic in reply. It was just part of our parlance; a joke we shared, though I’m not convinced either of us found it particularly funny.

  ‘I’ll check my diary,’ I said playfully. ‘There might be a window in 2020—’

  I looked up at him to smile and Joe, a grin on his lips, narrowed his eyes, plotting something. Suddenly, he grabbed me by the waist and hoiked me up over his shoulder into a fireman’s lift.

  ‘Joe,’ I screamed, laughing and kicking my legs. ‘Put me down!’

  ‘No way,’ he laughed. ‘I’m taking you to the bedroom right now.’

  I wriggled down out of his grip, laughing. Back upright, with my feet on the ground, I shook my head and raised my eyebrows.

  ‘Sorry, Joe,’ I said, pinging the elastic of his pants that was sticking out of the top of his jeans. ‘There isn’t time. I’ve so much to do. Later, though?’

  I kissed his cheek and hugged him again.

  ‘Later,’ he said with a sigh. ‘OK.’

  I sensed his dissatisfaction. I’d been so busy with the cafe lately, working late nights and early mornings, I knew our relationship had suffered as a result. I was knackered and stressed, that was all.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ I said, mentally vowing to make more effort after tonight. ‘Maybe we can have breakfast in bed tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, visibly cheering up. ‘Definitely.’

  I didn’t want Joe to feel unappreciated. I chewed the inside of my cheek, hoping that he didn’t.

  ‘Thanks for putting those lights up,’ I said, looking at the lights carefully twisted around the leafy branches of the apple tree. ‘I would never have had time to do that.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said kindly.

  I held on to Joe tightly and squeezed his arm gratefully, leading him back indoors. Nothing was a problem for Joe. He was Mr Capable, adding some semblance of order to my chaotic existence, and I loved him for that.

  ‘I should put those lilies in water,’ I said. ‘I’ve so much to do. They’re coming at seven, aren’t they?’

  Joe nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Dominique, the girl from the paper writing the story, said she’d arrive then with the others.’

  ‘Did she mention their names?’ I asked.

  Joe shook his head and scratched his chin.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She said she’d email, but I haven’t heard anything. I can text her? Actually, I have a feeling it’s policy not to give out names before the group meets . . .’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I shrugged. ‘I’ll find out soon enough.’

  We walked back inside, my arms goose-bumping in the cool, eyes readjusting to the contrasting darkness. Joe stopped me, held me in his arms and kissed me again, before picking up his car keys and mobile phone from the lily table.

  ‘I’d better get going,’ he said. ‘I promised your dad I’d go to that folk club with him while you do your thing tonight. Fuck knows what that will be like.’

  He raised his eyebrows and gave me a quick smile.

  ‘Maybe I’ll get to do some Morris dancing,’ he said.

  ‘You need bells on your shoes,’ I said, then hugged him. ‘Thanks for looking out for my dad. You really are properly wonderful.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘I just like your old man.’

  Joe looked downcast for a moment and I smiled brightly at him. I knew he was thinking of his own dad, whose permanently drunk and disorderly personality left a lot to be desired. My dad, in sharp contrast, was absolutely adorable. Everyone loved him, but no one more than me.

  ‘Have a good time,’ I said, hugging him. ‘I do love you, you know?’

  Joe squeezed me. I breathed in his smell. Mint. Joe always smelt of mint lip balm. This is a very teenage confession, but when Joe had gone away for two weeks on a press trip a couple of months previously, I bought a pot of the stuff, just so I could slather it on my lips. I’d hated those weeks, not because I couldn’t enjoy life without Joe. I could. No, I hated that time because it brought home how much I loved having Joe in my life, which made me feel sick with dread about the possibility of losing him. I knew that people could disappear at the snap of a stick. Each goodbye could potentially be the last. I shivered at the thought.

  ‘Knock ’em dead,’ he called from the doorway. ‘Actually, maybe don’t kill anyone, though that would guarantee publicity. See you tonight, Beautiful.’

  ‘Hardly,’ I said, pulling a disapproving face at him, feeling about twelve years old. I couldn’t help grinning insanely. He was the only person in the world who could get away with calling me ‘Beautiful’ as if it was my birth name, without sounding like a testosterone-pumped jock. Perhaps it was his accent. When you’ve a voice like his, you could say pretty much anything and still sound good. He waved goodbye and closed the front door, leaving me alone in the quiet of the flat.

  ‘Not long left,’ I said, moving into the kitchen and locating my frilly red-and-white gingham apron on the back of the door. ‘Oh-my-God-look-at-the-time.’

  I thought about my menu. I was aiming for seasonal, simple and delicious. I’d bought fresh asparagus and hollandaise for the appetizer, mussels, haddock and clams to make fisherman’s stew for the main course, for which I would also bake rosemary and thyme bread, plus boxes of sweet, wild strawberries and pots of organic fresh double cream to use in my meringue dessert. I needed to make the meringues first. They had to be absolutely perfect, sweet vanilla clouds. Then I had to tidy up.

  ‘Brown sugar,’ I said, flinging open a cupboard door and pushing aside packets of flour and a bottle of vanilla extract. ‘Brown sugar, where are you . . .? And vinegar, I need vinegar.’

  I’d learned the trick about brown sugar and vinegar making meringue crisp on the outside, but mallowy and chewy on the inside, from my mum, who was a brilliant home cook. I remembered my dad’s expression when she made it; kind of stupefied, like there was nothing else in the world but his mouthful of meringue. I smiled at the memory, cracked six eggs into a bowl, separating the yolk from the whites, and thought about my dad’s sixtieth birthday coming up. Daisy was insisting we throw a party for him, but I wasn’t sure it was such a great idea. Much like me, he would rather be lurking in the wings than be centre of attention.

  ‘I’ll just have one glass,’ I thought, pouring myself a glass of white wine, running through what I had left to do, a nervous bubble floating in my belly. I had a growing sense of unease and I couldn’t work out why. Perhaps it was the prospect of having to make conversation with people I didn’t know, und
er a photographer’s glare, around my own dinner table. Though I was a fairly confident person, occasionally I felt inexplicably shy and awkward, wishing I could magic myself into invisibility. I hoped tonight wasn’t one of those nights. I gulped more wine and broke off three squares of dark chocolate, putting all three into my mouth.

  The majority of my menu had to be thrown together right at the last minute, the seafood added at the end, so after a little more preparation I showered and dressed. I carefully applied my make-up. I looked at my reflection and pulled a face. Even though Joe had the nerve to call me beautiful and had once, in a moment of madness, compared me to Audrey Tatou (which I secretly revelled in; who wouldn’t?), I thought my bob and big eyes made me look like some kind of woodland creature.

  ‘Welcome to my dinner party,’ I practised into the mirror, grimacing slightly. ‘What can I get you to drink?’

  I returned to the kitchen and stood at the stove stirring the fisherman’s stew, feeling a knot tighten in my stomach. Out of the window the sky was darkening with rain clouds. There would probably be a storm later. Despite the heavy heat in the kitchen, I shivered.

  Leaving the stew to simmer gently, I melted the dark chocolate for the rich pudding sauce, siphoning some off to ‘test’. Heaven. I blew my fringe out of my eyes and poured a glass of water, but drank more white wine instead. I was increasingly nervous. With a shaking hand, I assembled my dessert into a leaning tower of crisp, chocolate-dipped meringues with oozing layers of vanilla-infused whipped cream, sweet wild strawberries and crushed pistachio nuts, stuffing any broken chunks of it into my mouth as I worked. I finished up eating an entire layer. No one would know. Buzzing with sugar, I fought with the funereal lilies until I’d convinced them to sit in two green vases, set the table, carefully laying out cutlery, glasses, spotty candles, napkins and one of the vases of lilies in the middle, then, with minutes to go, I paced the flat, picking things up from the floor. I stuffed a discarded bra into a drawer, shoved a worrying heap of bills onto a shelf and blew the dust off my cactuses planted in Marmite pots. I changed the CD three times and pushed my Cooking with Keith Floyd DVD under the sofa. I looked out the window and watched a square-headed pitbull dragging his owner along the road. Then, perched on the arm of a chair in the living room, legs crossed, fingers drumming on my knee, I watched the clock. At a minute before seven, the doorbell went in three short bursts, making me jump out of my skin. I glanced in the mirror by the front door and put my mouth into the smile shape. I opened the door and I stared. And I gasped. And my legs threatened to give way beneath me. My hand shot to my mouth. I could not believe my eyes. I blinked. It was Ethan, my ex, former Love Of My Life, the boy who snapped my heart in two, easy as a green bean.

  ‘Oh my God!’ he gasped, rocking backwards, stumbling into the dreadlocked wisteria dangling from the trellis. ‘Eve?’

  My heart pounded in my chest, blood draining from my cheeks. I held on to the door to keep myself upright. It was him. Ethan Miller. I swallowed, and bit my bottom lip so hard I tasted blood.

  ‘Christ almighty,’ he said, his eyes perfect circles. ‘I cannot believe this. It’s been nearly three years.’

  Chapter Two

  Joe and I met over a bathtub of pickled onions. He was eleven. I was ten. My mum, intent on making an enormous batch of pickled onions to last the year through, decided to use the bathtub to marinade the pale shallots in two feet of dark brown pickling vinegar and two fistfuls of peppercorns. Her bath. Her prerogative. We were, thank heavens, an exceptionally clean family. I watched in silent awe while she worked, as if her life depended on making enough pickled onions to feed an army. I’d find out later that, in a way, it did.

  ‘Ingenious idea, darling,’ my dad had said to her, secretly raising his eyebrows at me. ‘Eve, why don’t you get the neighbour’s boy to come and see the kind of madness that goes on round here? He’s out in the garden again.’

  I’d heard Joe, ‘the neighbour’s boy’, being screamed at by his father and cried on by his mother too many times, and I’d once seen him hurling stones at the window of their shed until the glass splintered and cracked. Then he got screamed at and cried on again. My parents worried about Joe out loud most days. They said he wasn’t having a childhood. That his dad was an angry man and that his mum had given up on life. Daisy told me they were trapped in a loveless marriage, as alien a concept to me as my mother apparently needing a ‘quick lie-down’ every afternoon, despite previously being incredibly energetic. So even before we became friends, Joe and I had something in common; we wanted to ignore the uncomfortable truths in our own homes.

  Calling out the bathroom window, across into the neighbour’s garden, I asked Joe if he wanted to see the pickled onions in the bath. He, of course, did. He scrabbled over the fence with the speed of a squirrel, marvelled at the onions and our friendship was born.

  ‘I always knew – and hoped – we’d be an item one day, but I couldn’t work out how it would happen,’ Joe had said when we got together as a couple, sixteen years later. ‘You don’t live next to a girl like you and forget her in a hurry. I even tried to etch your initials into my skin with a compass, little freak that I was. Can you remember those glasses I wore? Jesus, what were my parents trying to do to me? Actually, don’t answer that.’

  It was late one wintry night, the lights were low in Joe’s flat in Kentish Town and we were sitting together on his double bed, leaning up against a stack of pillows, listening to Johnny Cash on his record player, drinking cider and sharing the chestnuts I’d roasted and sprinkled with sea salt. Joe, the skin around his eyes crinkling as he smiled up at me, was holding a burning candle, dripping the molten wax onto the back of his hand. He held his hand up for me to see the splodge of wax, which was almost a heart shape, caught my eye and laughed gently. I leaned into him and rested my head on his shoulder, all angles and not a very good pillow.

  ‘You looked cute,’ I said, digging him in the ribs. ‘But the compass thing is plain weird. You could have got septicaemia or something hideous like that. You know, you hid your devotion very well. I never guessed you were remotely interested. I certainly didn’t think you were emblazoning my name across your body.’

  Back then Joe was totally gangly, wore National Health-style glasses and covered his clothes with little badges. He virtually lived at our house, where he was smiley and pink and ate well. On the rare occasion that I went to his house, he crept about like a shadow, grabbing us bowls of cereal to eat on our knees in his bedroom.

  ‘I didn’t get very far,’ he said. ‘It hurt too much, and besides, your initials are E. T. Not very cool.’

  From the moment we met, Joe and I had been best friends, and when my mother died a year later – and I realized why she had been furnishing us with year-long supplies of pickled onions, jams and chutneys – we barely left each other’s sides. As we grew older, people assumed we’d get together, but we never did. Though we lived in different cities, we stayed in close contact through our university years – he went to Liverpool to study art, I stayed in London to do film studies – but afterwards, when I fell for Ethan, we barely saw one another. Not something I’m proud of.

  ‘If it doesn’t work out with Ethan,’ Joe would sometimes joke when we spoke, ‘there’s always me.’

  But even though Joe hinted at the possibility of something happening between us, nothing did, until we met up again in London, one afternoon almost a year after Ethan had vanished. I was thinner, weaker, paler than before. I had somehow lost sight of who I was, and I didn’t know what to do. I was grateful for Joe, who was, by then, working as a trainee reporter at the Islington Gazette and coming into his own. He was doing geek chic for real, wearing dark-rimmed glasses, skinny trousers, black Vans and shrunken pullovers. He looked every bit the arty Londoner, was undeniably attractive and not remotely pretentious. He had shaken off his childhood shyness and was quietly ambitious, driven to succeed, talking of his plans to be an editor, while I just floundered around like
a jellyfish. I got outrageously drunk and after I’d poured my heart out about Ethan, Joe, who had never had a girlfriend for longer than three months, confessed he’d always fantasized that we would get together. I was flattered, but, even then, still in love with Ethan and didn’t want to slip into a rebound relationship with Joe. Our friendship was too precious for that. But despite my good intentions, before I knew it, we were seeing each other all the time. One night, after watching a film snuggled up on Joe’s sofa, listening to the sounds of the overground train rumbling by outside Joe’s window, we slept together. I’d kept my eyes open because when I shut them Ethan appeared on the backs of my eyelids. But I knew I had to get on with my life now Ethan was gone, and Joe was perfect; he already knew me inside out. We were already best friends. My dad loved him and was delighted we got together. Everyone thought it was a marvellous idea for me to be with Joe. I listened to them carefully. Back then, because I seemed to be making such a mess of things, I thought other people probably knew better than me.

  Joe was totally different to Ethan; quieter, determined, considerate, a buyer of flowers. He was a brilliant illustrator and captured the essence of a person with a few strokes of his fine black pen, whether he scribbled on the back of a napkin or more painstakingly in his sketchpad. He had all his illustrations pinned up on a wall in his flat and I remember, the first time I saw them all, being gobsmacked and embarrassed, because there were so many drawings of me. I hadn’t realized he’d done most of them.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind?’ he’d said, worried for a moment, then grinning sheepishly at me. ‘I’m not a psycho stalker, it’s that you’re so naturally lovely. I’ve always thought so. Ever since we were kids. Can’t believe my luck, you know?’