Читать книгу The Happy Glampers - Daisy Tate - Страница 13

‘Charlotte! Darls … Happy Birthday! Twenty-one again!’

And so the charade begins.

‘Jessica! So glad you could make it. Treena! What a lovely frock. Is that Rixo? Thank you so much for … oh! For me? You really shouldn’t have. Oli’s just over there, by the champagne. Ha ha! You know what he says. A day that begins with bubbly is never a bad one!’

The effort was exhausting. Was this what her mother had felt like during her final days with the oxygen mask? Constantly taking those small sips of air in the vain hope the torture might end.

Oli was long back from his mystery errand looking roughly the same as when he’d wandered off, bacon sandwich in hand, phone to ear. Only this time it was glasses of fizz and lipsticky kisses that were occupying him. No added layers of guilt as far as she could ascertain. Perhaps, as Izzy had suggested, he had been off getting her a present.

The only truly good part of this, Charlotte thought, was having Freya, Izzy and Emily here. They were doing a remarkable job. Steering people this way and that. Checking up on her but not looking too sympathetic. Too much sympathy would crack the very thin veneer of normality she was desperately clinging on to.

‘What? We’re not up at the proper house?’

Charlotte’s attention shot to the car park where, amidst the hubbub of their other guests, she couldn’t miss her mother-in-law’s distinctive voice.

Verity had grown up in Rhodesia – when it was still Rhodesia – in a sprawling home overflowing with staff. She’d met and married Nigel shortly after they’d both matriculated from Oxford (classics for her because ‘she had to do something’ and law for him).

After a stint in New York where Nigel had made a rather tidy sum in real estate, they moved to their Sussex home where, Verity was fond of saying to anyone who would listen, their ‘crumbly old manor home had given them no choice but to hire in a gardener, housekeeper and an odd-jobs man.’

Charlotte had always had the distinct feeling that Verity included her on the staff list. She had, after all, been ‘one of the staff’ when she’d met Oli. It struck her that perhaps one of the reasons Oli had been so enchanted with her was because he finally had someone who thought he was perfectly fine as he was. Better than that. Amazing. His mother was incredibly demanding. Where her parents hadn’t had any expectations for her at all, Verity wanted her son to be Nigel but better, and never shied away from reminding him that the reason Oli and Charlotte lived in a very nice house was because Nigel had bought it for them. For their wedding, in fact. Her parents had given them an Argos gift token. She bristled on Oli’s behalf. The economy was quite different to what it had been back in the day, and making the squillions Nigel had was nigh on impossible unless you were an outright crook. As things stood, Oli did very well. Even if he did agreed with his mother about just about everything Charlotte could improve upon. Very well indeed. Her heart softened for her husband. Affair aside, he worked incredibly hard. And he did love his family. Perhaps all that bravura was masking a little boy still trying to attain his mother’s approval. Which made his affair a blip. A painful one, but something they could move past.

‘Darling!’ Verity swept in. ‘Don’t you look sweet in that little … that’s not Zara, is it? I’m sure I saw one of the other girls wearing the exact same one. My goodness.’ Verity gave her a dry peck on the cheek then pursed her taupe lips as she scanned the area, her eyes stopping and stalling at Freya’s serviette bunting. ‘It all looks so—’

‘Wonderful!’ Charlotte’s father-in-law, Nigel, bustled his wife out of the way, planting the obligatory kisses first on one cheek and then the other. He always smelled of pipe tobacco and leather, though she’d never seen him come in contact with either. ‘The place looks ripping. Hope you don’t mind, love, but Verity didn’t want to mess with the hoi polloi on the bus so we’ve got a driver in tow. You wouldn’t mind sparing him a sandwich or something, would you?’

Charlotte didn’t get a chance to answer as a second stream of guests from the Sussex Schooner, as Oli insisted on calling it, arrived from the car park. They all seemed quite jolly for so early in the day. It was only just noon.

‘Brilliant idea with the champers, doll.’ A friend from Oli’s golf club purred into her ear as she went through the motions. Kiss. Kiss. Half hug. Smile. ‘Is that Zara? I have the same one! My goodness. It’s all very rustic out here, isn’t it?’

‘That’s what I was saying, darling!’ Verity had a knack for pouncing on moments to prove she’d been right. ‘Look at you! Now, that’s what I call a party frock.’

Whether Charlotte wanted it to or not, the flow of people coming off the bus swept her into the role of hostess for a party she’d not entirely wanted to have.

She looked up and smiled at the long strings of decoration above her. At least she had her bunting.

An hour later she felt as if her head was spinning. Perhaps she should’ve eaten something before letting all of those leather-aproned serving staff fill up her glass. She went into the kitchen to get a glass of water and escape the sun for a moment, only to find Poppy curled up in a corner of a sofa, thumbing away at her phone.

‘Hello, darling. Everything all right?’

Poppy’s eyes shot out to a crowd of teens playing Giant Jenga. Jack was clearly the ringleader, egging everyone on to have a go. Freya’s two were a short way off showing Luna how to play Connect Four.

Poppy looked back at her phone and shrugged.

Charlotte examined the group a bit more closely. She was sure she recognized a couple of girls from the children’s boarding school. Ella and Maisie, was it? She’d definitely seen Maisie’s mum. A rather brisk woman who never bored of letting everyone know how terrifically busy she was with her organic energy ball business now that Nestlé were interested in snapping it up.

‘Isn’t that Maisie out there? And Ella? Don’t you want to be with the group?’

Poppy’s mouth screwed up tight to the left-hand side of her mouth. A nervous habit that Verity regularly tried to discourage. Charlotte preferred not to mention it as she’d always found her own mother’s rebukes doubled her humiliation and her need to seek comfort from it. Nail biting had been hers.

‘They’re having enough fun without me there to ruin it.’

Oh. Now this didn’t sound good.

Charlotte sat down beside her, resisting the urge to pull her into one of the cuddles they’d so enjoyed when she was a little girl. Poppy had become a big fan of space since she’d started at this new boarding school that Oli had insisted would be the making of them.

‘I thought the three of you were friends.’

‘No, Mum!’ Poppy spat. ‘We’re not friends. Typical you. Seeing what you want to see instead of seeing exactly what’s in front of your face! Can’t you see they’re only nice to me because of Jack?’

When she saw the dismay on Charlotte’s face, she crumpled as quickly as she’d roared. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy. I don’t mean to shout at you on your birthday.’

This time Charlotte did put her arms round her daughter. Stiff shoulders and all. The poor love. Feeling she was playing second fiddle to her brother. How awful. Who knew if it was true? Girls could be so difficult at that age. So complex.

She’d hated being a teen. All of the changes that had come with it. And not just the physical ones. The new schools. New cliques. New friends to invent when she needed to escape her parents’ flat. She’d been so dreadfully shy and her school had been particularly awful. Bullies. Truants. Gangs. Charlotte had always thought of the life they gave their children as a godsend. Not a well-heeled copy of her own.

Poppy eventually ducked out of the hug, loosening yet more hair out of her thick, fishtail plait. She looked more little girl than blossoming thirteen-year-old. ‘I’ll be fine, Mum. Don’t worry. I’ve probably got my period coming or something.’

She tried to protest, but Poppy held up a hand that distinctly said No, grabbed a couple of canapés off the counter and slipped away into the crowd. She was right. Now wasn’t the time. Just as it wasn’t the time to tell Oli she was up to the challenge. She wanted to raise their children together. For their marriage to work. She wanted her family. Even if it meant constantly treading water to keep it.

Charlotte cringed as the calls for a speech grew louder. It had been mortifying enough opening her presents in front of everyone. The gifts had been lovely, of course. Freya’s lace-edged serviettes made from Irish linen were beautiful. There’d been no need to confess they were seconds. Izzy had bought her a delicate necklace with a starfish on it. Her favourite sea animal. And Emily had given her a Brora cardigan she already had plans to move into for the autumn. Together they had bought her membership to the Royal Academy of Arts. She’d nearly wept at the thoughtfulness. It had been so long since she’d been to a gallery. Oli found art appreciation tedious at best.

Amazing to think how many years it had been since they’d properly seen one another and yet how perfectly her friends still knew her.

She stared at the gifts on the table. The children had given her a handbag she knew for a fact her mother-in-law had selected because it was bright blue, a colour Charlotte had never favoured. Poppy had tucked a couple of her favourite sanitizing gels into the side pocket, which was thoughtful. The rest of the gifts were … nice. She wasn’t ungrateful, but couldn’t help feeling that the guests had been generous in the way one might be to a maiden aunt who only came down from her poky cottage in the Lake District for Christmas. A spiralizer. A leather-bound journal. Quite a few organic soaps and lotions. She already had the book on hygge and was fairly certain she’d seen the Christmas ornaments at one of the school’s silent auctions a year or so back.

It was extraordinary how little the people she saw every day of her life knew her. Was it because there wasn’t much to know? She always agreed with Oli. Rarely put her foot down about anything as one of the school governors. She was the tea-maker, really. Had no opinion on current events. What little news she was aware of she read in Waitrose Weekend. Not exactly a paper with its finger on the world’s political pulse.

Perhaps it was her fault Oliver had strayed. Xanthe did seem terrifically interesting, if her Instagram posts were anything to go by.

Her eyes moved over to the small velvet box placed in prime position on the gift table. It was from the jeweller’s in Sittingstone village, so his errand this morning must have been to collect it. She didn’t know whether to feel hurt it had been so last minute or pleased he’d remembered at all.

The sapphire earrings Oliver had chosen were lovely. Beautiful, in fact. But clip-ons? It was his mother who didn’t have pierced ears. She’d had hers done since she was a teen. And, again, she had never really been one to wear blue, so …

‘Speeeeeech!’

Oliver stood up, shushing the crowd in that ‘All right, already. I’ll give you what you’ve all been waiting for’ way of his. They never wanted her to say anything, thank god.

‘Charlotte,’ he began loftily as the crowd leant in and the waiting staff topped up everyone’s glasses.

The children weren’t anywhere to be seen, save Poppy who, worryingly, was wandering back towards that little nook she’d appropriated in the kitchen tent. At the edge of the crowd, Emily, Izzy and Freya had all lined up and were each holding one of her handmade cakes. It looked like a Bake-Off presentation of Charlotte Mayfield’s Greatest Cake Hits. Those girls. Until this very moment, Charlotte had thought she’d invited them out of misguided sentiment, but honestly? She’d asked them to come because she wanted people who knew her at her party. The Charlotte who adored art. The Charlotte who couldn’t enter a room without giving it a tweak or a rejig so that it looked just so, and would then appreciate that she’d done as much. The Charlotte whose hopes and dreams they’d supported rather than dismissed as silly when there were other, Mayfield-shaped hopes and dreams to fulfil. She saw now she was drowning in a quicksand of upper-middle-class beigeness. Perhaps she’d known that, without their help, there wasn’t a chance on earth she’d be able to claw her way out and find herself again.

‘What can I say about my wife of over fifteen years?’ Oli took her hand and stood back, appraising her as one might a newly purchased heifer.

‘That she has the patience of a bloody saint!’ a red-faced man shouted out. Karl, was it? One of the chaps who propped up the bar at their local. What on earth had he done to warrant an invitation? She’d not so much as said hello to the man.

‘That’s a good start,’ Oli laughed congenially. He always could play to the crowd. ‘It’s astonishing to think this beautiful creature here is forty. It seems like only yesterday she was but a naive Yorkshire lass with nothing more than big dreams in an even bigger city—’

‘Oi!’ shouted Izzy, nearly losing her grip on the carrot cake. Oh dear. ‘I think you’ll find an art history degree hardly makes her Dorothy in Oz!’

Charlotte squeezed Oli’s hand. He squeezed back, mistakenly thinking she was on board with being portrayed as a modern-day Eliza Doolittle. When had his hand stopped becoming a thing of comfort? Yesterday morning? The first time he’d sided with his mother rather than his wife? This very moment?

She pulled her hand free.

‘Absolutely right, Izzy. And of course there was the party planning. Back in the day she would’ve had us celebrating properly up at Sittingstone Castle, but this clever one insisted all the cool kids were keeping it au naturel!’

No she hadn’t. She’d done no such thing. Charlotte was about to correct him when she caught him sending a pointed look at Freya’s bunting which was now, unfortunately, a bit worse for wear.

People laughed, but didn’t look as if they were entirely sure they knew why.

He carried on smoothly, ‘Regardless.’

Indeed.

‘Charlotte is, as I said, from ooop North. When I met her …’

… Oli had been covered in red wine that one of the legal secretaries had thrown at him after he’d made a sexist remark. Not that Charlotte had known that then. He’d told her the girl was cross because he wouldn’t go home with her.

Oli smiled ingratiatingly at Charlotte, then the crowd. ‘My girl here needed a bit of softening round the edges. With a few curative pointers from myself and my family,’ he lifted a glass to his mother who sent an adoring look in return, ‘we now have supper instead of dinner, bread instead of teacakes and, my personal favourite, a proper cup of Earl Grey in the morning instead of that—’

‘Eh, laddie! I object to that! A person’s from where a person’s from and no one should try and oppress them for it!’ Freya’s broad Scots rang out despite Monty’s feeble attempt to shush her. Charlotte had forgotten what champagne did to Freya’s accent.

Amidst the murmurings of ‘bloody Scots’ and ‘never miss a chance to wave the Saltire’, Oli soldiered on. This was his crowd and he knew it. ‘So here she is, over fifteen years on. All grown up and properly civilized. She makes a mean Sunday roast. Her Yorkies are the envy of Sussex—’

‘Seriously? Her Yorkies?’ Emily, who hated the limelight as much as she did, was indignant. ‘How about her brains? Her efficiency. Her UN-like diplomacy?’

A few people called out ‘hear-hear’, but not enough to decrease the humiliation. Or Emily’s sotto voce, ‘Bloody wanker.’

The children appeared at the edge of the group, clearly keen to see what the hubbub was about.

Oh, when would this end?

Undeterred, Oli carried on as if no one had said a word. ‘Thanks to Charlotte’s fortitude, we’ve got two gorgeous children who, hopefully, take after their mother more than they do their monster of an old man.’ He pulled a face, beaming when the protests flooded in.

Charlotte did her best not to flinch when he put his arm around her shoulder and lifted his glass. ‘I’m going to wrap this up so all of this attention doesn’t go to her head. Wouldn’t want her running off and finding someone else’s shirts to iron, would we? To Charlotte. Happy Birthday.’

As the crowd dutifully echoed the toast and drank, Charlotte watched in horror as Freya marched with the fixed determination of someone who may have had slightly too much to drink to the front of the group and lobbed her beautiful, buttercream, triple-chocolate devil’s food cake directly into Oliver’s face.