Confessions of a Serial Dater Page 25

  Anyway, I’ve had several practice cooking runs, just to ensure success. I’ve calculated ingredients, cooked them, and measured them onto ten plates. The first couple of attempts were a disaster, but I really did a decent job the third time, and the results are currently frozen in individual servings in my freezer.

  Oh, yes, I’d planned how to accommodate ten people around a table by opening the partition doors that separate my living room from my dining room and extending the dining-room table by the cunning addition of Carmen’s collapsible table, covering both with large tablecloths. I’d even planned to borrow four extra chairs, crockery and cutlery from Jess or Carmen. I had it all worked out perfectly to a T, and in my state of organized euphoria, I should have known that something would go wrong.

  It began yesterday at lunchtime.

  I’d taken an extended lunch break so that I could make a thorough reconnaissance of the supermarket and purchase everything that I needed for the dinner party. With list in hand, I waged a successful campaign that had all the ingredients purloined, taken home, unpacked, and put away, ready for the next stage of the assault.

  So when I arrived back at the office just after two and found that Elaine had arrived minutes earlier, you could have knocked me down with a feather. This is what happened when I pushed open the door and walked into the main reception area…

  “She shouldn’t be much longer,” Shirley tells Elaine as she sneezes into a Kleenex.

  “Here, love, I’ve made you a nice cup of tea and cut you a slice of my homemade chocolate cake. That’ll keep you going until Rosie gets back. You look like you need feeding up,” Gloria says, holding out a cup and plate to Elaine. And then to Shirley, “Are you eating enough greens? Only if you ate more vitamin C you wouldn’t get so many colds.”

  “No, thank you,” Elaine tinkles, taking a horrified step back from the germ-infested Shirley and the calorie-infested plate of cake. “I’ll just wait in her office, shall I?”

  This is the first time Elaine has ever condescended to visit Odd Jobs, and before I can absorb my shock and surprise, Colin unintentionally lands me in A Situation.

  “Here she is,” Colin monotones as he sees me. “Get everything you need for the engagement party tomorrow night?”

  “Darling, there you are,” Elaine singsongs at me. “I was just passing on my way to Luke’s new house. I’m helping him with the interior design—you know what men are like when it comes to that kind of thing,” she adds, laughing her tinkly laugh.

  Luke’s got a house? I suppose it makes sense that Elaine makes sure that she likes the décor. I mean, it will be partly her house too, won’t it?

  Luke and Rowan are officially separated. They announced it just after the christening, and it even got a mention in the daily newspapers. Not that it has anything to do with me. Not that I’m remotely interested.

  “So I thought, why not pop in and say hello to Rosie?” Elaine continues. It’s all part of her newly reformed character. Since Charlie and Lewis’s housewarming party with Luke, she’s taken to calling me to fill me in on what she and Luke are planning next.

  “Um, lovely,” I say with a bright smile on my face, as I wait for the other shoe to drop. Maybe she missed it? “So, how’s Becky?”

  “Gorgeous. Nurse Hodges has taken her for a walk in the park. So important for infants, you know.” And then, as she absorbs Colin’s words, “Oh, are you having an engagement party? I thought you weren’t going to bother. I thought the wedding was low key.”

  “It’s not an engagement party,” I stress, feeling my heart sink. Thank you, Colin. “It’s just, you know, a few friends and a plate of spaghetti Bolognese. Nothing elegant, just, um, pasta and supermarket wine.”

  “Oh, but that sounds so—so spontaneous. And fun.” Elaine adds just that perfect bit of pathos to her voice, and I’m immediately guilty for excluding her.

  “Well, if you’ve nothing better to do, you’re more than welcome to join us,” I say, infusing my voice with false eagerness. “I just didn’t think it was your, you know, kind of thing, but—”

  “Darling, we’re not snobs,” Elaine jumps in, and I cringe at her use of “we,” because, of course, I know that she’s not referring to herself and Baby Becky. “Luke and I would love to come to your little spaghetti party. Although I didn’t think that you could cook, hahaha.”

  “She’s been taking lessons,” Shirley tells her. “Oh. Well, I hope you all have a lovely time,” she adds dourly, then blows her nose, and I feel like the meanest person.

  “I suppose you’re going, are you?” Gloria asks Colin. “I mean, with you being Rosie’s lodger. Not that I’m angling for an invite or anything,” Gloria adds with a big beam on her face. “But if you need any help with the cooking, you know my number—just give me a call. I’ll be happy to stay in the background and just—help.”

  “I haven’t got any fixed plans,” Colin monotones back at her. “I thought I’d spend the evening checking and dusting my model train collection.”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I didn’t mean to hurt Colin’s feelings. I just assumed that he wouldn’t want to join us. I mean, on the previous two occasions I had my friends around, Colin just disappeared upstairs, even though I told him that he was welcome to join us. I assumed tomorrow would be the same, so I just didn’t ask him. How did I suddenly become the most heartless person on the face of the planet? I take a deep breath. There is no way out of this.

  “It’s like I said, just a few friends having an informal plate of spaghetti,” I say. “But if you all want to come, then that would be lovely. The more the merrier,” I add, just a bit hysterically.

  How the hell am I going to cook dinner for fifteen people? Where will they sit?

  I can do this. I can cope. I called Carmen and Jess earlier. They’re bringing Jess’s fold-down arts and crafts table, plus more additional crockery and cutlery. And chairs.

  Christ, they’ll all be here in a minute, and I haven’t even gotten the water boiling for the pasta yet! Better get a move on.

  “Can I just get to that drawer, Rosie?” Colin asks, just as I’m teeming spaghetti sauce from four saucepans (two of which are new, because I needed additional pans to cook additional food) into four tureens (two of which are also new, because I needed additional tureens in which to store the additional food) so that I can keep it hot in the oven while I wash the four saucepans, boil water in them, and cook the pasta.

  I sigh, put down the ladle and move out of Colin’s way.

  “Rosie, Colin’s just wiped that kitchen surface, and you’ve dirtied it again,” Mum fusses, and I hold my breath and count to ten. “Here,” she says, handing me a small plate and a cloth, and I fight the strong urge to scream in frustration. “Put the ladle on the plate and give the side another wipe, there’s a love.”

  Mum wasn’t originally on the invitation list for tonight, either, but that all changed when Mum phoned this morning to invite Colin to go to bingo with her. They’ve become very chummy these days. Colin, of course, told her I was having an engagement party.

  What else could I do to preserve world peace but invite her? So, of course, I also had to invite Granny Elsie. And Sid and Alf, because she’s still embroiled in her love triangle and didn’t want to play favorites.

  “Everything under control?” Jonathan asks from the doorway. “We’re doing nicely out here. Not to make you panic or anything about dinner being late, but people are starting to arrive. Just thought I’d see if you needed a hand, but you know how useless I am in the kitchen. But I can see you’re fully manned—I’ll go and sort out the drinks,” he says, beaming at Mum and Colin, totally missing the desperate, madwoman expression on my face as he disappears back into the living room.

  “You’ll have to get that sauce into the tureens and into the oven if you’re going to have enough pans to cook the pasta,” Colin tells me wisely, and I want to shake him.

  “Have you got another ladle?” Mum asks. “I’ll give y
ou a hand. Oh, have you got the plates in the oven keeping warm? Why don’t you let me—”

  “Can I help?” Luke asks brightly from the doorway, and I panic even more. He came, then. Yet another pair of helping hands, I think hysterically, as I also remember just what those hands are capable of. And what happened last time he came….

  “No, no,” I say brightly. “All fine, all okay, lovely to, um, see you, hahahaha.”

  Luke, always observant, as we know, recognizes the desperate, madwoman expression on my face for what it is and does something rather startling and kind. He raises that sardonic eyebrow at me and gives me a gentle, understanding smile.

  And then he rescues me.

  “We’re in dire need of some help out here,” he tells Mum. “Flora and Ned have just arrived with the extra table, and we need you to—organize setting it up.”

  “Oh, well have you opened the French doors onto the patio? Only we’ll need to extend out onto the patio if we’re all going to fit,” Mum says, heading toward the door. “Honestly, Rosie, it’s not like you to be so disorganized and leave things until the last minute.”

  “Colin, we’re still in need of two additional chairs. If you could just get the vanity chair from Rosie’s room and the stool from the master bathroom, that would solve the seating situation problem. I’ll take over down here,” he finishes, just as Carmen, too, arrives in the kitchen to hear every word.

  My face flames, because the only way Luke would have this information is if he’d actually been upstairs in my bedroom and bathroom. Which he has…

  “Yes, I—noticed the extra seats when I used the master bathroom earlier,” Luke adds as he realizes what he said.

  “Certainly,” Colin tells him, his expression not flickering as he wipes his hands on the dishcloth. But then his expression never flickers, so who knows what he’s thinking? “If Rosie’s sure she doesn’t need me in the kitchen any more?”

  “No, no, I’m fine. Um, thank you, Colin. Carmen,” I squeak. “How lovely to see you,” I add just a bit desperately, which sounds completely manic because I saw her earlier when she called around to drop off some cutlery and crockery.

  “I was going to ask if you needed some help,” she tells me, looking back and forth from me to Luke with a very strange, speculative gleam in her eye. “But I can see that you and Luke have everything in hand.” She twirls a lock of her red hair—a bad sign that she is thinking and putting together two and two and coming up with, well, four.

  She eyes me with an expression that says she didn’t believe a word of Luke’s excuse and promises “Later you will spill all.” She smirks at me as she leaves us to a difficult silence.

  “Right—you finish the ladling,” Luke tells me, all business. “Hand me each pan as you finish, and I will wash and add water for pasta. How does that sound?”

  “Thank you,” I tell him in a small voice, concentrating furiously on the sauce.

  “You’re welcome,” he tells me gently. And then, “Sorry about that comment. I didn’t think. Do you think she bought that excuse?”

  “No,” I tell him, getting hotter by the minute. “But I’ll work on her.”

  “Right, right.”

  For the next few minutes we work in tandem in a vacuum of speech, my brain totally befuddled and confused as I wonder why he’s helping me, and how I can best explain the situation to Carmen.

  “Darling, I wondered where you’d gotten to,” Elaine, a vision in pale blue silk, says to Luke as she comes into the kitchen. “Oh, you’re helping with the cooking? I thought you’d been taking lessons, Rosie,” she says, following it with her tinkly little laugh, somehow managing to make me sound inept. “Luke, you’re supposed to be a guest. I’m sure Rosie can manage. In fact, I’ll help, too, if you like?”

  “That would be lovely, but we don’t want you to spoil that beautiful dress with spaghetti sauce,” Luke tells her, and Elaine takes a step backward, her face a picture of horrification at the thought. “However, instead, could you be an angel and tell everyone to take their places? The food is on its way,” he smiles at her fondly.

  And I remind myself that Luke and Elaine are together, just like Jonathan and I are together. Which is good. Great.

  “Right, how about we serve in here?” he asks me as he drains pasta and I retrieve the sauce tureens from the oven. “I’ll dish up the pasta, you ladle on the sauce, and I’ll be waiter. Does that sound okay?”

  “That sounds great. Why are you helping me?” I blurt.

  “Well, I know how daunting it is to cook for so many, and I have previous experience roommating with a gregarious Australian in med school who regularly invited twenty fellow students for Saturday-night pasta. And besides,” he adds quietly, “it’s your engagement party, and so far you’ve spent it slaving away the entire day in the kitchen, I would guess. Plus,” he goes on, wielding two plates of pasta for me to cover in sauce, “I, um, owe you one. I’m—sorry about what happened. The lack of communication. I should never have—” He breaks off and takes a deep breath.

  “We should never have. Consider it forgotten.” I’m aiming for cheerful and unconcerned, but instead I sound like a mouse on speed.

  “I didn’t mean it quite—” He pauses, sighs, and looks down at me. And then closes his mouth as Jonathan comes bustling into the kitchen.

  “Do we have any more red wine?” Jonathan asks, and the moment is lost. Which is just as well, because I’m not sure that I want to hear what Luke has to say.

  The spaghetti is a success. Well, not exactly perfect, but it is, at least, entirely edible. As is the chocolate mousse that I made this morning and carefully spooned into nineteen small bowls.

  And as my friends and family eat, drink and raise their glasses to the chef and to the happy couple, I’m strangely sad at Luke’s last words.

  That he regrets having gotten involved, however briefly, with me. That he regrets having slept with me.

  Of course, I regret it, too. Of course I do.

  “If I was thirty or so years younger, I’d give you a run for your money,” Granny Elsie cackles, batting her eyelashes and clacking her false teeth as she flirts with Luke. “Or offer to show you my garden gnomes, or something.”

  “Why let a couple of extra decades come between us?” Luke charms her. “I’d elope with you in an instant, but I fear Sid and Alf would track me down and beat me to within an inch of my life.”

  Sid and Alf are (a) eighty-four, five feet six maximum, rotund, and (b) a toy boy of seventy-five, five feet six maximum, skinny. They would probably challenge Luke to a game of gin rummy and swindle him out of the contents of his bank account for Gran, but physical they are not. Well, not that kind of physical, obviously. I immediately squash all thoughts about Gran’s sex life.

  “Ah, well, you can’t blame a girl for tryin’,” she flutters at him from under her lilac rinse. Lilac, it seems, is the new blue. “I shall just have to content myself with my love triangle. Of course, our Rosie is the exact spitting image of me at her age. And she ain’t married. Yet,” she adds rather unhelpfully, and my pulse kicks up speed as she wobbles back to the kitchen, and to Alf and Sid, who are taking her line dancing shortly.

  She still can’t choose between them, and they seem to be content to share her. But I guess at her age she can do pretty well what she likes.

  I am trying to distract myself.

  Luke and I are alone in the hall, and my face heats up as yet another uncomfortable silence forms between us. I say yet another uncomfortable silence because over the course of the past four weeks since the spaghetti dinner, I can’t seem to move without falling over Luke.

  Every time I go to a Saturday dinner party, or on the odd occasion I babysit Baby Becky, there he is. With Elaine, who somehow is a regular at our Saturday-night dinners. Not that it bothers me.

  Actually, that’s a lie, but it’s, you know, probably that old saying about the grass always looking greener on the other side of the fence.

  Unfort
unately, Gran has taken a huge liking to Luke and thinks that I should ditch Jonathan and sleep with him instead.

  Luke is watching me with an odd look on his face.

  “Just ignore my grandmother, hahaha,” I babble, cursing myself for sounding like an idiot. “She has some strange ideas, sometimes, hahaha.” God, I should just shut the hell up.

  “I love her,” Luke tells me, not smiling. “She’s unique, just like her granddaughter,” he says, and my heart skips a beat. And then he does that thing of his and changes the subject. “How are the wedding plans coming along?”

  He always asks me about wedding plans when we have these awkward silences.

  “Um, good. Good.”

  But did he mean good unique or bad unique? Before I can even think about it, and not that I care, because it’s bound to involve more regret for what happened between us, Charlie and Lewis stagger in through the door.

  “That’s the last of the boxes,” Charlie says as he and Lewis carry what I think is Colin’s computer screen down the stairs to the basement apartment.

  Currently, Luke’s helping Charlie, Lewis and I move Colin from my spare room to Mum’s basement.

  Yes, Colin moving into Mum’s basement was a bit of a coup on my part—another Amélie moment. Mum, after the spaghetti fest, started including him for Sunday lunch along with Jonathan and I, because she didn’t want him to feel left out, and when I saw how well they got along, it seemed like a good idea to plant the seed. Mum thinks it was her idea, but I don’t mind her claiming the glory.

  “Thank God that’s the end of Colin’s stuff.” Luke’s sardonic eyebrow does its thing as he pushes his hair off his forehead. “Who knew one man could own so many model trains?”

  Oh, I wish he wouldn’t do that. It’s too—too damned sexy.