several fingers of the vodka that Andrew had stolen for her.
‘He’s such a bastard,’ she said. ‘We’d still be in Hackney if he hadn’t led Mum on. She’s so bloody stupid. I could have told her he wasn’t that interested. He never took her out. He couldn’t wait to leave after they’d shagged.’
Andrew, who was piling additional sandwiches on an almost empty platter behind her, could hardly believe that she was using words like shagged. The chimeric Gaia who filled his fantasies was a sexually inventive and adventurous virgin. He did not know what the real Gaia had done, or not done, with Marco de Luca. Her judgement on her mother made it sound as if she knew how men behaved after sex, if they
‘Drink something,’ she told Andrew as he approached the door with the platter, and she held up her own polystyrene cup to his lips, and he drank some of her vodka. Giggling a little, she backed away to let him out and called after him: ‘Make Sooks come in here and get some!’
The hall was crowded and noisy. Andrew put the pile of fresh sandwiches on the table, but interest in the food seemed to have waned; Sukhvinder was struggling to keep up with demand at the drinks table, and many people had started pouring their own.
‘Gaia wants you in the kitchen,’ Andrew told Sukhvinder, and he took over from her. There was no point acting like a bartender; instead, he filled as many glasses as he could find, and left them on the table for people to help themselves.
‘Hi, Peanut!’ said Lexie Mollison. ‘Can I have some champagne?’
They had been at St Thomas’s together, but he had not seen her for a long time. Her accent had changed since she had been at St Anne’s. He hated being called Peanut.
‘It’s there in front of you,’ he said, pointing.
‘Lexie, you’re not drinking,’ snapped Samantha, appearing out of the crowd. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Grandad said—’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Everyone else—’
‘I said no!’
Lexie stomped away. Andrew, glad to see her go, smiled at Samantha, and was surprised when she beamed at him.
‘Do you talk back to your parents?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, and she laughed. Her breasts really were enormous.
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ boomed a voice through the microphone, and everyone stopped talking to listen to Howard. ‘Wanted to say a few words… most of you probably know by now that my son Miles has just been elected to the Parish Council!’
There was a smattering of applause and Miles raised his drink high above his head to acknowledge it. Andrew was startled to hear Samantha say quite clearly under her breath, ‘Hoo-fucking-ray.’
Nobody was coming for drinks now. Andrew slipped back into the kitchen. Gaia and Sukhvinder were alone in there, drinking and laughing, and when they saw Andrew they both shouted, ‘
He laughed too.
‘Are you both pissed?’
‘Yes,’ said Gaia, and ‘no,’ said Sukhvinder. ‘
‘I don’t care,’ said Gaia. ‘Mollison can sack me if he wants. No point saving up for a ticket to Hackney any more.’
‘He won’t sack you,’ said Andrew, helping himself to some of the vodka. ‘You’re his favourite.’
‘Yeah,’ said Gaia. ‘Creepy old bastard.’
And the three of them laughed again.
Through the glass doors, amplified by the microphone, came Maureen’s croaky voice.
‘Come on, then, Howard! Come on – a duet for your birthday! Go on – ladies and gentlemen – Howard’s favourite song!’
The teenagers gazed at each other in tantalized horror. Gaia tripped forward, giggling, and pushed the door open.
The first few bars of ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’ blared out, and then, in Howard’s bass and Maureen’s gravelly alto:
Gavin was the only one who heard the giggles and snorts, but when he turned around all he saw were the double doors to the kitchen, swinging a little on their hinges.
Miles had left to chat with Aubrey and Julia Fawley, who had arrived late, wreathed in polite smiles. Gavin was in the grip of a familiar mixture of dread and anxiety. His brief sunlit haze of freedom and happiness had been overcast by the twin threats of Gaia blabbing what he had said to her mother, and of Mary leaving Pagford for ever. What was he going to do?
‘Kay not here?’
Samantha had arrived, leaning against the table beside him, smirking.
‘You already asked me that,’ said Gavin. ‘No.’
‘Everything OK with you two?’
‘Is that really any of your business?’
It slipped out of him before he could stop it; he was sick of her constant probing and jeering. For once, it was just the two of them; Miles was still busy with the Fawleys.
She over-acted being taken aback. Her eyes were bloodshot and her speech was deliberate; for the first time, Gavin felt more dislike than intimidation.
‘I’m sorry. I was only—’
‘Asking. Yeah,’ he said, as Howard and Maureen swayed, arm in arm.
‘I’d like to see you settled down. You and Kay seemed good together.’
‘Yeah, well, I like my freedom,’ said Gavin. ‘I don’t know many happily married couples.’
Samantha had drunk too much to feel the full force of the dig, but she had the impression that one had been made.
‘Marriages are always a mystery to outsiders,’ she said carefully. ‘Nobody can ever really know except the two people involved. So you shouldn’t judge, Gavin.’
‘Thanks for the insight,’ he said, and irritated past endurance he set down his empty beer can and headed towards the cloakroom.
Samantha watched him leave, sure that she had had the best of the encounter, and turned her attention to her mother-in-law, whom she could see through a gap in the crowd, watching Howard and Maureen sing. Samantha relished Shirley’s anger, which was expressed in the tightest, coldest smile she had worn all evening. Howard and Maureen had performed together many a time over the years; Howard loved to sing, and Maureen had once performed backing vocals for a local skiffle band. When the song finished, Shirley clapped her hands together once; she might have been summoning a flunkey, and Samantha laughed out loud and moved along to the bar end of the table, which she was disappointed to find unmanned by the boy in the bow tie.
Andrew, Gaia and Sukhvinder were still convulsed in the kitchen. They laughed because of Howard and Maureen’s duet, and because they had finished two-thirds of the vodka, but mostly they laughed because they laughed, feeding off each other until they could barely stand.
The little window over the sink, propped ajar so that the kitchen did not become too steamy, rattled and clattered, and Fats’ head appeared through it.
‘Evening,’ he said. Evidently he had climbed onto something outside, because, with a noise of scraping and a heavy object falling over, more and more of him emerged through the window until he landed heavily on the draining board, knocking several glasses to the ground, where they shattered.
Sukhvinder walked straight out of the kitchen. Andrew knew immediately that he did not want Fats there.
