‘Oh, of course,’ I said. ‘Well, I wish we’d got him to do ours.’
‘Do you, now?’ Ant said.
‘Yes, I do,’ I said, smiling at Joe and feeling brave.
‘Maybe next time,’ Joe said, smiling.
‘Definitely!’ I said.
‘Oh, we’re redoing the kitchen, are we?’ Ant said. ‘Women! Jesus, it just never stops.’
Despite the shaky start, the evening turned out to be a success.
Next door in the lounge, the kids ate pizza in front of a film, while we adults, to put it bluntly, got sozzled.
Amy opened two bottles of Prosecco just for the aperitif and she, Joe and I downed both bottles plus another of delicious Californian Chardonnay. Ant, for his part, drank four, perhaps even five bottles of Singha beer. And they weren’t small bottles, either.
The food was excellent – though poor Ant ate more rice than he did Thai curry – and the conversation flowed easily, helped on, I think, by all the booze.
Ant’s humour was a little prickly for my taste, and a lot of it seemed to be at my expense, but as Amy had a similar sense of humour directed at Joe, I didn’t feel exclusively targeted, and if I’m honest, despite a lot of it being a little too close to the bone, I laughed more than I had in years.
The only truly difficult moment was when the subject of holidays came up and Ant explained that we weren’t going away because I didn’t want to go with his mother.
‘Oh, now you see, I did want to go with Joe’s father,’ Amy said. ‘It’s Joe’s father who doesn’t want to come with us.’
‘You see,’ Ant said, nodding in my direction. ‘Some people know how to appreciate their in-laws.’
I felt terribly trapped in that moment because it looked, to Amy and Joe, as if I was an awful person. But I could hardly explain that Ant’s mother was a monster, could I? And my addled brain was unable to find any other way out.
‘I . . .’ I spluttered, trying to jump-start my brain into action.
‘Yes?’ Ant said, glancing at Amy and then nodding towards me in a watch her get out of this kind of way.
‘I . . . I don’t know . . .’ I said.
‘You can’t stand her,’ Ant said. ‘Just say it.’
‘Oh, really?’ Amy said. ‘How sad.’
It was then that Joe intervened. ‘Well, not everyone can get on with everyone, eh?’ he said forcefully. ‘And things aren’t that simple on our side, are they?’
Amy frowned at him. ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘I get on with Reg just fine.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve only met your mum once, for, like, an hour. And I’ve never met your dad.’
‘Really?’ Ant said. ‘Why’s that, then?’
I sighed with relief that the conversation had been moved on.
‘Oh, I just don’t think they’d get on,’ Amy said. ‘Mum and Joe, that is. So, I mean, what’s the point?’
‘We wouldn’t get on?’ Joe said, looking amused. ‘Why is that, honey?’
‘And your dad?’ Ant asked.
‘Oh, Dad lives in Toronto,’ Amy said. ‘So . . .’
‘Toronto!’ I exclaimed. ‘So you’re Canadian? Sorry, I thought . . .’
‘American,’ Amy said. ‘You thought I was American.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I admitted, ‘but yes, I think I did.’
‘It happens all the time,’ she said. ‘But no. Nothing American about me. I’m half English, half Canadian.’
‘And so you lived there?’ Ant asked. ‘I mean, if you have the accent and everything?’
‘Till I was twelve,’ Amy said. ‘And then Mum and Dad split up . . . So I came home with Mum. And I’ve sort of flitted back and forth ever since. They’re both so lovely, I could never decide which one I wanted to spend time with.’
‘Though you haven’t spent much time with your dad lately,’ Joe commented.
‘No,’ Amy agreed. Was that a glare she sent his way? It was so fleeting it seemed hard to tell. I thought then how skilfully Joe had moved the conversation on, and as Ant was busy chatting to Amy, I sent him a hint of a smile by way of thanks. In return, he sent me the tiniest, quickest wink, and for some reason – and it probably had a great deal to do with all the alcohol I’d been drinking – that tiny gesture of complicity made me want to cry.
My plate moved then, and I snapped back into the moment to realise that Amy was trying to take it. ‘Now for dessert,’ she said.
‘She’s made her speciality,’ Joe told me. ‘It’s bloody lovely, so I hope you’re still hungry.’
As we tripped along the lane homeward, I commented on the amazing dessert. It had been a vegan banana and chocolate ‘cheese’ cake, and was probably the nicest cheesecake I’d ever eaten. ‘She’s a pretty impressive cook,’ I added.
‘The cheesecake was OK,’ Ant agreed. ‘Which is more than I can say for that banana curry.’
‘It was banana blossom,’ I said. ‘And I thought it was delicious. It was just too spicy for you.’
‘I didn’t like the texture,’ Ant said. ‘It was weird.’
‘It was like fish,’ I said. ‘The texture was like cod.’
‘That’s what you all kept saying,’ Ant said. ‘But it wasn’t. It was weird and slimy, and other than the bloody spices, it tasted of nowt.’
‘The pizza was weird, too,’ Lucy chipped in, tugging at my hand for attention. Ant was carrying Sarah, who was sleeping.
‘Why was it weird?’ I asked, squeezing her fingers.
‘The cheese was funny,’ she said.
‘Because it wasn’t cheese,’ Ant commented. ‘And what’s so wrong with cheese, anyway?’
‘What do you mean, what’s wrong with cheese?’ I asked.
‘I mean, why not just use bloody cheese,’ Ant said. ‘It’s not like eating a cow, is it?’
‘Well, they have to kill the calves so we can have the milk,’ I explained. Kerry had explained the arguments in favour of veganism at great length to me over the years – in fact, so much so that I’d ended up agreeing with her, really. Had it not been for my uncanny ability to avoid thinking about anything that troubles me – the killing of baby cows,
