‘Hello, stranger,’ Kerry said. It was true that we hadn’t spoken for months.
She’d just passed her Italian language test with flying colours, and was about to apply for Italian nationality, she explained excitedly. The whole Brexit business had made her self-employed status somewhat complicated in Italy, she said, and becoming Italian was the easiest solution.
‘They make you jump through so many hoops,’ she told me. ‘I have to provide years and years of tax records, and I’ve got to get hold of Mum and Dad’s birth and death certificates. You haven’t got them, have you?’
I told her that I would ask Ant to look, as it was he who ran our filing system.
Kerry went on to babble about a new flat she’d found and how it had a spare room if ever I wanted to visit, but that she wasn’t sure if she was going to take it because it was so expensive, and what if they refused her Italian citizenship . . .
She chattered on for a good twenty minutes about this and that before eventually saying, ‘Anyway, enough of me. What’s going on with you?’
‘Oh, not much,’ I said. ‘Same old, same old. You know.’
‘You always say that,’ Kerry said. ‘But I really can’t believe your life is that boring. Have you got a secret lesbian lover or something?’
So I told her about our meal down the lane. And then I told her about Spain.
‘That’s totally pazzo, you know?’ she said. This slipping Italian words into the conversation was a new thing.
‘And pazzo means?’
‘Crazy,’ she said. ‘Well, more loony, really. Pazzesco means sort of absurd, and it’s that too. It’s pazzo e pazzesco.’
‘Italian always sounds like food to me,’ I said. ‘No matter what you’re saying, it just sounds like a menu. But you’re right, it’s mad. I mean, as if we could just drop everything and whizz off on holiday with a couple of—’
‘No, hang on,’ Kerry said, interrupting me. ‘You’re misunderstanding me. What’s crazy . . . what’s totally crazy here, is you saying no.’
‘Oh,’ I said, a little taken aback. ‘You think?’
‘You’ve been wanting to go abroad for ages. That nightmare of a man you live with won’t even let you visit your darling sister in Rome and—’
‘Oh, it’s not he won’t let me,’ I said. ‘It’s just complicated, with the kids and everything.’
‘Um, hello . . . He’d go nuts and you know it,’ Kerry insisted. Despite the fact that they had seen so little of each other, she understood Ant surprisingly well. ‘And now you’re turning down the opportunity to go to Spain with him.’
‘I just don’t see it as an actual opportunity, I suppose,’ I explained. ‘It’s not really an option, is it?’
‘Well, I say go,’ Kerry said. ‘If there’s any possible way you can do it, then go. If he likes it, then that opens up the door to all kinds of new experiences for both of you. Hell, you could even come to Rome and visit little old me.’
‘But he wouldn’t like it,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s full of spics and dagos, isn’t it.’
‘Spics and dagos?’ Kerry said. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’
‘It’s not me, Kerry. That’s what Ant calls them. Can you imagine how well that would go down? So no, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t like it.’
‘And there you go,’ Kerry said. ‘It is him, isn’t it? It’s not you saying no at all.’
‘Ant actually said it was a possibility,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s just I don’t really believe he’d do it.’
‘Then call his bluff.’
‘And I can’t really convince myself it’s a good idea anyway, Kes. Like I said, we just don’t know them.’
‘But they’re nice, you said.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘Yes, they’re nice.’
‘So it’s a win-win,’ Kerry said.
‘Amy’s a bit too good-looking for comfort, if you know what I mean.’
‘Ah, so that’s it,’ Kerry laughed.
‘She looks like someone . . .’ And then it came to me. ‘Actually, I’ll tell you who she looks like. She looks exactly like that singer you used to have on your wall. The blonde one. What’s her name?’
‘No Doubt?’ Kerry asked. ‘Gwen Stefani?’
‘That’s it! God, it’s been driving me mad trying to remember. But that’s her. Gwen Stefani.’
‘Wow,’ Kerry said. ‘Has she got the bod to go with it?’
‘Well, she’s a dance instructor and a Pilates teacher. So yes, she totally has the bod to go with it.’
‘Jesus,’ Kerry said. ‘Can I come? I’ve had a crush on our Gwen for years.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s why I thought of her, I think: your posters.’
‘But seriously. If you’re saying no because you’re worried Ant fancies her—’
‘I’m not,’ I interrupted. But even as I was saying it, I was thinking, Or am I? ‘I’m saying no because people simply do not go on holiday with couples they met a week ago.’
‘Oh, fuck what people do,’ Kerry said. ‘And if it is about how cute she is—’
‘It isn’t.’
‘But if it is, remember she lives down the lane. That’s what you said, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘So if he was going to fuck her, he would have fucked her already.’
‘Oh, that’s lovely, Kerry,’ I said. ‘Oh, yes, that’s gorgeous. Thanks for that.’
‘Morning!’
I turned to see Ant standing in the doorway.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
‘It’s Kerry,’ I said quietly.
Ant nodded unenthusiastically. ‘Give her my love,’ he said, through a yawn.
‘I’d better go,’ I told Kerry, once he’d returned to the kitchen.
‘Of course,’ Kerry said. ‘Your lord and master has arisen.’
‘Don’t be like that. We’ve been talking for almost an hour.’
‘Forty minutes,’ she corrected.
‘It’s Saturday. I’ve got things to do. I have children.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Whatever. And send me a postcard this summer. From Chislet.’
I slipped the phone into my pocket, and it was only when I went to look at what the girls had been doing that I realised I hadn’t passed the phone over so that they could say hello to their aunt. But they were engrossed in making flowers from coloured pipe cleaners and seemed to have forgotten about Kerry anyway.
‘Those are lovely,’ I told them. ‘Are they for me?’
Sarah offered me her misshapen flower-in-progress
