Dinner at Mine (10 page)

‘Hello?’

‘Matt, it’s Charlotte. How do I get into this place?’

Matt wondered how she had his number. She must have asked Rosie. What did that mean? ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘Downstairs. Outside. I think this is your flat anyway.’

‘Are you by the blue gate?’

‘What blue gate?’

Matt laughed silently to himself. ‘OK. Can you see the Brazilian corner shop?’

‘No.’

‘Try turning round.’

‘Yes, all right. Got it.’

‘So opposite that is a bike rack . . . yes?’

‘Er . . . wait . . .’

‘And about fifty metres north of that is the blue gate.’

‘Which way’s north?’

‘Towards Costcutter.’

‘Hold on . . . Ah!’

‘OK, press the button for 17B when you get there, then press “Call”.’

Matt waited too long for her to have not reached the door, and thought maybe she was somewhere else entirely, then he heard the buzz of the entryphone.

‘Hello? It’s the seventeenth floor. I’ll leave the door open.’

Charlotte’s reply was inaudible, but she didn’t buzz again, so Matt assumed she was in. As he went to put the phone away, he noticed two text messages from Charlotte’s number.
The first had been sent an hour ago, the second half an hour after that. Both said she was running ten minutes late.

‘Sorry! I know I’m a little bit late,’ Charlotte said as she came in through the open front door. She was slightly out of breath, even though she must have taken the lift. Her
cheeks were flushed, but her expression was businesslike, a combination that Matt found unsettling. She wore a dark denim jacket cut to accentuate her wide hips.

Matt gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and offered to take the jacket. She handed it to him and swung her oversized handbag to the floor.

‘Is anybody here yet?’

‘No.’

‘Good. That would have been embarrassing. Where’s the kitchen?’

Matt showed her through.

‘Mmm. That smells good. What is it?’

‘That’s the paella. It’s for the vegetarians.’

‘Oh,’ Charlotte said, with a disappointed look at the pot. ‘What are we having?’

‘Roast lamb. It’s in the oven.’

‘Great. And what’s that?’ She pointed at the chopping board.

‘Snapper. For the ceviche.’

‘Right, good. You seem to have everything under control. I’ll get on with the pud, then.’ Charlotte swung her Tesco carrier bag on to the worktop. It lay there, shallow, flat
and square.

Charlotte didn’t look at Matt as she took the box out of the bag. On the waxy cardboard packaging, Matt read: American-style Chocolate and Hazelnut Tart.

‘What?’ Charlotte said, without looking round. There was an aggressive edge in her voice.

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘I was in a hurry, all right? I was going to make it myself, but I just ran out of time.’

‘Right. I’ve got stuff for a fruit salad if . . .’

‘No. We’re having chocolate tart.’

‘O-kay,’ Matt said slowly. ‘You don’t think anyone will notice?’

‘I’ve thought of that.’

‘Have you?’

‘Why don’t you just get on with your fish, OK?’

Matt shrugged. ‘All right.’ He turned back to his chopping board a split second before he started grinning. How would they react to such an obviously shop-bought dessert? It could be
quite funny. After he’d seen their faces, Matt could always bring out the fruit salad. And what if they fell for it? That would be . . . But they wouldn’t fall for it. Nothing home-made
was that smooth. He chopped the rest of the snapper in silence before throwing it into a shallow dish and squeezing lemon over it.

‘Do you have a salad spoon?’

‘Er . . . yes. Second drawer down. Why do you need a salad spoon?’

Charlotte did not reply.

Matt turned round to see she had lined up the tart on the edge of the worktop, its crust just protruding over empty space. Charlotte smacked the crust at an oblique angle. Small chunks of pastry
fluttered on to the floor. She turned the pie round a few degrees and repeated the procedure. The perfectly corrugated factory crust gradually became lumpen and irregular, with bits missing and
ridges at uneven intervals.

‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you?’

‘No.’

Charlotte now flicked the back of the spoon lightly over the soft chocolate filling, whipping up gentle drifts on its glassy-smooth surface.

Now she turned to Matt. ‘Right,’ she said, putting the plastic packaging in the bin. ‘I’m ready.’

Matt peered over to look at the tart. With its careful flaws, it did look significantly more home-made.

‘You might even get away with that.’

‘Get away with what? I made it this morning.’ Charlotte defiantly met Matt’s eye. He was on the point of thinking she had really made herself believe it when she started to
laugh.

Matt joined in. ‘That was pretty good,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have to go one better when Rosie asks you what’s in it.’

‘Oh fuck, yes, what was it? Some kind of nuts?’ Charlotte reached round and began scrabbling in the bin for the cardboard packet. ‘Yes, here we are: hazelnuts.’ She
squinted at the tiny list of ingredients on the side. ‘What else? Emulsifiers, stabilizers, inverted corn syrup, diglycerides of fatty acid . . . can’t really mention those. . . So,
sugar, chocolate, and pastry (flour, butter, vegetable oil, stabilizers). Will that do?’

‘How about some dulce de leche?’

‘Sounds good. What is it?’

‘It’s like a South American sweet paste.’

‘I like it.’

‘It will sound better than just saying you put sugar in.’

‘Dulce de . . . what was it?

‘Dulce de leche.’

‘Dulce de leche it is.’ She dropped the packet back into the bin. ‘Shall I open the wine?’

‘Hold on.’ Matt nodded at the bin. ‘That’s going to be too obvious.’ He finished trimming the fish and threw the offcuts on top of the packet with a shower of
spring onion leaves, working it down into the mulch of pepper seeds and onion skin. ‘That ought to do it.’

‘Great,’ Charlotte said. ‘What a culinary team we make.’

Matt laughed. After all his efforts, he had the right to be offended, but what was the point? Anyway, this would definitely make the evening more fun.

When Matt had finished the ceviche, he found Charlotte in the living room, unabashedly going through his bookshelf with a large glass of wine in her hand.

‘Found anything interesting?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Charlotte said. ‘You’ve got a lot of law, haven’t you?’

‘Well, I am a lawyer.’

‘But why have them at home? It’s a bit sad, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose it is. But in my defence, the shelves at my office are filled with my first-edition collection of the
Twilight
series.’

Charlotte snorted without looking round. ‘Oh look, these aren’t about law.
The Men Who Stare At Goats, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
Niall Ferguson, Richard Dawkins, Malcolm
Gladwell . . . Don’t you have any novels?’

‘I don’t really read much fiction.’

‘Wait, there’s some here. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Dickens . . . These are part of a set aren’t they?’ Charlotte picked one of them out and looked at the back cover.
‘Yes, “The Twenty Essential Novels of the Educated Mind – a Classic Press Presentation Edition”.’

‘My mum gave them to me.’

‘That’s sweet. Have you actually read any of these?’

‘Some of them.’

‘How many?’

‘Some.’

‘Which ones? I don’t think this one’s even been opened. Understandable, I suppose, when you spend most of your time with these fascinating legal textbooks.’

‘Have you read any of them?’ Matt asked.

‘No.’

‘Well, then . . .’

‘Oh wait. I think this Thomas Hardy was on the A-level syllabus at school.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘No.’

They both laughed.

‘Can you give me hand with the table?’ Matt said. ‘People are supposed to be here by now.’

They went into the kitchen. ‘How are eight people supposed to eat round that?’ Charlotte looked scornfully at Matt’s folding table.

‘It will be a bit cosy.’

‘If we all only use one arm each it might be all right.’

‘It’s not that bad . . .’

‘Yes, it is. We can’t eat round there. We’ll be forking things into each other’s mouths by accident.’

‘There’s a middle section which goes in to make it bigger . . .’

‘Well, why haven’t you used that?’

‘I forgot about it earlier. I don’t think there’s time now . . .’

‘Of course there is. They’re not even here yet. I’ll stall them if I have to.’

Matt hesitated, but realized she was probably right. He went out to the cupboard in the hall to search for the extra panel. As he pulled it out from the back he knocked over a tube of tennis
balls. They bounced off the front door in quick succession, half rolling into the kitchen and the other half into the living room. Why were they in there? When had he ever played tennis? Charlotte
kicked them back too hard and they ricocheted around the hall until Matt knelt down and grabbed them one by one. Straining now to avoid getting flustered, he stuffed them back into their tube,
threw it hard into the corner of the cupboard, and took out the panel.

‘When did you last use this, then?’ Charlotte asked as Matt began wiping the dust off it.

‘I can’t remember.’

‘And how do you fit it in?’

Matt stared at the table. There was some sort of flap underneath, wasn’t there? Or maybe you had to move the legs first . . .

‘You can’t remember, can you?’

‘No.’

‘Oh dear,’ Charlotte said with obvious glee. ‘Dinner on the sofa it is, then.’ She sat down on one of the dining chairs with her glass of wine and settled in to watch
Matt’s efforts.

Matt laboriously removed all the cutlery and glasses, turned the table on to its back and crouched down to inspect it. Dusty instructions in Swedish were dotted around the base.

‘Oh dear. This could take a while.’ Charlotte grinned broadly.

‘No, I think you just pull this . . .’ Matt tugged on a block of wood, which remained resolutely immobile. ‘Hmm, OK. Perhaps these screws have to be loosened first . . .’
Matt wrapped his hand round a chunky metal nut and twisted.

‘I bet this wasn’t how Rosie prepared for her guests to arrive,’ Charlotte said.

Matt hesitated for a second, then laughed. It was either that or get annoyed, and he didn’t want Charlotte to see him irritated. She would almost certainly find it amusing.

‘Probably not,’ he said.

‘I bet she spent the time worrying that the two candles on the dining table weren’t exactly the same length. Or fretting about whether all the napkins were the exact same shade of
taupe.’

‘To be honest, that has been preying on my mind.’

Charlotte clasped her free hand to her face in mock horror. ‘Don’t tell me yours don’t match!’

‘Well, I’ve got a couple of white serviettes. I think the rest are left over from a Hallowe’en party. They may have cartoon pumpkins on them.’

‘Uh-oh. I don’t think Rosie is going to stand for that. You might as well just give up now.’

‘Quick, then, draw spiders on the other two. At least that way it will look like a theme.’

‘Dah-ling!’ Charlotte exclaimed, in what Matt supposed was meant to be an exaggeratedly posh voice, but to him just sounded like a high-pitched version of her own. ‘Don’t
you know insects are in this yah? Cath Kidston’s new range is simply covered in woodlice!’

‘I think this needs a spanner.’ Matt got up and went back to the cupboard in the hall, where he kept his small bag of tools. Charlotte started laughing as he came back in clutching
an adjustable wrench.

‘I’m guessing you don’t entertain very much.’

Matt yanked at one of the nuts, hoping Charlotte couldn’t see how much effort it took to loosen it. He felt pricks of perspiration form on his forehead as he manoeuvred the panel into
place.

Charlotte laughed. ‘What I would have done . . .’

An electric buzzing interrupted her advice.

‘Was that the bell?’

‘Yes, it was,’ Matt said, tightening the last nut.

‘Oh.’

Matt thought she sounded disappointed. He got to his feet and wiped his hands on a tea towel. ‘I’ll go and get it, shall I? Can you put the stuff back on the table? Make sure you
give me the Donald Duck cutlery.’

With derisive laughter in his ears, Matt went into the hall and buzzed open the door without bothering to ask who it was. While he waited for the lift to ascend he noticed a stray tennis ball in
the corner, and kicked it back into the cupboard.

He opened the front door in time to see Justin get out of the lift and look left and right a couple of times before realizing Matt was watching him.

‘Hello, Justin. Barbara not with you?’

‘No, she’s coming separately . . . I’ve been at work. She’s not here, then?’

‘No.’

‘Oh dear, are we late?’

‘No, you’re the first to get here.’

Justin looked at his watch. ‘Well, everyone else is late, then.’

‘Do you want to come through?’

Matt led him into the flat, pausing as he passed the door to the kitchen so that Charlotte couldn’t avoid being seen.

‘Hi, Charlotte! Great to see you again,’ Justin said.

‘Yeah, hi.’ Charlotte gave him a reluctant kiss on the cheek.

‘I’d better finish off in the kitchen,’ Matt said. ‘Charlotte, do you mind getting Justin a drink?’

‘Oh, lovely. I’ll have a glass of white wine, please.’

Matt reached over to the fridge for the bottle and handed it to Charlotte in one smooth movement. ‘Great. You can take some crisps out as well if you’re hungry.’

Charlotte gave Matt a look of shocked malevolence as she accompanied Justin into the living room.

Matt took his time tidying the worktop. Then he began to re-lay the table. It had been quite fun with Charlotte, actually. She was a good laugh. Well, let’s see how it goes. It could be a
long evening.

Matt lingered over the place settings. He had no desire to go and talk to Justin. The lamb was browning nicely in the oven. About twenty more minutes, probably. The paella could go on simmering
indefinitely. He wouldn’t plate up the ceviche until everyone was here. So it was time for a glass of wine. Matt poured one from the bottle of red he had opened earlier. Pretty good.
Charlotte had probably topped herself up. He certainly wasn’t going into the other room to check.