Ghosts in the Morning (11 page)

No, sod Graha
m,
I wasn’t cooking
steak.
Maybe I’d do some fi
sh – sea bass, perhaps, that was easy to cook
, and it was easy to make it appear exotic with a few of the right herbs and a dash of lemon juice.

Chapter
7

We all stood in the lounge, clutching champagne flutes
, smiling politely
and
generally
looking awkward. Piers
, Graham’s boss,
cleared his throat, about to speak, but he was beaten to it by David, one of the audit partners from London.

‘
It’s a l
ovely
house
you have here, Graham, very nice indeed
, I do like the way you’ve utilised the space. I recall reading once that the placement of mirrors is very important when you’re trying to give the illusion of a larger room.’ I saw Graham smile through gritted teeth, at the rude slight. ‘
I’m sure I right in assuming your good wife is responsible for the interior decor?
After all, wo
men are usually much better at that sort of thing, aren’t they?’
boomed David. He had a very loud
voice.

‘Yes, yes, they are, hah hah,’ Graham said, adding a forced chuckle.
He glanced at me and wobbled his glass, his signal to me that we needed another bottle of champagne. That would be the third one. Good. It meant I
there was plenty of
room for error in my cooking
, none of this lot would be able to taste a bloody thing
.

I grabbed a sweating bottle, topped my own glass up and took a large swig before heading back into the lounge.
Graham came towards me, glass outstretched. He seemed to be drinking fast
er than usual
and I knew it was because he felt uncomfortable.
I knew, too, that part of the reason for his discomfort was that h
e was embarrassed by me.
Against the other women in the room, I stood out like a sore thumb. A sore
very
fat
thumb.
I looked like a giant marshmallow in a bed of pencils.

Piers’ wife
- Lindy -
was young
,
attractive
and very slim
, with large, high breasts
.
Glossy and blonde – on the surface at least - she was a schoolboy’s wet dream, but I couldn’t help thinking that a
gainst her sylph-like silhouette,
her breasts
seemed out of place. Too big and forthright, like freshly-launched torpedoes,
I knew
it had to
be a boob job.

The London visitors had also brought their other halves. They appeared to be girlfriends rather than wives
-
there were no wedding rings. Like Lindy, they too
were slim with over-large
t
its,
creamy
lumps of cleavage spilling from the scooped necklines of their dresses.

I topped David’s glass up, and he nodded at me with a brief smile, but said nothing. I turned to Matthew, the other London
partner
.
‘Was your flight over okay, Matthew, not too bumpy
I hope
? We’ve got a fairly short runway at Jersey airport, it can be a rough landing sometimes
,
’ I said, easing more champagne into his glass.

‘
I’d rather M
att,
please,
not Matthe
w,’ he said in a voice that was used to
telling people what to do. The result of a posh public school perhaps, or maybe just plain arrogance
.

‘Oh, okay, sorry,’ I said.

‘
Shit
,
’ cried Matt
suddenly
.

I looked down. I
had
overfilled the glass and champagne was
now
dripping over
Matt’s hand. The cuff of his suit also looked very wet
.

‘Oh no, I’m so sorry, I’ll get a cloth or a towel, I’m so sorry,’ I said
.

‘That’s okay, honestly, it’s okay, I’ll just
go
to the loo and sort it
. Look,
don’t worry about it, accidents happen
, I suppose.
’  He was trying to sou
nd cheery,
trying to underplay it
like it didn’t matter, but I could sense the barely-controlled anger beneath the surface. His face had gone red, like the birdwatcher who fell from the rocks at Corbi
è
re.

I could feel Graham’s eyes boring into me. I glared back at him, saw the disgust in his eyes, and I willed him to say something. I knew he wouldn’t,
he had seen something in my eyes, he
could sense
that
I was up for a fight. He couldn’t afford
a
scene now.

An awkward silence fell over the room, then we heard the toilet door slam. Matt stepped back into the room, still looking a little angry.
I took a deep breath. ‘Okay, if you’d all like to make your way into the dining room,
please,
I think the starters should be ready.’
I ushered the s
even
of them towards the dining table.

‘Er, who’s sitting where?’ Graham said, looking expectantly at me.

‘Um, put me on this end, so it’s easier for me to serve,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave you to sort out the rest.’ I h
eaded for the kitchen, leaving Graham looking slightly flustered.

A large frying pan was gently sizzling on
the
range cooker, and I
poked one of the scallops
nestling within. It
felt as if it had gone beyond the point of becoming
springy
. I cursed and turned the heat off
. Scallops needed only the barest amount of time to cook,
too long and they became chewy,
and it looked like they would be slightly overdone.

‘Oh well, at the rate they’re drinking they’ll never notice,’ I mused
aloud
. ‘Besides, it’ll be fine once I’ve plated up.’ I took a sip of wine. ‘
Plated up
, oooh, get me.
Right little Nigella I’m
turning into
,’ I mumbled, then started to giggle.
Using that sort of slang,
I
reckoned I
was starting to sound like a TV chef, maybe I needed to cut down on the number of cookery programmes
I watched
.

I was a good cook
,
if I put my mind to it
, if I wasn’t feeling lazy.
I wasn’t when Graham and I got married, not in the early years. I had never had any experience of cooking when I was young; there had been no hours of fun spent watching my mother home baking. Or cook at all, for that matter, all of our meals came out of a tin or packet. Supermarket own brands. And at the home, all of our meals were prepared for us in the canteen – the ‘
daily slop
’ as Anita called it. But
over the years a mixture of boredom and those ubiquitous
cookery
programmes had led to experimentation and
then to
a discovery that I did indeed have some latent creative culinary skills. I wished I’d had a daughter, we could have had some fun in the kitchen together
;
chopping vegetables, rolling pastry,
mixing eggs and flour and sugar and laughing as the mixture spilled over the side, smiling as she dipped her little fingers cheekily into a bowl of melting chocolate -
hell, maybe we could have baked cookies like they
do on all those American movies...

My sons weren’t interested in cooking. Not even Simon,
in fact
especially
not Simon. He
didn’t want to do anything that could be construed in any way as ‘girly’.
As if to prove that he was not
what
I
knew he was. It didn’t help that Graham thought I was talking rubbish
, that I was just being stupid
. Not that I’d ever said anything to Simon, of course.
The fact was that
Simon was gay
but he didn’t
yet realise
it
.
Well, he probably suspected, deep down, but
I don’t think he
want
ed
to believe it,
he
didn’t want to accept it.
I knew it, though. It was difficult to define the reasons for my certainty. There had been clues from a young age - he was more relaxed with girls, and some of his mannerisms were innately effeminate – but it was more than that. I just knew
, a mother always knows these things
.

I put four scallops onto each of the rectangular plates, and wondered when it was decided that round plates were no longer trendy. Another sip of wine, and then I reached for the olive oil.
A special Tuscan one
-
Graham ordered
it online from a website with the tagline ‘
designed for shoppers with a discerning taste
.’ Or as I said to Graham when I saw the prices – ‘
designed for
mugs who are happy to be ripped off
’. Graham hadn’t found my comment funny.

I drizzled the oil
over the scallops
in a
zigzag
pattern
, then swirled a dribble of balsamic vinegar at the corner of each plate. Finally, I squeezed a few drops of lemon juice over the shellfish and then garnished each of the plates with a handful of rocket, half a lemon and a few succulent baby tomatoes.
I took another sip of wine and looked at the price on the side of the packet of rocket and rolled my eyes. Rocket grew wild in Jersey in abundance – Graham said he saw loads of it on the golf course – yet it seemed all they had to do was pop it in a see-through bag and it
turned into green gold. Just as well it didn’t say ‘
organic
’ on the packet, or that would have doubled the price.

‘Andrea, is the starter ready or what? Our guests have been waiting
for
bloody ages,’ Graham said, suddenly appearing at the kitchen doorway. He was angry, but his voice was low. He had gone a bit red, perhaps it was the champagne or maybe it was
due to t
he challenge of trying to convey his
burning
anger with a whisper.

I glanced at the kitchen clock. I must have been lost in thought for a few minutes.
I stared at Graham, sadistically enjoying his discomfort. He was clenching and unclenching his fists and I could see a vein pulsing in his neck. I waited another few cruel seconds and then said,
‘Yes, okay, sorry,
yes,
it’s coming
.
’ I
motioned towards the worktop
. ‘Here, you can take some plates in with you.’

‘Ooh, this looks lovely, Angela,’ trilled
Debbie,
David’s girlfriend.

‘It’s Andrea, not Angela,’ I said, but Debbie wasn’t listening. She had turned to Kat
he
rine, Matt’s girlfriend. ‘I never used to like fish
at all
, but
last year
David took me to
this wonderful
sushi restaurant – it’s got
one of those
Michelin star
s
and everything, and now I just can’t get enough of it.
Very low in calories too,
so it’s
good for the waistline
. Keep those naughty pounds at bay
,’ Debbie
said
, tapping her
washboard stomach. It sounded hollow, obviously not eating much at all helped keep those ‘
naughty
’ pounds at bay. A giggle bubbled in my mouth and I disguised it with a cough.

‘So, what do you reckon to this Eurozone crisis, Matt? Must be affecting a lot of your clients in the city, I suppose?’ Piers said. He had a bit of rocket stuck between
his teeth, I could see him worrying at it with his tongue.
             

‘Yes, it’s not helping, that’s for sure. About time those supposed
European
leaders sorted things out, to be honest
, started earning their inflated salaries. Too busy snuffling their noses in the trough, b
loody foreigners, eh,’ he laughed and
roughly
nudged Katherine’s elbow. A piece of scallop fell from her fork, but she duly joined in with the laughter.

‘Well, thank goodness we kept the pound,’ I said.