The house itself is stone and has more windows across the front than I can count at first sight.
‘I can hear everyone out in the garden,’ Tom says, directing me diagonally across the drive towards the corner of the house.
When we get to the corner (it takes an appreciable length of time to walk over there), we go through a very pretty archway framed in rose trees and I see lawn. Lots and lots and lots of lawn. It feels like acres. Over to our left, there are dozens of people, adults plus several little kids, all talking and laughing. Straight ahead of us, basically tucked away in the right-hand corner of the garden, there’s a tennis court. In the far left corner, which isreallyfar away, there’s a swimming pool surrounded by a fence and a gate.
‘This is very nice,’ I say. I think of my three-bed-plus-loft-conversion-semi childhood home in New Malden and wonder whether Tom grew up here. And whether it’s nice living in such anenormoushouse; wouldn’t it be a little un-cosy? You could all spread out and never really even see each other. Obviously the garden’s absolutely stunning, though. You could havesomuch fun in it.
‘Yeah, we’re lucky with this garden. Come and meet everyone.’
‘Best fake-new-girlfriend foot forward,’ I say.
As we get closer to the group, I see that there’s quite a white colour scheme going on with the way everyone’s dressed, and congratulate myself on the lucky chance that I chose the dress I’m wearing – pale cream with little yellow flowers – rather than the sky-blue alternative I’d been considering.
Maybe Tom forgot to tell me about the colour theme. Maybe he didn’t know. It’s only really the women who are doing it; the men are mainly dressed similarly to Tom, who’s wearing a white T-shirt but blue shorts, more of a half-arsed white theme.
As we get even closer, I note to my surprise that a lot of the women aren’t just in white, they’re intennis-style whites, as in white skorts and tops, or tennis dresses. The men look quite tennissy too, I realise, scanning the group with my eyes.
Maybe there’s a tennis-dress theme to this party that Tom forgot to tell me about.
A woman with silvery-blonde hair and a very good tan of the type fair people can only have in June if they spend a lot of the year in sunnier places or alotof time outside in not much clothing, and who has extremely toned legs (much more toned than mine even though she has to be nearly twice my age) hurtles towards us, arms outstretched, calling, ‘Tom!’
‘Mum!’ He envelops her in an enthusiastic hug, before saying, ‘Apologies, I should have introduced you immediately.’ He releases his mother and says, ‘Mum, this is Nadia, a new, um, my new, um, friend.’
I’m impressed. He sounds exactly like youwoulddo if you had a very new girlfriend who you didn’t yet want to label as such.
‘Nadia.’ His mum puts her hand out and I move forward and shake it. ‘How do you do?’
‘Very well, thank you. It’s lovely to meet you.’ I give her my best wide-but-polite smile, and she does smile back, although her smile’s tighter than mine. I’m pretty sure I read once that the royals disliked Kate Middleton for saying she was pleased to meet them instead of How-do-you-do-ing them, but luckily I’m never going to have to impress this woman for real.
‘Sorry we’re a bit late,’ Tom says. ‘Terrible journey.’
I blink. We had anexcellentjourney. And we were both about five minutes earlier than the time he’d suggested we meet at Waterloo. And when we made general chit-chat about what we’d been doing earlier in the day he said he’d been to the gym and then just chilled. Which leads me to suspect that he hadn’t wanted to arrive any earlier.
‘Don’t worry, darling. But we should probably play your first matches sooner rather than later. You and Nadia can partner each other; we can jig things around. You can get changed inside, Nadia.’
‘Changed?’ I query. Are they… maybe… wearing tennis kit because… we’re all supposed to beplayingtennis? I can’t play tennis withserioustennis players. I do like playing, in an occasional, really not very good way, but notproperly. ‘Do you mean to play tennis?’
Tom and his mum both look at me as though I’m a little mad and as one say, ‘Yes?’
‘I don’t have any tennis kit with me,’ I tell them. WhywouldI have tennis kit with me? When I thought I’d covered any eventuality I’d thought of things like plasters, an umbrella, a cardigan, an emergency cereal bar and a pair of scissors. I did not have sports covered.
‘Oh.’ Tom’s mum stares at me for a moment, but not as much as Tom’s staring at me.
‘I really thought I’d mentioned it,’ he says.
I think back. I’ve had a busy couple of days; maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. Oh.
‘I think you referred to “a couple of games”, and in my head I interpreted that as board games,’ I explain.
‘Board games.’ Tom’s mother stares at me as though I’ve just told her I was expecting to playnakedgames.
I nod and smile and say, ‘Yep, a misunderstanding. Anyway, not to worry, I’m very happy to watch you all.’ More than happy, actually. I do love watching tennis, any standard, not just Grand Slams, and I wouldwayprefer to watch than play, because clearly several of the family take tennis quite seriously. No-one owns an actual adult tennis dress if they can’t play.
‘No, no, we wouldn’t hear of it. You can borrow some kit.’
‘Oh, that’s very kind,’ I say, sure that I won’t really be playing tennis this afternoon with these people. ‘But I don’t have any trainers with me and I can’t play in these. Honestly, I’mreallyhappy to watch. I do love watching tennis.’
‘She does love watching tennis,’ Tom agrees. ‘We had a conversation about tennis-watching the other evening while we were watching the England match.’
