‘Let me write it down for you.’ Mum turns to get paper and pen from a drawer, and I shake my head slightly at Nadia as she smiles at me blandly.
Once the recipe’s been written down and handed over, Nadia places it carefully into a pocket inside the large gold bag she’s carrying, which I had assumed contained tennis kit, and then Mum says, ‘I’ll be back in a couple of minutes; I’m just going to go and find some things for you.’
I decide that we definitely shouldn’t be talking about anything we don’t want anyone to overhear because you never know who might pop up at any moment, so I leap straight into conversation with: ‘Do you like cooking? Or baking? Or jam-making?’
‘Yes. Especially baking, which is clearly not very healthy when you live alone, so I take a lot of cakes and biscuits into work for my colleagues.’ Nadia’s answer is as stilted as my question was.
‘I have a colleague like that. The head of Biology. She’s very popular, especially on Mondays. She’s in her fifties and has four children and the youngest has just gone to uni. She says she’s always baked on Sundays and can’t stop but now she doesn’t have enough people in the house to eat all her baked goods so we have to perform that service for her. She does this insanely good chocolate fudge cake. Also a ginger and pineapple one.’
Nadia nods enthusiastically, clearly as happy as I am that we’ve got some proper chat going now. ‘Ginger and pineapple. That’s such a good combo. I’m going to try it. That empty nest thing must be so hard. It’s almost enough to put you off having babies in the first place.’
‘Nothing should put you off having babies,’ declares my mother. She’s popped back up from nowhere and sends a hideously embarrassing wink in my direction, which I can only describe as roguish.
I laugh, because I would absolutely have to cry otherwise.
Nadia’s laughing too, looking a lot less uncomfortable than I feel, and that would be because this is not her mother who we’re having a baby conversation with while pretending to be dating.
‘Tom, why don’t you come with us to help Nadia get changed,’ my oblivious mother continues.
Now Nadia isn’t looking so comfortable, understandably. She has her mouth open and her eyes raised, and behind Mum’s back is mouthingeekat me.
I mouth back that I will obviously turn my back, because I’m not sure what else to do, in that I can’t really refuse to go, and then we both traipse after Mum to a spare bedroom (there are quite a few now that my siblings and I have fully moved out).
Fortunately, it’s en-suite, so Nadia can get changed in there with the door closed, which I point out in a whisper as soon as the bedroom door’s closed behind Mum.
‘Good idea.’ Nadia whisks herself and the tennis kit into the bathroom and locks the door behind her with a very emphatic click.
‘Oh myGod,’ she says loudly a couple of minutes later. There are muffled sounds and then she repeats, ‘Oh my God.’ She opens the door and peeks round it. ‘Okay. I don’t totally know what to do about this. I don’t actually mind about your family because I don’t know them at all but I do know you and I have to beg you either to go and tell your mum that I have food poisoning or promise me that you will not look at me atall. If you do look at me you’ll have to banish all memory of anything you see and never refer to it again.’
‘Wecoulddo food poisoning.’ Or a terrible headache. Any illness would do. Now she’s mentioned it, I feel like that would be anexcellentidea. I would very much like to put an end to this stupid situation as soon as possible.
‘I wouldlovenot to wear this outfit.’ Nadia still has her whole body hidden behind the door. ‘But I think it might be rude to your parents because it would be really obvious that the food poisoning and changing for tennis were linked and I think your mum might be offended, and the whole point of this – I think – was to keep your family happy?’
She’s right; I don’t want to upset anyone. I mean, any more than they’ll be upset in future when Nadia and I ‘split up’. We should stay for tennis and the barbecue and then leave and then I’ll tell my family in a few weeks’ time that we’ve split up and that I’m not going to date again for a while. And there’s a silver lining: thatwouldget them off my back a little. They did hold off for a while after my ex-wife and I split up.
‘Yeah, I think you’re right,’ I say.
‘Dammit.’ She’s still just a door with a tilted talking head. She doesn’t strike me as particularly vain or histrionic, so I’m wondering how bad the tennis kitis.
‘Are you… ready to go?’ I check.
‘You know, I wouldn’t mindnotgoing for a while?’
‘Um. Okay.’ I’d stood up when the door opened but now I sit back down on the bed.
Nadia closes the door again and then quite a long time later – I think a good couple of minutes – says, ‘Okay, I’m actually going to come out now.’
‘Great.’ I look up as the door opens, and then just stare.
Nadia screws her face up and says, ‘So what do you think?’ She does a slowish three-sixty for me and I stare some more.
‘Tom?’
‘Um. Crikey.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Um.’ I’m trying so hard not to laugh it’s almost physically painful.
