Page 59 of Just for the Season

I shake my head. ‘You are so, so wrong.’

‘You are defeated, Dad,’ Ruby says.

‘Nope. I just need everyone to land on my hotel on Pentonville Street on their next two goes while I don’t land anywhere I have to pay rent, and all good.’

‘Exactly,’ the rest of us say in unison. ‘Defeated.’

I leave a couple of minutes later, and basically smile all the way home to the flat. You can’t beat some good old-fashioned family fun at times.

* * *

My Wednesday potluck supper is all ready to go at six the next evening.

‘That’s a lot of food,’ says Simon dubiously when he arrives five minutes later, straight from an appointment with a new client, an influencer who I have never heard of who’s barely out of their teens and has already made enough money from YouTubing or TikTokking or whatever they do to buy a multi-million-pound country house and wants to completely refurbish it. Simon doesn’t like being paid by someone nearly twenty years younger than him but on the other hand it’s a huge project and he might get great exposure from it (apparently). ‘Are you sure that many people are going to come?’

‘It’s only five past.’ I cross my fingers surreptitiously under the counter so Simon can’t see. I’m beginning to get a bit worried. When I think about it, no-one actually said they’d come. ‘Also, most businesses start small.’

‘What have you made?’

‘A big chicken stew. And I have Scrabble planned for afterwards.’

Simon walks into the kitchen and sniffs the casserole dish. ‘It does smell very good. Which is lucky for us because I feel like we might spend the next week eating that ourselves.’

I nod. There’s bloody loads of it. There’s no way the two of us will be able to get through all of it before it goes off, and there’ll be too much for the freezer to cope with.

At least I have Ellie and Jack plus Marcus and the kids to ship it out to.

The bell over the door rings and we both rush out of the kitchen in surprise (I was totally not expecting anyone ever to turn up; I was too embarrassed to beg even Ellie or Miranda to come) to see Marcus, Ruby and Sam.

Simon and I seat them right in the window, just in case there are any passers-by (there won’t be) who would be tempted in (if there were any they wouldn’t be tempted because they’d be on their way somewhere), and put large bowls of stew, a big plate of sourdough and glasses of water down in front of them.

‘Looks amazing,’ says Marcus. ‘Kids, you start. I just need to make a quick call.’

While he’s outside, Ellie and Jack, plus Miranda and her kids (without Rob, who is working late this evening) turn up. We seat them in the window too.

‘See,’ I tell Simon. ‘We do have customers.’

‘We have your best friends and their kids,’ he says.

A few minutes later, three couples, one of them with two kids in tow, turn up. I recognise them all, but they definitely couldn’t be classified as friends of mine.

‘See,’ I say again to Simon while we’re dishing up in the kitchen. ‘Acquaintances, not actual friends.’

‘I’m not sure whether or not to tell you this but I think on balance I should.’ He puts sourdough into baskets. ‘Those are men Marcus plays padel with, plus their partners and kids.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’ He gives me a quick hug. ‘I feel like you should look on this as a nice thing Marcus has done for you and they can then tell their friends how amazing this is.’

No other customers turn up, and there’s a lot of stew, so practically speaking it’s a very good job Marcus called his friends.

I have Scrabble boards around the room and, when they’ve finished the chocolate and sultana tray bake I made for pudding, everyone – some more enthusiastically than others, it has to be said – arranges themselves, with a little help from Simon and me, at tables to play. Simon and I join in so that we have five tables of four.

One of the tables – predominantly teenagers – remains only moderately enthusiastic, although I do see even them cracking a few smiles and even the odd laugh, but the other four are soon fully absorbed in their games.

Time genuinely flies until before we know it games are finishing, with in two cases some extremely hotly contested results and mutterings about people having cheated by reading the dictionary, and everyone – even the teenagers – agrees that it’s been a great evening.

‘So you know what you have to do,’ Simon says as they leave. He’s all for shameless plugging of his business. ‘Tell literally everyone you know to come next week. And also that I am a great interior designer.’