Page 40 of The Way We Are Now

‘Good, good. That’s good.’ Dad said nothing more but patted my arm and I knew he’d weighed up my relationship with John, and, in Dad’s eyes, he’d been found wanting.

I constantly waylaid the postman until he actually asked if I fancied having a drink with him one night.

I didn’t.

My heart raced every time the phone rang, but it was inevitably Aunty Sandra for Mum, reminding her of something she’d promised to do to assist the strike action, or one of Les’s many girlfriends he’d said he’d ring and never had. Dad would be either down at The Alamo with Mum and Les or up at his allotment tending to his onions and spring greens. I seemed to spend a lot of time alone in the evenings, up in my bedroom determined to work on a thesis that might get me a first next year.

Then, one evening, the minute I walked through the door, Mum broke off from laying the table in the kitchen, immediately looking up as I came in. ‘Letter for you, Anna. Looks official.’ She nodded expectantly towards the mantelpiece in the living room.

And there it was.

Sir Hugh and Lady Mandeville

Request the company of

Anna Piasecki

at the Harrowton Annual May Hunt Ball

on Saturday 12 May at 7 p.m.

In celebration of the end of the season, we warmly invite you to join us for an evening of fine dining, dancing and friendship.

Attire: Formal, with an optional nod to the celebrated tradition of hunting.

Carriages: at 1 a.m.

With warm regards,

Hugh and Ava

13

On the second Saturday in May, Theo came to pick me up at around four in the afternoon.

I’d dithered, uncertain as to whether I should meet him at our front door in the beautiful long red dress Linda and I had both seen, and jumped on, the minute we’d gone into the back room of the dress agency in Sheffield a week earlier.

The dress had been hanging in pride of place on the wall and way beyond my budget, but fitted like a glove, and the owner had oohed and aahed, saying I just had to have it. So many others, she said, had tried desperately to get into it, but hadn’t succeeded. ‘Nobody else will be able to get into it,’ Linda had whispered in the changing room as she brought in a pair of heels for me to try. ‘Offer her twenty quid less.’

‘I can’t do that,’ I’d said.

‘It’s a dress agency. Course you can. If you won’t, I will.’

And she did. I couldn’t afford the shoes as well, but Linda said she had just the pair at home I could borrow. So then, the question was, should I be at the door wearing the dress to go with the make-up and up-do hairstyle that Kath, Linda’s sister, had spent a good hour and a half on? Or was it etiquette that I travel the hour up the M1 in Theo’s Mini in my jeans, taking the dress along in its protective cover? Aunty Sandra, desperate to be in on the whole exciting shebang, had provided this after Uncle Maurice’s best suit had returned from the cleaners in the bag after an accident, allegedly with a pint of Sam Smith’s. I’d work out where I was going to get changed later.

Theo had said, when he phoned me to check I’d got the invitation and still wanted to be his guest, that if it was OK with me, I’d be staying the night in the guest wing.

‘Guest wing. Fancy!’ Mum and Sandra twittered at each other like a couple of sparrows once Sandra had walked over from her street with the black plastic Johnson’s Cleaners cover in her hand. ‘Shame it doesn’t say HELEN SYKES on it,’ Sandra said, quoting the top Leeds fashion boutique where, apparently, Audrey Lindley, who Sandra cleaned for, had always gone when mother-of-the-bride to all three daughters.

‘Look, fold it over and no one will see,’ advised Linda who’d come round to supervise my getting ready as well as, presumably, get a good gawp at Theo Mandeville. ‘You do know who this bloke is?’ she said to Mum and Aunty Sandra as she fussed about with one of my curls that wouldn’t behave itself.

‘As in?’ Mum and Sandra leaned in to Linda, their eyes wide.

‘Well, he’s only the son of some lord and lady up in North Yorkshire.’

‘Ey, you didn’t tell us that, Anna,’ Mum said.

I’d not shared the actual invitation with anyone at home, just saying I’d been invited to a bit of a student May ball in Harrowton and I was getting a lift up there and staying the night, but Linda had quietly come up behind me at my desk as, for the millionth time, I’d taken out the stiff cream embossed invitation in order to convince myself it was real.