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“There’s nothing wrong with Mavis,” insists Nanny Barb.
“I think, actually”—Les is still standing in the doorway, still keeping his voice down—“there are a couple of things wrong with Mavis.”
Auntie Jack has lit another cigarette. “The problem with Mavis is that the things that are wrong with her are precisely the things that make her interesting.”
“You give me one good reason why I shouldn’t invite Mavis.” It’s beginning to look like Nanny Barb’s going to double down the way only people over eighty can.
“She cheats at Cluedo,” says Wendy.
“She made little Anthea cry,” adds Les.
“Oh be fair”—this is Auntie Jack—“those bracesdidmake her look like she’d tried to perform oral sex on a shopping trolley.”
“Don’t make it the right thing to say to a fourteen-year-old,” replies Del.
“And she gatecrashed Kayla’s thirtieth,” Wendy goes on, “threw up on the cake, kicked the dog, and stole Johnny’s car.”
“Now now”—even Nanny Barb can’t quite field all of these at once—“she brought the car back eventually.”
“Only after she was arrested,” Del points out.
“Yes but—”
“For drink driving.”
“She had—”
“In Majorca.”
I can see that this might go on for a while, and although it’s not really a situation that’s conducive to the getting in of words, edge-or-otherwise, I don’t want to be causing family strife. “It’s fine,” I say, “I’m sure I’ll have somewhere to go.”
“No.” Wendy is very, very forceful on this point. “You can’t not know where you’re going at Christmas. You’re coming here, and we’ll just risk the death curse.”
I’d figured they were just mildly superstitious. I hadn’t realised there could be fatalities. “Death curse?”
“If thirteen sit down to dine,” Nanny Barb intones, “one must die within a year.”
“Are yousurewe shouldn’t invite Mavis?” asks Auntie Jack.
Del sighs. “Tell you what, I’m probably on my way out anyway, just make sure nobody gets up before me.”
“Oh you morbid sod, Dad.” Wendy isn’t having any of it. “Anyway it don’t work like that, somebody’ll forget and they’ll be allooh I need the looand then they’ll be going through to the toilet and thenbam.”
I shouldn’t ask. But I do. “Bam?”
“Massive heart attack,” Wendy explains. “Or a toaster falls in the loo while you’re having a slash.”
For some reason, this is the step too far for Jonathan. “I do not. Keep toasters. In my bathroom. Besides,” he adds with the same air of finality he used when he was firing me, “with the cat there’s fourteen, so Sam can stay if he wants.”
And that’s that. From what I’ve seen, Jonathan’s difficult alpha energy doesn’t always work on his family, any more than it always works on me, but from time to time, when he hits it just right, he can lay down the law with the best of them. I’m honestly a bit surprised he’s chosen to do that for me.
“Well then, that’s settled,” says Wendy cheerily. “Course we’ll have to make sure we get in the turkey cat food.”
“And your mum has said you can have our spare table,” adds Les. “If we stick it at the end of yours it should fit everyone.”
“Not quite.” Del isn’t the sort of man to let a nitpick slide. I wonder for a moment if he’d get on with Amjad. “If yours seats eight and his seats six, that only makes twelve.”
It’s bait, and I know it’s bait, but I figure it’s better for me to take it than anybody else. “Doesn’t it make fourteen?”
