Desperately Seeking - By Evelyn Cosgrave Page 0,71

there hadn’t been more children born out of wedlock. We all agreed that she was delighted with the news. The fact that Lucy was moving into Iris’s house went uncommented on.

And then there was Iris. Of all my brothers-in-law, only Mike could rival her for looks or conversation. Lucy was keen that we meet her formally and that Iris meet us and realize we weren’t all latent homophobes preoccupied with doing up our kitchens. (They had bumped into Ruth in town.) So I volunteered to play host to the select few – Lucy, Iris, Jean, Marion and me. Keith said he’d leave us girls alone for the evening – he had to work late anyway and he’d spend the night at his place.

I was quite pleased to be doing the party thing as it had been ages since I’d entertained at home. Keith and I had kept meaning to have dinner parties where we would mingle our friends over some good food and wine, but we’d never got round to it. We could never decide which friends would go with which. I think each of us was privately afraid it would be a disaster. It was easier to order a takeaway and talk about it.

I was, therefore, in the mood to make a bit of a fuss. There was no worry with the liquor part of the evening, I knew I wouldn’t disappoint there, but I wasn’t much of a cook. People kept telling me that all you needed were good ingredients and a simple recipe, but somehow that wasn’t enough to turn me into a domestic goddess. I did have one idea but I wasn’t sure if it was entirely above board. However, by the evening before the proposed dinner I’d had no further ideas, so I decided to risk it. I rang Mike to ask for his help.

He was at home. If he hadn’t been I’d have put the phone down without leaving a message. It was one thing to be cheeky in person, quite another to leave a cheeky message.

When he answered I almost hung up. Mike was very busy and our family was always pulling and dragging out of him. But he’d said we could still be friends. And friends called on one another when they needed help. I could probably muddle through on my own, but it wouldn’t be half as good – and it was certainly cheeky to ask him to help prepare a meal I couldn’t invite him to. Or could I? No, it wasn’t my place. I was only the nominal host. It was Lucy’s party and, besides, they would probably prefer if it was just the girls. Oh, what the hell? I thought. I’ll just ask him.

‘Hi there!’ I said cheerily. ‘It’s Kate.’

‘Oh, hi, Kate.’

‘Yeah… Listen, Mike, I was wondering if I could ask you a favour?’

‘Sure, no problem.’

I went straight for it. ‘I’m having Lucy and the girls over tomorrow night so we can introduce Iris to the good part of the family. Now, I know she wouldn’t want me to go to any trouble but I kind of want to. The only problem is I don’t know how to make anything other than spaghetti Bolognese and the only –’

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ he said. ‘I’m nothing great myself now either, but we’ll pull something together. Have you got a paper and pencil there? I’ll give you a shopping list for tomorrow. Are you ready? OK, start with…’

I grabbed a Biro and an old envelope and scribbled furiously.

I had to visit four different shops to get everything on Mike’s list – he was very particular about where the ingredients came from – but by four o’clock the next afternoon I had everything ready. He was punctual. He had brought a few things of his own – fresh basil from his garden, some particularly good olive oil, a few utensils that he said would make everything easier and a pile of CDs – ‘I know how bad your CD collection is. We’ll need something to work to.’

He looked really good. The fine weather and all the time he was spending out of doors had given him a colour, which was well set off by his blue jeans and a pale blue T-shirt. His hair was longer than it had been in ages, and because he had taken holidays to work on the house, he had more than a few days’ growth in his beard. Yes, he would definitely be snapped