rattling. ‘Look, here comes the man with the trolley. Do you want anything? Can I buy you a restorative cup of coffee? I think I might have one.’
I wasn’t sure I could concentrate on coffee while my brain was still whirring.
‘Hello, my good man,’ Rory said to the short man in a regulation waistcoat pushing the trolley through the train. ‘Could I please have a cappuccino, hold the chocolate.’
‘Don’t do them,’ he replied in a surly tone. ‘We do white coffee or black coffee.’
‘Ah, of course, what a terrific choice. Well, in that case a white coffee please. Florence?’
‘Er…’ I looked at the man in the waistcoat as if he’d help me out and sell me the secret to a straightforward relationship instead of a coffee that tasted like puddle. ‘No, I’m good, thanks.’
Rory tapped the card machine and took his coffee – ‘Magnificent, thank you so much’ – before putting his free hand over mine.
‘Ignore Octavia,’ he said. ‘She’s a troublemaker sometimes.’
‘I will, I just wanted to ask,’ I replied.
‘Don’t be absurd, of course you should ask,’ he said, kissing my head before releasing my hand and immediately opening Margaret Thatcher.
When we arrived at King’s Cross, Rory caught a cab to his office. I took the Northern Line home, inconveniencing every other person on the Tube with my suitcase.
I found Mia and Hugo on the sofa discussing wedding canapés. Mia was cross-legged with her laptop balanced on her knees, Hugo was lying flat along the rest of it, his gangly legs dangling over the sofa arm like a cadaver.
‘What do you think, Flo, if you had a choice between the venison carpaccio with fig compote or partridge tart with horseradish cream?’ she asked.
‘Please, no more partridge,’ I said, releasing my suitcase. ‘Rory’s mother murdered several of them for our lunch yesterday.’
‘Course, his parents!’ shrieked Mia, shutting her laptop screen and dropping it on Hugo’s torso.
‘Owwww, Mia, that really hurt,’ said Hugo, clutching his stomach.
She ignored him. ‘How were they? I’ve been tits deep in crab cake and scallop goujons since yesterday; tell me everything.’
‘It was kind of hilarious,’ I replied. I needed a quiet afternoon to go over it in my head. The house. His parents. Nearly being ravaged by a wolf. Actually being ravaged by Rory in the herb garden. The food. Octavia’s conversation and my talk to Rory on the train. I looked down as I heard a ‘mewl’ to see Marmalade sitting patiently at my feet.
‘Hi, pal,’ I said, scooping him up and scratching under his ear, never more grateful to see him.
‘Hilarious how?’
‘Mad,’ I replied, as Marmalade buried his face in my neck. ‘Eccentric. Like, they live in this huge posh house with dogs and chickens, even a peacock, but it looked like a squat inside. Well, maybe not a squat. But it was pretty old and run-down. Curtains that looked like they’d been put up 900 years ago, an extremely casual attitude towards voles and a whole room for boots. Boots! And no heating.’
‘That’s posh people for you, they spend all their money on horses.’
‘They do have horses.’
‘Exactly. But you liked them? His parents?’
‘Yessssss,’ I said slowly. ‘They were just quite… different.’
‘Don’t worry. I loathed Hugo’s mother when I first met her.’
‘What?’ interjected Hugo, pressing his head back into the sofa to glance up at Mia. ‘I thought you liked them?’
‘I do now,’ she replied, running a soothing hand over his forehead before looking at me and mouthing ‘No, I don’t.’
‘All I’m saying to Florence,’ she went on, ‘is that it doesn’t matter if you don’t love the parents straight away. There’s all this pressure about meeting them for the first time but sometimes other people’s families are even worse than one’s own.’
‘Where’s Ruby?’ I asked.
‘Dunno. Haven’t seen her all weekend. Have you invited Rory to the wedding yet?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m sort of waiting for the right moment. I just… didn’t want it to seem too much.’
Mia rolled her eyes. ‘You’re fine, you’ve just been to stay with his parents.’
‘He must come,’ added Hugo, ‘it’ll be like having the abominable snowman or the Loch Ness Monster there.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Only that they’re also exceptionally rare beasts, a bit like your boyfriends, ha ha!’
Mia punched Hugo in the arm and made him whine again.
‘Oh hey, would your friend Jaz be up for doing our hair?’ she went on. ‘I’ve booked a make-up artist called Mel so that’s sorted. She’s amazing, she did the Royal wedding. But I still need someone to do hair.’
‘For you?’
‘You,