email Ed regretfully cancelling our badminton fixture. He comes back with ‘Chicken’.
On the Friday afternoon I receive a text from Florence on my family mobile. It tells me we can ‘talk if you want’ and offers me a number that is not the one she is texting from. I ring it from a pay-as-you-go mobile, get the answering service and discover I am relieved not to be talking to her directly. I leave a message saying I will try again in a few days, and come away thinking I sound like somebody I don’t know.
At six the same evening I send an ‘all eyes’ to the Haven, copy to Human Resources, informing them that I am taking a week’s leave of absence for family reasons from 25 June to 2 July. If I am wondering what family reasons I am attending to, I need look no further than Steff who, after weeks of radio silence, has announced that she will be descending on us for Sunday lunch with ‘a vegetarian friend’. There are moments that are made for cautious reconciliation. As far as I am concerned, this is not one of them but I know my duty when I see it.
*
I am in our bedroom, packing for Karlovy Vary, sorting through my clothes for laundry marks and anything that shouldn’t belong to Nick Halliday. Prue, having conducted a long telephone conversation with Steff, has come upstairs to help me pack and tell me all about it. Her opening question is not designed for harmony.
‘Do you really need to take badminton gear all the way to Prague?’
‘Czech spies play it all the time,’ I reply. ‘Vegetarian boy or vegetarian girl?’
‘Boy.’
‘One we know, or one we have yet to know?’
There have been precisely two of Steff’s many boyfriends that I managed to engage with. Both turned out to be gay.
‘This one is Juno, if you remember the name, and they’re on their way to Panama together. Juno being short for Junaid, she tells me, which means fighter, apparently. I don’t know whether that makes him any more appealing to you?’
‘It might.’
‘From Luton. At three in the morning. So they won’t be staying the night with us, you’ll be relieved to hear.’
She is right. A new boyfriend in Steff’s bedroom and pot smoke coming out from under the door do not accord with my vision of family bliss, least of all when I am packing for Karlovy Vary.
‘Who the hell goes to Panama anyway?’ I demand just as irritably.
‘Well, I think Steff does. In rather a big way.’
Mistaking her tone, I turn sharply to look at her.
‘What d’you mean? She’s going there and not coming back?’ – only to discover she is smiling.
‘Do you know what she said to me?’
‘Not yet.’
‘We could make a quiche together. Steff and me. Between us. Make a quiche for lunch. Juno loves asparagus and we mustn’t talk about Islam because he’s a Muslim and doesn’t drink.’
‘Sounds ideal.’
‘It must be five years since Steff and I cooked anything together. She thought you men should be in the kitchen, remember? And we shouldn’t.’
Entering the spirit of the occasion as best I can, I take myself to the supermarket, buy unsalted butter and soda bread, the two staples of Steff’s gastronomic regime, and to atone for my boorishness a bottle of ice-cold champagne even if Juno isn’t allowed any. And if Juno isn’t allowed, then my guess is that Steff won’t be either, because by now she is probably well on her way to converting to Islam.
I return from shopping to find the pair of them standing in the hall. Two things then happen at once. A courteous, well-dressed young Indian man steps forward and takes my shopping bag from me. Steff throws her arms round me, tucks her head into the crook of my shoulder and leaves it there, then pulls back and says, ‘Dad! Look, Juno, isn’t he great?’ The courteous Indian man steps forward again, this time to be formally introduced. By now I have spotted a serious-looking ring on Steff’s wedding finger, but I have learned that with Steff it’s better to wait till I’m told.
The women go to the kitchen to make quiche. I open the champagne and present each of them with a glass, then walk back to the drawing room and offer Juno one too because I don’t always take Steff’s guidance about her men literally. He accepts without demur and waits for me to invite him to sit down. This is new