I confirmed with a nod. ‘Mr Carven wants one from the outside of the grill but your dad wants one from the middle of the grill and Mr Khan is very concerned that if they wait much longer, all the sausages will be burnt and the experiment will be compromised.’
‘Aren’t you glad this is how you’re spending your first Saturday back?’ he said, resting his arm on my shoulders. ‘Is there anything more British than watching a load of old men fight over barbecued sausages?’
‘It is strangely compelling,’ I agreed as the men settled on a sausage and sliced it open. Adrian’s dad hooted with joyous conviction, brandishing the perfectly cooked sausage in his supposed friend’s face. I hadn’t seen anything quite like a British barbecue in a long time. I smiled, my stomach rumbling. Mostly I was just glad to be outside and able to see the sky. I’d stayed late at work all week and not only because my friends were all too busy to see me. I really, really wanted to do a good job and, since I knew absolutely nothing about gaming, it had been a steep learning curve.
‘Mum’s so happy you’re here,’ Adrian said, nodding over at his mother resplendent in her garden party florals. ‘But be warned, she’s definitely going to ask you if you’ve come back to make an honest man of me.’
‘How much to tell her I’m pregnant and it’s yours?’
He threw his head back and barked out my favourite laugh. ‘She’d have you up the registry office wearing her wedding dress before you’d even finished your sentence.’
At least once a year, one of Adrian’s parents would ask me, in person or – my favourite – by commenting on an unrelated post on my Facebook wall, why it was he and I had never got together. The truth of it was, we had kissed once. Both very drunk on alcopops, faces smushed together on the dance floor of the only local nightclub that didn’t check IDs closely enough to see that neither of us was eighteen. It was such a rousing success that I burst out laughing, Adrian’s penis disappeared back up inside him and neither of us had ever mentioned it again. I’d always assumed we must be related in some weird, 23andMe kind of a way, because, love him though I did, it really wouldn’t have mattered if he was the last man left on the face of the earth, I would rather have had sex with my own foot than make a go of it with Adrian Anderson.
‘Christ almighty, is that your mum?’ he gave me a nudge as my parents approached. ‘She looks well fit.’
‘Shut up before I remove your testicles with my house keys,’ I replied, my cheeks flushing the exact same shade as my mum’s strappy sundress. Everyone else at the Andersons’ party was wearing exactly what you’d expect: a bit of Jasper Conran here, a touch of M&S there, plenty of floaty and floral. But not my mother. The hem of her dress barely flirted with her knees, clung to her tiny waist and strained over her absolutely massive chest. I looked down at the round-neck, loose-fit watercolour-print Zara midi dress I’d bought on the way home from work the night before, feeling like a complete frump.
‘She looks fantastic,’ he said, waving them over. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen her out of jeans before. What has she been doing?’
‘More like who she’s been doing,’ I grumbled. ‘Her and my dad are “getting to know each other” again, if you know what I mean.’
‘I don’t but I’m dead serious, your mum could get it,’ he whispered before throwing his arms open for a hug. ‘Mr Reynolds, Mrs Reynolds, so nice to see you. It’s been a dog’s age.’
‘Adrian, how many times do I have to tell you? It’s Gwen to you,’ Mum said, tittering as my friend kissed her hand and spun her around, making the handkerchief hem of her dress flare outwards.
Dad wasn’t nearly as impressed. Ever since we were little kids, he’d never been especially keen on Adrian and Adrian hadn’t really done anything to change his mind, whether he was kicking a football through his greenhouse or suggesting that the very expensive and beautiful steam shower Dad had designed for Adrian’s parents’ new bathroom was ‘cool in a sexy gas chamber kind of way’.
It was fair to say he didn’t help himself.
‘We must go and say hello to Simon and Sheila,’ Dad