seconds later, there was a thud and a stifled scream. The special wine wasn’t all Mum had found in the cupboard under the stairs. We all rushed out into the hall. She was on her hands and knees, leaning over a cardboard box. Inside was a lumpy black mess, part solid but mainly liquid. The smell was overpowering; it made me gag. ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ Dad asked, bending to pick up the hallowed bottle, which, in her shock, Mum had dropped.
‘I think it must have been a cabbage,’ she said. ‘I remember putting a cabbage in there ages ago, in a box . . .’
‘Well, it’s not a cabbage any more,’ said Dad, elbowing Kit in the ribs as if to say, ‘Another hilarious episode in the life of the Monk family!’
‘I’ll get rid of it for you, Val,’ said Anton. He moved my mother to one side like a bomb-disposal expert preparing to secure the scene.
‘Anton to the rescue,’ said Dad for Kit’s benefit, as if Kit might not understand what was going on; subtitles might be required. ‘There’s no one better in a crisis.’
‘Yup,’ Fran muttered. ‘When it comes to disposing of decaying vegetables, no one can touch him.’
I looked at Kit, dreading the disgust I was sure I’d see on his face. He grinned at me and widened his eyes in a secret signal, as if to say, ‘We’ll talk about this later.’ I smiled at him, grateful because he’d made me feel like a fellow outsider, not part of the Thorrold House madness. Not implicated.
We all watched as Anton opened the front door and carried the box containing the former cabbage outside. ‘Right.’ Dad clapped his hands together. ‘Back to what matters: food and wine.’
We ate our cold lasagne – which Dad kept insisting was still ‘piping hot’ and Mum kept threatening to heat up in the microwave – drank the wine, which was nice but nothing spectacular, then drank some ordinary wine when the over-hyped stuff had run out. Dad carped at Mum for dropping the bottle on the carpet, rotten cabbage or no rotten cabbage, because ‘it could easily have smashed’, even though it hadn’t. Kit tried not to let Dad fill his glass again and again, Dad bored me and Fran and shocked Kit with his views on drinking and driving: ‘As far as I’m concerned, if you can’t drive responsibly when you’ve had a few, you’re not fit to drive at all. A good driver’s a good driver, tipsy or sober.’
Then, apropos nothing, Mum burst into tears and ran from the room. Taken aback, we listened to her weeping as she ran upstairs. Dad turned to Fran. ‘What’s the matter with her? Too much vino, do you think?’
‘Dunno,’ said Fran. ‘Why don’t you make her drive up and down the A1 for a few hours? If she crashes, she’s pissed. If she doesn’t, she isn’t. Or is it the other way round, according to you?’
‘Go and check on her,’ said Dad. ‘One of you. Connie?’
I stared down at my plate, resolutely ignoring him. Fran sighed and went off in search of Mum.
Dad said, ‘We’ll have a nice cup of tea in a minute, and pudding – apple and rhubarb crumble, I think it is.’ He meant that we would have both when Mum came downstairs. I bit back the urge to say to Kit, ‘My dad might suck up to you and force his best wine down you, but he will never, ever make you a cup of tea, no matter how many years you spend sitting at his kitchen table, no matter how thirsty you are.’
At that moment, it struck me as a form of cruelty: to know and supposedly love someone – your own daughter – and yet never to have offered them a cup of tea or coffee in thirty-four years, unless it was with the certainty that someone else would make it.
Fran reappeared, looking annoyed. ‘She says she’ll be down in a minute. She’s upset about the cabbage.’
‘Why, for goodness’ sake?’ Dad was impatient.
Fran shrugged. ‘I couldn’t get much out of her. You want more information, ask her yourself.’
A few minutes later, Mum swept into the kitchen wearing newly applied make-up and started talking with manic cheeriness about crumble and custard. The rotten cabbage wasn’t mentioned again.
Two hours later, after pudding and tea, we were able to escape. As diplomatically as possible, Kit fielded Dad’s attempts to insist that he drive home despite having had