still nodding, and she’s clutching his arm, and as they get nearer, I hear her saying, “Thank you so much,” in her confident, penetrating voice. “You’re such a star, Matt. So, you’ll phone the storage company, will you?”
“Er…no problem,” says Matt, sounding a bit startled.
“You’re an angel.” Maud bats her eyelashes at him. “Now, tell me, you don’t know any MPs, do you? Because—”
“Maud!” I cut her off brightly. “Happy birthday!”
“Oh, thank you!” says Maud, blinking at me as though this greeting is a complete surprise. “What a lovely day.”
“Where are the children?” inquires Nell, and Maud looks around vaguely.
“They were here….Now, Matt, that reminds me, you don’t have an electric mower by any chance, do you?”
“No, he doesn’t,” I say quickly. “Matt, a word?”
I drag him away a little distance and say in a stern undertone, “You have to say ‘no’ to Maud, remember? We went over this.”
“I’m not just going to say a flat ‘no’ when someone asks me a favor,” says Matt, frowning. “I’m a decent human being.”
“That’s how she gets to you!” I retort. “She makes you feel like a decent human being, she flutters her eyelashes gratefully…and then boom. You’ve been got. I love Maud, but it’s true.”
Matt laughs and bends to kiss me.
“Thanks for your concern,” he says. “But I can look after myself.”
Fourteen
Famous last words. Sure enough, two hours later, Matt looks utterly beleaguered. God knows what he’s agreed to do for Maud, but she’s been monopolizing him and saying things like “I’ll text you the details” and even handing him Royal Mail notices about parcels. In the last conversation between them, I overheard the phrases “passport office,” and “school run,” and “so kind.”
Well, he’ll learn.
By now we’re all sprawled on the picnic rugs, searching for the last of the cava. Maud’s children were eventually located trying to cadge food from another family picnic and corralled back to ours. Now, having heard that Matt does martial arts, they’re attacking him with “kung fu” punches.
“I’m going to beat you up!” Bertie yells at Matt for about the hundredth time.
“Stop it, Bertie, my love,” says Maud, glancing up briefly. “Matt, I’m so sorry, only he does adore martial arts.”
“It’s fine,” says Matt good-humoredly, although I see him flinch as Bertie prepares to kickbox him again.
“I’ve found it,” Nell addresses Matt, looking up from her phone. “ ‘The fundamental problems with Harriet’s House: a feminist viewpoint.’ It’s a blog. I knew I’d seen it. Have you read it?”
“Can’t remember, I’m afraid,” says Matt, looking even more beleaguered. He and Nell have been debating Harriet’s House all afternoon—at least, Nell has been telling him how patriarchal and misogynistic it is, and he’s been occasionally offering replies like, “We have a new feminist line of character dolls,” which barely causes her to break stride.
“ ‘Who buys into this capitalist, exploitative version of girlhood?’ ” Nell reads out with a thunderous frown. “ ‘What architects of bullshit think to create such a misleading fantasy world?’ You should read the piece, Matt,” she adds, offering him her phone. “It’s good.”
“Right,” says Matt, without moving to take the phone. “Yes. Maybe later— Oof!”
Bertie has landed a vicious blow on Matt’s chest, and finally Maud raises her voice.
“Bertie! Stop attacking Matt! Just…You mustn’t…” She takes another gulp of cava, then heaves a massive sigh. “Oh God. It’s my birthday.”
I exchange looks with Nell and Sarika, because this is what always happens on Maud’s birthday. She gets drunk and morose and starts saying she’s ancient and usually ends up weeping in a taxi.
“I’m so old,” she says, right on cue. “So old. Where’s the other bottle?”
As she gets to her feet, she sways dangerously on her wedges, and I see that she’s been quietly getting more drunk than I’ve realized.
“Maud, you’re not old,” I say reassuringly, as I always do. But she ignores me, as she always does.
“How did we get this old?” she says with a dramatic flourish, grabbing the last full bottle of cava and swigging from it. “How? You realize we’re going to disappear?” She narrows her eyes. “We’ll be invisible women, all of us. Ignored and belittled.” She takes another glug of cava and sweeps a hand around to include all of us. “That’s the wretched society we live in. But I won’t be invisible, OK?” she gives a sudden impassioned cry, gesticulating with the cava bottle. “I refuse to disappear! I will not be invisible!”
I bite my lip to suppress a smile, because Maud could not be invisible if