brochure.
I’d never liked ‘Flo’. It made me think of Tampax. I’d been christened Florence after my maternal grandmother, a thin, energetic Frenchwoman who lived in an old farmhouse outside Bordeaux surrounded by village cats and apricot trees. I’d spent long stretches of my summer holidays there when I was younger, bribed to pick up fallen fruit. If I collected several baskets a day, Grandmère poured me a glass of watered-down wine that evening. It had been our secret and I adored her for it, for treating me like a grown-up when nobody else seemed to, when nobody else would talk to me about Mum and I was scared that I’d forget her. If anyone had dared called Grandmère ‘Flo’, she would have sworn at them in French. She’d died when I was fifteen and I’d clung to my proper name ever since, as if it still linked me to those summers, although I’d long since given up correcting my sisters.
‘Hugo, say hello to Flo,’ added Mia.
‘Hullo, Flo,’ said Hugo, raising his head from his phone and smiling weakly before lowering his gaze to his screen again. Honestly, I’d met more interesting skirting boards. If he was physically attractive I might have understood, but he looked like a pencil in a suit: tall and gangly, with an overly gelled hairline that had started receding, carving out the shape of a large ‘M’ on his forehead.
I looked from Hugo’s head to the table before sitting down. Five place settings, two candlesticks and one fishbowl of white roses equalled eight, which was fine because that was an even number.
‘Where’s Ruby?’ I asked as a waiter appeared with a bottle of champagne and held it in front of Patricia.
Patricia nodded at him. ‘Very good. On her way from a casting, didn’t you say, Mia?’
‘She said she might be late but we should go ahead.’ Mia held up her champagne flute and watched as the waiter poured, then held it up for a toast.
‘Everyone ready?’ she said. ‘Here’s to me. And Hugo,’ she added quickly. ‘Here’s to us, and to the best wedding ever.’ She squealed and scrunched her face as if on the verge of ecstasy at the thought of herself in a white dress.
‘Darling, I couldn’t be prouder,’ said Patricia.
‘So exciting!’ I lied as we clinked glasses.
Hugo winced and patted his chest – he had weirdly thin fingers too – as he put his glass down on the table. ‘Mia, have you brought any Rennie with you? You know champagne always gives me heartburn.’
Ruby arrived an hour later when we were halfway through the main courses. ‘Sorry, they kept us all waiting,’ she said, interrupting a debate which had been running for fifteen minutes about whether Mia and Hugo should have a wedding cake made of cheese or a Sicilian lemon sponge by the East End baker who’d designed Prince Harry and Meghan’s cake.
‘Hi, guys, hi, Flo, hi, Mum,’ she added, dutifully circling the table and kissing each of us on the head before throwing herself in the seat next to me. ‘I could murder a drink.’
‘We were just discussing my cake,’ said Mia, a forkful of fish paused in the air.
‘Our cake,’ corrected Hugo.
‘Catch me up, what have I missed?’
‘What was your casting for?’ asked Patricia, who dreamed of Ruby modelling on the cover of Vogue so she could boast to her friends at bridge club.
‘A new campaign for cold sore cream.’ Ruby glanced up at a hovering waiter. ‘Could I have a vodka and tonic please? Slimline tonic.’ She turned back to the table. ‘And it was crap. I’m not doing it even if they ask me.’
Ruby never seemed to mind missing out on jobs. Castings came and went every week and she shrugged them off, convinced that her big cover moment would come along one day. It helped that she was twenty-six and still had a credit card bankrolled by our father.
‘Oh well,’ said Patricia. ‘What do you want to eat?’
‘Er…’ Ruby looked at our plates. Hugo was chewing a rib-eye; after a debate of several minutes over whether the fish was cooked in butter or oil, Patricia and Mia had opted for the sea bass with the thyme cream on the side; I was having chicken but had swapped the truffled mash for chips because I thought truffle smelled like the crotch of my gym leggings and why anyone would want to eat that was beyond me. Plus, I could count the chips as I ate them. I couldn’t