Mad About You Read online

  In choosing the original venue for this celebration, for example, Martin and Mel had carped about the awkward location, and his father had objected to the trendy ‘plant forward’ cuisine. (‘The photos looked like things they’d fling at monkeys at Chester Zoo!’) And Jon simply flipped the booking to another hotel without even checking how much it cost. Everyone should be pleased, that was Jon’s religion, and Jon could facilitate that pleasing, so he did.

  He was, Harriet always said to herself and others, an incredibly, ludicrously nice guy. So, given her increasing doubts, what did that make her?

  2

  They pulled through gateposts that owls perched upon and followed a gently twisting drive to park up in front of a sprawling stone country house hotel. Warm yellow light flowed from leaded pane windows onto an immaculate lawn dotted with white canopied picnic tables, in the crisp early dusk.

  Jon’s mother emerged from the main door and walked out to meet them, Harriet’s heart sinking at the inevitability of their having arrived first. Jon’s dad was someone who would leave at dawn for any journey.

  Jacqueline was in a candy-pink striped shirt with upturned collar, pearls and white jeans, pushing her bouncy salon blow-dry out of her face with her fresh manicure, fingertips like shiny coral beetles. She was always groomed to within an inch of her life, the snowy Mallen streak in her blonded silver hair giving her a pleasingly appropriate look of Disney villainess, to Harriet’s eyes. In turn, her dismay at Harriet’s ‘curiously tomboy style’ (© Jacqueline) was barely concealed.

  After Harriet had met them for the first time, she was sitting next to Jonathan when he got a text from his mum. It was very Jon to have neither the deviousness nor the common sense to not open it in Harriet’s eyeline.

  We thought Harriet was a lovely girl, JJ. Terribly pretty face, like the sidekick girl from the detective show where he’s lame with a cleft palate. But why on earth does she wear those awful glasses?! Last seen on Eric Morecambe! Such a shame. Given contact lenses are widely available, you presume she’s making some sort of cross feminist statement.

  ‘What the …!’ Harriet had exclaimed, cupping her hand to stop herself spitting BBQ flavour Walkers Bugles. ‘What’s wrong with my glasses, and why say something like that?’

  ‘She thinks you’re beautiful!’ Jon said, blushing, with what Harriet at first took as embarrassment and later realised was in fact a swoon at what he’d taken as straight praise from his mother.

  ‘She’s only saying that so she can go in hard on the “four-eyed feminazi frump” angle, Jon. That’s a “paying twenty pence so you can use the toilet” move.’

  ‘You really can’t cope with compliments, can you?’ Jon had said, absurdly fondly. Harriet gave up trying to translate it for him. Like trying to wake a sleepwalker.

  ‘At last!’ Jacqueline said, as they climbed out of the seats, straightening stiffened limbs and grinning awkwardly. ‘We were about to send out the search parties!’

  Jon and Harriet weren’t late.

  ‘Hit a sticky bit of traffic on the B6160,’ Jon said, ‘Hi Mum, how are the digs? Acceptable?’

  ‘Fine, though your brother asked them to change the pillows on his bed, they’re like rocks.’

  Of course he did. Martin Junior, a chest-puffed humourless little pigeon of a man, always led with a complaint, to make it clear he was superior to his surroundings. Harriet suspected he liked Jon picking up the bill but was also hugely insecure about it.

  ‘Harriet, how ARE you?’ Jackie cooed, with that oddly sarcastic intonation that passed for good manners among affected people.

  ‘Very well, thanks. And you?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Can’t complain.’

  Bet you do though.

  Harriet had really tried to bond with Jackie, at the start. She once told her over too much wine in girl talk that she had irregular periods. The following week, Jackie rang Jon and told him that he should send Harriet for a fertility test.

  ‘We’re going to check in, head up to change and meet you in the bar at six?’ Jon said.

  ‘I should hope you are going to change!’ Jacqueline said, in fake-merriment, giving Harriet’s standard t-shirt and jeans and Doc Martens an up-and-down pained look. ‘Tell me you’ve packed something smart!’

  ‘I’m always smart-casual, mum!’ Jon said, imagining this was maternal fussing, rather than a blatant jibe at Harriet that Jacqueline was very thinly disguising by pretending she was referring to the pair of them.

  Somehow, no matter how much she remembered that Jon’s family were a trial, their manifold horrors always dazzled her afresh in person. A thunderous measure of Bombay Sapphire could not come fast enough.

  Their ‘Estate Room’ was more Dalston than Harriet had anticipated for the Dales, a collision of countryside and town – William Morris Strawberry Thief print quilt on the bed, Edison bulbs hanging on a cluster of cables as a modern chandelier. There was a vast copper freestanding tub with matching jug near a marble fireplace, as a whimsical cosplay of the privations of a previous century. The walls were a dramatic shade of Farrow & Ball smoky grey against toothpaste-white cornicing.

  Harriet was a veteran of fancy hotels thanks to her job, and this one still stood out as exceptionally luxe. The kind of scene you were near obliged to put on Instagram with a moody filter, captioned #dontmindifIdo or #todaysoffice. (Harriet was an Instagram refusenik. ‘Busman’s holiday!’ she told her best friends Lorna and Roxy, when they exhorted her to join in.)

  ‘Bloody hell, Jon, this must have cost a fortune,’ Harriet blurted as she twirled her trolley case to a halt, then regretted her words as a bit crass and grasping, rather than grateful. It must have, though.

  ‘It’s not Travelodge prices, but, then again, it’s not every day you’re forty years married!’

  Harriet tensed as she watched him do that thing – where he saw tissues on the bedside table and immediately had to seize one, and start blowing his nose astonishingly loudly, like he was trying to bring brain matter out through his nostrils. Her stomach churned, like it was mixing a Slush Puppy of freezing cement.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Jon said, folding Harriet into a hug, and she squeezed back, mumbling, ‘Thank you for inviting me.’

  ‘Dur, of course I invited you! You make it sound like you’re an optional extra. You’re one of the family. You’re more my family than they are.’

  ‘Hah, I hope not,’ Harriet said, disentangling from an octopus grasp. ‘That would make this incest. I’m going to have a shower, if that’s alright?’

  ‘Have at it!’ Jon said, accepting her subtle non-compliance with the moment he wanted.

  He began prodding at the remote control for the television. What was the unspoken rule that all men in hotel rooms had to immediately put CNN on at a slightly-too-loud volume and lie on their bed watching it, in their socks? Harriet had so often found herself brushing her teeth in a gorgeous suite, listening to a newsreader booming the violence and looting continued through the night as community leaders appealed for calm through the door.

  She unzipped her case and rifled through it for her eveningwear and her clean bra and knickers, silently cursing the way Jackie made her want to mulishly reappear in the same t-shirt. Actually no, reappear in a t-shirt with the slogan BEAST MODE: ACTIVATED and a pair of Union Jack Crocs.

  In the floor-to-ceiling white metro-tiled bathroom, like a sexy sanatorium, Harriet stood under a showerhead the size of a dinner plate, in a pleasingly scalding gush of water. Her hair was gathered off her face into a drooping bun. Harriet had an incredibly thick, strawberry-blonde mane which some might think a blessing, but it meant it was unmanageable worn any other way than up in her trademark long, high, bell pull of a plait. She’d tried cutting it short in her teens, but it stuck out from her head like a box hedge. In a science class at school, they’d examined strands plucked from their own scalps under the microscope, and hers looked like an ear of wheat.

  Once dry and in her unde
rwear, she picked up her dress from the armchair upholstered in chinoiserie fabric in the corner. Bathrooms with armchairs: mad fancy.

  Harriet didn’t buy many dresses, but this one had called to her from the window of a boutique in a picturesque village, a few months back. She’d had an hour and a half to kill before Andy and Annette said, ‘I do,’ and had gone in to touch the fabric. Naturally, she was swooped upon by a bored assistant who was adamant Harriet would look absolutely stunning in it, and that was that.

  It was a deep emerald-green cheongsam that buttoned high at the neck and clung so tightly to her calves it meant she had to take baby steps. She’d not necessarily wanted to wear something so showy to tonight’s dinner, but she also had few options in her wardrobe, and it had cost her almost £200.

  She also had to concede her beloved black-rimmed spectacles didn’t really go with it. Harriet would have to infuriatingly oblige Jacqueline, and wear contacts. She gingerly applied mascara to her exposed eyes and wound colossal handfuls of hair into a bun, securing it with Kirby grips. She turned her head from side to side to check her handiwork. It looked like she had a huge cinnamon pastry on her head, but it would have to do. She dropped the necklace she always wore, with the small key, down her neckline.

  As she exited the bathroom, she saw Jon standing naked in the tub, dousing his head with the jug, spluttering as he swallowed water. She hadn’t expected to come face to face with a penis this early in the evening and let out a small yelp, covering her eyes.

  ‘And good evening to you too!’ she said.

  ‘You have seen it before!’ Jon said, in jolly fashion, and set about aggressively towel-drying his hair, so his face was obscured while his member flapped gently at her, like a windsock in a weak breeze.

  Jon was the image of a solid catch – solvent, dependable. He had a catalogue-model handsomeness, tall, with neatly clippered dark brown hair, unthreatening and well-ironed, and a slim build softening around the edges. And that was a perfectly adequate size of penis. As Lorna always said, the extra-large ones were only a recipe for constant cystitis.

  What kind of monster wouldn’t be satisfied with a man like Jonathan Barraclough?

  ‘Wow!’ Jonathan cried, mercifully having wrapped the towel round his waist by the time he’d blinked away sufficient water that Harriet swam into view. ‘My girlfriend, the supermodel!’

  ‘Hah. Thanks,’ Harriet said, tugging black velvet heels on, which were otherwise only used for funerals. She’d never worked out why comfy flats were disrespectful to the departed. ‘Not too much?’

  ‘Not at all, seriously, you look stunning,’ Jon said, staring as he stepped out of the tub, with some effort given it was the size of Gibraltar. ‘Really. Wow. I don’t know why you don’t dress up more often, given you’re such a knockout.’

  ‘It’s not really me.’

  ‘It is you; you just can’t see yourself the way others do. Stand up, I want a proper look at you.’

  Harriet embarrassedly got to her feet, while Jon whistled and waggled an imaginary Groucho Marx cigar.

  ‘I’m the luckiest guy in the world!’

  3

  ‘… And I tell you this, I wouldn’t live in Bristol if you paid me to. A hotbed of troublemakers and scruffy malcontents.’ Jonathan’s father Martin Senior was holding forth with characteristic vim as Jon and Harriet found them in the private dining room, which had tartan shot-silk curtains and a mounted stag’s head.

  ‘Evening all!’ Jon said. ‘Is Dad off on one already?’

  ‘Your cousin’s moving to Temple Mea— Oh my God! Harriet, can that be you?’ said Jacqueline, clutching her chest and reeling back in simulation of heart attack, while Jon’s dad, Martin, said: ‘Well! Wonders will never cease!’

  Jacqueline leapt up from her seat to come and tug at the fabric on Harriet’s hips, twitching it into place. Harriet went stiff at the uninvited physical interference.

  ‘There! Perfect.’ She added, ‘So nice to see you in a frock for once.’

  The ‘see the praise you get when you actually make the effort’ triumphalism in his mother’s tone made Harriet wish she’d made a cross feminist statement in stout trousers after all. You don’t negotiate with terrorists.

  ‘Thank you. Happy anniversary,’ Harriet smiled at Jacqueline, and then Martin Senior, who looked right through her. He was a husband and a consigliere, with the flushed House of Lords look of someone who had dined and drunk well for many decades. His main role in matrimony seemed to be sinking expensive booze and muttering quite right Jackie, absolutely abysmal behaviour to punctuate any of Jacqueline’s stories about the many wrongs they had been done.

  Jonathan’s brother Martin Junior and his wife Mel walked in behind them, with a scowling, skinny Barty in shirt and tie. He went to a private school and his parents dressed him so smartly he looked like a kid from another era, who might buy sweets with shillings and play conkers.

  ‘My goodness, Harriet?! I didn’t recognise you! I thought Jon had a new woman!’ Martin Junior said, double taking.

  ‘Isn’t it extraordinary!’ Jacqueline chimed in. It?

  ‘Seeing you in a dress is so unfamiliar it’s like … like you’re in drag,’ he said, chortling, and Harriet was momentarily speechless at the rudeness, as everyone fell about.

  ‘Yes, doesn’t she look incredible?’ Jon said, deploying his selective hearing. Why did she feel so undermined by Jon? I’m not asking for their approval.

  ‘Why is Aunt Harriet in fancy dress?’ Barty said, looking up at his mother, and everyone whooped at this precocious wit.

  The standard Barty MO was to direct borderline offensive questions about the company to his parents. Why don’t Uncle Jon and Aunt Harriet have children? was a supposedly innocent query last Christmas, over the prawn cocktail starter.

  ‘Because they’re not married,’ was the snaky answer from Barty’s grandmother, which Harriet itched to correct. Harriet had no moral objection to marriage; she just had no interest either. Doing it purely as a favour to someone else, and to meet society’s expectations, seemed wrong. She’d been quite clear with Jon on this from the start, before he got the chance to start dropping hints. And whenever the subject came up again, she reiterated her stance: nope, not for me. Not now. Not ever. It wasn’t personal to Jon, but it was personal to her.

  ‘Harriet says you told them about the green threat,’ Jon said to his mum, as they took their seats and marbled ham hock terrines were placed in front of them, Jon’s absent of its decorative leaf of Little Gem.

  ‘Oh, so it’s blame mother if they forget, is it?’ Jacqueline chortled in more faux-merriment, shooting Harriet a look.

  ‘Jon asked me if I’d told them and I said you said you’d do it,’ Harriet said.

  ‘I’m only joking, goodness!’ Jacqueline chided, waving her hand at Harriet as the waiter topped her glass up. Sniping passed off as humour, Harriet characterised as over-sensitive if she defended herself? The Jacqueline Barraclough bingo card would be fully dabbered tonight.

  ‘A toast, I think!’ Jon said, picking up his Malbec, once everyone had theirs, and Barty was noisily sucking on a Coke with a straw. ‘To our wonderful mother and father and their marvellous achievement of forty years of happy marriage. Your ruby anniversary! May we all be so fortunate. And so patient, hahahaha.’

  As they raised their glasses, Harriet could see Martin Junior’s slapped-bum face at his brother hogging the limelight.

  ‘Perhaps Dad wants to say a few words?’ Martin Junior said, pointedly, but his father paused in swilling the grog to say: ‘My wife speaks for me, that’s how we’ve made it forty years,’ so his gambit failed.

  ‘Thank you for organising this. I have such wonderful sons!’ Jacqueline said.

  ‘Time for our gift, I think?’ Martin said, and gestured with a head nod at Barty. ‘Go on!’

  Barty looked stubbornly blank until Melissa leaned down and whispered urgently in his ear. Barty slid off his seat, walked to the back of t
he room and collected a gift-ribboned shiny rectangular package. Amid much cooing, he handed it over silently to his grandmother.

  ‘For me?!’ Jackie said.

  ‘What do you say, Barty?!’ Mel trilled from the far end of the table.

  ‘Happy anniversary, Grandma,’ Barty mumbled sullenly, before stomping back to his chair.

  She tore the paper off to reveal a framed photograph of their wedding day, a young Martin and Jacqueline stood on registry office steps. Martin with a thatch of hair, then dark brown; Jacqueline in an unusually tasteful, simple Eighties wedding dress in pale mocha satin, a long veil fixed to her head with an Alice band.

  ‘Oh Marty! Melly! And Bartholomew, of course. You shouldn’t have!’

  Barty looked like he agreed.

  ‘Look, look what they did for us,’ Jacqueline said, turning the picture to face Jon and Harriet, as if they didn’t witness the gift-giving.

  Harriet said: ‘You look gorgeous! That dress really suited you,’ glad to be able to be both honest and positive.

  ‘You’d have loved my going-away outfit, Melissa, I had this super little swing coat,’ Jacqueline said, to make it clear she only had one stylish daughter-in-law.

  ‘Yes, didn’t Mum look bloody smashing on her big day?’ Jon said, and put his hand over Harriet’s, looking at her with proprietorial adoration.

  That was the moment Harriet felt a whisper of strange foreboding, a psychic disquiet, that she chose to ignore in favour of more wine.

  4

  They made it to a chocolate marquise in raspberry coulis with a quenelle of tonka bean ice cream without controversy, until Martin Junior said: ‘How’s the wedding photography going, Harriet?’

  His tone put scare quotes around ‘wedding photography’, as if it was an implausible front for escorting. Perhaps it was all the nice red wine, but Harriet could feel her diplomacy waning by degrees: many of the times she’d thought she was at the end of her tether with her in-laws, she was actually somewhere in the middle of her tether.