A Not Quite Perfect Family Read online

  This book is for Michael and Alison Anderson

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  June: Hors d’oeuvres

  CHAPTER TWO

  July: Potage

  CHAPTER THREE

  August: Poisson

  CHAPTER FOUR

  October: Entrée

  CHAPTER FIVE

  November: Sorbet

  CHAPTER SIX

  December: Relevé

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  New Year’s Eve: Salade

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  February: Légumes

  CHAPTER NINE

  March: Entremet

  CHAPTER TEN

  April: Savoureux

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  May: Fromage

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  June: Café

  Acknowledgements

  Dinner Party Recipes and Tips

  What Would Mary Berry Do?

  A Very Big House in the Country

  Snowed in for Christmas

  CHAPTER ONE

  June: Hors d’oeuvres

  Fern Carlile was a woman who lived from meal to meal, already fantasizing about dinner as she washed up her lunch plate, but the annual Midsummer supper in the garden was her favourite meal of the whole year. Lanterns in the trees, a blushing dusk supplying the flattering light a lady needs, and the soft boom, crash of next door’s nightly vicious argument. A lifetime Londoner, Fern knew better than to expect birdsong; her summer soundtrack was fox orgies and bin lorries.

  Her family’s raised eyebrows couldn’t dent the simple happiness Fern felt laying out nibbles on pretty mismatched plates.

  ‘Quails’ eggs? Seriously?’ Adam looked askance at the tiny ovals. ‘What happened to the usual breadsticks and own-brand hummus?’ He looked deflated; he was highly attached to own-brand hummus.

  ‘I’m recreating our meal at La Boite Rouge.’ It had been a high point of her year, so Fern pouted when he looked vacant. ‘You can’t have forgotten! We had that incredible dinner for our anniversary?’

  ‘Oh. Yeah. All those weird courses.’ Adam patted his tummy, as if it was a skittish pet. ‘I had raging squits all the next day.’

  Fern, not for the first time, wondered why she bothered. She’d been blown away by the attention to detail at the famous old-style French restaurant as plate after plate of delicious grub was brought to their table. When the waiter heard that they were celebrating their anniversary, he’d brought them a glass of scented, sweet dessert wine ‘on the ’ouse’; he wasn’t to know it wasn’t their wedding anniversary, but a celebration of the night Fern and Adam had first made love.

  She paused for a moment, a dish of stuffed figs in mid-air, and remembered the single bed in Adam’s digs. It squeaked. And so did I! Fern watched Adam lug chairs over the pot-holed lawn. If she squinted she could still see the lean, keen young stud inside the outline of the forty-three-year-old dad.

  ‘Where’s that pretty platter with the gold rim?’ she asked him.

  ‘Do I look like the kind of person who could answer that question?’ Adam was out of breath; the chairs Fern insisted on for this feast were cast iron, and took some lugging.

  ‘I s’pose not.’ Fern let him off the hook. ‘Sometimes I forget you’re not a girl.’ She left him frowning at her receding back as she hurried back to the house, taking off her shoes as she did so. Lawns and heels don’t mix.

  Down in the cellar, the platter sat alongside piles of similar charity-shop crockery which was either dead people’s junk or bargainous treasure, depending on whether you agreed with Adam or Fern. Moving items to get at the platter, Fern put her hand on a dusty box, patterned with faded flowers and tied with mouldering ribbon.

  Recognition made her pause. ‘Bloody hell,’ she whispered to it. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

  Outside once again, she placed the platter just so on the table, which sat happily in their shambles of a garden as if it had grown there. Everything that Fern owned was slightly wonky – she included Adam in this analysis. The lawn sloped. The ancient conservatory leaned. The roof of the rambling, vaguely Gothic house undulated as if it was breathing. Roof next, she promised herself. The house was a never-ending project, a mountain of DIY.

  Inheriting the multi-windowed, red brick Homestead House in her twenties had transformed Fern’s life. She’d been as round as a small planet, pregnant with their son, when she and Adam first looked round the big old house. The creaky floorboards and the resolutely unmodernized bathrooms and the cracked stained glass had saved their bacon, allowing them to move out of their dismal rented room. From then on, the young couple lived mortgage-free while their friends sold their souls for a toehold on the bonkers London property ladder. Homestead House had enfolded them in its warm Edwardian embrace of brick and tile, offering them more rooms than they could fill, and a garden like a green bowl of sunshine.

  Standing back to appraise her handiwork, Fern accepted that the table setting didn’t look much like the picture in the magazine, but it was pretty and she was starving, so it was time to yell, ‘Kids! C’mon!’

  ‘Are there chips?’ shouted Tallulah hopefully as she vaulted down the crumbling steps, Boudicca their rescue whippet at her heels. She was never far from Tallulah; eight-year-olds tend to spill food, and food spillers are dogs’ favourite people. ‘Please God let there be chips.’

  ‘There are chips,’ said Fern gravely. Michelin star pretensions were all very well, but nobody in their right mind would get between Tallulah and a hot chip. ‘And before you ask, there’s ketchup too.’

  ‘Where is everybody?’ Ollie turned a slatted chair the wrong way round and sat astride it. It seemed to be a teenage badge of honour never to just sit on a chair. ‘There’s usually a big crowd for Midsummer Night.’

  ‘I thought it’d be nice to have just us this year.’ Fern avoided Adam’s eye. Infamously ready to throw a party for the lamest of reasons – the dog not weeing in the utility room, or a month with a vowel in it – Fern had kept this Midsummer a strictly family affair. Today was the day they’d tell the kids their news. ‘So we can, you know, really talk for a change.’

  ‘We’re always talking, Mummy,’ said Tallulah.

  ‘You’re always talking, you mean,’ said Ollie.

  ‘Hey, now, be nice.’ Adam waved a stick of celery as he took his seat. ‘Mum’s gone to a lot of trouble over this meal.’ He winked at Fern.

  Fern winked back.

  ‘Urgh!’ said Tallulah, who cringed at any proof that her parents might own functioning genitals.

  ‘Quiche?’ Ollie’s lip curled as he peered from beneath the black quiff of hair that hovered over his brow like a glossy bird’s wing. ‘For real?’

  ‘I’m not sure about posh food,’ murmured Tallulah.

  ‘Ollie, you like quiche.’ Fern knew it was ridiculous to tell people what they liked, but Ollie did like quiche. Just recently, he’d eaten his own weight in it.

  ‘Ollie,’ said Adam in a warning way. ‘There’s plenty of other food. Just choose something else. I can’t stand quails’ eggs but you don’t hear me saying so.’

  ‘Except you just did,’ said Fern.

  ‘Oops,’ said Adam.

  ‘Mmm, the quiche is yummy,’ said Tallulah with a sideways look at her brother, who failed to rise to the bait.

  Skirmishes between the seventeen-year-old and his little sister had tapered off over the summer. Ollie had shrunk, retreating into himself. Adam put it down to the rigours of sixth-form mock exams, but Fern knew how much Ollie missed Donna.

  His first girlfriend worthy of the title, Donna had been a constant at their dinner table until a couple of months ago when she’d inexplicably stopped appearing. A
ccording to Tallulah, there was another chap in the mix, somebody called Maz. Solid, clever Ollie, a boy who managed to combine common sense and cool, had confided in nobody, but Fern knew tears had been shed up in his turret bedroom.

  ‘I propose a toast!’ Adam stood up, brandishing his glass. For a moment, Fern thought he was pre-empting her with their news, but instead he shouted ‘To Roomies!’

  ‘Roomies!’ echoed the others, raising their squash, Coke, and the wine Fern had chosen for the label but which tasted like meths.

  ‘My dad’s the coolest dad in the class ’cos of Roomies,’ said Tallulah complacently, helping herself to some chargrilled halloumi, a cheese she’d never met before.

  ‘I like to think I was always the coolest dad.’ Adam pulled a mournful face.

  ‘Just ’cos you like to think it doesn’t make it true, Dad.’ Ollie crammed his face urgently with carbs and protein as if he had a train to catch.

  ‘Oi, you! When I was in my twenties my band was the bee’s knees.’ Adam squared his broad shoulders, tossed the thick brown hair peppered with grey that always needed a cut, and sat up straighter, presenting his profile with mock vanity. ‘The first time Mum ever laid eyes on me I was setting the stage on fire at a nightclub.’

  Tallulah looked concerned and Fern knew she’d have to explain later about metaphors; Daddy’s not an actual arsonist, darling.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, we know.’ Ollie made sure Adam knew just how unimpressed he was. ‘You could’ve been a pop star, et cetera et cetera.’

  ‘You’re better than a pop star.’ Tallulah was a veteran daddy-pleaser.

  Fern guessed at the scenes spooling in Adam’s head, snapshots of the far-off summer when he and the rest of Kinky Mimi had clubbed together to buy a knackered Ford Transit for their European tour. She recalled his face when she’d shown him the little stick with its life-changing blue stripe. Pregnancies, especially accidental ones, have a way of speeding life up; in a trice, the van was sold, Kinky Mimi were history, and magically, providentially, Fern inherited this house. She saw Adam’s eyes linger on Ollie and supplied the subtitles: eighteen years ago you were the cluster of cells who put paid to my career and now you’re sitting there, all five foot ten, eleven stone of you, laughing at me.

  ‘When does the new series of Roomies start?’ Fern knew, but wanted to give Adam his moment. The transition from rock god to writing advertising jingles had been hard; he deserved this late burst of glamour.

  ‘Fourth of September.’ Adam burst into song, and Tallulah joined in.

  Sometimes stuff just seems to get you down

  Feelin’ like there’s no one else around

  You wish you could reach out and find a friend

  Who’ll be here today, tomorrow, until the bitter end

  Written twenty years ago, Adam’s cheerful melody had lain in a drawer until he dug it out and filmed himself singing it at the piano. Meant as a bit of fun for commercial producers browsing his jingle website, the song had somehow reached the ears of a Hollywood creative. One phone call later and the song was re-recorded as the theme song for a hot new project: Roomies. Like Friends – which it shamelessly ripped off – Roomies took over the known world, breaking viewing records and making superstars of its cast.

  As the writer of the theme, Adam was famous. Sort of. In a not-really-famous-unless-you-bother-to-read-the-credits-right-through-to-the-end way. He tried to pretend it was no biggie, but Fern knew it was a hugie.

  Fern joined in with the spirited, jangling chorus.

  Roomies – we’re always there

  Roomies – we always care

  Your mates are here to stay

  And your life’s a holiday

  With Rooooooooomies!

  They sat back, exhausted from the big finish; Tallie always stretched out that last ‘Roomies’ as long as she could. It was a sunny song that never failed to uplift them; now millions of people around the world hummed it and felt uplifted too.

  ‘Did you hear about Lincoln Speed’s latest?’ scoffed Ollie.

  The star of Roomies, Lincoln Speed was a film actor who’d found a second wind on TV. ‘Clean’ at last from various bad habits, he wasn’t yet over the hill but was dangerously near the summit; to his fans that made him all the more sexy and glamorous.

  ‘What’s he done now?’ Adam was agog.

  ‘He bought a monkey,’ said Ollie.

  ‘I want a monkey!’ said Tallulah.

  ‘You don’t want a monkey,’ said Fern, who’d overseen the lonely deaths of hamsters and fish and stick insects abandoned by their fickle owner. ‘Even Lincoln Speed doesn’t really want a monkey.’

  ‘I’d like a small monkey,’ insisted Tallulah, setting down a stuffed fig with a mixture of shock and sadness that such a thing could exist. ‘What’s that box in the kitchen? The really old one.’

  ‘It’s a box of letters.’ Fern’s eyes whisked towards Adam, who was pulling a morsel of something out of his back teeth. ‘From Daddy to me.’

  ‘Love letters?’ Tallulah asked, as Ollie mimed hanging himself.

  Elbows on the table, Fern leaned over to Adam, her face amused in the candlelight. ‘They’re from the Great Rift of ’93. Remember?’

  ‘Christ, yes.’ Adam pushed a hand through his hair, half laughing, half in awe. ‘I was nineteen and you were eighteen. Hard to believe we were ever that young.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Fern, even though she felt as if she’d been born aged forty-two with two children and a stupid dog. ‘Daddy and I had been going out for a year,’ she explained to Tallulah, who was listening avidly. Even Ollie was earwigging, although he took pains to look uninterested. ‘And we had a row. A big one.’

  ‘You have one of those every couple of days,’ murmured Ollie.

  ‘No we don’t. Do we?’

  ‘Go on, Mummy!’ Tallulah rapped the table impatiently.

  ‘Sorry. Yes. So, big big row. I told him he was chucked. He told me I was chucked.’

  Tallulah swallowed, possibly imagining an alternative reality where she didn’t exist. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then Daddy wrote to me. Every day for eleven days.’

  ‘I had no idea you’d kept them.’ Adam played with a spoon, turning it over, smiling to himself.

  ‘And you took him back?’

  ‘Well, duh,’ said Ollie.

  ‘I was teaching him a lesson for looking at my best mate’s legs for a millisecond too long.’ Fern could feel Adam listening, his eyes on the spoon. ‘There was never any doubt in my mind.’

  ‘Muggins here didn’t know that.’ Adam threw his crumpled paper napkin at Fern. ‘I was writing for my life.’

  ‘It’s hardly the greatest love story ever told, Dad.’ Ollie shifted even lower on his chair. ‘You only split up for eleven days.’

  Fern thought of Donna, and longed to hug her man-shaped but still juvenile son. That wasn’t allowed, so she poured him some more of the lemonade she made once or twice a year and everybody pretended to like. ‘I could probably quote those letters,’ she said.

  ‘Show me! Read them out!’ Tallulah, a child with very few of the traditional girly notions, who wore combat trousers and had made her mother sign a document banning pink from her bedroom, was nevertheless riveted by this evidence of her boring old parents’ romantic past.

  ‘Not now, darling. Dad and me have something to tell you.’

  Adam interrupted, looking into the middle distance. ‘I wrote two songs during the Rift of ’93. Good songs. Music poured out of me back then.’

  ‘I remember them,’ said Fern, her tone soft to match his.

  ‘One was called, oh, what was it?’ Adam clicked his fingers. ‘“Love of my Life”!’

  ‘Aww!’ trilled Tallulah.

  ‘Pass the sick bucket,’ said Ollie.

  ‘The other one,’ said Fern, ‘was “Psycho Bitch”, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Adam looked sheepish. And, she thought, secretly pleased with his
younger self.

  ‘Kids, like I said, me and Dad have something to—’

  Ollie flourished a piece of paper. ‘Reasons Why Fern Martindale is the Best Girlfriend in the World.’ He whooped and slapped the page. ‘Go, Dad!’

  ‘That’s from the box!’ Fern was suddenly possessive of the letter that her nosy son had pilfered. ‘Give it back, Ollie. Don’t muck about.’

  ‘Reason number one.’ Ollie was on his feet, twirling. ‘She has the best bum in the United Kingdom.’

  ‘Daddy!’ Tallulah was shocked.

  Fern was chuffed.

  ‘Two. She listens to my rubbish.’

  ‘Ollie!’ Adam couldn’t quite do stern when his mouth twitched with the need to laugh.

  ‘Three.’ Ollie jumped onto the trampoline and bounced as he shouted, ‘She kisses brilliantly.’

  ‘No!’ Tallulah went scarlet.

  Fern took a bow. ‘What can I say?’ she laughed. ‘When you gottit, you gottit.’

  ‘Four, she knows me better than anybody else.’

  ‘That’s a silly reason!’ giggled Tallulah.

  Fern was quiet. Adam was quiet. When she looked over at him, he was looking away. Fern suddenly remembered what number five was. ‘Give me that paper, Oliver Carlile,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  Ignoring the use of his full name, Ollie’s eyes widened. ‘Five, she knows just how to—’

  Leaping onto the trampoline, Adam rugby-tackled the boy. The list was folded up and stashed safely away. With pointed looks in Tallulah’s direction, Adam said, ‘Let’s get back to the table, yeah?’

  ‘I need to bleach my eyes,’ muttered Ollie as he took his seat.

  When the atmosphere had calmed a little, when Tallulah had stopped whining Tell me what number five is!, Fern said, ‘Maybe now Daddy and I can make our announcement.’

  The phone bleated from indoors.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ Tallulah was off her seat.

  ‘No, darling, I’ll go.’ Fern was firm. Tallulah was apt to answer the phone with Good afternoon the Carlile residence how can I help you thank you please? Galloping through the French windows, Fern located the landline beneath a dam of cushions on the sofa. ‘Hello?’

  The caller’s identity took a moment to register. Fern’s face dropped. ‘Hi, Auntie Nora,’ she said, scrutinizing her reflection in the mirror over the mantelpiece and wondering why none of her family had bothered to mention that her mascara had pooled, raccoon-style, beneath her eyes. Fern tried to be groomed but her body defied her; expensive dresses hung like shower curtains and make-up rearranged itself on her broad face, with its merry brown eyes and straight brush-stroke brows. Adam used to say she looked like a little girl in a storybook, with her shiny bobbed hair and her solid snub nose. Now I’m more of an old bat in a storybook, she thought, as Auntie Nora began the conversation with her usual niceties.