Charlotte poured herself another glass of wine. Of course, if Barbara didn’t come back, it would make things more difficult for Justin, which was a bonus. Charlotte had promised herself
she wasn’t going to get sucked in to this stupid bourgeois competition – she didn’t give a fuck whose napkins were the most tasteful – but she wanted to make damn sure that
Justin and his sanctimonious nut roast bloody well lost.
Although, in fairness, that cheesy aubergine thing had really hit the spot. As she arrived at Justin’s flat, Charlotte had felt her hangover pushing its way back in through the protective
curtain of bacon grease. She’d had to stop at the corner shop and wolf down a packet of cheese and onion crisps before she could face ringing the doorbell.
The first glass of wine was difficult. She hadn’t really felt like it, and the liquid had tasted sour and alcoholic, but it was important to get started. It wasn’t an evening to be
faced sober. The second had been easier, and now, with the third, the hangover was at bay again. Charlotte felt her energy beginning to return. She studied Matt properly for the first time that
evening. He was saying something to Stephen and didn’t seem to notice her appraising him. There was less awkwardness than Charlotte had expected. All the same, she looked away before he
turned round.
She took another long sip. That was more like it. The wine wasn’t very good, but the feeling of it was. Tell you what, if they were having that conversation about Barbara’s pots now,
there was no way she would have kept her mouth shut. Load of pretentious crap. It needed saying, and Charlotte regretted not doing so. No wonder Barbara was so moody, if she spent her life churning
out wanky rubbish in – where the hell even was this? Charlotte had never been to this part of London before, and certainly didn’t intend to make a habit of it. It was a
taxi-there-taxi-back kind of place. Charlotte had watched appalled from the window as they drove through canyon-like housing estates, with miserable-looking inhabitants shuffling about between
them. They didn’t even look like they’d have the wit to mug you. Twenty quid, though, and another twenty back. The evening obviously wasn’t going to be worth that. Bloody
Rosie.
‘Make room, make room!’ Sarah charged back in to fuss over the coffee table, clearing space around a big bowl of salad that seemed to be mostly beige. Justin followed carrying a big
casserole dish with wisps of steam escaping from beneath the lid. He eased it into the middle of the table.
‘That looks amazing, Justin,’ Sarah said.
‘Mmm, smells delicious,’ Rosie added.
Calm down, he hasn’t even taken the bloody lid off yet, Charlotte thought.
Justin removed the lid, waved away the heavy cloud of steam that billowed from the dish, and began handing round big bowls of stew.
‘Do start,’ he said.
‘Is Barbara . . . ?’ Rosie asked.
‘Please. Start.’
Rosie picked up her fork.
Justin thought for a moment before adding: ‘She’s not been feeling too well, you see.’
‘Oh I’m sorry . . .’
‘She must have just gone to get some aspirin or something.’
‘But I could have—’
‘Please. Start.’
When everyone had started eating, Charlotte listened to another round of absurd enthusiasm.
‘Mmm. Justin, this is gorgeous!’
‘Delicious.’
‘Absolutely fantastic!’
Jesus Christ, Charlotte thought, tone it down a notch! Could they sound any more fake? How much more obvious could it be that they were trying to compensate for Barbara storming off? Not even
Justin was going to fall for this.
‘Do you really think so? I’m so pleased that you like it,’ Justin said.
Charlotte looked round the room, hoping someone would catch her eye in private amusement at Justin’s gullibility. But only Matt had the half-smile that suggested he shared the joke.
Charlotte let her eyes skate over him.
‘It’s really very simple,’ Justin said. ‘It’s just chickpeas, chard, caraway seeds, tamarind paste and a few bits and pieces.’
‘Is that all? But it’s so rich!’
Christ. This couldn’t go on.
‘You know what I think would improve it?’ she said.
Rosie glared at her, but Charlotte couldn’t see any reason to hold back.
‘Some nice cubes of aged steak,’ she said.
Justin didn’t react.
‘This salad is lovely too,’ Rosie said with grim determination. ‘So fresh! What did you put into it?’
Justin had become subdued. He didn’t respond.
‘It’s OK,’ Charlotte insisted. ‘But it’s just a side dish, isn’t it? You really need a chunky main course to go with it, don’t you? Like
steak.’
Justin smiled sadly, but without any sign of annoyance.
‘Yes,’ Charlotte tried again. ‘With a nice bit of meat this would be really tasty.’
Justin sighed.
What the fuck? Why wasn’t he rising to this? It had taken much less last time. Surely someone so self-righteous couldn’t help but retaliate.
Charlotte had another spoonful of stew. The chickpeas popped satisfyingly between her teeth. It was quite tasty, actually – tangy, like a curry sauce. But you couldn’t have just the
curry sauce on its own, could you? It was all Tikka Masala and no chicken.
Quite good, that. Worth trying on Justin. Charlotte opened her mouth.
‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry!’ Sarah was scrambling to her feet. Her glass lay on its side next to her, a pool of wine spreading across the carpet. ‘I’ll get a
cloth.’
‘It’s all right, I’ll do it.’ Justin perked up from his reverie, suddenly purposeful again. He dashed out to the kitchen and returned with an array of cloths, scouring
pads and kitchen roll.
Justin knelt forward to mop up the wine, his skinny buttocks protruding into the ring of diners. His bottom shook with the effort of scrubbing. Charlotte shuddered involuntarily. Even Rosie sat
back on her chair.
‘I can’t believe I was so clumsy!’ Sarah said, crouching down next to Justin to study the carpet. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘No, I think it’s going to be OK,’ Justin replied, dabbing at the stain with paper towels. ‘It was only white wine.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to put something on white-wine stains?’ Stephen asked. ‘Salt, isn’t it?’
‘That’s red wine,’ Rosie said.
‘Are you sure? What’s white, then? Is it lemon juice?’
‘That’s why I always have white wine at other people’s parties,’ Sarah said. ‘Imagine if that had been red!’
Charlotte was appalled. What a stupid reason for choosing anything! She topped her glass up to the brim with red.
‘I’m really embarrassed,’ Sarah said, getting closer to Justin on the floor as he gathered the cleaning materials.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You can hardly see it.’
Charlotte looked at the carpet. Quite clearly, you could. But the carpet was so worn and faded anyway, discoloured by the marks of numerous tenancies. Frankly, she thought, wine was probably one
of the nicer stains in there.
Sarah insisted on helping Justin carry the cloths back to the kitchen. No one stepped in to restart the conversation. Charlotte watched with slight amusement as Rosie’s smile became
tighter the longer the silence dragged on.
‘Speaking of embarrassment,’ Rosie said in the end, ‘did I ever tell you about the time I went to the industry awards dinner with my boss?’ She didn’t risk waiting
for anyone to say yes before continuing. ‘God, it was awful – you know how boring those work things can be – and I’d maybe had a few too many glasses of wine. Anyway, they
started serving these canapés, only it wasn’t a waiter with a tray, it was a finger buffet. So I thought, “Oh well, that’s a bit of a faff, I can wait for
dinner.”
‘But then I had another glass of wine, and I thought, “If I don’t eat something soon I’m going to be wasted before I sit down.” So I went and picked up a plate. You
know the usual sort of things they have: mini-quiches, smoked-salmon squares, prawns with satay sauce – there’s always satay sauce, isn’t there? And I wolfed down a couple of
those to take the edge off. Ideally, I would have had one of those tiny burgers – those are the best, aren’t they? – but there weren’t any left.
‘I was walking back across the room with a plate, looking for a quiet corner, when my boss called me over to talk to some very important woman from the Design Council or something, so I
thought, “I’ve got to be lucid for this; better eat some more.”
‘And then what happened was that I was standing next to this woman while my boss was on the other side of her, talking loudly, obviously trying hard to impress her. And I had my wine glass
in my left hand, and the plate in my right. But I couldn’t eat anything like that. So I needed to try and get both the glass and the plate in my left hand so the right was free. I had the
stem of the glass wedged in, and I was just about holding the plate between my thumb and forefinger, but I wasn’t really looking at what I was doing because I was nodding vigorously,
pretending to be interested in what my boss was saying. Then I pushed down on the plate to dip a prawn in some satay sauce, and the plate flipped out from between my fingers.
‘There was nothing I could do. I tried to catch it, but I missed because I wasn’t looking, although I did get a mini-quiche. So I just closed my eyes and thought, “Oh shit,
this is going to be humiliating.”
‘And I waited and waited for the crash when it hit the floor. But there was nothing. I opened my eyes, looked down, and there was no plate. It had literally disappeared. I was a little bit
freaked out by that, I can tell you. My boss was still droning on, and I don’t think he’d noticed anything.
‘Then I looked down to my right, and I saw this Design Council woman’s handbag. It was a big handbag. An expensive leather one. Maybe a Mulberry, or something like that. It was
undone at the top. And there, sticking out of the top of it, I could see a little pink prawn tail.
‘I didn’t know what to do. How can you explain that? “Er, excuse me, but I appear to have tipped a plate of canapés into your handbag. Sorry.” It’s not going
to work, is it?
‘But then I thought, “No one else has noticed. Just keep calm, and maybe you’ll get away with it.” So I carried on nodding, and I laughed very loudly when the boss told
one of his rubbish jokes.
‘I said something banal to this woman, she nodded at me, and then my boss started talking again. I thought, “Just make an excuse, leave, and you’ll be clean away.”
‘But then the woman’s phone began to ring. I heard it first, because I was so jumpy. And because it was in her handbag.’
A ripple of laughter ran round the room. Even Justin, back from the kitchen, was leaning forward to hear more. It was a good story. Why hadn’t Charlotte heard it before? Clearly, this
wasn’t the first time Rosie had told it. Why hadn’t she told Charlotte first? This was the sort of thing Rosie used to tell her immediately.
‘Well, the end of this is really shaming. In my defence, I didn’t have time to think. It was just instinctive.
‘I stepped back as if to answer my own phone, and I put out my hand to guide Siân a bit closer to this woman to fill the gap.’
‘Who’s Siân?’ Charlotte asked.
‘That girl who sits by our stationery cupboard. The one who sniffs all the time, but never blows her nose.’
‘Oh her! She’s so annoying.’
‘Yes, exactly. Anyway, by the time the woman heard her phone ringing I was out of the circle and away, and when she screamed in disgust it was Siân who was standing next to her. I
felt bad, but what could I do?’
‘Poor Siân!’ Sarah exclaimed.
‘Well, yes, obviously, in a way. But she was so horrified as well that I’m sure they all believed it wasn’t her. Certainly I would have done. But we never did get an award from
the Design Council.’
Charlotte laughed along with everyone else. It was embarrassing, but like lots of Rosie’s stories, it was self-deprecating in a way that made you think it probably hadn’t been as bad
as she made out.
‘God, I hate finger buffets,’ Stephen said with surprising vehemence. ‘Quite clearly it’s impossible to hold a plate, a glass and eat with your hands at the same time. So
why do they persist in having them? Are they trying to make people look stupid?’
‘When do you ever go to finger buffets?’ Rosie asked.
‘Never. Because I can’t stand them.’
‘You know what’s really been annoying me lately?’ Charlotte decided she liked the direction the conversation was going. ‘People having breakfast at work.’
There was a chorus of agreement, although Matt and Justin remained quiet.
‘I mean, what’s the point? How much time can you possibly save by having a bowl of cornflakes at your desk? Twenty seconds? Thirty? Not even that, because then you’ve got to
buy milk to take to work, and write your name on it with a green marker pen and three exclamation marks so that no one steals it from the fridge. And are you really going to do any work while
you’re spooning cereal into your face? Of course you’re not. You’re just going to browse the internet, aren’t you? And then leave the office littered with empty bowls, with
bits of rotting Cheerios stuck to the sides. What’s the point? Just to say to everyone: “Hey, look, I’m so busy and important I don’t have time to eat anything before
rushing in to my super-important job.” And then you spend the next hour e-mailing round links of baby pandas sneezing. It’s pathetic.’
Marcus laughed. ‘All right, then, my turn. The thing that’s really been pissing me off lately is people who stand on escalators.’
‘What!’ Charlotte and Rosie protested at the same time.
‘I just don’t understand it. It’s not a lift. They’re basically stairs. You’re meant to climb them. Why would you just stand there? Are you looking at the adverts?
Are you that desperate to find out which one from
Home and Away
is doing panto this season?’
‘No, it’s because you can’t be bothered to walk up a long flight of stairs,’ Charlotte said. ‘What’s so hard to understand about that?’
‘How lazy do you have to be not to bother walking up a few stairs?’
‘About as lazy as me.’
‘Half the people standing there probably go to the gym anyway. They stand on an escalator, kitbag over their shoulder, so they can get to the gym and spend half an hour on the
StairMaster.’