chapter three
The day of the barbeque
Erika drove into her cul-de-sac and was greeted by a strange, almost beautiful sight: someone was finally driving the silver BMW that had been parked outside the Richardsons’ house for the last six months, and whoever was driving hadn’t bothered to brush away the layer of red and gold autumn leaves that had accumulated on the car’s bonnet and roof, so that as they drove (much too fast for a residential area) a whirling vortex of leaves was created, as if the car were being followed by a mini tornado.
As the leaves cleared, Erika saw her next-door neighbour, Vid, standing at the end of his driveway, watching the car drive away, while a single ray of sunlight bounced off his sunglasses, like the shimmer of a camera flash.
Erika braked next to him, opening her passenger-side window at the same time.
‘Good morning,’ she called out. ‘Someone finally moved that car!’
‘Yes, they must have finished their drug dealing, what do you reckon?’ Vid leaned down towards the car, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head of luxuriant grey hair. ‘Or maybe it was the Mafia, you know?’
‘Ha ha!’ Erika laughed unconvincingly because Vid looked kind of like a successful gangster himself.
‘It’s a cracker of a day, you know. Look! Am I right?!’ Vid made a satisfied gesture at the sky, as if he’d personally purchased the day and paid a premium price for it, and got the quality product he deserved.
‘It is a beautiful day,’ said Erika. ‘You off for a walk?’
Vid reacted with faint disgust to this suggestion.
‘Walk? Me? No.’ He indicated a lit cigarette between his fingers and the rolled-up, plastic-wrapped Sunday paper in the other hand. ‘I just came down to collect my paper, you know.’
Erika reminded herself not to count the number of times Vid said ‘you know’. Recording someone’s conversational tic bordered on obsessive-compulsive. (Vid’s current record: eleven times in a two-minute diatribe about the removal of the smoked pancetta pizza from the local pizzeria’s menu. Vid could not believe it, he just could not believe it, you know. The ‘you knows’ came thick and fast when he got excited.)
Erika was very aware that some of her behaviours could potentially be classified as obsessive-compulsive. ‘I wouldn’t get too caught up with labels, Erika,’ her psychologist had said with the constipated smile she tended to give when Erika ‘self-diagnosed’. (Erika had taken out a subscription to Psychology Today when she started therapy, just to educate herself a little about the process, and it was all so fascinating she’d recently begun working her way through the first-year reading list for a psychological and behavioural sciences undergraduate degree at Cambridge. Just for interest, she’d told her psychologist, who didn’t look threatened by this, but didn’t look exactly thrilled by it either.)
‘Bloody revhead kid hoons up the street and throws it from his car like he’s throwing a grenade in bloody Syria, you know.’ Vid made a grenade-throwing gesture with the rolled-up paper. ‘So what are you up to? Been grocery shopping?’
He looked at the little collection of plastic bags on Erika’s passenger seat, and drew deeply on his cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke out the side of his mouth.
‘Not exactly grocery shopping, just some, um, bits and bobs I needed.’
‘Bits and bobs,’ repeated Vid, trying out the phrase as if he’d never heard it before. Maybe he hadn’t. He looked at Erika in that searching, almost disappointed way he had, as if he’d been hoping for something more from her.
‘Yes. For afternoon tea. We’ve got Clementine and Sam coming over later for afternoon tea, with their little girls. My friends, Clementine and Sam? You met them at my place?’ She knew perfectly well that Vid remembered them. She was giving him Clementine to make herself more interesting. That’s all she had to offer Vid: Clementine.
Vid’s face lit up instantly.
‘Your friend, the cellist!’ said Vid delightedly. He virtually smacked his lips on the word ‘cellist’. ‘And her husband. Tone-deaf! What a waste, eh?’
‘Well, he likes to say he’s tone-deaf,’ said Erika. ‘I think technically he’s –’
‘Top bloke! He was a, what do you call it, a marketing manager for an F-M-C-G company and that stands for a fast-moving … don’t tell me, don’t tell me … a fast-moving consumer good. Whatever the hell that means. But how’s that? Good memory, eh? I’ve got a mind like a steel trap, that’s what I tell my wife.’
‘Well, he’s actually changed jobs, now he’s at an energy drink company.’
‘What? Energy drinks? Drinks that give you energy? Anyway, Sam and Clementine, they’re good people, great people, you know! You should all come over to our place, for a barbeque, you know! Yes, we’ll do a barbeque! Enjoy this amazing weather, you know! I insist. You must!’
‘Oh,’ said Erika. ‘It’s nice of you to offer.’ She should say no. She was perfectly capable of saying no. She had no problem saying no to people; in fact, she took pride in her ability to refuse, and Oliver wouldn’t want her to change the plans for today. It was too important. Today was crucial. Today was potentially life-changing.
‘I’ll roast a pig on the spit! The Slovenian way. Well, it’s not really the Slovenian way, it’s my way, but it’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted before. Your friend. Clementine. I remember. She’s a foodie, you know. Like me.’ He patted his stomach.
‘Well,’ said Erika. She looked again at the plastic bags on her passenger seat. All the way home from the shops she’d kept glancing over at her purchases, worried that she’d somehow not got it quite right. She should have bought more. What was wrong with her? Why hadn’t she bought a feast?
Also the crackers she’d chosen had sesame seeds on them, and there was some significance to sesame seeds. Did Clementine love sesame seeds or hate them?
‘What do you say?’ said Vid. ‘Tiffany would love to see you.’
‘Would she?’ said Erika. Most wives wouldn’t appreciate an unplanned barbeque, but Vid’s wife did appear to be almost as sociable as Vid. Erika thought of the first time she’d introduced her closest friends to her extroverted next-door neighbours, when she and Oliver had hosted Christmas drinks at their place last year in a fit of mutual ‘let’s pretend we’re the sort of people who entertain and enjoy it’ madness. She and Oliver had both hated every moment. Entertaining was always fraught for Erika, because she had no experience of it, and because part of her would always believe that visitors were to be feared and despised.
‘And they’ve got two little girls, right?’ continued Vid. ‘Our Dakota would love to play with them.’
‘Yes. Although, remember, they’re much younger than Dakota.’
‘Even better! Dakota loves playing with little girls, you know, pretending she’s the big sister, you know. Plaiting their hair, painting their nails, you know, fun for all of them!’
Erika ran her hands around the steering wheel. She looked at her house. The low hedge lining the path to the front door was freshly trimmed with perfect, startling symmetry. The blinds were open. The windows were clean and streak-free. Nothing to hide. From the street you could see their red Veronese table lamp. That’s all. Only the lamp. An exquisite lamp. Just seeing that lamp from the street when she drove home gave Erika a sense of pride and peace. Oliver was inside now vacuuming. Erika had vacuumed yesterday, so it was overkill. Excessive vacuuming. Embarrassing.
When Erika first left home, one of the many procedural things that worried her about domestic life was trying to work out how often normal people vacuumed. It was Clementine’s mother who’d given her a definitive answer: Once a week, Erika, every Sunday afternoon, for example. You pick a regular time that suits you, make it a habit. Erika had religiously followed Pam’s rules for living, whereas Clementine wilfully ignored them. ‘Sam and I always forget that vacuuming is even a thing,’ she’d once told Erika. ‘We always feel better, though, once it’s done and then we say: Let’s vacuum more often! It’s kind of like when we remember to have sex.’
Erika had been astonished, both by the vacuuming and the sex. She knew that she and Oliver were more formal with each other in public than other couples, they didn’t really tease each other (they liked things to be clear, not open to misinterpretation) but gosh, they’d never forget to have sex.
A vacuumed house wasn’t going to make a difference to the outcome of today’s meeting, any more than sesame seeds were.
‘Pig on the spit, eh?’ said Erika to Vid. She put her head on one side, coquettishly, the way Clementine would in a situation like this. She sometimes borrowed Clementine’s mannerisms for herself, although only when Clementine wasn’t there, in case they were recognised. ‘You mean to say you’ve got a spare pig just lying around waiting to be roasted?’
Vid grinned, pleased with her, winked and pointed his cigarette at her. The smoke drifted into the car, bringing in another world. ‘Don’t you worry about that, Erika.’ He put the emphasis on the second syllable. Erika. It made her name sound more exotic. ‘We’ll get it all sorted, you know. What time is your cellist friend coming over? Two? Three?’
‘Three,’ said Erika. She was already regretting the coquettishness. Oh, God. What had she done?
She looked past Vid and saw Harry, the old man who lived alone on the other side of Vid, in his front yard, standing next to his camellia bush with a pair of garden shears. Their eyes met, and she raised her hand to wave, but he immediately looked away and wandered off out of sight into the corner of the garden.
‘Our mate Harry lurking about?’ said Vid, without turning around.
‘Yes,’ said Erika. ‘He’s gone now.’
‘So three o’clock then?’ said Vid. He gave the side of her car a decisive rap with his knuckles. ‘We’ll see you then?’
‘All right,’ said Erika weakly.
She watched Oliver open their front door and step onto the front porch with a bag of rubbish. He was going to be furious with her.
‘Perfect. Outstanding!’ Vid straightened from the car and caught sight of Oliver, who smiled and waved.
‘Mate!’ bellowed Vid. ‘We’ll see you later today! Barbeque at our place!’
Oliver’s smile disappeared.