The Rachel Incident(62)

“Rachel,” Dr. Byrne said. He was opening a bottle of wine, his face frozen in shock.

Deenie was plating the scallops, and looked up. Her white face became scarlet, her expression dead, her hands still.

“Rachel,” she said.

“Hello.”

I had only been in the house ten minutes, and had suffered so much humiliation already. I wanted to cry.

Then, with as much joviality as I could muster, I said: “Have I got the wrong night?”

Everyone at the table was peering at me in confusion. There were fourteen other guests, and two chairs for the hosts. There was no chair for me.

The fair-haired editor spoke up. “Were you going to make your intern eat in the garden, lads?”

“No,” Fred said robotically. “Rachel. Lovely to see you. Aideen…forgot to tell me she invited you.”

“Well,” I said awkwardly. “Here I am.”

He disappeared to his study and dragged an office chair to the top of the table. Deenie started passing out plates of scallops with black pudding.

I tried hard to disguise my horror. The office chair loomed over the other chairs, and if I sat on it I would be on display for the whole meal.

“Rachel, you take my seat,” he said, with false cheer. “I’ll take the throne.”

At least half of the guests were dying of second-hand embarrassment. I slowly lowered myself into Dr. Byrne’s place. I started replaying the phone conversation with Deenie in my head. She had invited me, hadn’t she? Was I suffering from pregnancy brain already?

Everyone had resumed a kind of awkward chatter, too polite to ask what on earth was going on.

Deenie had definitely called me. Otherwise, how would I even know this dinner party was going on? Maybe she had told me about the dinner party, but had mentioned it in passing, and I misinterpreted it as an invite. Maybe she had told me, but had found some tactful middle-class way of asking me for catering help, and I thought that was an invite.

But I was sure, sure as the ten-week-old foetus in my stomach, that Deenie had phoned me to ask me to this dinner party. She’d even said I might make some contacts. She said I was part of the team that had made Little Fire. I had the book at home. It thanked me for policing the vibe.

Right now, I was murdering the vibe. Some advanced scallop mathematics went on in the kitchen, and I was passed a plate with one scallop on it, while everyone else had two.

The fishy odour mixed with the earthy smoke of the black pudding. My stomach turned over, and I took a long sip of water, wanting desperately to gag.

“Sorry,” the woman next to me said. “I think that’s my water glass.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I murmured, and grabbed for my own, the glass that was supposed to be Dr. Byrne’s.

The drunk man started blithering away about how he thought he would be a great lecturer, and felt as though he had missed his chance. This eased the tension somewhat, and the group started talking about all the silly things they would teach.

“I can always get a pen to start working again after it’s gone dry,” Ciara said. “I could teach a course in that.”

“I’ve seen every episode of Keeping Up Appearances,” someone else said. “I would do a course on class tensions in post-war Britain.”

They had clearly thought about this before.

“What was the name of the brother-in-law again? Something weird. Otto.”

“Onslow.”

“Onslow!”

Deenie and Dr. Byrne were chatting politely to people on either side of them, but neither looked at me, or at each other. I wanted desperately to leave, but I had enough social sense to know that leaving was the only thing I could do that was worse than staying.

So I stayed, and I mashed up my scallop with a fork, and thought: No matter how bad this is, it has to end. Dinners always end, eventually. That’s the thing about dinners.

The main course came out of the oven, and each of us was passed a clean warm plate. The fishy smell was replaced with the heavy odour of meat and onion and hot wine.

Ciara got up to help Deenie with the casserole dishes. It was clear they were very good friends, and had a kind of physical shorthand that I recognised. Ciara looked Deenie pointedly in the eyes, with an are you okay? expression. This seemed to revive Deenie’s spirit.

“Coq au vin!” she said, coming to the table. “I know it’s a cliché, very nineteen seventies, but you can make it in advance, so…”

“Divine!”

“Amazing!”

“Deenie, you’re incredible.”

“The smell, D, I can’t get over it. I’m salivating.”

Another casserole dish of mashed potato was revealed, and the chorus started up again.

“Mash!”

“Oh my God, mash.”

“My favourite food, mash. Good hot, good cold. It’s versatile.”

“What’s that Laurie Colwin line again…? About people only wanting nursery food at dinner parties?”

“Yes, no one likes fiddly food. Not really.”

“Mash!”

In the years since, I’ve always held my guests’ reactions to the standard of Deenie Harrington’s friends. No one has ever been quite as excited to see my mash. My husband actively dislikes it, and thinks mash is gloopy, like prison food. He will, however, go ape for my roast potatoes.