“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.
I have wondered a lot whether they were really that wild about her cooking, or whether they just saw she was suffering, and wanted her to feel good. I think it’s the latter. They loved her so much.
22
A MAN WITH A BIG HEAD—like, physically large—finally spoke to me.
“I’ve been trying to think where I know you from,” he said. “You work at O’Connor’s, don’t you?”
I smiled. It was the first time someone had asked me a question that didn’t make me feel like a science experiment.
“Yeah, until recently. They’ve had to downsize massively, so I don’t work there any more. Recession, you know.”
He nodded. “Yes, that’s it. And you were there at Fred’s book launch, weren’t you?”
Deenie dropped her fork and it clattered to the ground. Everyone looked up, and then back at me.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I was still working there, around then.”
“That was a good do,” he said hurriedly, sensing he had made a faux pas. “We were in the pub until all hours, after that one.”
Deenie had decided she’d had enough and left the room. It was all the excuse I needed. I followed, the silence trailing behind me. Deenie was sitting on her bed.
When she saw me in the doorway, she shrieked. Like I was a ghost, or a phantom.
“Get out of my bedroom,” she said, her voice high and bitten with tears. “Get out of my house.”
“Deenie, what is going on?” I tried to suppress my own cry. “You invited me here. You called me at work and invited me.”
“That was before,” she snarled. “That was before I knew.”
“Knew what?”
She was appalled. Offended to be taken for an idiot.
“That you were fucking my husband.”
“Deenie, why do you think that? I didn’t have sex with Dr. Byrne.”
“Oh, don’t bother, Rachel.” She started aggressively swiping at her tears, like she was trying to take off some of her skin. “We’ve had it out. He’s told me everything. He tried to lie, too.”
Dr. Byrne appeared in the doorway, and put his hand on my shoulder. “I think you’d better go, Rachel.”
“No, I want to hear what she has to say.” She looked like the wife from The Shining, all red-rimmed eyes and black hair. “God, is there any way of having this conversation that doesn’t feel, like, so boring?” She went on, her voice fat with disgust. “It’s so boring to be this character. This is the worst one to be, without question. Philandering husband, he gets to have loads of fun. Slutty young assistant, she has a brand-new life experience to write about in her diary. But I’m just fucking stuck here, feeling like an idiot for having let this person into my home.”
“I don’t understand.” I was starting to blub. “Someone explain to me what is going on.”
“I’ve seen the bills,” she said fiercely. “The receipts. He sends things to your house, Rachel. He sends wine. And cheese.”
Oh, no.
“I knew something was going on, but I never thought…You worked for me, Rachel. Then you made me drive you home. It was your address he was sending that stuff to. Rachel’s address? My Rachel…”
“We’re not having sex,” I said, sticking to the truth. “Deenie, I’m not having sex with your husband.”
“He’s admitted it, Rachel; you might as well admit it, too.”
This hit me like a battering ram. He admitted to sleeping with me?
Deenie looked at the duvet like she was considering getting under it. “Fred, call Ciara in.”
He did as she said, and Ciara appeared.
“Are you all right, hun?” Gorgeous Ciara in her backless jumpsuit took one look around the room and stiffened, like a butler. “Do you want me to send people home?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Then she disappeared.
“I’m going to have to tell her, now, too,” Deenie said. “Although, everyone will have guessed. This’ll be around Cork by tomorrow morning. Hope you’re pleased.”
Deenie wasn’t being self-involved when she said this. It would be around Cork by tomorrow morning, because that is how small Cork is. She rubbed at her eyes. “Why didn’t you ring her and tell her the jig was up, you prick? You could at least have saved me the humiliation of having her at my dad’s book party.”
I was startled to hear Deenie swear like this. “Prick” was not a word I expected to hear her say.
“I didn’t know you had invited her in the first place,” Dr. Byrne said lamely. “You never said.”
“No, of course. She is my little friend after all. God, this is all so fucking…so fucking Tudor, Fred. You get me a lady-in-waiting so you can keep an eye on her?”
I wanted to scream: It’s not me; it’s James he’s fucking. But would it make me any less guilty? I had still stood by while my best friend shagged her husband. I had drunk the infidelity wine, eaten the infidelity cheese. Plus, would she even believe it? She had no idea who James was.
“I have just one question, Rachel,” she said, fixing her gaze on me. “Was Carey even real?”