Sophie Hannah - The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

She heard her mother’s laugh and turned. Oh, no. Simon’s parents were talking to her own. Listening to them, rather. Kathleen and Michael Waterhouse cowered against a wall the colour of bile; they appeared to be huddling together against the onslaught. Charlie’s father, Howard Zailer, was telling one of his stories. Linda, her mother, emitted loud, theatrical chuckles in all the right places. Neither of Simon’s parents cracked a smile.

Charlie couldn’t bear to watch. Clutching her glass of champagne, she pushed through the mass of people towards the door that led to the stairs. The escape route. Before leaving the room, she turned and caught Simon watching her. He looked away quickly, nodding at whatever Debbie Gibbs was saying. Debbie was looking elegant in a long, high-necked black dress that was clingy without being at all revealing. Her hair was pulled back in a chignon. ‘Thanks a lot, thanks ever so fucking much,’ Charlie hissed as she stomped downstairs, splashing champagne on her clothes. She knew that she and Simon were the hosts-sort of; insofar as the landlord of the Malt Shovel wasn’t. She knew they had to mingle, pay more attention to their friends than to each other, but would it have killed him to smile at her?

She went outside into the cold night, found a wall to sit on, started to feel pleasantly cool, though she knew it wouldn’t be long before she was freezing. She’d lit a cigarette when she heard footsteps approaching. Kate Kombothekra. Kate’s husband Sam-dubbed ‘Stepford’ by Sellers and Gibbs because of his pleasant, polite manner and his desire to please everybody-was Charlie’s replacement in CID, Simon’s new skipper. Like Debbie Gibbs and Stacey Sellers, Kate was dressed for the special occasion to end all special occasions. Her shimmery green off-the-shoulder number was the exact colour of the Mediterranean sea under a warm summer sun, and swished around Kate’s full figure as she walked. A gold shawl and gold pumps provided the perfect top and tail to the outfit.

Had the CID wives got together and resolved to take the piss out of Charlie’s pathetic engagement party by overdressing, show it up for the farce that it was? Charlie wished she’d worn her only dress instead of a cerise V-necked top, black trousers and black pumps. The thin strip of velour around the V was her outfit’s only fancy touch, one tiny concession to the celebration tonight was supposed to be; without it, she would have looked as if she was off to a committee meeting.

‘If you can’t stand the heat…’ said Kate, wiping her forehead. ‘I’d have had to pour one of your ice buckets over my head if I’d stayed in there.’

‘Not my ice buckets. The pub’s.’

Kate gave Charlie an odd look, then smiled knowingly. ‘I met your in-laws-to-be. No wonder you’re looking deathly.’

‘Thanks a lot.’ Charlie took a long, deep drag of her cigarette, sucking hard, trying to give herself proper pulled-in skull-cheeks.

‘You know what I mean. Deathly of mood, not deathly of appearance.’ Kate’s blonde hair and glowing skin always looked as if experts had finished buffing them only seconds earlier.

‘It’s funny how meeting someone’s close family can bring into focus everything that’s wrong with them,’ said Charlie. Kate had insulted her; being made privy to one of Charlie’s more obnoxious thoughts was her punishment. ‘You suspect there’s something deeply amiss about a person, and then you meet their parents and think, “Now I understand.” I wonder if Simon, having met mine, can see clearly everything that’s wrong with me. And bound to get steadily wronger as I get older.’

Kate chuckled. ‘Sometimes it’s possible to defy both nature and nurture,’ she said. ‘Look at Sam-he’s the kindest, most considerate man alive, and his parents are lazy, selfish tossers. His brothers and sister too-the whole Kombothekra clan. When we have them round they sit immobile in armchairs like the human equivalent of a druid stone circle while Sam and I wait on them hand and foot. They do nothing for themselves. They’re worse than my boys have ever been, even as toddlers.’

Charlie couldn’t help smiling. It was reassuring to know that even women with silky blonde hair had problems.

‘They’re going to get what’s coming to them,’ said Kate, her eyes narrowing. ‘I’m not inviting them for Christmas dinner this year. They don’t know it yet. I do, and I’ve got nine months to gloat in secret.’

‘It’s only the first of March. Please don’t put Christmas in my head.’ What would Charlie and Simon do? Would he want to spend Christmas Day with her? Would it be a merging of the Zailer and Waterhouse families? Charlie felt her blood temperature drop by several degrees.

The situation with Sam’s folks had to be dire, she thought, if Kate was planning to withdraw her hospitality. She was the sort of person who seemed to want nothing more than to drag strangers in off the street and cook for them, then insist they stay the night. Charlie had been a virtual stranger when Kate had first started to demand her presence at Kombothekra family meals; now, after countless such occasions, Charlie supposed she had to regard Kate as a friend. It couldn’t hurt to have a friend who made staggeringly good apple and cranberry crumbles, could it? Kate always said that whisky was the crucial ingredient, but in Charlie’s view it was even more crucial to start off as the sort of person whose notions of pudding extended beyond unwrapping a Cadbury’s mini roll.

‘Did you and Sam have an engagement party? Of course you did,’ Charlie answered her own question. ‘I bet it was at one of your houses.’

Kate dragged herself out of whatever revenge fantasy had temporarily consumed her. ‘My mum and dad’s. Huh! Sam’s parents wouldn’t…’ She stopped. ‘But you didn’t want the party at yours, you said. Simon didn’t want it at his.’

‘Exactly,’ Charlie said quietly. ‘What’s wrong with us?’

Kate shrugged. ‘Simon wouldn’t have been able to relax with people all over his house, would he? And you’re in the middle of decorating.’ She grinned. ‘Though I’m not sure something that never ends can be said to have a middle.’

‘Don’t start.’

‘I did try to tell you that an undecorated house was the ideal party venue-no expensive wallpaper for people to puke on.’

‘And you were right,’ said Charlie. ‘But I still went ahead and booked a dingy room in a pub, because I’m not like you and Sam. Neither is Simon. We’re incapable of making anybody feel welcome. If we have to pretend to like the people we know, we’d rather do it on neutral territory.’ For some reason, Charlie enjoyed being vicious about herself; she felt it compensated for those occasions on which she was vicious about other people. ‘Did anyone give a speech?’ she asked.

‘At our engagement party? Sam did. It was earnest and endless. Why, are you going to? Is Simon going to?’

‘Of course not. We don’t do anything properly.’

Kate looked puzzled. ‘You can give a speech if you want to. It doesn’t matter if it’s off the cuff. Often a spontaneous-’

‘I’d rather dip my face in a tray of acid,’ Charlie cut her off. ‘Simon would feel the same.’

Kate sighed, gathering her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. ‘I bet he wouldn’t if he was certain of being able to give a really good speech. Confidence, that’s all he’s lacking. This is unfamiliar territory for him.’

‘Sounds like you know more about him than I do.’

‘I know he adores you. And before you say “Why doesn’t he show it, then?”-he does. If you don’t see the signs, it’s because you’re looking wrong.’

‘I thought I was looking deathly,’ said Charlie through clenched teeth.