Nicci French: Secret Smile

'You're looking very nice,' said my mother, which made me think something must be wrong. 'Everybody's here already. Kerry is looking gorgeous. I don't mean…' She glanced at me awkwardly. 'Shall we go through?'

'Is Troy here?' I asked.

'Yes. He seems quite well. A bit less hyper than on Thursday, but on an even keel. Touch wood,' she added and thumped the door for luck.

It seemed that all was well with the Cotton family. Kerry was happy. I was looking lovely. Troy seemed all right. I was tempted to make some sort of protest, but today was a day I was going to be on my best behaviour. The sun was shining, as if in honour of the occasion, and although it was October everybody was out in the long, narrow back garden. Everybody except Troy, who was uncomfortable in groups. You'd see him there at first and then he would melt away, go upstairs somewhere and read a book or listen to music.

Even so, the small garden seemed crowded. Bill and Judy were there as well. My parents hadn't told me they were inviting my boss. So he knew as well. Know: there should be a different word for knowing something that isn't actually true. The weather was so good that Dad had lit a barbecue. I could see him at the end of the garden, standing over it, poking at the coals with – yes, there was no doubt about it – with Brendan. The two of them were talking to each other with great animation, but were too far away for me to hear anything of what they were saying. Kerry was standing with Judy. She was wearing baggy black trousers and a tight-ribbed pink top, and she looked the way she did at La Table: happy, confident.

I decided to put off any potential awkwardness for as long as possible and walked over to Bill, who seemed like the most neutral person in the garden. He gave me a friendly nod.

'Hi, Miranda,' he said. 'How are you doing?'

He handed me a bottle of beer from the table next to him.

'I don't see you here very often,' I said to him.

'Marcia was most insistent.'

I took a sip from the beer and looked up at the back of my parents' narrow terraced house, which was covered by scaffolding.

'What do you think?' I said.

'If it wasn't being redone it wouldn't be standing by next year.'

'That bad?'

'Worse. You can almost see that crack growing.'

'Miranda,' said my father, appearing suddenly from the side. 'How are you?'

I ignored the question, especially as Brendan was hovering at his elbow dressed in new, ironed jeans and a light blue sweater with the sleeves pulled up to just below the elbow, and gave my father a little hug. He patted me on the back awkwardly. He's not a great hugger, my father.

'Hi, Dad,' I said. 'Lovely to see you.'

'I've got to admit that Brendan is a master with the barbecue,' he said.

'It's all about piling up the coal,' Brendan said. 'You make the bricquettes into a pyramid and put several fire lighters underneath and then really get it all burning. You only spread them out when the flames have died down.'

'Bill and I were talking about the house,' I said.

'You should pay attention to Brendan,' Dad said. 'You might learn something.'

'I don't make many barbecues in my flat,' I said.

'You might need to one day,' said Brendan.

'I've always thought it was something men liked doing,' I said.

'We never had a barbecue, did we, Mirrie?'

I was tempted to say: 'No, Brendan. We never had a barbecue because we only went out for about nine days, so we didn't have time for that or indeed almost anything at all.' I didn't. I made myself take a deep breath. A silent, metaphorical deep breath.

'No, we didn't,' I said.

'I'm afraid that I've been boring Brendan,' Dad said. 'He's been letting me talk shop.'

'Boxes,' said Brendan and rubbed his hands together. 'So simple, and yet imagine life without boxes.'

Bill gaped. Even my father looked a bit startled by such enthusiasm.

'Yes, well,' he said. 'I don't know about that. I'm a practical man. I like making things; I've always been interested in problem solving. Finding solutions. You can do that with the packaging business.'

'I know exactly what you mean,' said Brendan. 'On the face of it, packaging sounds obvious. But a few years ago, this man called Harry Vermont and I set up this dotcom company.'

'What company?' my father asked.

Brendan laughed ruefully.

'One of those that was going to make us all millionaires,' he said. 'But it's gone now.'

'What did it do?' said Bill.

'The point of it,' said Brendan 'was that people could order different sorts of consumer goods from the website and we would deliver them. We would be middlemen. Middlepersons, I should say. When it started, I thought it was all about technology. But once it started, I realized it was partly that but, when it came down to it, it was also about packaging and delivery. You had to get the right packaging at the right place, you had to source it and do the actual packing, and then you had to deliver it on time. It was an amazing challenge for us.'

'Who did you source it from?' asked Dad.

'Sorry?'

'Packaging in this country is quite a small world. I was wondering if you were dealing with someone I know.'

'We were only in the planning stage,' said Brendan. 'Then the dotcom collapse happened and we lost our funding. Poor old Harry never quite got over it.'

'If you're interested, Brendan, I'll show you around some time,' said my father.

'I'd love that,' said Brendan. 'Meanwhile, I reckon it's time to get the food on the barbecue.'

As it turned out, it wasn't time to put the food on the barbecue. While we had been talking, the barbecue had gone out. Brendan said that this sometimes happened when the bricquettes had been left in the shed for a long time and had become damp. My father looked pleased and said that he wouldn't have been able to bear it if there were somebody better than him at lighting barbecues in the family. His position as lord and master would have been threatened.

I was disconcerted for a while by that notion of Brendan being 'in the family' and I fell silent. I finished my beer and opened a second one, and then I started to feel more mellow about it all. I stood apart and looked at the family and looked at Brendan bustling around. I thought of this narrow strip of urban garden, one of dozens in the street, one of millions in London, and suddenly I was touched by the sight of Brendan going to so much effort, bustling between the barbecue – which had now been lit, quickly and efficiently by Bill – and my father and my mother. Every so often he would sidle up to Kerry and touch her or whisper something to her or give her a look, and she would light up.

He helped my mother with sorting out the marinade for the chicken and salmon pieces. Somehow he went into the house and tracked Troy down to whichever hole he'd been hiding in. He chivvied him out and persuaded him to carry plates to the table, and the different salads that Troy and my mother had made that morning. It made me think about myself and I felt a little ashamed. I wondered if I had assumed that the Cotton family existed entirely for my benefit, like some sort of museum that I could drop into whenever I felt like it. And I could always rely on other people to maintain it. My parents were there to do things for me and to blame when things went wrong. Had I thought enough about doing things for them?

By the time I was on to my third beer, I was feeling thoroughly forgiving of almost everybody in the world, and certainly everybody in this garden, though not necessarily in the most coherent way.

There was Brendan, doing five things at once, working so hard; and there was my mother bustling in and out with plates and cutlery; my father fiddling around with the barbecue to stop it tipping over; Kerry in conversation with Judy; Troy playing some game with Bill's children, Sasha and Mitch. And I noticed something odd: they all seemed to be having a good time. Brendan brought me a plate of grilled chicken and salad, and I ate it eagerly. I needed something to soak up the beer. I was so hungry that I barely noticed the very slight oddity that he had served me first. I looked over at Kerry and she sensed my looking at her in that way people do, and she turned to me and smiled. I smiled back. We were being a happy family.