Sophia Money-Coutts - The Wish List

‘A new campaign for cold sore cream.’ Ruby glanced up at a hovering waiter. ‘Could I have a vodka and tonic please? Slimline tonic.’ She turned back to the table. ‘And it was crap. I’m not doing it even if they ask me.’

Ruby never seemed to mind missing out on jobs. Castings came and went every week and she shrugged them off, convinced that her big cover moment would come along one day. It helped that she was twenty-six and still had a credit card bankrolled by our father.

‘Oh well,’ said Patricia. ‘What do you want to eat?’

‘Er…’ Ruby looked at our plates. Hugo was chewing a rib-eye; after a debate of several minutes over whether the fish was cooked in butter or oil, Patricia and Mia had opted for the sea bass with the thyme cream on the side; I was having chicken but had swapped the truffled mash for chips because I thought truffle smelled like the crotch of my gym leggings and why anyone would want to eat that was beyond me. Plus, I could count the chips as I ate them. I couldn’t handle very small food like peas or grains of rice because they were too fiddly to count. Chips were fine.

‘Whatever Florence is having please,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m desperate for a fag but…’ She gazed around the room, as if anyone else would be smoking.

‘Can we get back to the wedding?’ demanded Mia.

Ruby sat back in her chair. ‘Yes, sorry. What’s the plan?’

‘We’re having it here but I’m worried about numbers. Are you bringing anyone?’ Mia narrowed her eyes. ‘Do you want to bring Jasper?’

Jasper Montgomery was Ruby’s latest boyfriend, a rakish playboy and the son of a duke who was to inherit a castle in Yorkshire and thousands of acres. Patricia was thrilled; Mia had become less pleased about our sister’s posh new relationship as the weeks wore on because Jasper kept turning up at home unannounced, late and pissed, leaning on the doorbell until someone answered it, usually Mia, whereupon Jasper would tumble into our hallway.

‘How on earth do I know?’ Ruby replied. ‘The wedding’s not until Christmas. That’s…’ she counted by tapping her fingers on the table, ‘four months from now. I can’t predict where we’ll be then.’ She was as relaxed about relationships as she was about timing. And this nonchalance, combined with her freckles and long, chestnut-coloured curls (she’d once been told she resembled a ‘young Julia Roberts’ in her headshots), meant that men fell about her like skittles.

‘Flo, what about you?’ said Mia.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Are you bringing anyone?’

‘To your wedding?’

‘Yes, obviously to my wedding. What else would we be talking about?’

‘Our wedding,’ said Hugo.

The question made me defensive. ‘Well I mean, no… I didn’t… I don’t… I can’t imagine who that would be, so…’

‘Florence, sweetheart, I’ve been thinking about this,’ interrupted Patricia, and my jaw froze, mid-chew. Patricia’s tone had become wheedling, the widow spider seducing her prey before the kill. ‘I think it’s high time you considered your love life. You’re thirty-two, darling. You really should have had a boyfriend by now. What will people think otherwise? Time waits for no man. Or woman, in this case.’

I swallowed. ‘Perhaps they’ll think I’m a lesbian, Patricia.’

‘Gracious me. Are you a les…? Are you one of those?’

I picked up a chip and dunked it in the silver pot of ketchup beside my plate. ‘No, sadly.’

Even though I’d spent years pretending I didn’t care that I’d never had a boyfriend, years telling myself it wasn’t very feminist to worry about such things, privately I did mind. Was it my flat chest? My size eight feet? My pale colouring, or the mole on my forehead that I tried to hide with my hair? Could men tell that I was so inexperienced? Did I emit an off-putting, sexless smell?

Deep down, of course I wanted to fall in love. Doesn’t everyone? I’d spent my teenage years ripping through romantic novels and dreamed of being as alluring as Scarlett O’Hara, with the sassy intelligence of Jo March and the porcelain delicacy of Daisy Buchanan. In reality, I was starting to feel more like Miss Havisham. But although I allowed myself to brood about this on dark Sunday nights, I never admitted as much out loud and I didn’t want to discuss it with my family. Especially when my sisters’ allure was so much greater than my own.

We’d lived as a trio for years. Dad was posted to Pakistan when I was eighteen. Five years later, the Foreign Office moved him to Argentina. That was when Patricia moved into a flat in South Kensington. She’d never liked our house in Kennington because she didn’t think the postcode was fashionable enough, so she persuaded Dad to take out another mortgage and buy her one somewhere else. Patricia insisted it was to allow Ruby, Mia and me to remain living at home but the truth was Patricia felt she deserved to live in a posh flat with thick carpets, expensive floral wallpaper and an SW7 postcode. She was the wife of an ambassador, after all, even if she spent most of her time in London. She visited Buenos Aires every couple of months and Dad flew back for the odd meeting, but they spent such long stretches of time apart I used to wonder how their relationship was a success. Over the years, I’d realized it thrived precisely because of the long periods away. If they lived together full-time, one of them would have murdered the other. Patricia was the highly strung neurotic who made everyone take their shoes off when visiting her flat; Dad was the stable rudder. She wanted a husband who could afford her weekly haircuts and dinners in expensive restaurants; he needed a woman willing to be the diplomatic wife when she did visit. Patricia never minded cutting the ribbon at the opening of a new textile factory or chatting up the wife of the soybean magnate. The South Kensington flat was stuffed with official photographs taken at these events.

Anyway, ever since Patricia moved out, boyfriends had arrived at our house more often than the postman. They were mostly Ruby’s but, before Hugo, Mia’s hit rate had also been high and I’d often come downstairs in the morning to find men called Rupert or Jeremy hunting for tea bags in the kitchen. The only man who made it into my room was ginger, had four legs and was called Marmalade – my 17-year-old cat.

‘But we do worry about you,’ breezed on Patricia, ‘so what I’ve decided is that you should go and see this woman I read about in the hairdresser in Posh! magazine – she’s got a funny name. Gwendolyn something. A love coach. Or guru. Can’t remember which. But apparently she’s brilliant.’

I squinted across the table. ‘A love coach? What do you mean?’

‘There’s no need to be embarrassed, darling. Think of her like a therapist but for relationships. You go along, talk to her about your situation and what you’re looking for, and she helps you work out all your funny little issues.’

‘What. Do. You. Mean?’ I repeated slowly, enunciating each word.

‘I just think it must be a bit lonely at your age, still being on your own when your sisters are getting married. Sort of… unnatural.’

‘Mum, hang on,’ interjected Ruby. ‘ I’m not getting marr—’

Patricia held a hand up in the air, signalling that she wasn’t finished. ‘Don’t you want to meet someone, darling?’ she said, leaning towards me. ‘Don’t you want to find a lovely chap like Hugo and settle down?’

I looked at Hugo, who was repeatedly running his index finger across his plate to mop up his steak juice, then sticking it in his mouth.

‘Patricia,’ I started, ‘it’s the twenty-first century. Single women aren’t illegal. We can drive cars, we can vote. We can own property. We can play in premiership football teams and…’ I paused, trying to think of more, ‘we can do whatever we like with our own body hair. We can dress how we like. And we can have sex with ourselves, if we like, no man necessary—’