Nicola Barker - Darkmans

The dazed-looking blonde — who wore a tight, white roll-neck and heavy make-up — gazed over at Pat, horrified. ‘She made you clean out your fridge, Pat? I’m not being funny , but…’

Beede’s affable companion shook her head. ‘Tom’s exaggerating, Laura. She just needed some extra room so I did a quick…’

‘As God is my witness !’ Tom interjected. ‘I stagger home after a long day at the coalface, only to be sent straight back out — flea in my ear — to get some Dettox fridge spray and a bottle of silver polish. Arrive home for the second time, and blow me if she doesn’t have me perched at the breakfast bar — like a disgraced schoolboy — polishing the cutlery!’

‘Did a lovely job, Tom,’ Cheryl sniggered, lifting up a dessert spoon, panting on to the back of the bowl and then buffing it, assiduously, with the sleeve of her top.

‘Show them your fingers,’ Pat instructed him.

Tom lifted up his hands. Every nail was blackened.

‘How awful !’

Laura shook her head, horrified. ‘I mean what’s the point in getting a meal specially catered if you end up with hands looking like that?’ ‘He offered , Laura,’ Pat struggled to pacify her. ‘You should’ve seen it. All “yes Ms Sayle, no Ms Sayle” he was.’

‘Is that her name, then?’ Laura asked. ‘Ms Sayle?’

‘Well what kind of sense would the story make if it wasn’t ?’ the car man sniped.

‘Good God , Pat,’ Cheryl spluttered (over the top of the others, half-way through a sip of wine), ‘my idle, chauvinist brother actually volunteering to do some housework? Has the world finally gone mad ?!’

‘What do you mean ?’ Tom drew himself up, outraged. ‘I’m a completely modern male. Ask the girls in the office. I make them a pot of fresh coffee, every morning, without fail…’

‘You’d be quite astonished,’ Pat faux -sniffed, ‘how “modern” Tom can get around a clutch of attractive office girls.’

‘ Attractive?! That lot?!’ Tom howled. ‘Back me up, Charlie. Most of ‘em are homely enough to stop the clock!’

‘Stop the what ?!’ Cheryl snorted.

‘The last time Tom brought me coffee in bed was when Max was three months old,’ Pat sighed, all misty-eyed, ‘on my twenty-fifth birthday…’ she glanced around the assembled company, ‘and how old is Max now?’

Tom began wailing.

‘No! Seriously! How old is he?’

‘Twenty-three?’ Laura took a wild guess.

‘Twenty- four !’ Pat struggled to make herself heard over the general commotion. ‘Getting Tom to lift a finger at home…?’ she threw up her free hand, despairingly. ‘It’d be easier to get the Pope to fit a condom.’

‘ Proper coffee and everything,’ Tom ignored his wife and continued to swank about his office achievements, ‘in the cafetiere …’

‘ Really? ’ Laura looked suitably impressed. ‘ Proper coffee? Charlie wouldn’t know one end of a cafetiere from the other.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Charlie snapped, ‘of course I do.’

‘No you don’t .’

‘It’s a little plastic thingy with a plunger…’

Charlie quickly mimed how to use the object in question.

Laura puckered up her lips, irritably.

‘I’m right aren’t I?’

‘How old is she?’ Cheryl asked Pat.

‘Who?’

‘The caterer.’

‘Old enough to know better,’ Tom grumbled.

‘Young enough to teach an old dog new tricks,’ Pat struck back.

‘We’ll get a good look at her when she brings out the starter,’ Laura said, reaching for a stuffed, green olive from a nearby bowl, biting one end and inadvertently squirting the stuffing out through the other and straight down the front of her top.

‘Oh bugger .’

She grabbed her napkin and began dabbing.

‘Can’t take you anywhere,’ Tom moaned.

‘I really should…’ Beede used this brief, domestic interlude to try and start backing towards the door again.

‘Don’t be such a party pooper!’ Pat clung tenaciously on to his arm. ‘Pull out a pew,’ Tom seconded her, ‘there’s plenty to go around.’

‘I’ve already eaten…’ Beede lied, a thin line of perspiration dotting his upper lip.

‘That doesn’t matter…’ Pat insisted, ‘it’s just a social thing. We’re one short and I’d be so grateful…’

‘To be perfectly frank,’ Beede brusquely informed her, ‘I’ve got a fair bit of paperwork to be getting on with at home…’

‘But it’s our Wedding Anniversary,’ Pat gazed at him, pleadingly. ‘Sit down, old boy or I’ll never hear the end of it,’ Tom exhorted.

‘If it’s me you’re worried about,’ Cheryl delivered him a frank smile, ‘then I absolutely promise to leave your virtue intact.’

‘ Well …’ Tom muttered, ‘until she’s finished her second glass…’

‘ Tom! Stop provoking your sister!’ Pat scolded him, yanking a reluctant Beede forward a step. ‘Cheryl, this is Beede. Beede, this is Cheryl…’

Cheryl frowned. ‘ Bead ? As in necklace?’

‘No. Beede as in…’ Pat thought for a second. ‘Yes. As in necklace, but without the “a” and with two extra “e”s.’

‘So not as in necklace,’ Tom rolled his eyes, long-sufferingly.

‘And of course you know Tom ,’ Pat continued.

Beede smiled, curtly.

‘ Everybody knows Tom,’ Laura exclaimed.

‘And the woman with the embarrassing stain down her cleavage…’

Charlie interrupted her.

‘That’s Laura, my sister-in-law…’

Pat paused as Laura waved a genial hello. ‘And Charlie, my brother…’ she cleared her throat, carefully, ‘Laura and Charlie Monkeith .’

Beede stiffened as he reached out to shake Tom’s hand. ‘But of course …’ he said, nodding sharply, like a tight-arsed but intensely respectful commandant , ‘very pleased to meet you.’

‘Beede just did us the great honour of accepting the post of Chairman on the Road Initiative Committee,’ Pat continued, somewhat nervously, ‘for Ryan.’

Silence

‘I must actually…’ Beede gently demurred.

‘It’s not embarrassing at all ,’ Laura brusquely interrupted him, peering down at her generously proportioned bust and rapidly dabbing again. ‘ Look . It’s almost come off.’

Charlie didn’t look. Instead he pointed towards Beede’s piss-pot. ‘Come on a bike, eh?’

Beede gazed down at his helmet as if it were a curious tumescence which had just that second sprouted from the tips of his fingers.

‘ Uh …’

‘I admire your fortitude, old boy,’ Tom whistled, ‘it’s stinking weather for it.’

As Tom spoke Pat whisked away Beede’s helmet and then placed her hands on to his shoulders to lift off his waterproofs. Beede started, involuntarily, as if her graceful hands were the clumsy mitts of an arresting officer.

‘I’m sorry , Pat,’ he insisted, ‘but I’m afraid I really must…’

‘Is it an old one?’ Charlie asked.

Beede didn’t answer. He was too busy fighting a losing battle to keep hold of his jacket.

‘Didn’t you hear it back-fire,’ Tom asked, ‘five minutes ago, pulling up?’

‘Charlie here is a car and bike fanatic,’ Pat informed Beede as she neatly folded his jacket over the crook of her arm, ‘he owns that huge Jag’ dealership on the edge of the Orbital Park, just across from the market…’