“We’d just have liked to know you were considering it.” A slightly different flavour of Cordelia Palmer pause. This was one that said, I don’t want to say the hurtful thing I’m going to say next, but you have driven me to it. “Especially given how steadfastly you’ve ignored the same suggestion when it came from your father and me.”
Even for her parents, taking offence at the fact she was doing something they liked now because it meant she hadn’t done it earlier was a new low. “Amelie was a lot younger then.”
“Amelie’s age has nothing to do with it. You’ll listen to Alain because you’re in a relationship with him, and while I tried to raise you not to rely on men to make all your decisions for you, I apparently failed.”
“Weren’t you on at me to settle down with him a couple of weeks ago?”
“Your father and I want you to do what makes you happy, you know that.”
Rosaline took a breath so deep it made her lungs ache. “And what if I said I was happy right now?”
“Then you’d be lying. To me, your father, and yourself.”
“Why?” asked Rosaline ill-advisedly. “Why is it so unimaginable I could be happy raising my daughter and baking my cakes and living in my tiny house and working my ordinary job in a shop that sells pencils?”
“Because, darling, you’re better than that.”
And, after a moment or two, she turned on Radio 4 in time to catch the start of the shipping forecast.
Week Six
Patisserie
Wednesday
ALAIN HAD ARRANGED for Rosaline to meet him and his friend at a cocktail bar in Shoreditch called Some Kind of Cocktail Bar—which she hoped he’d chosen because it was fairly easy to get to from Liverpool Street station, and not because he thought she might be into it. Which, from the name, she definitely wasn’t. As a teenager, her social life had generally revolved around places that had a relaxed attitude towards ID and charged less than thirteen pounds a drink. And as a plucky single mother, her social life had revolved around not having one. Either way, she’d very much missed the little-black-dress-let’s-do-cocktails stage of adulthood.
Wait. Was this a little black dress occasion? Did she have a little black dress? Was it appropriate to wear a little black dress to meet a woman you weren’t dating? Surely if she turned up in a sexy dress—or as sexy as any of her dresses got—she’d just look desperate and threatened. But if she showed up in jeans and a T-shirt, she’d look like she didn’t give a fuck, and she might not even be allowed in the front door.
Though, now she thought about it, that might actually be an advantage. Whoops, sorry. Didn’t realise there’d be a dress code. Let’s go somewhere not awful instead.
In desperation she tried googling the place to see if there was anything on its website that might offer a clue re vibe or attire. But all she found was a black page and the words “coming soon” underneath a massive logo.
“Why don’t you wear this?” asked Amelie, tugging on the hem of the very pink, very puffy-shouldered dress that a combination of Allison’s traditional aesthetic and Lauren’s cruel sense of humour had forced the bridesmaids to wear at their wedding. “It’s pretty. And it makes you look like a princess.”
“I thought princesses were undemocratic?”
“They are. But yesterday when I didn’t want to wash my hair you said this family isn’t a democracy.”
“She’s got you there.” Lauren was lounging in the doorway, a glass of pre-babysitting wine firmly in hand.
Rosaline led Amelie gently away from the wardrobe. “Please don’t gang up on me. I’m trying to get ready.”
“Can I choose your lipstick?” Apparently interpreting being led away from the wardrobe as an invitation to retrain as a makeup artist, Amelie started digging through the contents of Rosaline’s dressing table. “What about this one?”
The lipstick in question was deep purple and glittery and had been sitting in the back of Rosaline’s makeup drawer since before Amelie was born. “Assuming it’s survived the last decade, Mummy’s no longer interested in looking like a drag queen.”
“Why not? Drag queens are pretty.”
Lauren shook her head. “No, darling. I remember your mother’s glitter phase very well, and while I was madly in love with her at the time, even I have to admit she did look a bit silly.”
“It wasn’t my glitter phase,” protested Rosaline. “It was a generalised glitter phase. Lots of people were doing it.”
“You did it quite hard.”
“Oh come on. I was seventeen. Everyone makes terrible fashion choices when they’re seventeen. What about you in your whole . . . ” Rosaline had been about to say “lick my pussy and call me Byron phase,” but Amelie was right there and the makeup box wasn’t quite that distracting. “ . . . wannabe Oscar Wilde act? You had a crushed velvet frockcoat and everything.”
Lauren gave her a withering look. “I think you’ll find I’m still doing that act. And I was wearing that coat yesterday. And what Allison was doing while I wore it, I will never tell you.”
“Was she,” asked Rosaline, “preparing a detailed analysis of her client’s recent expenditure?”
“On this occasion, yes. Last week, definitely not.”
“I make sensible fashion choices.” That was Amelie, deciding the conversation had gone on long enough without her. “I wear my uniform when I’m at school and other things when I’m not at school. I always have pockets because they’re useful and I like things that have pictures on them I like.”
“Well, I’m going to wear this.” Rosaline turned away from the mirror in her wardrobe door, having settled on a nice pair of slim-fit trousers, boots, and an off-the-shoulder top that had been pretty fashionable about three years ago. “I think it’s a bit flirty but not pushing it.”
“It would be better if you were an anglerfish,” offered Amelie.
“I admit”—Lauren peered disappointedly at the dregs of her wine—“straight men aren’t my forte, but I suspect Alain wouldn’t like your mummy anywhere near as much if she was an anglerfish.”
“I don’t know. I’d have one of those cute little lights on my head.” Putting her hand to her forehead with one finger hooked over in a vague approximation of an anglerfish’s bioluminescent appendage, Rosaline pushed her jaw forward and began swimming about her bedroom.
“I meant,” explained Amelie patiently, “that if she was an anglerfish . . .”
“I am an anglerfish,” said Rosaline.
“Stop being silly, Mummy. Anyway, if you were an anglerfish you’d release a pheromone into the water and a boy anglerfish would follow it and then he’d bite onto your tummy and he’d stay there forever which would be very convenient.”
Lauren raised an eyebrow. “Well, that does sound better than most heterosexual dating.”
“You’d rather”—nudging Amelie aside, Rosaline dug through her makeup for something more sedate than her ancient stick of Electric Plum—“have a man permanently attached to your stomach, than go for drinks with one?”