As greetings went, it could have been worse. And occasionally had been. “This is Harry. He’s from the show.”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Palmer.” Harry offered his hand and Cordelia started at it, like it was literally covered in faeces.
“What happened to Alain?” asked Cordelia.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I do want to know. You just don’t want to tell me.”
Rosaline curled her nails into her palms. “You’re right. I don’t want to tell you. Can I have my daughter back, please.”
Sighing, Cordelia stood aside. “She’s in the upstairs drawing room with your father and her marbles.”
It was hard for Rosaline to meet Harry’s eyes after her mother had not only refused to shake his hand but also referenced the drawing room in a way that made it very clear they had more than one. Sliding past Cordelia, she led him up to the largest space in the house, which was now filled with the most complex and elaborate marble run Rosaline had ever seen. The Palmers made little secret of their desire to “get Amelie into STEM,” and so, over the years, they’d spent a small fortune on GraviTrax kits that Amelie loved and Rosaline tried not to feel betrayed that Amelie loved.
“Mummy,” Amelie called out from across the small forest of towers, ramps, and magnetic catapults. “Look. Look what me and Granddad made.”
“Granddad and I,” said Granddad, who was sitting on a nearby stool and assembling a flipper.
“Look what Granddad and I made. It’s a race. For marbles. And there’s a blue marble and a red marble and a green marble and they go whoosh. And we’re going to start the green marble here and the red marble here and the blue marble here and see which one wins because of gravity and momentum.”
Harry crouched to get a better look at the track. “That sounds well exciting.”
“Hello, Mr. Viking.” Amelie looked up from her construction project. “Look what Granddad and I made.”
“I heard, Prime Minister. It’s a race for marbles.”
“Rosaline”—St. John Palmer got his feet—“who’s this?”
“He’s from the show,” explained Cordelia, emerging from the stairwell. “Apparently Alain is out of the picture.”
St. John Palmer shook his head regretfully. “Pity. Seemed a good sort. What went wrong this time?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rosaline told him as firmly as she could.
“Talk about what?” asked Amelie very loudly. “Who’s Alain?”
“Alain used to be a friend of Mummy’s. But he’s not anymore.”
“Why?”
“He turned out not to be a very nice person.”
Amelie thought about this for a moment. “Why?”
Oh God. “He pretended to be . . . the sort of person Mummy might like. But actually he was very selfish.”
Amelie still had that “why” look on her face, but Cordelia got in first. “He didn’t seem that selfish to me. He was encouraging you to make some very positive changes in your life.”
“Yes.” St. John Palmer chose, as ever, to act on his perennial conviction that what the world really needed was his opinion. “Your mother told me you were going back to university. I’ve looked into it, and an Open University level-two course is the best place to start. I’ll have a word with Edward—he’s been working for them since the last recession.”
This was rapidly becoming typical. “Dad, don’t have a word with Edward. Don’t have a word with anybody.”
“Rosaline.” Cordelia was gazing at her coldly. “I hope you aren’t going to abandon your career plans just because things didn’t work out with a man.”
“They weren’t my career plans,” Rosaline tried to insist. “They were something I was thinking about.”
“Mummy . . .” And now Amelie was involved again. This felt nastily like it was escalating. “You didn’t say you were going back to university. Why didn’t you say you were going back to university?”
They didn’t often have Rosaline’s back, but if there was anything Cordelia and St. John would rush to defend, it was her right to do something they’d been wanting her to do for a decade. “It’ll be very good for you,” St. John was saying.
“Mummy might be a bit busy for a little while,” Cordelia continued, “but after that she’ll have a much better job and you can live in a much nicer house—”
“Will I be able to have a dog?” Amelie asked. “Or a hissing cockroach?”
In theory, this was a good time for Rosaline to put her foot down, but that was hard with the Palmers working so much at cross-purposes with her. “We aren’t getting a new house.”
“Then why are you going back to university?” Amelie was beginning to sound confused, and a confused Amelie was a short step away from a tearful Amelie. “If you get to go back to university, I should get a dog or a cockroach or a house.”
Harry, who had been fiddling with one of the loose bits of track in Amelie’s marvellous marble monorail, looked up. “Sounds to me like your mum ain’t made up her mind yet.”
“Hasn’t made up her mind.” That was both the Palmers at once.
“And I think you’ll find she has.” That was Cordelia.
That was also, at last, enough. “Oh do you,” Rosaline snapped. “I’m so glad you’re here to tell other people when I’ve made my mind up because I’m clearly incapable of doing it myself.”
“Well, if we’re being honest, darling”—Cordelia clasped her hands like she was delivering painful news and not just being shitty—“you’ve always been a little indecisive.”
“I’m not indecisive, Mother, I’m bisexual. There’s a difference.” It was the wrong thing to say, because if there was one thing the Palmers excelled at . . . Well, if there was one thing they excelled at, it was pursuing careers in medicine lucrative enough to pay for large houses in central London and a private education for their daughter to waste. But one of the many other things they excelled at was plausible deniability. “You’re the one who’s making this about your lifestyle choices. I’m simply pointing out that your father and I have met two of your gentlemen friends in as many months—”
“We’re just mates,” Harry offered in a doomed attempt to set the record straight.
All he got for his trouble was a femtosecond of Cordelia’s attention. “Nobody’s talking to you, Harold dear.”
“It ain’t Harold, it’s Harry. And I don’t like to say nothing, but I think you’re being a bit rude now.”
“The fact that you don’t like to say nothing is quite self-evident.” St. John Palmer looked from Harry to Rosaline. “Are you really going to let this man talk to your mother like that?”
And what the fuck kind of question was that to ask her?
“Sorry, Mrs. Palmer.” Harry put his hands in the air almost as if a gun was being pointed at him. As if a gun were being pointed at him. “Didn’t mean no offence.”