The rest are all text messages and emails for Violet. As I scroll down them, I notice that Sam features in the subject heading of quite a few of the emails. Feeling like Poirot again, I check back on the numbers called function and, sure enough, the last number that called this phone was Sam Mobile. So that’s him. Violet’s boss. Dark-rumpled-hair guy. And to prove it, her email address is samro xtonp a@whi teglo becon sulting. com.
Just out of the mildest curiosity, I click on one of the emails. It’s from jenna smith@ grant lyass etman agement. com, and the subject is Re: Dinner?
Thanks, Violet. I’d appreciate you not mentioning any of this to Sam. I feel a little embarrassed now!
Ooh. What’s she embarrassed about? Before I can stop myself, I’ve scrolled down to read the previous email, which was sent yesterday.
Actually, Jenna, you should know something: Sam’s engaged.
Best, Violet
He’s engaged. Interesting. As I read the words over again, I feel a strange little reaction inside which I can’t quite place—surprise?
Although why should I be surprised? I don’t even know the guy.
OK, now I have to know the whole story. Why is Jenna embarrassed? What happened? I scroll down still farther, past a couple more exchanges, and at last find a long introductory email from Jenna, who clearly met this Sam Roxton at a business function, got the hots for him, and invited him to dinner two weeks ago, but he hasn’t returned her calls.
… tried again yesterday … maybe using the wrong number … someone told me he is notorious and that his PA is always the best route to contact him … very sorry to bother you … possibly just let me know either way …
Poor woman. I feel quite indignant on her behalf. Why didn’t he reply? How hard is it to send a quick email saying, no, thanks? And then it turns out he’s engaged, for God’s sake.
Anyway. Whatever. I suddenly realize I’m snooping in someone else’s in-box when I have a lot of other, more important things to be thinking about. Priorities, Poppy. I need to buy some wine for Magnus’s parents. And a welcome-home card. And—if I don’t track down the ring in the next twenty minutes—some gloves.
Disaster. Disaster. It turns out they don’t sell gloves in April. The only ones I could find were from the back room in Accessorize. Old Christmas stock, available only in a small.
I cannot believe I’m seriously planning to greet my prospective in-laws in too-tight red woolly reindeer gloves. With tassels.
But I have no choice. It’s that or walk in bare-handed.
As I start the long climb up the hill to Magnus’s parents’ house, I’m starting to feel really sick. It’s not just the ring. It’s the whole scary prospective in-laws thing. I turn the corner—and all the windows of the house are alight. They’re home.
I’ve never known a house which suits a family as much as the Tavishes’ does. It’s older and grander than any of the others in the street and looks down on them from its superior position. There are yew trees and a monkey puzzle in the garden. The bricks are covered in ivy, and the windows still have their original 1835 wooden frames. Inside, there’s William Morris wallpaper dating from the 1960s, and the floorboards are covered with Turkish carpets.
Except you can’t actually see the carpets, because they’re mostly covered in old documents and manuscripts which no one ever bothers to clear up. No one’s big on tidying in the Tavish family. I once found a fossilized boiled egg in a spare-room bed, still in its eggcup, with a desiccated toast soldier. It must have been about a year old.
And everywhere, all over the house, are books. Stacked up three deep on shelves, piled on the floor, and on the side of every lime-stained bath. Antony writes books, Wanda writes books, Magnus writes books, and his elder brother, Conrad, writes books. Even Conrad’s wife, Margot, writes books.12
Which is great. I mean, it’s a wonderful thing, all these genius intellectuals in one family. But it does make you feel just the teensiest, weensiest bit inadequate.
Don’t get me wrong, I think I’m pretty intelligent. You know, for a normal person who went to school and college and got a job and everything. But these aren’t normal people; they’re in a different league. They have superbrains. They’re the academic version of The Incredibles.13 I’ve met his parents only a few times, when they flew back to London for a week for Antony to give some big important lecture, but it was enough to show me. While Antony was lecturing about political theory, Wanda was presenting a paper on feminist Judaism to a think tank, and then they both appeared on The Culture Show, taking opposing views on a documentary about the influence of the Renaissance.14 So that was the backdrop to our meeting. No pressure or anything.
I’ve been introduced to quite a few different boyfriends’ parents over the years, but hands down this was the worst experience, ever. We’d just shaken hands and made a bit of small talk and I was telling Wanda quite proudly where I’d been to college, when Antony looked up over his half-moon glasses, with those bright, cold eyes of his, and said, “A degree in physiotherapy. How amusing.” I felt instantly crushed. I didn’t know what to say. In fact, I was so flustered I left the room to go to the loo.15
After that, of course, I froze. Those three days were sheer misery. The more intellectual the conversation became, the more tongue-tied and awkward I was. My second-worst moment: pronouncing Proust wrong and everyone exchanging looks.16 My very worst moment: watching University Challenge all together in the drawing room, when a section on bones came on. My subject! I studied this! I know all the Latin names and everything! But as I was drawing breath to answer the first question, Antony had already given the correct answer. I was quicker next time—but he still beat me. The whole thing was like a race, and he won. Then, at the end, he looked over at me and inquired, “Do they not teach anatomy at physiotherapy school, Poppy?” and I was mortified.
Magnus says he loves me, not my brain, and that I’ve got to ignore his parents. And Natasha said, think of the rock and the Hampstead house and the villa in Tuscany. Which is Natasha for you. Whereas my own approach has been as follows: Just don’t think about them. It’s been fine. They’ve been safely in Chicago, thousands of miles away.
But now they’re back.
Oh God. And I’m still a bit shaky on Proust. (Proost? Prost?) And I didn’t revise the Latin names for bones. And I’m wearing red woolly reindeer gloves in April. With tassels.
My legs are shaking as I ring the bell. Actually shaking. I feel like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Any minute I’ll collapse on the path and Wanda will torch me for losing the ring.
Stop, Poppy. It’s fine. No one will suspect anything. My story is, I burned my hand. That’s my story.
“Hi, Poppy!”
“Felix! Hi!”
I’m so relieved it’s Felix at the door, my greeting comes out in a shaky gasp.
Felix is the baby of the family—only seventeen and still at school. In fact, Magnus has been living in the house with him while his parents have been away, as a kind of babysitter, and I moved in after we got engaged. Not that Felix needs a babysitter. He’s completely self-contained, reads all the time, and you never even know he’s in the house. I once tried to give him a friendly little “drugs chat.” He politely corrected me on every single fact, then said he’d noticed I drank above the recommended guidelines of Red Bull and did I think I might have an addiction? That was the last time I tried to act the older sister.