Page 4 of Mad About You

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They pulled through gateposts that owls perched upon and followed a gently twisting drive to park up in front of a sprawling stone country house hotel. Warm yellow light flowed from leaded pane windows onto an immaculate lawn dotted with white canopied picnic tables, in the crisp early dusk.

Jon’s mother emerged from the main door and walked out to meet them, Harriet’s heart sinking at the inevitability of their having arrived first. Jon’s dad was someone who would leave at dawn for any journey.

Jacqueline was in a candy-pink striped shirt with upturned collar, pearls and white jeans, pushing her bouncy salon blow-dry out of her face with her fresh manicure, fingertips like shiny coral beetles. She was always groomed to within an inch of her life, the snowy Mallen streak in her blonded silver hair giving her a pleasingly appropriate look of Disney villainess, to Harriet’s eyes. In turn, her dismay at Harriet’s ‘curiously tomboy style’ (© Jacqueline) was barely concealed.

After Harriet had met them for the first time, she wassitting next to Jonathan when he got a text from his mum. It was very Jon to have neither the deviousness nor the common sense to not open it in Harriet’s eyeline.

We thought Harriet was a lovely girl, JJ. Terribly pretty face, like the sidekick girl from the detective show where he’s lame with a cleft palate. But why on earth does she wear those awful glasses?! Last seen on Eric Morecambe! Such a shame. Given contact lenses are widely available, you presume she’s making some sort of cross feminist statement.

‘What the …!’ Harriet had exclaimed, cupping her hand to stop herself spitting BBQ flavour Walkers Bugles. ‘What’s wrong with my glasses, and why say something like that?’

‘She thinks you’re beautiful!’ Jon said, blushing, with what Harriet at first took as embarrassment and later realised was in fact a swoon at what he’d taken as straight praise from his mother.

‘She’s only saying that so she can go in hard on the “four-eyed feminazi frump” angle, Jon. That’s a “paying twenty pence so you can use the toilet” move.’

‘You really can’t cope with compliments, can you?’ Jon had said, absurdly fondly. Harriet gave up trying to translate it for him. Like trying to wake a sleepwalker.

‘At last!’ Jacqueline said, as they climbed out of the seats, straightening stiffened limbs and grinning awkwardly. ‘We were about to send out the search parties!’

Jon and Harriet weren’t late.

‘Hit a sticky bit of traffic on the B6160,’ Jon said, ‘Hi Mum, how are the digs? Acceptable?’

‘Fine, though your brother asked them to change the pillows on his bed, they’re like rocks.’

Of course he did.Martin Junior, a chest-puffed humourless little pigeon of a man, always led with a complaint, to make it clear he was superior to his surroundings. Harriet suspected he liked Jon picking up the bill but was also hugely insecure about it.

‘Harriet, how ARE you?’ Jackie cooed, with that oddly sarcastic intonation that passed for good manners among affected people.

‘Very well, thanks. And you?’

‘Oh, you know. Can’t complain.’

Bet you do though.

Harriet had really tried to bond with Jackie, at the start. She once told her over too much wine in girl talk that she had irregular periods. The following week, Jackie rang Jon and told him that he should send Harriet for a fertility test.

‘We’re going to check in, head up to change and meet you in the bar at six?’ Jon said.

‘I should hope youaregoing to change!’ Jacqueline said, in fake-merriment, giving Harriet’s standard t-shirt and jeans and Doc Martens an up-and-down pained look. ‘Tell me you’ve packed something smart!’

‘I’m always smart-casual, mum!’ Jon said, imagining this was maternal fussing, rather than a blatant jibe at Harriet that Jacqueline was very thinly disguising by pretending she was referring to the pair of them.

Somehow, no matter how much she remembered that Jon’s family were a trial, their manifold horrors always dazzled her afresh in person. A thunderous measure of Bombay Sapphire could not come fast enough.

Their ‘Estate Room’ was more Dalston than Harriet had anticipated for the Dales, a collision of countryside and town – William Morris Strawberry Thief print quilt on the bed, Edison bulbs hanging on a cluster of cables as a modern chandelier. There was a vast copper freestanding tub with matching jug near a marble fireplace, as a whimsical cosplay of the privations of a previous century. The walls were a dramatic shade of Farrow & Ball smoky grey against toothpaste-white cornicing.

Harriet was a veteran of fancy hotels thanks to her job, and this one still stood out as exceptionally luxe. The kind of scene you were near obliged to put on Instagram with a moody filter, captioned #dontmindifIdo or #todaysoffice. (Harriet was an Instagram refusenik. ‘Busman’s holiday!’ she told her best friends Lorna and Roxy, when they exhorted her to join in.)

‘Bloody hell, Jon, this must have cost a fortune,’ Harriet blurted as she twirled her trolley case to a halt, then regretted her words as a bit crass and grasping, rather than grateful. It must have, though.

‘It’s not Travelodge prices, but, then again, it’s not every day you’re forty years married!’

Harriet tensed as she watched him do that thing – where he saw tissues on the bedside table and immediately had toseize one, and start blowing his nose astonishingly loudly, like he was trying to bring brain matter out through his nostrils. Her stomach churned, like it was mixing a Slush Puppy of freezing cement.

‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Jon said, folding Harriet into a hug, and she squeezed back, mumbling, ‘Thank you for inviting me.’

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