Page 5 of Mad About You

‘Dur, of course I invited you! You make it sound like you’re an optional extra. You’re one of the family. You’re more my family than they are.’

‘Hah, I hope not,’ Harriet said, disentangling from an octopus grasp. ‘That would make this incest. I’m going to have a shower, if that’s alright?’

‘Have at it!’ Jon said, accepting her subtle non-compliance with the moment he wanted.

He began prodding at the remote control for the television. What was the unspoken rule that all men in hotel rooms had to immediately put CNN on at a slightly-too-loud volume and lie on their bed watching it, in their socks? Harriet had so often found herself brushing her teeth in a gorgeous suite, listening to a newsreader boomingthe violence and looting continued through the night as community leaders appealed for calmthrough the door.

She unzipped her case and rifled through it for her eveningwear and her clean bra and knickers, silently cursing the way Jackie made her want to mulishly reappear in the same t-shirt. Actually no, reappear in a t-shirt with the slogan BEAST MODE: ACTIVATED and a pair of Union Jack Crocs.

In the floor-to-ceiling white metro-tiled bathroom, like a sexy sanatorium, Harriet stood under a showerhead the size ofa dinner plate, in a pleasingly scalding gush of water. Her hair was gathered off her face into a drooping bun. Harriet had an incredibly thick, strawberry-blonde mane which some might think a blessing, but it meant it was unmanageable worn any other way than up in her trademark long, high, bell pull of a plait. She’d tried cutting it short in her teens, but it stuck out from her head like a box hedge. In a science class at school, they’d examined strands plucked from their own scalps under the microscope, and hers looked like an ear of wheat.

Once dry and in her underwear, she picked up her dress from the armchair upholstered in chinoiserie fabric in the corner. Bathrooms with armchairs: mad fancy.

Harriet didn’t buy many dresses, but this one had called to her from the window of a boutique in a picturesque village, a few months back. She’d had an hour and a half to kill before Andy and Annette said, ‘I do,’ and had gone in to touch the fabric. Naturally, she was swooped upon by a bored assistant who was adamant Harriet would lookabsolutely stunning in it, and that was that.

It was a deep emerald-green cheongsam that buttoned high at the neck and clung so tightly to her calves it meant she had to take baby steps. She’d not necessarily wanted to wear something so showy to tonight’s dinner, but she also had few options in her wardrobe, and it had cost her almost £200.

She also had to concede her beloved black-rimmed spectacles didn’t really go with it. Harriet would have to infuriatingly oblige Jacqueline, and wear contacts. She gingerly applied mascara to her exposed eyes and wound colossal handfuls of hair into a bun, securing it with Kirby grips. Sheturned her head from side to side to check her handiwork. It looked like she had a huge cinnamon pastry on her head, but it would have to do. She dropped the necklace she always wore, with the small key, down her neckline.

As she exited the bathroom, she saw Jon standing naked in the tub, dousing his head with the jug, spluttering as he swallowed water. She hadn’t expected to come face to face with a penis this early in the evening and let out a small yelp, covering her eyes.

‘And good evening to you too!’ she said.

‘You have seen it before!’ Jon said, in jolly fashion, and set about aggressively towel-drying his hair, so his face was obscured while his member flapped gently at her, like a windsock in a weak breeze.

Jon was the image of a solid catch – solvent, dependable. He had a catalogue-model handsomeness, tall, with neatly clippered dark brown hair, unthreatening and well-ironed, and a slim build softening around the edges. And that was a perfectly adequate size of penis. As Lorna always said, the extra-large ones were only a recipe for constant cystitis.

What kind of monster wouldn’t be satisfied with a man like Jonathan Barraclough?

‘Wow!’ Jonathan cried, mercifully having wrapped the towel round his waist by the time he’d blinked away sufficient water that Harriet swam into view. ‘My girlfriend, the supermodel!’

‘Hah. Thanks,’ Harriet said, tugging black velvet heels on, which were otherwise only used for funerals. She’d never worked out why comfy flats were disrespectful to the departed. ‘Not too much?’

‘Not at all, seriously, you look stunning,’ Jon said, staring as he stepped out of the tub, with some effort given it was the size of Gibraltar. ‘Really.Wow.I don’t know why you don’t dress up more often, given you’re such a knockout.’

‘It’s not really me.’

‘It is you; you just can’t see yourself the way others do. Stand up, I want a proper look at you.’

Harriet embarrassedly got to her feet, while Jon whistled and waggled an imaginary Groucho Marx cigar.

‘I’m the luckiest guy in the world!’

3

‘… And I tell you this, I wouldn’t live in Bristol if you paid me to. A hotbed of troublemakers and scruffy malcontents.’ Jonathan’s father Martin Senior was holding forth with characteristic vim as Jon and Harriet found them in the private dining room, which had tartan shot-silk curtains and a mounted stag’s head.

‘Evening all!’ Jon said. ‘Is Dad off on one already?’

‘Your cousin’s moving to Temple Mea— Oh my God! Harriet, can that be you?’ said Jacqueline, clutching her chest and reeling back in simulation of heart attack, while Jon’s dad, Martin, said: ‘Well! Wonders will never cease!’

Jacqueline leapt up from her seat to come and tug at the fabric on Harriet’s hips, twitching it into place. Harriet went stiff at the uninvited physical interference.

‘There! Perfect.’ She added, ‘Sonice to see you in a frock for once.’

The ‘see the praise you get when you actually make the effort’ triumphalism in his mother’s tone made Harriet wish she’d made a cross feminist statement in stout trousers after all. You don’t negotiate with terrorists.

‘Thank you. Happy anniversary,’ Harriet smiled at Jacqueline, and then Martin Senior, who looked right through her. He was a husband and a consigliere, with the flushed House of Lords look of someone who had dined and drunk well for many decades. His main role in matrimony seemed to be sinking expensive booze and mutteringquite right Jackie, absolutely abysmalbehaviourto punctuate any of Jacqueline’s stories about the many wrongs they had been done.

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