Page 81 of Boyfriend Material
“Judy”—that was Mum, coming to my rescue, just like always…okay, like about 90 percent of the time, when she wasn’t the problem—“we are here to eat my special curry and watch the drag race. We are not here to talk about that man.”
“Then dish up, old girl. It must be ready by now.”
“My special curry, she cannot be rushed.”
“It’s been in the slow cooker since you got up this morning. If it was any less rushed, it’d be catatonic.”
My mum threw up her hands. “It is called a slow cooker. It is slow. If it was not slow, it would be called a fast cooker. Or maybe just a cooker.”
Oliver dislodged Eugenie and climbed to his feet. “Can I help at all?”
Mum and Judy gazed at him adoringly. God, he gave good parent. Worse, I was pretty sure he meant it.
“By the way,” I said. “I should have mentioned this earlier, but Oliver’s vegetarian.”
He gave me a genuinely betrayed look, as if I’d respected his ethical choices just to make him look bad in front of my mother. “Please don’t worry. It’s not a problem.”
“Of course it’s not a problem.” Mum somehow managed to turnbofinto a gesture. “I’ll pick the meat out in the kitchen.”
Judy shook her head. “Don’t be a ninny, Odile. That’s very disrespectful. What you should do is fish the vegetables out and serve them separately.”
“I assure you,” Oliver protested, “neither is necessary.”
Mum turned to me. “You see? Why are you making such a big fuss over nothing, Luc? You are embarrassing yourself.”
She barrelled off again. And Oliver, mouthing a “sorry” in my direction, trotted after her. I held out a tempting pay-attention-to-me hand to Eugenie, but all I got for my trouble was a disdainful glance before she scampered out in pursuit of Oliver.
Well, fine. My perfect fake boyfriend and the cute dog could go and play with my mother in the kitchen while I was stuck in the front room with a serial divorcee in her mideighties.
“Just us, eh?” Judy had that “I’m about to start a long anecdote, and there’s nothing you can do about it” look in her eye. “I never did tell you what happened with those bullocks, did I?”
I surrendered with as much grace as I could muster. Which, admittedly, wasn’t very much. “You didn’t. How were they?”
“Terrible disappointment. I went to see the chap, expecting him to have a nice, big healthy pair of bullocks for me to get my hands on. But when I got there, I found I’d been quite misled.”
“Yeah. It happens.”
“I know. We went all the way down to his paddock and he got them out for me, and frankly they were substandard. About half the size I’d expected. I mean, I think there was something wrong with them, to tell you the truth. The one on the left had this strange swelling, and the one on the right was listing most unfortunately.”
“It sounds,” I offered tentatively, “like you were better off leaving them alone.”
“That’s what I thought. Obviously I gave them a good once-over anyway just in case. Nice firm pat-down and all that. But in the end I had to tell the fellow ‘No, I’m sorry, but I will not be handling your oddly shaped bullocks.’”
To my tremendous relief, Mum, Oliver, and Eugenie came back in with the curry before Judy could explain how he’d gone on to try to interest her in his prize rooster. Oliver handed a bowl of curry to Judy, and then he, Mum, and I squidged onto the sofa like three not especially wise monkeys.
“Has this got banana in it?” I asked, prodding nervously at what I hesitated to call my dinner.
Mum shrugged. “They put bananas in curries all the time.”
“In specific curries. Curries where the rest of the ingredients are chosen to complement banana.”
“It’s like tofu or beef. It absorbs the flavour.”
“It’s delicious, Odile,” declared Judy, loyally. “Best one you’ve ever made.”
We fell silent as we grappled with Mum’s cooking. I wasn’t exactly a wizard in the kitchen myself, but I think Mum was anevilwizard in the kitchen. It took skill, and years of practice, to be as consistently and specifically terrible at food as she was.
“So.” Oliver could have been doing his social lube thing as usual or, maybe, he’d just realised that if he was talking, he didn’t have to be eating. His eyes were definitely watering. “Um. Is that your guitar?”
