Page 22 of Alice Carver Manifests Her Perfect Life
Hmm. Maybe I spoke before I thought there. On a couple of counts. ‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘You have a point. But I thought you said yesterday that you took this week off? Why would you head back to London already? Won’t Astrid be pissed off?’
Aziz took a sip of his coffee, making his glasses steam up. ‘I need some decent coffee.’
‘You’ve never left on Boxing Day before!’ I didn’t want Aziz to go. Christmases have been better since he’s been in the family.
‘Yeah, maybe you’re right. It was just a thought.’
‘A terrible thought! What would we even do without you?’
We’d have a disgusting supper, that’s what. Mum and Dad used to always give us ‘cold cuts’ but now, Aziz makes us a Boxing Day pie every year, which is pretty close to perfection.
‘You’re thinking about pie, aren’t you?’ said Aziz.
‘A bit,’ I admitted. ‘But I’d miss you as well as the pie.’
Aziz smiled properly this time, and I clinked coffee mugs with him.
‘So you’ll stay?’
‘Sure,’ he said, settling back into the devouring sofa.
‘Good. Make yourself comfortable.’ I caught sight of the clock, and paused on my way to the sink. On second thought… ‘Maybe not too comfortable, though… ’
‘Why?’ said Aziz suspiciously.
‘Nothing really. Just seeing as you and I are on our own and there’s no Matthew Lloyd or Astrid or Arrie to be judge-y and you need a distraction from work, I thought we could hang out together… ?’
Aziz pushed the bridge of his glasses back up and sighed before speaking. ‘You’ve used half a roll of paper opening and re-wrapping that journal and I’ve taken numerous videos of you pretending to be surprised by it. You don’t like any ofthem. There’s nothing I can do differently with you or this room. I’m done, Alice.’
I looked around the sitting room and felt a sense of panic. The reason I didn’t like any of the videos was because of the state of the sitting room. The lighting was awful, as was that ridiculous tree. Plus, whilst I loved our ancient shabby furniture, on camera it looked more junk store than cosy chic; in the sitting room at the old house it had worked but here it looked cramped and haphazard. I was never going to get the kind of luxe vibe I needed in here. I needed somewhere like the library in the Lamb. Bloody Matthew Lloyd. How had he ended up with his own hotel? A video shot there would be perfect—
‘Oh my goodness, Aziz, you’re right!’ I said, mentally thankingThe Guidefor that advice last night:Every obstacle is a potential opportunity. ‘We need to go to the Lamb and film it there!’
‘We do?’ said Aziz. ‘Are they going to let you in there wearing pyjamas?’
‘I’ll wear a long coat and no one will notice the pyjamas. But we need to go right now.’ I reckoned I had less than an hour before they’d get back from that walk. There was no way I wanted to come across Matthew Lloyd whilst I was borrowing his hotel.
‘Alice, I think I’m going to say no to this. I’ve had enough “hanging out”.’
‘Come on,’ I cajoled. ‘Look, I’ll buy you a coffee there. A proper one.’
‘I could really use an espresso,’ deliberated Aziz. ‘But not enough to do videos again.’
‘Please. Just one… ?’
Aziz sighed. ‘One video. No re-shoots. No re-wrapping. And a double espresso.’
‘Done.’
We walked briskly along the street towards the Lamb, passing the huddle of honeyed stone houses that run up the rise of the hill, each one individual yet leaning comfortably together as if they had secrets to impart to one another. Leaded glass panes within the stone framed the twinkling lights of Christmas trees, decorated much more tastefully than Mum’s, holly wreaths adorned doors painted in varying shades of Farrow & Ball muted neutrals, and, every now and again, a chimney ghosted up wisps of smoke into the grey skies to vanish there.
And I realised that however dead and dull Little Minchcombe may have seemed when I was growing up here, desperate for the excitement of city life, in terms of Instagrammable residential fantasy, it was pretty peerless.
Just before the Lamb, we passed our old house and I couldn’t help but pause there for a moment. The recently departed previous owners had painted the door navy blue, which is just wrong for the stone, but they were philistines and they also put those white sheer blinds in all the windows, and there are a lot of those, so you can’t look in now, plus they let the hedges at the front get really high, which means you can’t see the whole of the house or the apple trees down the east side that were planted when Mum was a child. But it still mademy heart beat faster. It was still my house. Our house. I used to have a swing in the middle apple tree.
‘Alice?’ interrupted Aziz. ‘I could really use that coffee… ’
‘Sorry, Aziz. It just seems so sad that after all that time, our house is no longer in the family. What do you think?’
