“Okay. Well. I’m not sure what to say to that.”
“ ‘Thank you, Grandma, for all this lovely silver’?” she suggests.
“Thank you, Grandma,” I say, leaving it there.
“Crystal next time!” she calls as I walk down the drive, flapping both hands above her head in farewell.
Clarification
At home, I clean the silver, the first time I have done this since I was small, when my mother lighted upon child labor as a means of keeping me entertained during the school holidays. I loved the ritual of it: laying everything out on a towel, and gently buffing with greasy polish and soft cloths to transform the murky, finger-smudged pieces into gleaming treasure. Mum would let me do her wedding rings too, and back on her hand, they looked foreign and bright, and I’d resolve to monitor their reversion to dullness (a vigil that never lasted beyond that same day).
“How was Grandma’s?” asks Luke when he gets home. “Did you rob her?”
“She’s off-loading my inheritance early,” I say, “starting with the precious metals.”
“And what,” says Luke, picking up a tiny, hollowed-out oblong with clawed feet, “might this fellow be?”
“That item is, quite obviously, a very fine example of the classic…mustard bath? And this is the mustard-bath ladle.” I place a tiny silver spoon on his palm and start to rub a tankard. “It’s technically ‘wedding silver,’ but she’s given up on us ever getting married. She is onto you, my friend.”
Luke laughs. “This should be good.”
“She knows all about your plan to wait till you’re fully qualified, then leave me for a twenty-year-old Polish nurse.”
“Busted,” says Luke. “What did you say to that?”
“What is there to say? We’re happy how things are. We don’t need to get married.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Is that not how it is?”
Luke shrugs. “That’s how you feel, is it?”
“I thought we both did. If it isn’t, we should talk about it.”
“Your plan sounds fine.”
“It’s not my plan. It’s my understanding of our situation. If you think differently—”
“You don’t need to shout.”
“I’m not shouting.” (I’m really not.) “I’m just trying to establish where you stand.” I go hard at a dark spot on the tankard handle that won’t budge.
“Let me put it this way,” he says. “I’m not in any rush, but I wouldn’t rule it out.”
“Neither would I! I don’t think we have.”
“But it sounds like you can take it or leave it?”
“Only because I thought you didn’t care either way,” I say. He moves behind me, but I can still see him: many tiny Lukes reflected in my silver empire. “I’m not sitting around waiting for you to propose, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You could propose too, you know,” he says.
“Hang on, let’s back up a bit: you’re the one who’s always said it’s just a bit of paper, that our commitment to each other is what counts. You already know this is it for me, love-wise. You are, I mean.”
“So you’re saying you wouldn’t ever propose?” he asks.
“Why does one of us have to? We could decide together. Like equals.”
“All right, yeah,” he says. Then quickly adds, “Let’s revisit this at some point in the future. Two years? No — three?”
I clap my hands. “Oh, Luke! We’re engaged to be engaged! Grandma is going to be so thrilled to hear this! Kidding, kidding, kidding,” I say, watching multiples of his shoulders visibly tense, and then relax in miniature.
Skin
“Did you want any help?” asks a white-coated, broad-bosomed lady, topped by a large, flawless bun. Her makeup is dense and meticulous, her scent powerfully sweet. I grimace no, and attend to the glowing bank of products, squinting the way I’ve seen shrewd consumers do. “Maybe there was something in particular you were after?” she wonders aloud.
“I’m fine, really, thank you,” I say, but now it’s as though all that censored helpfulness is bubbling away like toxic waste, and unable to bear it, I cave and confess. “Well, I was thinking about looking at maybe buying some anti-aging cream.”
“Certainly,” she says. “What was it you had in mind?”
“Um. Anti-aging cream? I don’t…know how else to say it.”
With a pleasant sigh, she rattles through the options, batting densely frosted lashes with impressive speed: “Day cream, night cream, serum, double serum, extra-firming, tinted?”
“Right. Oh. I see. Yes. I wanted, well, wondered, really, what would you recommend?” I jut my chin forward and smooth my brow, giving her ample opportunity to praise my skin, its youth and dewy suppleness. Instead, with Mary Poppins-ish efficiency, she marshals a crowd of tubes and pots on the counter.
“Six separate items?” I press the pads of my fingertips underneath my eyes. My mouth hangs open as I consider my complexion in the magnifying mirror: a vast, banal iteration of The Scream. “The eyes are that bad? They need their own special one?”
She beams. “It really is a super gel. It’ll do wonders for the issues you have here”—she waves an illustrative pinkie—“and here”—the other pinkie appears; together they sweep in broad arcs. “I’d recommend you also think very seriously about the daily youth-renewal moisturizer. I guarantee you the years will tumble away.”
Miracles do happen
It worked! I’m fourteen again! The cream has awakened a long-dormant gland, restoring my chin, my forehead, my nose, my cheeks to adolescence in all its greasy, pimpled glory.
Strategy
Geri’s invited me to join today’s breakfast strategy meeting. I wanted to decline, but it seemed a bit rude — plus there’s free fruit and pastries.
Jonathan, sitting at Geri’s right hand, looks triumphantly resentful, as though my presence is the last bit of proof he needed that I’m here to pry my job from his efficient, clammy grasp. But he needn’t worry about me, unless he wants a chocolate croissant: there’s only one left, and I plan to make it mine.
Awkward
Now we’re into the thick of the general meeting, and I’ve fallen into my old waking nightmare: that it will never end and I’ll be stuck in here forever.
Bea keeps making faces at me, and I’m struggling to find an expression that humors her without alienating everyone else. She’s also brought her phone in — which isn’t allowed, but no one says anything — and every so often she takes a break from texting to pipe up with off-topic ideas.
“My mate Angus is an indie coffee supplier: we should use him for the office. That stuff is — no offense — crap,” she says, when someone asks her to pass the French press. “He only does one blend, but it’s perfect. He’s a coffee prodigy.”
“Ooh,” says one of the graduate girls, “I think I read about him in Metro. He’s hot!”
“Give his details to Claire,” says Geri, trying to wrest things back on track. In addition to my freelance duties, I seem to have become the intern’s PA. I write Coffee on my notepad.