When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

I hear the plastic crinkle underneath me. Rebecca covered Johnny’s seat in a clear plastic tarp. Fair enough, it’s an antique chair and he’s six and I get it. She also covered the floor under his chair with a piece of plastic, because OK, it’s light carpeting, overkill maybe, but I understand. Interesting, though, that the plastic under his seat was extended to include the carpeting under my chair as well.

“Jeej, Jeej—what is that?”

Johnny’s whisper is as subtle as a bulldozer, but I just say quietly, “It’s a terrine, buddy. It’s a…French. Keep coloring, that’s a great picture.” Johnny had already eaten his ham sandwich and was coloring at the table. At least Rebecca understood what children ate, and the coloring was a small concession that I appreciated.

Johnny whispered whenever he was here. The house, with its high ceilings and antiques, signaled to him that it was like a library or a church. But it was also Damon. Johnny stayed close and very quiet whenever he was around.

Damon is Rebecca’s third husband. He’s 6'5", as big as a moving van, and wears an eye patch which no one has explained and which we’re not allowed to ask about. He played rugby for Gloucester in his youth, which is impressive for some reason, but I don’t understand enough about it to know why and when I asked he didn’t answer. He’s semi-retired, in his seventies, and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of racehorses. He watches rugby. He drinks whiskey. This is all I know about him. He’s said about eleven words to me since we met because a) I’m a woman and b) I’m not a horse.

Despite his surliness he’s sweet with Rebecca. She has rules about where people sit for meals but he never observes them. Rebecca sits at the head and he always sits next to her instead of at the other end of the table. She loves this because when we come over Harry sits on her other side and then she’s flanked by her two faithful men. This leaves me and Johnny on the periphery on Damon’s other side and he always sits at an angle with his back to me to give more of himself to her. I can’t see past him to Rebecca’s end so I don’t participate in the conversation directly. But maybe that’s best for everyone.

Rebecca gets up to put a water jug on the table. She’s slender and taut. Her hair is chic and short, a honey-blond meticulous bob. She’s dressed in a tight ivory cashmere sweater set with a tailored gray wool pencil skirt and a string of real pearls, black stilettos, and nude fishnet stockings. Like what a seventy-year-old Claire Underwood might wear to a casual family lunch before she murders someone.

“How was the traffic? Was it awful?” Rebecca begins as I choke down the terrine. From the awful traffic, she moves on to the ghastly British weather and then the dreadful people in the papers.

Then Harry says, “The house looks marvellous, Mummy, really, and this terrine is lovely, really lovely,” trying to get her on to another topic, while I gulp wine and look away to stop the involuntary rolling of my eyes.

“Well, thank goodness for that. It was all very stressful, because I planned an entirely different menu that I had found in the Sunday Telegraph but when I went to Waitrose for the ingredients they had almost none in stock. Can you imagine? I had a word with the store manager. Surely Waitrose know that most of their customers are Telegraph readers? Shocking.”

I think about how “I planned an entirely different menu” is a sentence I have never said. I check out for a while, try not to taste anything and pretend to be occupied with Johnny. I run my fingers through his hair, pretty sure that I can see lice. Rebecca might have to be hospitalized if she finds out so I’ll just keep that to myself.

“…now, Eugenia, you must do something about your phone line. I called and it rang and rang the other day with no answer,” Rebecca huffs at me and so I snap back to attention.

I consider what she’s just said. You’re the only one who calls that number so I didn’t pick it up because I knew that in thirty seconds you would call my cell phone from your cell phone while calling my landline from your landline at the same time, which is exactly what you did. And it was ten o’clock at night. And why are you saying this to me when we both know it’s only Harry that you want to talk to. And stop calling me Eugenia is not the right answer, so I just say, “OK, I’ll look into it,” from behind the mass of Damon’s giant shoulder.

“You do look awfully thin and pale, Harry, darling, really you do. And Johnny has dark circles under his eyes. Is no one looking after you?” Rebecca asks Harry, the no one, obviously being me.

“I don’t need to be looked after, Mummy, I’m a grown man,” Harry says, sighing, looking at me for approval. But I wonder if there are many grown men who call their mothers “Mummy.” He adds, “And Johnny has no such thing, he’s perfectly fine.”

“Well, this is the curse of modern life, isn’t it, the family falls to pieces with no one there to look after it properly,” Rebecca says, very pointedly not looking at me.

“We look after each other, Mum, and we’re doing just fine. And Gigi is doing very well at work, aren’t you, darling?” He smiles at me, but he should know that this nod to gender equality will be too much for his mother.

Desperate to change the subject, I start to say, “So when’s the big horse race? It’s here in Ascot, right…” But it’s too late. It’s Rebecca’s Correct Opinion Time:

“Surely it must be better for Johnny to have his mother at home, given his…history. It’s very nice for Eugenia