Even though we both knew that wasn’t entirely true, he went anyway, tapping away at his phone on what wasdefinitelythe Dominos app. I surveyed the disaster area that used to be the kitchen and grimaced.
Bugger.
This was not going to be as easy as I thought.
It took Mrs Jones a surprisingly long time to come to the door, considering I was knocking so hard I worried my knuckles might shatter the solid wood into splinters.
‘Hello?’ she said as she opened the door by a fraction, leaving it secured by the chain. ‘Gwen, is that you?’
‘It is, hello, Mrs. Jones. Merry Christmas,’ I smiled my most dazzling smile as I rubbed the feeling back into my fingers.
She did not smile back.
‘So sorry to both you but I was wondering, would you happen to have any spare bacon?’
I was doing my level best to look calm when in reality I felt like the Energizer bunny after three cans of Red Bull and a trip to the toilets with Donald Trump Jr. After our breakfast butties and my failed attempt at pigs in blankets,there wasn’t so much as a bacon-flavoured Frazzle left in my mother’s house. I considered wrapping the rest of the sausages in wafer-thin ham but even I had thought better of that one. Plus, I’d eaten most of the ham during a panic over the state of my Yorkshires.
The Joneses were my only hope.
‘Bacon, you say?’ Sunita replied, eyeing my Chippendale apron with reasonable alarm. ‘We should have some, let me look.’
And then she closed the door.
I jogged up and down on the doorstep, my breath misting up the air in front of me. My mum and Dev’s mum had never really got on. Our dads were fine with each other in the way that dads usually are, a shared celebration over a sporting event, mutual admiration of each other’s cars and zero emotional connection, but our mothers had rubbed each other the wrong way from the off. Dev’s mum was gorgeous, always elegant and put together, very much a walking advert for The White Company, and full price White Company at that, no sale rail for Sunita Jones. I remembered watching Sunita come home from her office job from the safety of my bedroom window and fantasising about owning a beautiful camel trench coat, just like hers. When I got my first promotion at Hampton’s, I spend almost an entire month’s rent on a Burberry trench coat and promptly left it in the cloakroom of a dingy Camden club a week later, never to be seen again, a painful and valuable lesson about the maximum amount I should ever spend on anything for myself. Bronwyn Baker always told us how she gave up trying to wear white clothing of any kind the moment she got her teaching degree. As she liked to say, busyprints hid the evidence better, a fact my friends in criminal law confirmed was true. Peeking through the window, I saw the inside of Sunita’s house was still as impeccable as its owner. Dev and his dad wouldn’t dare breathe too heavily for fear of leaving some sort of carbon dioxide stain on the Farrow & Ball paintwork. Not that there was anything wrong with wanting a smart, clean, minimalist home, it was just very far removed from the cosy, comfortable chaos in which I’d been raised. There were still days when I dreamed of being the kind of person who had a white cashmere throw tossed over the end of my mid-century-modern sofa, but I knew in my heart I would be a tea-stained hoodie on the back of the settee girl for life.
When the door reopened, I expected to see Sunita’s standard look of disapproval but instead, someone else was smiling down at me.
‘Hello, stranger,’ Dev said, taking the door off the chain and opening it wide. A waft of warm air brushed over my cold skin. ‘Long time no see. What are you doing outside?’
It was so nice to see him smiling again and without any pudding-related injuries.
‘She came to borrow bacon,’ Sunita replied as she pushed past her son to hand me a brown paper package, tied up with string. Bacon was one of my favourite things.
‘My pigs need blankets,’ I explained, clutching the packet to my chest. ‘Had a bit of an accident with the first batch.’
‘You burned them?’
‘I incinerated them.’
‘Devendra, you’re letting all the heat out,’ Sunita said, sliding herself between Dev and the door. ‘We should letGwen get back to her cooking, it sounds as though she has a lot to do.’
‘Yes, I should get back to it,’ I confirmed, shuddering at the thought of returning to the scene of my many crimes. ‘Thank you so much for this, you’ve really saved my bacon.’
Sunita stared me down and if I could have made myself evaporate on the spot, I would have.
‘Quite,’ she said, Dev beside her trying not to laugh. ‘Merry Christmas, Gwen.’
‘Merry Christmas, Mrs Jo—’
The words were only half out my mouth when she closed the door with slightly more force than was necessary and rattled the chain back into place.
‘Bah, humbug,’ I muttered, turning on the heel of my slippers and marching victoriously back to my kitchen.
CHAPTER NINE
My victory was short-lived.
‘How am I supposed to do the roast potatoes, the roast parsnipsandthe pigs in blankets all at the same time as the turkey when they all need to be at different temperatures?’ I wailed with despair, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes until everything went dark. ‘It doesn’t make any sense,Nigella.’