My “official” boyfriend

Instead of four heads at the table – my mother, sister, niece and nephew – there were five.

I groaned audibly. Jeffrey.

Maman had clearly decided it was appropriate to invite Jeffrey for brunch. Who is Jeffrey, I hear you ask? Good question. Jeffrey is my “official” boyfriend. Well, at least that’s what he thought he was. And more to the calamitous point, that’s what my mother thought he was.

For me, he was more like, well, a bus stop. Now a bus stop is not actually bad in itself. It could even be argued it’s an eminently useful spot. After all, it constitutes a place to wait for a deluxe, national, air-conditioned bus to come and whisk one off to better things.

Jeffrey, as bus stop, had a couple of attractive features, I have to admit. He’s loaded, for one thing. And he’s almost decent in bed. And then there is the fact that my mother absolutely adores him.

Having Jeffrey there was just about as bad as having to drink the coffee my mother had placed in front of me. I bent over to plant a dutiful kiss on Jeffrey’s cheek, then scowled at my mother who smiled serenely back.

“Darling”, my mother purred. “Must you always be so disagreeable on Sunday mornings?”

“Mother”, I said, “Do you have to start cooking at five am?”

I smiled and felt the pounding in my head begin again.

“I made your eggs just the way you like them, dear,” said my darling mother, putting a plate of eggs, bacon, baked beans and burnt toast down in front of me. Just the way I liked them, I thought, eyeing the half-cooked eggs. I hate slimy eggs – and my mother knows it!

“I am SO hungry,” said Fiona cunningly. I knew it was a ploy on my sister’s part calculated to cut short a disagreeable interchange and get everyone eating. Fiona was my angel, my saviour in moments of every kind of need. Like this one.

”So, Jeffrey, what brings you to our house this morning?” Fiona asked after a short but welcome period of silence.

“Well, Fi,” he began, and I thought, Fi? FI? Who the fuck was Fi?. “I came over because I love visiting you girls – Jay being my favourite of course!” (Did he just wink at my mother? Perhaps, I surmised wildly, he’s in love with her and he’s only using me as camouflage!)

Fiona stared at Jeffrey and tried not to laugh, while Zoe and Jason giggled quietly. Why is it, I thought, that children can identify the truly pathetic so much faster than adults can?

“And...?” my mother said, nudging Jeffrey. “You had have something very particular to say, don’t you? To Jay?”

Wait, was that a conspiratorial smile? They were up to something! They’d cooked up a plan and they were about to announce it. Evasive action was required a.s.a.p. I had to head them off at the pass! But how? When I didn’t know what the conspiracy actually involved!? I looked at Fiona desperately, but Fiona was as unaware as me of the trap our mother and Jeffrey had laid for me.

“And, well...um, I don’t know how to say this, but, you see...” said Jeffrey with the clumsiness that my mother found so charming.

There was an awkward pause as Jeffrey mumbled and visibly started sweating. I found myself staring into the abyss with horrified fascination. I felt paralysed. Perhaps if I feigned an epileptic fit! Or a fast-acting brain tumour! Or a…

But it was too late. Jeffrey continued in his slow and inexorable way.

“Well, I – I wanted to ask Jay, um, here, now, if she would…”

Once more he stumbled to a halt. I couldn’t bear the suspense. “What?” I shouted in exasperation. “What is it you’re asking me?!”

Jeffrey’s face was a picture of sheer panic. “Marry me!” he stammered. “I wanted to know if you’d marry me!”

My mother smiled and patted Jeffrey on the back.

“That wasn’t too difficult, was it, Jeffrey?” And to me, she said: “You see, dear? He just wanted to ask you if you’d marry him. I really do wish you weren’t so disagreeable on Sunday mornings. Otherwise this would’ve been much more pleasant for all of us.”

I turned from Jeffrey to look, astonished, at my mother. Then my gaze swept over Fiona and the two children, who seemed to be holding their collective breaths.

Then suddenly, without warning, the full horror of my hangover returned. I looked down at the slimy eggs and undercooked bacon and cold baked beans on my plate. The whiff of burnt toast caught at the back of my throat.

“Well,” said my mother. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

I opened my mouth to tell them what I truly thought of both of them. I knew for once that I was armed with all the words I needed to put an end to my mother and Jeffrey’s conspiracy.

“Listen,” I said.

“We’re listening, dear,” said my mother sweetly.

But then, before the tirade of abuse that I knew was shaping itself within could articulate itself, I felt an even larger stirring inside – and I knew with that cold certainty that precedes all truly humiliating experiences that the next thing I uttered would not be words at all, but what remained of last night’s injudicious excesses.

Dear reader, permit me to draw the curtain on the scene before I absolutely embarrass myself.

To be continued…