Name and Address Withheld. Jane Sigaloff
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Название: Name and Address Withheld
Автор: Jane Sigaloff
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9781472089144
isbn:
‘So, darling…rumour has it you were sent flowers this week.’
Rumour has it? How on earth had her mother found out?
‘Just a bunch.’
‘Really…?’ Annie paused for effect and looked round the table at her captive audience. ‘Clare said they were quite special.’
Clare. Great. It was fantastic that she was always willing to make polite conversation with her mother, but there were unwritten rules about divulging actual news.
‘He’s just a friend.’ Despite Lizzie’s attempt to keep her focus on her roast potatoes, she could feel her brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew staring.
‘Gran…?’
Lizzie still found it very weird when Jess and Josh called her mum ‘Gran’…it sounded so…so…set and blow-dry.
‘Yes, poppet?’
Poppet? For goodness’ sake. Jess had had the same name for all nine years of her life. Next her mother would be stashing crumpled Kleenex up her sleeve and wearing mauve.
‘You don’t usually send flowers to just friends, do you?’ Jessica shot Lizzie a look to indicate that she knew exactly what she was doing. Jonathan silently cast a sympathetic glance at his sister. Ford grillings were legendary, and it seemed that Jessica had honed the craft at a ridiculously early age.
‘Flowers, flowers…’ Josh had become a four-year-old parrot.
Lizzie gulped down her wine and wished she could be invisible. Just for an hour or two.
‘No, you don’t, darling…’
Annie might have been talking to Jessica but she was staring at Lizzie, and a smile slowly spread across her face as she sensed the discomfort of her second-born child. Lizzie decided to bombard them with information in the hope that they would retreat for analysis.
‘I met him at the City FM Christmas shindig and we’ve been on one proper date. He’s gone skiing for two weeks, during which time I hope he won’t go off me. He works in advertising. He’s a copywriter, which basically means that he comes up with slogans. I forgot to ask him what his parents do, where he was at school, his inside leg measurement or his net annual income.’
Lizzie beamed at her mother, who usually wanted far more detail than she could offer. Annie would have been happiest if any prospective sons-in-law filled out a five-page questionnaire…not that Matt was a prospective son-in-law yet in Lizzie’s eyes. In her mother’s eyes, when your daughter was thirty-two every male was a prospective son-in-law.
‘There’s no need to be so defensive, darling….’ Her sister-in-law and her mother exchanged knowing glances.
Who was being defensive? Lizzie had thought she was being funny. Clearly not.
‘What’s his name?’
Trust Alex to pick up on the crucial information she’d omitted. A natural at everything, and one of those mothers who could flit effortlessly between Play-Doh and Prada and still manage to fit in trips to the gym, Alex had a flat stomach which suggested that Jess and Josh had gestated in her handbag rather than her womb. Lizzie added interrogation to her mental checklist of Alex’s talents and filed it in her insecurity folder.
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