And then Claudette laughs.
Everyone looks at her.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry, Weela, to interrupt your story. I have a little something in my throat.” She taps her chest, just below her clavicle. She makes a short coughing sound—not coughing, in fact, but an imitation of coughing—hec hec—to illustrate her point. She looks at me, straight in the eyes. Is she smiling? “I apologize.”
“What about you, Claudette?” Liv says.
“Me?” she says. “I remember breaking my arm. Oh, and also eating a cake.” She’s still holding my gaze. Cake?
“Cake?” Jamie asks, smiling broadly. “Was it a special cake?”
“Yes, very special, a beautiful big cake covered in tiny sugar flowers. It was on a marble shelf. And I was hiding under the shelf, eating the sugar flowers.” She raises her eyebrows at me, and something like little birds flitter around the inside of my chest.
My heart thuds. It’s her. It’s Laika. “Was it your own birthday?”
“Non,” says Claudette, “not mine. I was born in March.”
March? She can’t mean March. It has to be November, November the third, Laika’s birthday. Because Laika’s earliest memory could very probably be about cake, and not any old cake either but rather the exquisite showpiece of my mother’s thirtieth on a hot day in July. A cake she’d found in the pantry and smashed.
“And about how old would you say you were?” Liv asks.
“I was six.”
And I was nine. And I should never, ever have let that happen.
Liv tells Claudette that she is almost certainly remembering something almost exactly as it occurred. Then she tells Jamie that the memory he recalled is invented and, hammered as he now is, he scoffs, instantly arguing back.
“It’s just a load of bollocks,” he says, swigging back the last of the red. To my surprise, Liv says the memory I recalled was fabricated too.
“No,” I say. I look around the table. “That really happened.” There’s no way I would have made up a memory of wetting myself. Why would I do that? Claudette holds my eyes for a moment and I think an understanding passes between us that is so unmistakable that I very nearly say Laika—but then, flat-eyed and without the smallest hint of recognition, she looks away and starts talking to Jamie. It’s not her. What was I thinking? Of course it’s not. Sometimes it feels as if my whole adult life has been spent like this: lighting little fires of hope that are just as quickly put out.
“So, Jamie,” Claudette says, turning her gaze toward him and resting her chin on her hand, “I’m trying, but I can’t quite place your accent.”
I see Jamie attempt to sit up a little in his chair. He chuckles, apparently liking her attention, and the warmth returns to his voice. “Well,” he says, his voice slightly slurred, “I’m English through and through but I lived in South Africa for a while—ten years, actually, so you might be hearing a hint of that. Have you ever been?” He’s in his element now, clearly enjoying himself. “It’s a truly magnificent country.”
“Non.”
“You should try Cape Town. Fantastic city. One of our favorite places.” I look at him sharply, but he doesn’t seem to realize what he’s just said. I’ve never even been to South Africa and I’ve certainly never been to Cape Town. Whoever “our” refers to, it’s definitely not him and me. Which leaves who? Melissa, I think. Great. The tricky ex-wife.
“But you and Weela live in London now?”
“We have a flat in Brook Green,” Jamie says. “Very, very nice.”
Now everyone is listening to Jamie: to that slow, languid drawl of the pissed. I try to keep my face impassive, but it’s an effort. The heat of shame starts rising up my neck.
“Yah, doer-upper. Total wreck when we got it, ’s taken like, fucking, months. Cost an arm and a leg.”
I shoot Jamie a look, feeling myself coloring. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this drunk. Since our little squabble earlier, he’s been throwing back the wine. Hacked off and bladdered: God, I think, that’s a pretty toxic combination. Dangerous too. And he’s still going strong. I can’t keep still. My hands move to my lips, my throat, my chain, and my fingers find the little silver dolphin, tugging it out from underneath my dress, holding it like a talisman.
“Meantime we’ve had to bunk up with the paterfamilias: Lord and Lady Bryce.” His face makes an odd twitch. “Yah. In their massive pile,” he says. He links his hands behind his head, tipping his chair so far back that it leans against the wall. “Down on the coast. Fuck, what a place. You should see the security. S’like fucking Fort Knox.”
“Wow,” Liv says, “what level are we talking, bodyguards and dogs?”
“Not quite”—Jamie makes a lopsided attempt at a grin—“but electric gates and a bloody great wall.”
“A wall,” Claudette says. Her voice is cool. “Is it to stop Weela escaping?” Her eyes flash over to mine.
Jamie seems to find this immensely funny. “Ha, ha,” he says, “very good. But no. ’Cos of scumbag intruders.”
“You have a problem with invaders?”
“Yeah, all that lot you Frenchies should be keeping. Immigrant types.”
Dear God, I think, no. I can feel my cheeks glowing with embarrassment, no, not just embarrassment, more, a growing sense of horror. I don’t think even he believes what he’s saying. I notice Robyn steeple her fingers, tucking down her chin to form a barrier over her face. In fact, the entire gathering has fallen into an awkward silence, every last one of them. I can almost feel them squirming in their seats.
But Claudette leans in now, her expression bemused. “You don’t think refugees need our help?”
Jamie’s eyes make a slow, uncoordinated blink. “Look,” he says, “what you’ve got to do, right, is go to the crux of the problem. You’ve just got to tackle the problems back where they came from. I mean, it’s bleeding obvious, right? Letting them all in here doesn’t help a thing.”
“Don’t you think, Jamie,” Claudette asks, her voice low, clear, and with a new level of intensity, “that the reason refugees choose to undertake terrible, dangerous journeys, often alone, often at great expense, is because they don’t have any other choice? You understand, yes, that they’re leaving cities thick with poisonous dust, homes reduced to piles of rubble, places where there’s no education, no sanitation, no fresh water, no medicine, nothing at all.” She leans across the table, holding Jamie’s gaze. “You’ve seen the news footage, right? All those kids riddled with diseases; babies so malnourished they can’t even lift up their heads. We’re talking about the completely dispossessed.”
“Genuine refugees need help, no one’s denying that, and there are clear rules to be followed in those cases. But only a fraction of this lot fall into that category, insignificant numbers. You don’t see women and children coming across the Channel, do you? No, they’re all young men, the very ones who should be staying at home, building their countries back up, working. But instead they trek over here as economic migrants, looking for an easy life in a country with a generous benefits system.”
Claudette’s voice rises. “Yes, there are women. Yes, there are children. And you,” she says, her voice angry now, “you’re going to sit here, or down there, in your tiny village, behind your big wall, and tell me you don’t think these people are genuine refugees? That you don’t think they have the right to try to make a better life? You should be ashamed.” Claudette’s head snaps toward mine, her face a picture of disgust. “And Willa,” she says, “this is what you think?”
No, I think, horrified. Christ, no. I open my mouth to tell her but she has already switched her attention back to Jamie, this drunk and belligerent man she knows is directly connected to me. I’ve got to apologize. I leap to my feet.
I watch a boozy smile spreading across Jamie’s face. “You’re a funny girl, Claudette.” He waggles a finger at her, smiling. “All poise and grace and whatnot, then bam. You’re kinda like that thing in Alien when it rips through the chest of Officer Kane.” He laughs, then adds, “Yeah, and has anyone ever told you just how English you sound when you get worked up? It’s like your entire accent disappears. Brilliant. I honestly think you could pass for a Brit.”
