A new two-parter begins today…

I am sitting at my parents’ dinner table, a glass of prawn cocktail before me on one of my mother’s best, porcelain plates. It’s a rare opportunity to eat prawns, as Gray won’t allow anything fish related to cross the threshold at our own house. From the corner of my eye I can see he’s edging his chair away and I know he’ll have an expression of disgust on his face. But I’m not going to pass up the chance of a treat.

We’ve had a choice of starters- soup, pate or the prawns. Gary’s gone for the soup and has begun slurping it, even before the others have been served, ignoring my sidelong glance and attempt to shake my head. We’ve all selected our meal options in advance, a choice from three for each course.

Next to me, my mother is smiling her beatific smile at we, her gathering. She has made this happen, this event. She’s dug out her best, white linen tablecloth and the rarely used, flowery table mats as well as the drawing room cutlery and crystal glasses, all shined and sparkling. My father is at the head of the table, of course, talking to James about music concerts. Opposite me, James’s wife, Melissa, leans forwards.

‘Do you like music, Sarah?’

My mother is regarding me with an intense stare, still smiling but I know she is willing me to say something profound and intelligent. When I was a child and visitors came, she’d mouth soundlessly along to all my utterances in desperate hopes that I’d make an impression.

‘Um..yeah.’ I say. But I don’t tell her I like loud rock bands, that I don’t get to go out to concerts, that I don’t go out.

Melissa plays the flute.’ Mum tells me, beaming with pride at being Melissa’s neighbour.

‘So are you in an orchestra or anything?’ I ask Mum’s talented neighbour.

‘I sometimes play for village events, but mostly for personal pleasure,’ she replies. ‘Do you play any instruments, Gary?’

My husband looks up from the soup, startled. ‘Guitar,’ he says and resumes slurping.

‘He used to play guitar,’ I correct.

Everyone has their starter now. James takes his napkin and unfurls it with a flourish before smoothing it on to his lap and I see Gary’s remains in place by his bowl.

The prawn starter is delicious. I’m eating slowly to make it last as I catch James looking across to Gary. ‘Do you play any sport, Gary?’ he asks and I wonder why he hasn’t asked me, or addressed his question to both of us. Gary looks bewildered.

‘No’ he splutters. James persists.

‘Follow any sport?’ James and my father go to cricket matches together and talk endlessly about it, according to my mother, who seems to think it’s a good thing.

‘Gary likes football,’ I tell him. He turns back to Dad and starts a conversation about the West Indies and South Africa match. Mum tells me that James and Melissa’s son, Benjamin is doing very well at Oxford and enjoying it. ‘That’s nice,’ I say. ‘Does he live in, Melissa?’ I learn that Benji has a room at Queen’s College, that he loves it and they are looking forward to visiting next weekend.

The main courses begin arriving to the table. I’ve chosen poached salmon, much to Gary’s annoyance. He has a steak.

My mother rang me three weeks ago in a fever of excitement, to say they’d won a meal for six in a raffle at the village hall and wanted us to take part. James and Melissa would be coming. I’d considered telling her we couldn’t make it. that we couldn’t get a babysitter or that we were busy but I doubted she’d have believed me and besides, the pull of a meal cooked by someone else was too strong to refuse. I accepted without asking Gary, who would object on the grounds that he’d miss ‘Match of the Day’ on TV.

I knew all about James and Melissa of course, as since they’d moved in opposite my parents nine months ago, Mum and Dad have talked of little else.

It occurs to me now, setting about the salmon in its glossy bath of Bearnaise sauce that my mother wants to show us off to each other, to show her neighbours off to us and to show us off to them, only there is little about Gary and me to brag about, of course. We live in a run-down terraced house in a down-at-heel part of Sowerbury. Gary, having dropped out of polytechnic works shifts as a warehouseman and I do shifts as a receptionist at a GP surgery, having failed to finish my degree in medicine because I became pregnant in my first year. Now we have three children under five and our cramped, two bedroom house resembles a bomb site. We take turns looking after the children between bouts of work, lurching from crisis to crisis as bits of house fail, children get sick or the car breaks down,

My mother nudges me, James is addressing me. I look up from my salmon.

‘Sorry? I missed that.’

‘I was saying, you’ve got three little ones, is that right?’ I note that he is asking me this and not Gary. Melissa is smiling. ‘That must be lovely.’ she gushes. ‘We wanted more babies after Benji but…’ she sighs. James breaks in.

‘Benji was hard work. I didn’t want Melissa to go through that again.’

I know that Melissa doesn’t have a job and is a lady of leisure, because she frequently comes over for coffee with my parents, and according to my mother, is a member of almost all the village societies, besides playing her flute ‘for pleasure’. I try to think when I last did anything for pleasure, aside from sleeping, so a little, prickly annoyance gets the better of me.

‘What do you do for work, Melissa?’

She colours and I notice James is paying attention. He interjects.

‘We thought about it, now that Benji isn’t at home full time but Mel doesn’t need to work and I do like that she can pursue her interests and keep the home fires burning, so to speak.’

Gary is regarding James with interest, now that his steak and potatoes Dauphinoise have been demolished. I’m hoping he won’t ask James what he does or how much he earns, information that I know already, of course, from Mum’s phone calls. James works for the BBC local TV station as a news editor…

A Prize Dinner continues in next week’s post…

Novels by Jane Deans [Grace]: The Year of Familiar Strangers and The Conways at Earthsend. Visit my website: janedeans.com