My Favourite Part

14: small world...

"Thank you, Jemima!" I touch a hand to my heart when she places the platter on Caz's side table.

As friends, Caz, Babe and I are bound together by a lot of things, but three things most crucially. One: laughter, two: complimentary world-views, and three: mums who are experts in providing adorable snacks. Once Jemima sets down the grapes and gluten-free almond and ginger thins, she stands back, with her hands on her hips, looking me up and down.

When they're stood side by side like they are now, you can tell Caz looks up to her. Or, at the very least, you can tell she's her daughter – the same eyes, the same lip gloss colour. If not for their freshly blown out curls, only differentiated by the honey blonde streaks in Jemima's, the two of them might be difficult to tell apart.

We're still playing dress-up, and I'm in something scratchier, longer and less ...bedroom now, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

"C'est pour Ascot, Mama." Caz explains. She also explained today, in thorough, thorough, detail, that whilst the London elite generally play by their own rules, Royal Ascot is one of the few occasions on which they watch horses, cheer things like 'huzzah!', and play by the rules, of which there are way too many for me to remember.

"Aw, sweetie. That's why you have me." She'd said with a knowing hand on my cheek. "The basic rules? Dresses have to be knee-length, or longer, but...no," she scoffed at the thought, "no shoulders out, and no tits out either, technically."

"Ah, so not my scene then." Babe added as she sifted through a rack of big hats, although I was almost certain she'd tuned out as soon as a dress code was mentioned.

"Oh, that reminds me – hats are, like, a big deal. We've got to get you something ...extraordinary."

A few hours and blisters later, I'm stood in front of my audience of 3, who've all got their heads tilted like I'm wearing the dress backwards. I glance down quickly to make sure that I'm not.

"Oh, really!" Jemima gleams – she lives for British social life. "What day?"

I only manage an 'um...' before Caz jumps in with a grimace, and it's for the best, I think,

"Uh, don't worry, Mama."

Jemima narrows her doe eyes, and I'm pretty sure she knows something's up, but she lets it go like a woman who had her own set of secrets at 18.

"Okay, what look are we going for then? I can ask this one, no?"

"Posh and boring." Babe calls out, face down on the bed.

"Uh, sexy and sophisticated." Caz corrects.

"Maybe, 20/60 on the sexy-sophisticated?" I suggest, shyly, "and 20% posh."

She laughs at the lack of consensus, and fishes swiftly into one of Caz's drawers,

"You are so cute. It's a lovely dress, chérie, but you are young! It needs some more... Cara, comment dis-je l'éclat, le 'ouah' ?

"Mhm, mhm, I agree – needs more wow factor," Caz nods enthusiastically, although she's the one that picked it out. She's right, though; it's white, and just regal enough, flaring at the knee, and cascading like a tail at the back. But it's not quite... comment dis-je? L'éclat, le ouah...

Jemima comes right up close to loop a thin baby blue satin belt around my waist, and says a couple of things to Caz that I don't pay enough attention in French lessons to understand whilst gesturing to my legs, but whatever they are, Caz is blown away.

"Ah, maman, c'est parfait! Ange, she says we can make like a, pleat pattern, in the bottom part of the dress, but, like, trace out a spiral, so that you can show a little bit of skin, you know?" When she translates the French live, she picks up her mum's accent for certain words, pronouncing bottom as bo-dum and spiral as spee-ral, and it might be the most endearing thing I've ever heard.

I'm not sure I do understand, but I do trust Jemima, and the excited grin on her face as she shuts one eye and envisions whatever pleat-spiral-skin thing she has planned.

"Okay, I'm down! Although, I thought Ascot was had a strict maximum snobbery and minimum skin dress code?"

With a cheeky wink she must have inherited from Adam, Jemima adjusts my crisp white cartwheel hat, cocking it to the side,

"That's the great thing about these events, chérie – they pretend it's all posh, but you can break the rules if you do it with style."

Maybe it's the ex-Parisian fashion model fawning over me, or the slow dawning of the realisation that I'm actually spending a week with Eric amongst the honourables and duchesses of the English elite, but I'm very, very excited.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3RD – 16:12

Looking at this bloody Kirsty MaColl vinyl again, all wrapped up now, I really do hope things go better today than they did a few days ago. It's Walt's 41st, and he's still in the doghouse, or just the guestroom, I suppose. This morning, though, when Mum gave him his card, she let him give her a little kiss on the cheek – it's a far cry from stirring pancakes together, but it's something. And when August was watching This Morning before school, she said thanks when he brought her Coco Pops and sat down to watch with her. She doesn't let just anyone watch Ruth and Eamonn with her.

Everyone's pretty nervous about meeting the mysterious, wayward, house-dividing brother – too nervous to ask anything more about him, but nervous, still. I'm excited. Although that might be because Mum ordered Walt's favourite for dinner – and incidentally mine – Lebanese. But it's probably the brother thing, too.

"Angie!" Mum calls from downstairs. I hear that brief booming of voices, the sound of adults greeting one another, and rub my lips together to spread out the freshly applied gloss.

"Coming!"

 As I tread downstairs, step by slow step, at first all I see are thick, black boots, glued to their spot. I descend, and the man comes into full view, lifting his gaze from his feet, slowly, and oh, my God, I recognise those emerald eyes. What the fuck?

"Jerome? What the fuck?" It escapes before I can filter it.

"Angie!" Mum exclaims, looking genuinely upset that I ruined the first impressions, but her upset morphs into horror when he greets me back, with what looks like smug surprise,

"Hello there, Goldilocks."

I don't know if we're at the hugging stage, and from the way he's got his jacket held in his folding arms I don't think he's expecting one. In any event, Mum's gaping look of confusion and Auggie's intrigued smirk both seem to suggest that this wouldn't be the right moment for a great-to-see-you-again bear hug.

Walt, though, takes a big deep breath, as if he understands it all, and says,

"Let m- right, I think we need some explanations all-round. Uh, Flo, would you mind if we all sit around the dinner table?"

Poor Mum has no words, and nods dumbly without actually moving from her spot. Al-right, I think I'm going to have to take the lead on this.

"Uh, please, follow me to the dining room," I attempt a hostess-ly smile as I turn and lead the way. August is trailing behind me, and Mum behind her, and Walt and Jerome behind her, but right from the back of the bloody queue comes a question that makes me freeze in my track and sends my heart plummeting into my stomach. And the worst part is, I think he's just trying to be nice.

"So, er, Evangeline, how are you? How's Eric?"