My Life On a Plate by India Knight

Author:India Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141938691
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

Laden with elaborately wrapped gift boxes, we stagger into the roomy, stone-floored kitchen, where we deposit the girls’ presents on to the table. I open mine, the first layer of which contains an intricately embroidered pink cardigan, complete with sequinned flowers. The second layer hides a fabulous silver lace skirt (drawstring waist, oh joy), and the third – good grief, there’s more – a couple of dozen very thin, glittery, beaded bracelets.

‘Do you love our presents?’ says Evie.

‘Passionately,’ I reply truthfully. ‘You are angels of sweetness.’

The boys start racing around the kitchen, shooting each other with their brand-new pop guns while wearing a stegosaurus outfit (Jack, delirious with happiness) and an extravagantly mustachioed pirate’s (Charlie, ditto). Miss Johnson, whom Evie finds and wakes up from her nap, gets three bottles of flavoured vodkas with a silver flask to decant them into (‘Capital!’ she booms, causing me, not for the first time, to wonder whether I’ve stumbled into a 1930s play). Elvis, the Labrador, gets a red velvet collar with diamanté studs; Anna gets a vast bunch of lilies, to add to her hamper; Mrs Dunn, who does and is elderly, gets some cashmere slippers, ‘for your poor feet’; Mrs Hoppy (really), who cooks, gets candied fruit from Carluc-cio’s; and so on. Digby, who’s off somewhere walking with Julian, gets a pair of pants that say ‘CAUTION: HEAVY GOODS’.

We’re falling about laughing at these when Julian returns. ‘What a jolly scene,’ he says, divesting himself of his Barbour. ‘Hello, my darling girls. Is it Christmas?’

‘Daddy!’ They rush to embrace him. ‘No, but we might not be here for Christmas’ – Julian raises an eyebrow – ‘so we thought we’d bring the gifts now. And then if we are here we’ll bring more, so, you see, it’s a win-win situation,’ Flo explains. ‘Anyway – come and open yours.’

Julian seems delighted by his first edition of The Diary of a Nobody, a book he is able to quote from at considerable length. The first time I ever saw Julian laugh hysterically, with tears, was when quoting from it to Kate. The second parcel contains Three Men in a Boat, a tome which has an equally dramatic effect on Julian, reducing him to hyperventilation on many an occasion and even, once, to falling off a loo with a very loud thud.

‘But how brilliant!’ he exclaims. ‘My two favourite books, from my two favourite girls! Er,’ he adds, giving me a glance and looking around for Magdalen, who has taken the baby off for a feed. ‘Well. Er. Oh. Yes.’

‘I love that bookshop, Heywood Hill,’ says Evie. ‘They’re so professional. They know your credit card number off by heart.’

‘How odd,’ I say. ‘It’s hardly as if you live to read, Evie, darling. How often do you go in there?’ The notion of Evie as bookworm is, as it were, novel and not entirely convincing. I don’t think Evie’s read anything since being devastated by Charlotte’s Web, aged eleven, although she shows some familiarity with the more upmarket mail-order catalogues.

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