Fair-weather friends
Emily never knew how many friends she had until she and Michael built a swimming pool. Come a heatwave and her mobile throbs with passiveaggressive texts. “Darling, you are so lucky to have a pool, what heaven it must be, we’re absolutely sweltering here at Nightingale Farm! I don’t suppose…?” The inevitable question hangs in the air and Emily finds herself weakly responding: “Do come over”. So Lulu arrives with her twins and their three little friends, about whom she had not told Emily. “But you don’t mind, do you?” Emily actually minds rather a lot as her pool, lovingly landscaped, is turned into Wet ’n’ Wild. Too late, as the noise reaches screaming point, she realises that the pool is far too near the house. It should have been built in another county.
It seemed such a charming idea to have it in the kitchen courtyard, water glinting across the limestone paving on which Michael has just slipped on an abandoned flip-flop. They’d imagined opening the bifold doors of their minimalist kitchen on to a haven of lavender-filled pots and outdoor suppers cooked on the Weber. There has to be an upside to global warming.
Lulu, confident that the children are absolutely no trouble, has appropriated the sunbed, factor 30 and a large glass of rosé. Emily is aghast at the proliferation of plastic
children seem to bring in their wake, in this case a giant blow-up lobster. “I bought it in John Lewis, isn’t it awesome?”
Michael, distracted by Lulu’s yummy-mummy bikini, involuntarily says: “Do stay for lunch.” Emily, forbiddingly: “It is only salad.”
Twin One is finding the mechanism of the pool cover dangerously fascinating.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that any man in possession of a swimming pool is neurotic about the cover. It can break/stick/ jam just by being looked at. Not to mention the time the Codringtons’ cockerpoo leapt on it in pursuit of his ball. “Ah, how sweet!” said Mimi Codrington. Michael remembers the bill. And the wait, since pool boys are not as omnipresent in the Woldshire hills as they are in Beverly Hills.
Twin Two leaves his wet swimming trunks behind as Lulu herds children and lobster into her SUV. “Emily, you’re such a friend. Have you thought of building a tennis court?”
Victoria Mather
There’ll Always Be An England: Social Stereotypes from The Daily Telegraph by Victoria Mather and Sue Macartney-Snape (Constable, £12.99). Facebook/Instagram: @social_stereotypes