The Unexpected East-Ender

Maybe, just maybe, Lily thought, if I sit here long enough I really will sink into the sofa. 

Still, maybe it was better to get it all out of the way in one go. If her parents insisted on coming to visit maybe it was better that it coincided with getting a bollocking from the head of Finance and then missing missing her bus, leading to a mad dash across London to be home in time. She’d only just had time to shimmy into acceptable clothes (“Honestly, Lilian. A lady needn’t look so dowdy just because she’s decided to enter the workplace.”, “More potatoes, mother?”) and try to cover up the circles under her eyes. Smokey eyes were a thing, right? Surely it would be indistinguishable. God, the last time she’d been wearing this much makeup was two weeks ago when Tom had challenged her to a drinking contest on a Sunday and she’d shown up to work the next day looking like death wearing foundation. She hadn’t even managed to say goodbye to him before she’d made her mad dash today. 

But this was no time to think about getting shit-faced. Not yet, at any rate. 

There was a smart rapping at the door just as she managed to sit down. She took a deep breath and tried not to groan. A quick check of lipstick and a tug of her necklace, she swung the door open. 

“Mother! Father! How wonderful to see you both!”

Her parent smiled and her mother leant forward. An air kiss on both cheeks, and a lingering scent of perfume, her mother swept past her. Her father stepped forward with a more genuine smile and kissed her forehead.

“Lily, my girl, how gorgeous you look. So grown up.” He had said that to her every year since she turned sixteen and yet it still felt more real than the smile her mother turned around with.

“Such a lovely house.” Her mother said, trailing a hand across the banister. “So…quaint.”

Lily bit her cheek and forced a smile. It was a rental, modestly furnished and not overly large, but it was completely her own. It was tidy, cosy and everything in it was both tacky and hers. Perfect. 

“It’s wonderful.” Her father said hurriedly as he guided his wife down the hall. “Such fine taste you have, my girl.” Her mother smiled tightly but said no more about and so Lily naively assumed that perhaps the rest of the evening may pass in relative peace. 

How very wrong one person can be.

An hour in and Lily stabbed a piece of steamed broccoli with particular viciousness. She tried to think of things that kept her calm; waterfalls, sunrises, that time she made Harold from HR cry, that time Tom walked into a pole…The memory soothed her a little. 

“All I’m saying, Lilian,” said her mother sipping from her wine glass, perfectly coiffed hair still piled on her head, “is that if you can cook like this and look like that,” she motioned with an elegant hand to her daughter, “then I really do not understand why there is no man in the picture.” Lily couldn’t even be bothered to tell her mother about the favours she’d cashed in to have one of the interns cook the meal, not when she knew it wouldn’t do anything to deter her. 

Her father looked sympathetic but he had given up trying to shield her half an hour ago. Lily thought of the last few dates she had managed between her projects (Harriet from finance, Annie from PR and then regrettably Diana from four doors down) and how many times she and her mother had had this conversation. 

“Perhaps, mother,” she ground out, “there is no man because-”

Her mother simply spoke over her. “Because if it’s simply a matter of finding one suitable enough you already know my opinion on George. Lovely boy.”

“And you already know my opinions of first cousins-”

The ringing of the doorbell saved her mother from the well reheated argument that Lily knew from experience would get her absolutely nowhere. When no one answer immediately the doorbell rang again. Then again. Again. Again. 

“Do you think you ought to get that, dear?” Asked her mother pointedly. 

Lily had only half risen from her seat when she heard the letter box be pushed open. 

“Oi! Lils, you dead mate?” Shouted Tom into her home. 

Lily raced to the door and answered it in record time. It opened to reveal Tom in an old hoodie and jogging bottoms that might have been black once upon a time. He grinned and then whistled low. “Christ, get a load of you! You got the queen coming round or something?”

She beamed at him and he instinctively took a step back. She tried to tone it down a little. 

“Thank god you’re here, I was beginning to worry!” She said loud enough for her parents to hear in the next room.

Tom’ smile dropped a little and he managed to look almost serious for a moment. “Everything alright, yeah? You left without your laptop. Thought it meant the end was coming or something.”

She looked down and realised what he was holding. She hadn’t even realised she’d left it behind. 

“Look, I’m really sorry for what’s about to happen.” She said in an undertone, “But I’m going to need you to just go with it, okay?”

He’d opened his mouth, doubtless to ask another question, but evidently her mother had got tired of waiting for them and rounded the corner. 

“Lilian, I do believe introductions are in order.”

Lily grabbed Tom’s hand, partly in warning, but mostly so he couldn’t run. He looked between her and her mother and seemed to come to a decision. 

Immediately his shoulders slumped and an easy grin came to his face. Lily watched in vindictive glee as her mother’s poise faltered. 

“No need, luv. Name’s Tommy.” God he was laying it on thick. Tom, who once claimed he’d been close enough to smell Prince Charles (not unpleasant, apparently) had never been to the East End in his life, never mind stayed long enough to pick up an accent. “You must be Lil’s mum, yeah? See being fit as fuck runs in the family.”

Lily watched in unrestrained joy as her mother looked as though she’d been hit with a wet fish. 

Lily turned to Tom and in her most clipped accent said, “I’m so glad to you could make it. Would you like to join us?”

“Don’t mind if I do. What’s for grub?”

The next hour of her life was among the best. She couldn’t decide if it ranked above the time she’d convinced her mother bukake was a kind of caviar or the time Arnold-the-used-to-be-manager put a hand up her skirt and found out the hard way she’d been taking Krav Maga since she was ten. It seemed her father cottoned on somewhere around the fifteen minute mark that Tom was making it up as he went along but he seemed content to see how it played out. Her mother, however, looked as though she might fast be approaching a stroke. 

“So what is it you do exactly, Thomas?” Her mother asked. 

Tom stopped extolling the virtues of socialism (which kudos to him for finding all of the right buttons to press in so little time) to her father and illustrating his points with a spear of asparagus in his hand, long enough to say, “I’m on the dole at the mo, but me prospects ain’t bad. Got a mate who says he can get me a job in one of those warehouses.” He sounded so cheerful that even Lily, who might be made an orphan if he kept on, couldn’t help but smile. She hid it behind her wineglass. “Then again, might pop the question to this one and be a kept man for a bit.”

He clicked his tongue and winked at her and Lily tried to look besotted when all she wanted to do was snort. Her mother looked between them so fast Lily thought she might have been practicing to watch some kind of demented tennis match. 

The evening was, all in all, magical. Other winning moments included Tom dumping the last of the wine into his glass and downing it in one, trying to engage her mother in game of shag/marry/kill and stealing the last piece of steak from her father’s plate. 

By the end of it all Lily was pretty sure she was going to bite through the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Her mother was apoplectic, two angry sports of red high on her cheeks and lips so thin that Lily was having traumatic flashbacks to the summer of 2003. Her father looked faintly amused but politely disengaged from what was happening around him. Lily had often thought it was a coping mechanism related directly to having to live in close quarters with her mother. 

It was the best evening she could remember spending with both her parents present. 

But all good things come to an end. After her mother’s third pointed comment about the lateness of the hour Tom scraped his chair back and yawned, not bothering to cover his mouth. 

“Best be off babes. Getting fucking late, innit?”

Lily smiled and got up, careful to smooth down her skirt. She took his hand and led him to the door, briefly out of sight of her mother’s hawklike gaze. 

He squeaked when she hugged him as tightly as she could. 

“Thank you.” She whispered into his jacket. “Really, thank you. I was going mad. I owe you one.”

When she pulled back he was smiling, the real one than she hadn’t seen since he’d first sat down to dinner. “I’ll hold you to that you know, Lils. Next round’s on you.” She let go of him just as he pulled her back. “This one’s for free though.”

He dipped her and instead of the showy kiss that she’d expected, licked the side of her face. 

“Seeya, babes!” He said before he righted her and made a swift exit before she could retaliate. 

Smart boy, she thought as she turned. Her mother was standing in the doorway, white as a sheet and fists clenched. 

“Lilian Smythe-Green, what on earth-”

The lecture would be a long one and undoubtedly tedious but the memory of not feeling completely alone at a family dinner would last even longer.