Free The Bluebird Café by Rebecca Smith

at least kind thoughts and good will.
    John Vir had decided to change his life. He usually did at around 11.30 on Sunday evenings, but this time he really meant it. He always really meant it, but this time he really did mean it. He was going to win Lucy. He would do whatever it took. Shewas going to be his. He thought of her soft hair, her sweet nose, her cool, slim hands, the way her collarbone jutted out when she shrugged, her feet in those floppy cotton shoes she always wore. What was it they called them? Escargots. Something like that. Perhaps he could get some at the Cash and Carry, and sell them in the shop. She might try them on. He could picture her slipping them on and off.
    Lucy was woken by
Farming Today
. She switched it off. She stared at the ceiling and made meticulous, itemised lists in her head. At 6.43 she got out of bed. At 7 a.m. Fennel was eating Arthur’s Meaty Chunks With Game. At 7.04 a cup of tea was placed beside Paul’s sleeping head, where it could be discovered at 8.30 a.m. She had a bath and then cleaned the bathroom with special attention to the algae that had grown in the overflow of the basin. The clogged nozzle of Paul’s shaving foam was rinsed, the mirror was wiped, the flannels folded neatly, new soap was unwrapped, the towels were folded. Lucy could never decide whether flowers in the bathroom were naff or not, somehow akin to M&S peach-scented toiletries. The flat was hoovered, dusted, blitzed! The geraniums were dead-headed, the windowsills wiped. Would she have time to clean the windows? No! No! But she did wipe the milk shelf in the fridge. Paul emerged at 8.45, made toast, made crumbs, was banned from mucking up the bathroom and told to do the potatoes. They made moussaka and salad and took a café apple pie out of the freezer. The hideous, cheese-encrusted sandwich toaster was hidden at the back of a cupboard. Paul put on a pot of coffee. At 11.45, right on schedule and half an hour early, his parents arrived.
    â€˜I’m sorry the place is in such a mess,’ said Lucy.
    â€˜Oh, that’s all right, dear,’ said Maggie Cloud. ‘We don’t expect you to go to any trouble.’
    They were sitting down to lunch. Whatever she did, whatever she and Paul cooked, or even if they were abroad or in a restaurant, Paul’s family always spent these special or family celebration meals discussing other meals they had eaten.
    â€˜Remember those king prawns we had in Portugal …’
    â€˜At that little place with the farm implements on the ceiling …’
    â€˜And those stuffed trotters at that one with the double loos …’
    â€˜And where the waiter showed you your fish before it was cooked …’
    â€˜And remember when we had that wonderful chicken with lime …’
    â€˜It was lemon grass.’
    â€˜Oh yes, in that French-Thai place where they gave us those awful soggy sesame crackers …’
    â€˜And we weren’t sure if she’d spilled something on them without realising it.’
    â€˜I think they’d stayed out in the sun too long – or we had – ha ha ha!’
    It was a litany. Lucy had to dig her nails into her palms under the table. If she’d been at Malory Towers she’d have been stuffing her clean hanky into her mouth.
    â€˜Oh God, and when we went to America – the amount they eat is disgusting!’ Paul’s mother would say as she helped herself to a little more potato salad. ‘At breakfast I’d say,“But I just want eggs on toast with a little bacon and tomato.” But they’d insist on bringing you this huge
platter!
And the cakes! The amount they eat is disgusting. They’d have a whole sponge cake to themselves. No wonder they are so obese as a nation.’
    â€˜Remember those steaks they gave us at that little taverna above Firenze? They just show them the flame!’
    â€˜Oh, and that asparagus there, and that