Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty

more pronounced when he was angry or felt threatened. He followed Welsh football matches, although he was indifferent to rugby. He teased me about being posh because of my English accent, which annoyed me because there had been a lot more spare cash floating around his childhood than mine.
    When his mind was elsewhere, it was pointless trying to get his attention. ‘I’m task-orientated,’ he said loftily, when I complained to him. We were in bed at the time. I groaned out loud and put a pillow over my face. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’
    Just before he had an orgasm, he would swear profusely, which I found amusing, although I was careful never to tell him that.
    *
     
    ‘There’s only one way to make sure a boy’s family likes you,’ my mother had told me when I was still a gawky adolescent, ‘and that’s to make sure they didn’t like the girlfriend that came before you.’ Her face was becoming expressionless by then, the muscles increasingly immobile, speech slurred. She stared a lot. She rarely blinked. I had to remember how her face moved when she used to speak and add a layer of animation over her demeanour, along with volume to her words, a smile.
    *
     
    I was invited to meet David’s family at a large gathering to celebrate the seventieth birthday of a favourite aunt, Lorraine. David had one sibling but an inordinate number of aunts and uncles and cousins who had formed an established Welsh enclave in Eastley long before his family arrived. It was winter, we had arrived after dark, sleet was falling softly. The world looked good but felt bitter. We had been on the doorstep in the cold, ringing the bell repeatedly, for some minutes, huddled together beneath the yellow light above the porch. Music was thumping from the bay window of the sitting room at the front of the house but the curtains were closed. David said if there was no answer in a minute he was going to bang on the window even though it would mean trampling a flowerbed.
    At that point, Aunt Lorraine flung the door open saying, ‘Yes, yes, all right…’ Seeing it was us, she stood back to make a careful appraisal. She nodded once, leaned forward and hissed, ‘You’ll do very nicely,’ before grabbing my arm and pulling me inside.

    Then she turned to David, still on the doorstep, and declared, ‘But you can piss off, boy!’ and slammed the door in his face. I saw his expression just before the door closed and guessed that this was a joke played many times before and one he found excruciating. I, on the other hand, had had a large gin and tonic on an empty stomach in the pub before we came and thought it rather funny – mad, but funny.
    Lorraine’s hallway was decked with foil streamers. She was a hefty woman in beige, her face alight with a beamy smile. She cackled affectedly and pushed at my arm. I heard merry laughter from above and looked up to see that an uncle was descending the stairs, zipping his flies and ho-ho-ho-ing like Father Christmas. Lorraine linked her arm with mine and, leaving David on the doorstep, pulled me towards the sitting room, which bulged with people, noise and cigarette smoke. She flung the door wide and pushed me into a large number of coloured balloons and curious faces. The furniture and decor were lost behind the faces and balloons. ‘Here she is!’ Lorraine shouted above the music.
    Before I could speak, another aunt was upon me. ‘Ooh, let’s take a look at you, girl, we’ve all been waiting.’ I felt her fingers plucking at my coat sleeve. ‘Well, you’re a big improvement on the last one, I must say.’ She leaned in close to me. Her breath smelt of gherkins. ‘Wore a lot of synthetic fibres, did the last one.’
    David was at my elbow. He didn’t look amused. ‘Leave her alone until she’s got her coat off,’ he grumbled.
    Someone thrust a drink into my hand. ‘Try this punch. It’s disgusting.’
    David removed it from my hand and said in my ear. ‘Kitchen. Now.’
    In the kitchen,