Satisfied with my work, I flitted back down to the kitchen, where the batter was made and coffee was brewing.
Jasper was giving my parents the full after-dinner speech routine and they were laughing uproariously at his anecdotes of hospital-soap life. It was nice, I thought, sliding on to the bench beside them with a faint wince. It was a bit like normality. Could this be all right after all?
He ladled batter into the pan and got plates from the dresser. Under the grill, rashers of bacon gave the air that blissful Sunday-morning scent.
‘You’re very efficient,’ said Mum. ‘Are you sure I can’t give you a hand?’
‘No, no. Sarah, you know where everything is. Can you squeeze some juice for us?’
He was definitely intent on making it understood that we were lovers, I thought. Well, we were, after all. The parents hadn’t objected yet, so perhaps we were home and dry.
The anecdotes flew on, thick and fast, while a stack of pancakes built up on the warming plate.
He served them up, with bacon, and then handed a squirty bottle of maple syrup to my Mum.
She frowned.
‘Ooh, I don’t know. It doesn’t quite sit right with me – bacon and syrup.’
‘You have to try it,’ said Jasper, still leaning over her. ‘I promise you, you won’t regret it.’
‘It’s very American, isn’t it?’ she said, still doubtful.
‘Yes, and that’s where I got the taste for it. You aren’t going to disappoint me now, by being one of those people who never tries anything new, are you? That’s not you, is it, Jean?’
She went all giggly and blushful at th
at.
‘Oh, go on, then. You’ve twisted my arm.’
I knew that wild horses wouldn’t drag my Dad to a squirty bottle of maple syrup, so I discreetly shoved the HP Sauce down the table to him before Jasper could even try.
‘So are you filming anything now?’ asked Mum.
Red alert. I stopped chewing my pancake and tried to give Jasper a look that said don’t talk about the new movie.
‘I’ve a film in post-production,’ he said. ‘I’m in London a lot of the time, at the editing suite. It should be out next year – it’s about a rich playboy who pisses off a lot of people and gets murdered. Sorry. He, uh, upsets a lot of people.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Mum, with a wave. Jasper had lightened her up by about fifteen shades. She usually hated swearing. ‘It sounds like a thriller, then. Is it a thriller?’
‘It’s not so much a thriller as a dissection of the thriller genre,’ said Jasper.
Oh, dear. Rocky ground here. As soon as a person started to sound pretentious my Dad started to get an allergic reaction.
‘So it’s a thriller, then?’ said Dad.
‘Geoff!’
But Jasper laughed. ‘Yeah, pretty much.’
Dad paused to masticate his pancake, then spoke again.
‘So, you and Sarah, then,’ he said.
More nervous twitching from me, a genial smile from Jasper.
‘Is it serious?’