Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

‘Course you can, Dad. I’m just saying, it’s nice to have a friendly face around sometimes, eh?’

Sammy shrugged, not conceding the point but graciously allowing it to pass.

‘I’ve got some good news for you two,’ Sammy said to us, leaning back contentedly into his pillows while Raymond and I deposited our carrier bags like myrrh and frankincense at the foot of his bed. ‘I’m getting out on Saturday!’

Raymond high-fived him, after some initial awkwardness whereby Sammy had no idea why a podgy hand had been thrust in his face.

‘He’s coming to stay at mine for a couple of weeks, just till he gets confident with the walking frame,’ his daughter Laura said, finally looking up from her phone. ‘We’re having a wee party to celebrate! You’re both invited, of course,’ she added, somewhat less than enthusiastically.

She was staring at me. I didn’t mind. In fact, I actually prefer that to surreptitious, sneaky glances – from her, I got a full and frank appraisal, filled with fascination, but with no trace of fear or disgust. I brushed my hair off my face, so that she could get a better view.

‘This Saturday?’ I said.

‘Now, Eleanor, don’t you dare say you’re busy,’ Sammy said. ‘No excuses. I want you both there. End of.’

‘Who are we to argue?’ Raymond said, smiling. I thought about it. A party. The last party I’d been to – apart from that appalling wedding reception – was on Judy Jackson’s thirteenth birthday. It had involved ice skating and milkshakes, and hadn’t ended well. Surely no one was likely to vomit or lose a finger at an elderly invalid’s welcome home celebration?

‘I shall attend,’ I said, inclining my head.

‘Here’s my card,’ Laura said, passing one each to Raymond and to me. It was black and glossy, embossed with gold leaf, and said Laura Marston-Smith, Aesthetic Technician, Hair Stylist, Image Consultant, with her contact details set out below.

‘Seven o’clock on Saturday, yeah? Don’t bring anything, just yourselves.’

I tucked the card carefully into my purse. Raymond had thrust his into his back pocket. He couldn’t take his eyes off Laura, I noticed, apparently hypnotized rather in the manner of a mongoose before a snake. She was clearly aware of this. I suspected she was used to it, looking the way she did. Blonde hair and large breasts are so clichéd, so obvious. Men like Raymond, pedestrian dullards, would always be distracted by women who looked like her, having neither the wit nor the sophistication to see beyond mammaries and peroxide.

Raymond tore his eyes away from Laura’s décolletage and looked at the wall clock, then, pointedly, at me.

‘We shall depart,’ I said, ‘and meet again on Saturday.’ Once again, there was an overwhelming onslaught of salutations and handshakes. Sammy, meanwhile, was rummaging in the bags we’d brought. He held up a packet of organic curly kale.

‘What the hell is this?’ he said, incredulous. Zinc, I whispered to myself. Raymond hustled me out of the ward rather brusquely, I felt, and before I’d even had a chance to mention that the squid salad would need to be eaten promptly. The ambient temperature in the hospital ward was very warm.

12

THE NEXT DAY, WHILST waiting for the kettle to boil, my eye was drawn to a leaflet which had been discarded on top of the office recycling bag, alongside a pile of holiday brochures and well-thumbed gossip magazines. It was for a department store in town – not one I had ever frequented – and set out an introductory offer, featuring a frankly spectacular one-third reduction in the price of a ‘Deluxe Pamper Manicure’. I tried and failed to imagine what a deluxe pamper manicure might involve. How might one introduce luxury and pampering into the process of shaping and painting a nail? It was, literally, beyond my imagining. I felt a thrill of excitement. There was only one way to find out. With my animal grooming regime in mind, I would turn my attention to my talons.