The Favourite

Even from this distance, Vivienne can hear the cultish drone of the singing bowls, and she rolls her eyes as she comes along the dark path between the trees. The wind is pinning her skirt to her crotch, wrapping her legs in thick indigo silk, and she’s hoping it will also be blowing the smell of the secret Marlboro Gold she’s just smoked from her hair, her face, as she makes her way back towards the gathering at the bottom of the slope. Although she hasn’t obliged, they were supposed to dress in autumn colours to match the season, and, as the path tracks to the right, she glimpses the red and yellow and orange and green of the rest of them.

The naming ceremony is over. Thank God. A tick-box DIY humanist thing that, according to Alex, all the south London ‘mumfluencers’ are going in for right now. It felt like a good idea at the time . . . her eldest daughter had murmured, as they’d lugged boxes of decorations and foldaway furniture, a bubble machine and all the rest of it from the car into the forest earlier that morning. They’d found a relatively – relatively – sheltered spot, and Alex and the others had wound paper lanterns through the trees, then hammered in a complicated gazebo that had whipped and snapped throughout, as if a malevolent presence was lurking. Most of the lanterns had blown away, and are tangled now in far-off branches. But for Vivienne the lowest point had come when she’d been ambushed into making a promise to the baby. They all had, but she’d been first up and, put on the spot like that, she couldn’t remember the name of her newest grandchild. I’d like to propose a long and happy life to . . . to our little . . . Betty, she’d gushed finally, too loudly. It was the wrong name. There was a frozen moment until, somewhere behind her, Nancy had tried and failed to disguise a laugh as a cough. In the same moment, Alex had corrected Vivienne’s mistake with a blank face – as though if she reacted minimally maybe it hadn’t happened, maybe her own mum hadn’t forgotten her baby daughter’s name – and they could all swiftly erase it from their collective memory. Dolly, she reminds herself now. Like the cloned sheep. Or the country singer with boobs the size of a baby’s head. She will not get away with this, she knows – Alex will be watching her, scrutinizing her, for signs of dementia for the rest of the week.