A DENNIR PARTY

The microwave beeped six times, sounding like a tiny, domestic life-support machine. I chose to ignore it, staring instead into the glassy murk of the oven as if looking for signs of life, or perhaps a miracle.

"Why didn’t we just get a takeaway from the night market, Stella?" I whispered, clutching a tea towel to my chest like a shield. "Thai requires no carving. Nobody has ever managed to throw a spring roll with lethal force. But lamb? Have you read Roald Dahl? Giving either of those two a sharp instrument right now is simply tempting fate."

Stella paused, a bottle of Merlot frozen mid-air. "It’ll be fine. Over before you know it. We just have to... provide a conversational buffer."

"It’s not the silence that worries me," I said, peering through the kitchen archway toward the lounge. "The air out there is positively radioactive. Stella…,” I leaned in, dropping my voice to a low murmur, "I think Hazel has been cheating."

Stella nearly dropped the Merlot. "What?!"

"I heard them from the hallway," I whispered. "Evie said she knew it wasn't real. She said Hazel was just trying to see what she could get away with while her back was turned. She said something about finding out in the Uber"

Before Stella could process this fissure in our social circle, Hazel’s voice cut through the air, sharp enough to slice bread. "Some people have absolutely no concept of mistakes. They assume it's a deliberate sham. No trust. Just nasty, baseless accusations."

A long pause followed, punctuated only by the brittle clink of a wine glass stem being handled with unnecessary aggression.

"Because it was a sham, Hazel!" Evie’s voice was tighter now, vibrating with what sounded like a decade’s worth of accumulated grievances. "You are an English major and you knew exactly what you were doing. You took a massive gamble on something you knew was completely wrong, and you simply hoped I wouldn't notice!"

"You had your chance!" Hazel retorted, her tone climbing an octave. "And, come on, it wasn’t as though I was trying to hide anything. And now you’re basically calling me a liar. A cheat!"

In the kitchen, Stella looked at me, her eyes wide with the dark thrill of other people's disasters. "Oh my god. Not hiding anything? Are they into polyamory? Or some sort of terrible modern arrangement? This is incredibly toxic, Delia."

I grabbed the oven mitts. The lamb was looking decidedly dry—sacrificed for nothing. "Right. I'm going in. Stell, we have to be normal. We mustn’t let them know we know what we know.”

I marched into the dining room, holding the sizzling roasting tray aloft like an award I was about to present. "Dinner is served! Everything is hot, on plates, and entirely transparent, ladies. Let’s move through!"

The four of us sat down to a table laden with tension and roasted root vegetables. Hazel and Evie sat diagonally from each other, trading glares.

"This looks gorgeous, Delia," Hazel said, her smile a little crooked. "It’s lovely to eat a meal that has some depth to it. That hasn't been completely corrupted by someone’s deep, bitter resentment."

Evie reached for the water jug. "Oh, is that a dig? Because if we’re talking about resentment, I’d love to discuss the absolute slap in the face of bringing something completely fake into our lives and pretending it's legitimate. It isn't in the Collins, Hazel. It’s a cynical fabrication."

I froze, a slice of lamb hovering precariously between the carving fork and Hazel’s plate. The Collins? Was that what they were calling those specialized hook-up apps these days? A sort of high-brow Tinder?

"I told you I thought it was legitimate," Hazel said, stabbing a roast potato with unnecessary force. "Bona fide. Genuine."

"You took advantage, Hazel, and you know it."

"Mint sauce?" Stella interrupted, her voice the chirrup of a frantic bird flapping in a closed room.

"It was beautiful and it fitted perfectly!" Hazel insisted.

Good grief, I thought, a wave of secondhand embarrassment washing over me. She’s been cheating with a... a device."TMI, Hazel," I managed, letting out a hollow chuckle that didn't fool anyone.

Hazel looked at me, genuinely quizzical.

"NUTSUIT is not a word, Hazel!" Evie exploded, finally dropping the hammer. "You made it up because you had two U’s and were desperate to bingo! You knew it wasn't real, you knew I was too tired to double-check, and you took monstrous advantage."

Stella’s wine glass stopped halfway to her mouth. "Wait. NUTSUIT?"

"Yes!" Evie turned to Stella, desperate for an ally in the court of lexical law. "She tried to tell me it was a valid alternative term for a peanut shell in some obscure, sixteenth-century poetic text! I looked it up in the Uber on the way here. It doesn't exist! And she knew it."

"I told you, I thought it was from Spenser!"

Oh God, I thought, the literature major is going to start quoting. And, yes, there it was:

“Sweet is the cypress, but his rind is tough;

Sweet is the nutsuit, but bitter is his pill;

Sweet is the broom-flower, but yet sour enough;

And sweet is moly, but his root is ill.”

Hazel’s face was now a brilliant, telltale crimson. "You had the right to challenge at the time. You didn't. The clock ran out."

I lowered the carving knife. So this was not a tragedy of marital betrayal; it was just another Tuesday night stymied by the competitive pathology of middle-class word games. I looked at Stella, whose mouth was still slightly open.

A Scrabble tile. All this for seven wooden squares.

"Speaking of... words!" Stella said, recovering beautifully. "Delia, didn't you say the Sunday market had those amazing purple-top turnips?"

"Yes!" I said, aggressively piling lamb onto plates. "Beautiful turnips. Incredibly... valid.” Which was a terrible choice of words.

"I love a valid thing," Evie muttered, staring across the table like a displaced Mary Tudor. "Something that doesn't cause a domestic incident because it existed only in the imagination of the desperate."

"It was an oversight on your part, Evelyn! The tiles stand!"

"The tiles are a lie, Hazel!"

I chewed my lamb. It tasted like cardboard, but at least nobody was going to divorce court. Right now, I was mentally drafting a petition to the local council to ban all board games within the wider Rotorua district.

By 9:45 PM, the apricot crumble had been dutifully cleared away, leaving behind only the sticky residue of social obligation. Evie placed her napkin on the table with an alarming finality.

"I think it's time we left."

I stood up quickly. "Let me get your coats before you change your minds!"

In the hallway, we exchanged the brisk, superficiality of quick goodbyes. Stella performed the AbFab double-cheek air kiss and I handed Hazel an umbrella, purely as a defensive measure.

"Thank you for having us, my sweets," Hazel said, her tone recovering its usual veneer. "The lamb was very …resilient."

"So glad you could make it!" I said, my smile fixed on my face like botox.

"We’ll see ourselves out," Evie called from the front steps. "Let’s hope the Uber driver actually knows how to follow a direct route. Without making up his own map."

"Excuse me? Was that comment directed at me?"

The voices faded, swallowed by the damp night air as the front door finally shut.

I pressed my back against the wood, listening to the solid thud thud of car doors and the engine retreating toward the main road. The house descended into a profound quiet.

I turned around.

Stella was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking in a silent, asthmatic fit of laughter.

I dropped the tea towel, walked over, and sank down onto the step beside her.

"P-E-A-C-E," Stella gasped, looking up with tears in her eyes. "Nine points. Ten if you hit the double-letter. Pass the leftover Merlot, Del. Don't bother with a glass."

“And what’s “moly” when it’s at home? And why is his root ill?”