My MIL ordered me a dress four sizes too small for her party, saying, “It’s time for you to lose weight” — but karma didn’t take long to catch up with her.
My mother-in-law throws parties the way other people breathe.
Vivienne Grantham. Sixty-three. Every holiday, every occasion, every excuse — a printed invitation, a dress code, servers in white shirts, a florist. Easter has a theme. Easter.
Her house on Ferrow Hill has a room they call the drawing room, which nobody has ever drawn in.
When I married Rollo in 2019 I thought all of it was slightly ridiculous and mostly harmless, and I said so to him once, and he said, “It’s her thing. Let her have it.”
That sentence turns out to be the load-bearing wall of this entire story, and I’ll come back to it.
Their fortieth anniversary was on the thirteenth of September this year.
The invitations went out in June. Cream card, engraved. A private room at The Thistlewood, which is out past the reservoir and has a tasting menu and a valet.
