Best Behavior

Chapter 1: The Iguana Incident

The iguana's name was Reginald.

Charlotte Rowe would remember this detail for the rest of her life—not because it was particularly important, but because the man sitting across from her at the Italian restaurant on Bellford High Street had said the name eleven times in the first fourteen minutes. She'd counted. She was a history teacher. Counting things was practically in her blood.

"Reginald gets anxious in new environments," the man—Derek? Darren? Something with a D that she'd already lost—explained, adjusting the small harness attached to the iguana currently perched on his left shoulder. "But I think he likes you."

The iguana blinked one prehistoric eye at Charlotte. She blinked back.

"That's... flattering," she said.

"He doesn't like most women. My ex-wife, for instance. Reginald could always tell she was going to leave."

Charlotte reached for her wine glass and found it empty. She'd been nursing it carefully for the first ten minutes. The last four had required a more aggressive approach.

This was her mother's doing. Janet Rowe had a gift—a genuine, Olympic-level talent—for finding the most spectacularly wrong men in the greater Ashford area and presenting them to Charlotte as though they were prizes at a village fête. There had been the accountant who collected toenail clippings "for art." The retired PE teacher who cried during the starter course because his sourdough reminded him of his childhood dog. The perfectly normal-seeming solicitor who waited until dessert to explain, with the calm authority of a man discussing the weather, that the moon landing had been filmed in a shed in Basingstoke.

And now: a man with an emotional support iguana.

"Reginald and I have been through a lot together," the man continued, stroking the iguana's scaly head with one finger. "The divorce, the redundancy, the incident at Tesco—"

"I'm sorry," Charlotte interrupted, because she genuinely needed to know, "what incident at Tesco?"

"He got into the salad bar."

Charlotte pressed her lips together very tightly.

"It was in the local paper," the man added, as though this were a point of pride.

She excused herself to the bathroom, locked herself in a stall, and stared at her reflection in the back of her phone. Thirty-four years old. Brown hair that couldn't decide if it wanted to be wavy or straight, so it compromised by being neither. A face that her Year 10 students had once described as "like a friendly librarian, miss, but the kind that would definitely grass you up." She was wearing her good dress—the navy one with the small white dots that her sister Victoria said made her look "approachable but not desperate," which was Victoria's way of saying it was fine.

She was fine. Everything was fine.

Her phone buzzed. A text from her mother:

*How's it going? Graham seems lovely. His mother goes to my Pilates class.*

Graham. That was the name.

Charlotte typed back: *He brought a lizard.*

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

*What kind of lizard?*

Charlotte put her phone away, splashed water on her face, and went back to the table, where Graham was feeding Reginald a piece of bread stick.

"I should probably call it a night," she said, reaching for her coat.

Graham looked wounded. Reginald looked indifferent. Charlotte left a twenty-pound note on the table—more than her share, but she considered it hazard pay—and walked out into the October evening, where the air was sharp and clean and blessedly free of reptiles.

Her flat was a fifteen-minute walk from the restaurant, a second-floor conversion in a Victorian terrace on Pemberton Lane. She'd bought it three years ago with money she'd saved by being, as Victoria put it, "aggressively single." It had high ceilings, original fireplaces, and a kitchen that was slowly falling apart. The cabinet doors hung at angles that suggested they were staging a quiet rebellion. The drawer next to the cooker had given up entirely and now sat permanently open, like a mouth caught mid-yawn.

She kicked off her shoes, poured herself a glass of wine that was significantly larger than the one she'd had at dinner, and collapsed onto the sofa. Her cat, a fat ginger tabby named Brutus, materialized from somewhere behind the bookcase and settled on her lap with the air of a creature conferring a great honor.

"I met an iguana tonight," she told him.

Brutus purred. He was not impressed.

Her phone rang. She considered ignoring it, but the caller ID read VICTORIA, and ignoring Victoria was like ignoring a weather event. You could try, but it was going to reach you eventually.

"How was Graham?" Victoria asked, before Charlotte had finished saying hello.

"He brought an iguana to dinner."

"An actual iguana?"

"Named Reginald. It sat on his shoulder the entire time. Like a pirate, but worse, because at least pirates have a certain rugged charm."

There was a pause. Charlotte could hear the sounds of Victoria's house in the background—the clatter of dishes, the distant shrieking of children, the low rumble of her husband Patrick's voice asking someone to please put down the scissors.

"Well," Victoria said carefully, "at least he's passionate about something."

"He's passionate about a reptile, Vic."

"Some people would find that endearing."

"Name one person."

Another pause. "I'm sure there's a community."

Charlotte took a long sip of wine. "I'm done. I'm telling Mum no more setups."

"You've said that before."

"I mean it this time."

"You said that after the toenail man."

"This time I really mean it."

Victoria made a sound that was part sigh, part laugh. "Come to Sunday dinner. Patrick's making his lamb. You can complain in person."

"Will Mum be there?"

"Charlotte. It's Sunday dinner. Of course Mum will be there."

Charlotte closed her eyes. Sunday dinner at Victoria's was a fortnightly ritual that functioned less like a family meal and more like a tribunal. Victoria and Patrick had a beautiful house in Ashford's nicest neighborhood—four bedrooms, a garden with an actual pergola, the kind of kitchen that appeared in magazines. They had two children: Sophie, who was six and terrifyingly perceptive, and Oliver, who was four and mostly interested in putting things in his mouth. They had a golden retriever named Captain. They had, in short, the life that Janet Rowe considered the baseline for human achievement.

Charlotte had a cat and a broken kitchen.

"Fine," she said. "I'll come."

"Wonderful. And Charlotte?"

"What?"

"Wear something nice. Mum's bringing someone."

"Victoria—"

"I tried to stop her. I really did. But she's already told him you're coming."

Charlotte hung up the phone, finished her wine, and seriously considered moving to another country.

---

Sunday arrived with the grim inevitability of a history exam. Charlotte drove to Victoria's house in her ancient Fiat, which made a concerning rattling noise every time she turned left. She was wearing the navy dress again because it was clean and because she'd decided, in a small act of rebellion, that she didn't care.

The house looked, as always, like something from a catalogue. Patrick had strung fairy lights along the front path, because Patrick was the kind of man who strung fairy lights without being asked. Charlotte could see through the front window that the dining table was already set with cloth napkins. Cloth napkins. At a family dinner. This was Victoria's world.

She let herself in through the side door and was immediately tackled by Sophie, who attached herself to Charlotte's legs like a small, blonde barnacle.

"Auntie Charlotte! Mummy said you went on a date with a man who had a dragon!"

"It was an iguana, sweetheart."

"Was it green?"

"Very green."

"Cool." Sophie detached herself and ran back toward the kitchen, where Charlotte could hear the sounds of organized chaos.

The kitchen was the nerve center of Victoria's operations. Patrick stood at the stove, wearing an apron that read KISS THE COOK (a gift from Janet, who had a complicated relationship with irony), stirring something that smelled extraordinary. Victoria was arranging a cheese board with the precision of a military strategist. Oliver was under the table, eating a crayon.

And there, sitting at the kitchen island with a glass of sherry and an expression of determined optimism, was Janet Rowe.

Janet was sixty-one, sharp-eyed, and had the kind of energy that could power a small village. She'd been a dental hygienist for thirty years before retiring, and she approached her daughters' lives with the same clinical focus she'd once applied to plaque removal. Victoria's life required minimal intervention—a bit of polishing here and there, the occasional adjustment. Charlotte's life, in Janet's view, was a cavity that needed urgent attention.

"Darling!" Janet rose from her stool and kissed Charlotte on both cheeks. "You look lovely. Is that the same dress?"

"Hello, Mum."

"I've invited someone for you to meet. His name is Philip—"

"Mum."

"—he's a podiatrist, very stable, no pets that I know of—"

"Mum."

"—and he should be here in about twenty minutes, so if you want to do something with your hair—"

"Mum!" Charlotte said, loudly enough that Oliver looked up from his crayon. "I told you. No more setups."

Janet's face performed a complicated series of expressions, cycling through surprise, hurt, determination, and finally settling on the one Charlotte thought of as the Look—a blend of maternal concern and iron will that had been perfected over three decades of parenting.

"Charlotte, darling. I only want you to be happy."

"I am happy."

"You spent last Saturday night watching a documentary about the Tudors."

"It was a very good documentary."

"You live-texted it to me, Charlotte. Fourteen messages about Anne Boleyn."

Victoria, who had been pretending not to listen while arranging grapes into a spiral, cleared her throat. "Mum, maybe Charlotte has a point. The last few haven't exactly been—"

"The iguana man was an outlier," Janet said firmly. "His mother assured me he was perfectly normal."

"His mother also has an emotional support iguana," Charlotte said. "The whole family has iguanas, Mum. It's an iguana dynasty."

Patrick snorted into his stirring spoon. Victoria shot him a warning look.

The doorbell rang.

"That'll be Philip," Janet said, smoothing her blouse. "Charlotte, please. Just give him a chance. For me."

Charlotte looked at her mother's face—hopeful, relentless, loving in a way that was genuinely exhausting—and felt something inside her snap. Not break, exactly. More like a rubber band stretched too far, finally letting go.

"I can't meet Philip," she said.

Janet's eyebrows rose. "Why not?"

"Because I'm seeing someone."

The kitchen went very quiet. Even Oliver stopped chewing his crayon.

Victoria put down a grape. "You're what?"

"I'm seeing someone. A man. A boyfriend. I have a boyfriend."

The words came out with a confidence that Charlotte did not feel, because they were, in every possible sense, a lie. She did not have a boyfriend. She had a cat, a broken kitchen, and a growing collection of documentary recommendations. But the look on her mother's face—the way it shifted from skepticism to dawning, almost tearful hope—was so immediately, overwhelmingly rewarding that Charlotte couldn't bring herself to take it back.

"A boyfriend," Janet repeated, as though tasting the word. "Since when?"

"A few weeks. It's... new. I didn't want to say anything too early."

"What's his name?" Victoria asked, with the sharp focus of a woman who cross-referenced everything.

"Ben," Charlotte said, because it was the first name that came to mind, plucked from absolutely nowhere. "His name is Ben."

"What does he do?" Patrick asked from the stove, genuinely curious.

"He's... a carpenter. He makes things. With his hands." Charlotte was aware she was describing the concept of carpentry as though she'd only just learned about it. "Furniture and things. Cabinets."

"A carpenter," Janet said. "How did you meet?"

"Through work. A work... thing. A connection through work."

Victoria's eyes narrowed. Charlotte could see the gears turning. "You've never mentioned him."

"Like I said. It's new. I was waiting for the right time."

"Well," Janet said, clasping her hands together with the satisfaction of a woman whose life's work had finally paid off, "you must bring him to Victoria's anniversary party. Three weeks from now. We'll all be there. He can meet everyone."

"Everyone" was a word that, in the Rowe family, carried the weight of a natural disaster. "Everyone" meant aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, Patrick's parents, Patrick's brother who always drank too much, and Great-Aunt Doris, who was ninety-two and said exactly what she thought at all times.

"I don't know if he's ready for—"

"Three weeks," Janet said, and it was not a suggestion.

The doorbell rang again. Patrick went to answer it and returned with Philip the podiatrist, a perfectly pleasant-looking man in a sensible jumper who seemed confused when Janet intercepted him at the kitchen door and said, with genuine warmth, "I'm so sorry, Philip. She's taken. Would you like some lamb?"

Philip stayed for dinner. He was, Charlotte noted with a bitter irony, completely normal. No iguanas. No toenail collections. He talked about his allotment and his book club and his volunteer work at a homeless shelter. He was, by all accounts, a decent human being.

Charlotte ate her lamb and smiled and nodded and tried not to think about the fact that she had three weeks to produce a fictional boyfriend or face a reckoning of biblical proportions.

She drove home with the rattling Fiat and the growing certainty that she had made a terrible mistake.

Brutus was waiting by the door. She picked him up, buried her face in his fur, and said, "I've done something very stupid."

Brutus purred. He was, as always, not impressed.