Recipes for Melissa (18 page)

‘I can come with you, if you like. In fact I’d like to.’ Now he was sitting on the edge of the bed, undoing the top button of his shirt beneath his tie. Eleanor felt something inside her shift. It was the idiosyncrasies. Doing up his shirt, putting on his tie and then undoing the top shirt button afterwards. Putting his tea cup down alongside the saucer after the first sip – never back on the china, for a reason he had failed to adequately explain. Something to do with drips. Tearing paper napkins into long matching strips when they were out for coffee. Always firing the central locking device at the car twice. Always scanning a new room for flies. Always forgetting something.

All these things killed her because they had once upon a time annoyed her and now with every repetition she asked the same question.

How many more times?

‘I’d honestly rather you go to work. I’ll be in and out in five minutes today. No point you disrupting your day.’

‘And you promise you won’t be talked into something.’

‘I won’t be talked into something.’

He kissed her on the mouth, closing his eyes and doing what he always did these days, leaving his lips touching hers that little bit longer. One second. Two. Three

‘Go. You’ll be late.’

‘Right. I’ll ring.’

‘Just go.’

She heard him march then into Melissa’s room to wake her, listened to her daughter’s response –
G
o away, Daddy
– then his footsteps on the stairs. The jangle of keys. The front door. She waited. Two minutes and the key was back in the lock. Swearing.

‘Left a book. Sorry. ‘

There was the sound of scrabbling about, more swearing and then finally the slam of the front door for the second time. Eleanor smiled.

‘You awake still, Melissa? Come on into Mummy’s bed.’

Melissa was like Max in the mornings, needing a period of adjustment. Trying to pitch for cooperation in the form of breakfast, teeth or dressing until she was through this zone was entirely counterproductive. So this was the preferred sequence. Max would wake her. Eleanor would pause. Then Eleanor would call her through to do her hair quietly in her bed, by which time Melissa would have surfaced sufficiently to face the day.

It was not only practical but for Eleanor now a highlight; the silent brushing of her daughter’s hair as she sat, hugging her knees with her chin resting on the same. Half asleep still.

Melissa had what Eleanor liked to call suggestible hair. It would quite easily be dried straight and silky – calmed and straightened with the application of heat. But left to dry naturally it had a soft curl. Shiny, dark hair with glints of autumn in the right light.

‘You have lovely hair.’

‘You always say that, Mummy. Every day.’

‘Ponytail?’

Melissa merely shrugged through a yawn and so Eleanor gently continued, wrapping a black velvet hair tie from the bedside table around her wrist and raking the brush through her daughter’s hair – stroke after stroke.

‘So have you got used to Mummy’s short hair yet?’

Another shrug.

‘Well it’s very easy to look after, though I think we should keep yours long. Much too beautiful to cut – not until you are very much older.’

She could feel her daughter yawn again as she took the hair tie from her wrist and carefully wrapped it twice around the ponytail to secure it firmly.

‘Ow.’

‘Sorry, darling. There. That’s done,’ she then hugged her daughter tight. ‘We should teach Daddy how to do your hair.’

‘I don’t want Daddy to do it.’

‘Well. Maybe he would like to. Just sometimes.’

‘I’d have to get up earlier.’

Eleanor laughed. ‘No, darling. You wouldn’t have to get up earlier.’

She made pancakes as a treat with lemon and sugar and just thirty minutes later watched Melissa disappear across the playground, turning for a final wave.

How many more times?

Eleanor had an hour before her meeting and so fired up the computer to see what she could find out. Max was the computer whizz in the house. She the dinosaur. Recently he had been trying to explain the new internet search function but she had been cynical – a wet blanket, certain it would all be the death knell for proper libraries and intellectual integrity. But now Eleanor needed it and so struggled to remember the instructions Max had given her. She tried a few keywords as he had explained. The gene names. BRCA-1 and BRCA-2. A number of pages were slowly listed and Eleanor began to read – her heart sinking.

She had no idea that things had come this far. But the more she read now, the more she understood why Dr Palmer was interested in her case.

The latest work seemed to be suggesting that the faulty gene they had found could be carried silently, not just by women but by men too. Eleanor was an only. Her mother had no sisters – only two brothers. So what did that mean? For the risks? For their gene tree? That the only two women in the tree for three generations had got ‘unlucky’?

The article she found suggested only families with multiple cancers pointing to a link or gene fault were likely to be offered counselling and testing in the future. This wasn’t yet widespread. Mainstream.

Eleanor turned off the computer and took out her journal for Melissa. She had been pasting in old family pictures and a very basic family tree with some anecdotes from her mother. She turned then to the back of the journal where she had started a new, separate section on motherhood.

Eleanor realised that a young Melissa would have very little interest in this part initially, which was why she had put it at the back. She remembered herself at 25. Goodness – parenthood drew such a line in the sand.

The before. The afterwards.

It also divided your world into two sets of people. Those with children who understood. And those without who did not. It was not a judgemental thing – suggesting that one group was better or worse than the other. Just a fact.

Until you had paced a house in the early hours with a colicky child, you did not know. Until you had watched a nurse put a needle into the arm of your baby, half wanting to punch them as your child howled, you did not know. You might guess and you might imagine how all of this might feel, but you could not know.

And so she was writing this section on parenting because she hated to think of Melissa’s future. A mother without a mother. A mother with no maternal compass.

Also, it was quite simply the loveliest part to write. Practical tips on the colic and the teething and how to survive the madness of no sleep
(remember that sleep
deprivation is used as a form of torture; it is normal to feel insane
). Brutal honesty about the moment when the sheer tiredness of those early days made you ask wicked questions of yourself. The shameful daydreaming over whether you had really done the right thing. Whether you would ever again feel in control of your life? The hallucinating about the old days. Long baths and reading books.

But always in the end….
the joy, Melissa
. The indescribable joy. That smell. The ache of your arm as the baby slept in the crook of it. The sound of the sucking as they fed. The eye contact.

Goodness. She had almost forgotten that. The eye contact.

Of the lurch inside every single time your child caught your eye, from the playground, from the front of a school stage or from a climbing frame in the park.

I get that pull, that lurch, over you, my darling girl. Every day. And one day, I hope that you will know exactly what I am wittering on about.

Because, I promise you, it will suddenly become what you live for …

Shit. Eleanor checked the clock and realised she would have to hurry. Too often it was like this. Tired. Hurrying. Late.

She phoned the oncologist’s secretary to reassure that she was on her way – ten minutes late at the very outside – and then grabbed her coat, tucking the journal beneath her underwear in the second drawer down; pausing just a moment to look at the title to wonder if it gave the wrong impression? Worrying about keeping this from Max and what he would think in the future and realising also that within these few short weeks the whole idea and purpose of this book for Melissa was beginning to change.

22

MAX – 2011

Max was about fifteen minutes early as he pulled into his parking slot and so listened to the latest on the Greek Euro crisis. The second bailout was finally agreed. A fifty per cent reduction in the Greek debt and a trillion Euro rescue fund.

Various European leaders were eloquently upbeat in their sound bites but Max shook his head. They seemed to be forgetting that Greece was still broke. Bailout or no bailout.

He snapped off the radio and turned to the back seat to discover that the green folio of assignments which he was one hundred per cent sure he had put alongside his keys was impossibly not there.

Shit.

He turned and stretched awkwardly to feel around the floor. Must have fallen into the well behind the driver’s seat. But no.

Shit and damn and fuck. He had left the bloody assignments plus his feedback at home. And he hadn’t updated it online. He was swearing some more, checking his watch to work out if there was time to dash home after his first lecture, when he turned to open the door to feel his body jolt half out of his skin.

‘Sorry. Sorry.’

She was blushing as Max fumbled for the electric window control, heart pounding.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you, Max. It’s just I saw the car. And I wanted…’

She was wearing running clothes. A black vest with purple stripes and charcoal sweat pants.

Max had not the foggiest idea where to look. Jesus. He thought she ran on Wednesday lunchtimes.

‘I thought you ran on Wednesday lunchtimes.’

‘Oh. Yes.’ She pulled her head back – apparently surprised that he had remembered this. ‘I do. Wednesday lunchtimes. But I’m getting myself into a paddy about this half marathon. Not ready. Easier to do the extra training here and use the showers before I start.’

‘Right.’

‘Look. Max. About the other day—’

‘Please. It’s absolutely fine, Anna. If you’re happy with the transfer. With Sarah as your new mentor, then we’re good.’

‘I didn’t mean that actually. Although we’ve had a meeting – Sarah and me – and I think you’re right. We’re a good fit. She’s very keen. Very switched on.’

‘Good. Good. That’s good.’

‘But that’s not what I wanted to apologise about.’

‘Look. It’s fine. Anna. Please. We talked it all through at lunch. All good.’

She had her hands on her hips, looking at the ground, and then stepping back as he put the window up and got out of the car, checking his watch as if he were suddenly running late.

‘You in lectures all morning, Max?’

‘Yes, actually. Until lunch. Got to keep an eye on this new bailout too.’

‘Of course. Look. I’m tied up this morning too. But I was wondering. Well. If you could find a window to grab a sandwich or something again later?’

‘Oh right.’

‘I felt terrible. The way you rushed off. Me putting my size sevens in.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Look. I have something I want to ask you.’

‘Oh right.’

She was smiling now. Not blushing any longer and looking him directly in the eye. ‘It would make me feel a whole lot better if you could spare ten minutes. This lunchtime?’

He smiled back. ‘Well,’ he checked his watch, not noticing what it said. ‘There’s no need. For any embarrassment, I mean. But if you’d like to.’

‘Twelve thirty? Same place?’

‘Fine. Yes. Why not.’
To hell with the folder.

And then she turned, waving her hand as she headed back to the main sports complex – Max watching her perfect bottom moving side to side as she jogged off.

He tried to look away but could not. Did this make him sexist? This fascination – or was it now an obsession – with Anna?

Oh, bloody hell. He wanted to ask her on a date. He really, really wanted to ask her on a date.

Three hours later and he was en route to the bistro, chanting it in his head.
Do not ask
her out, Max. Do not.

Think of Deborah. Think of the fallout of that fiasco.

A perfectly lovely woman. A whole year and then suddenly she had assumed that things would move on. He had not thought it through; got so used to Sophie and the no-strings agenda he had completely forgotten that was what other people expected.

He had decided to be five minutes late for Anna – picturing himself strolling up to her at the table.
Sorry. Had he kept her waiting?

He had never been very good at sitting on his tod in public places. Even with a newspaper, he felt exposed. Eleanor said that he hummed when he was nervous, though Max never noticed this.
You OK, darling? You’re humming.

Don’t hum
, he said to himself as he checked his watch – five minutes late exactly –turning the corner towards the wide entrance to the Litebite.

She was already sitting at the same table they had used the other day – the menu in her hand, and what was sweet and made him feel guilty as he watched her for just a moment before she looked up, was that she looked uncomfortable herself. Picking up the menu for a moment and then placing it back in the little stainless steel stand. Checking the clock on the wall. Then her own watch.

‘Hello, Anna. Sorry I’m a tad behind. I always hate sitting waiting. Have you been here long?’

‘Just five minutes.’

‘So do you know what you want? I’ll probably order my heart attack again. Bit pushed for time so best I order straight off.’

‘No. My idea so my shout today,’ she stood up.

‘No please.’

And now it felt a little farcical and they did the dance over the bill, Max worrying that it was sexist to insist and so he sat down ‘Baked spud again with the bacon and a cup of earl grey.’

‘Milk?’

‘Full cream, please.’

A few minutes later and she was back at the table with the drinks and a ticket for their food which she slipped under the metal menu holder, smiling.