Recipes for Melissa (2 page)

Twenty five years old? You will be wondering why now? Why wait so long? Oh my darling – I did think about the usual milestones. Eighteen? Or twenty one? And then I remembered the complete state I was in at eighteen and how twenty one never felt grown-up at all.

And the whole idea of this – the point of it – is to be really open and to talk to you woman to woman.

And so I decided to pick the age I truly grew up myself. Twenty five. The age I had you, Melissa...

God. How I wish I could see you. Wish that I was just the slightest bit religious. Believed in heaven. Something. Anything.

Anyway. Whatever. I have been careful over the details, in case you are wondering. The plan is to leave this book in the care of a very good lawyer who will be instructed to check that both you and Dad are fine before this comes to you. This way I can write – knowing you will only be reading if you are both OK.

I am imagining shorter hair. Did you get it cut? Secretly I hope not, but I rather think it will suit you, however you wear it. You have that sort of face.

Oh God. I’m rambling already.

So – yes. I picked twenty five, Melissa. The age our story began. And the age, I hope, that will see you truly ready for the things that I need to say to you.

Grown-up honesty.

How weird is this? Woman to woman, as you sleep next door. Leg lolling out the bed, with Elizabeth clutched in your arm. Do you still have her? I hope so. Such a pretty doll and you do so love her.

Goodness. Rambling again. Sorry…

Focus, Eleanor. So what then is the first thing – the first really important thing that I need to share? And now this sounds like preaching and it’s not meant to be that either. Oh, Melissa. It’s just there is all this stuff.

So. Much.
‘Stuff’.

I guess you must make of it what you will. And I will trust my gut and start with the simplest but most important piece of advice I feel that I can give you, my darling girl. Which is how every single day of my life, I wish more than anything on this planet …

2

ELEANOR – 1994

Eleanor heard Max’s footsteps on the stairs and quickly tucked the book into the top drawer of her desk.

‘You home already?’ She tried not to sound flustered as he kissed her on the forehead before sitting on the bed, alongside the desk, which doubled as a dressing table – a homey mess of paper and envelopes and old ink bottles which she collected from car boots and junk shops. A myriad of colours and shapes made of thick glass, which in the summer months caught the morning sunshine to sparkle patterns on the wall which Eleanor loved.

‘So how did it go?’ He was swinging his right foot to and fro very fast as he spoke. To. Fro. To fro. He had very much wanted to go with her today but she had point-blank refused.

‘What?’ Eleanor twisted her mouth to the side, then tilted her head as she put the lid carefully back on her fountain pen.

Her husband still looked like a boy. It was his hair. Unruly curls which had never learned to behave. Often these days she looked at him and tried to burn all of these images into her brain so that she could pull them out at random when he was away at work. The mad hair. The way he fiddled with his hands when he was nervous.

‘The consultant, Eleanor. The trial. Did we get the trial?’ He was playing with his wedding ring, moving it up and down between the knuckle and the base of the finger.

It was only in that moment that she realised that she had made the terrible mistake of letting it matter so much. That tiny flicker of hope. She had tried so hard to chant the mantra of the ‘long shot’. The ‘outside chance’. To remind herself that the odds of her case being a fit for the drug trial were slim.

As indeed they had turned out to be.

She shook her head fast from side to side, fighting the hot stab at the back of her eyes and then closing them, not wanting to see his.

‘
Shit,
’ a long exhalation of breath and again he was pacing. Left, then right across the room. Left. Right. ‘So we appeal. Yes? There must be some appeal. Some second opinion? They surely don’t let one consultant play God over this?’

It was the last option. A tiny splinter of hope. Two letters. Consonant. Vowel. And it was over. No.

They were all so very sorry, Mrs Dance, but she had not been suitable for the trial…

She had known that Max would not accept it.

When finally she opened her eyes, he was sitting on the window seat pinching his bottom lip with his thumb and index finger. Over and over. So hard that the lips were turning white where the blood was disturbed.

‘Don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself. There’s no appeal.’

He continued pinching and then he got up suddenly to walk into the en-suite shower room where he ran water and splashed his face.

Then very quickly he was back in the room, pacing yet again.

‘America. I read somewhere that there are new things in America. We should go. I can take a sabbatical...’

‘Stop it, Max. Please. I am not taking Melissa to America. You need to sit down.’ She patted the space beside her.

He paused for a time, fiddling with the buckle on his belt before sitting right next to her on the wide wooden stool in front of the desk-cum-dressing table, leaning his head onto her shoulder now as they watched each other through the mirror. Embarrassed then at his reflection – trying to smooth down his hair.

‘You know what I’ve decided. Please, Max.’

And now it was his turn to close his eyes.

‘No, Eleanor. If you stop everything. Stop all the chemo and all of it—’

‘It won’t make any difference. All that shit.’

‘But if you stop
everything
—’

‘You heard what they said. Buy an extra month or two at most. So what’s the point?’

The pinching again.

She moved her hand up to still his own and clasped her fingers through his.

‘I’m tired, Max. I just want a bit of normal. For Melissa.
Please.
’

He looked away to the window and then back.

‘She’s not going to get normal – Eleanor. You know that. She’s going to get a whole heap of shit.’

‘So let the heap of shit wait. Because it’s coming anyway.’ She kissed him on the forehead and then tilted her own head in so that their skin was just touching.

‘It’s the only thing left I have to give her. A little bit of normal. Please? For me. And for Melissa?’ She was thinking of a blanker page. No more appeals and letters. No more hiding from Melissa – fixing sleepovers so she wouldn’t see her after the treatments. ‘No more, Max.
Please
.’

He would not look at her. He looked instead at the wall, leg swinging faster and faster again until she reached out to hold his chin and to turn his face back towards hers. His eyes at first off on some other planet, buying tickets to America. And writing letters to consultants and health boards and strident appeal letters over obscure drug trials…

‘Please, Max.’

And then coming slowly back to her. Eyes which filled her heart and broke it all at once. Eyes which at last said that he could not say no to her.

Would not say no to her.

3

MELISSA 2011

‘You are seriously not taking that suitcase.’

‘What’s wrong with this case?’

‘You really need me to tell you?’

She frowned.

‘It’s too big, Melissa. Way too big.’

Melissa looked at the case and then back at Sam, pulling her head back into her neck.

‘And please don’t do that,’ he was smiling. ‘You look like a tortoise.’

Normally she would tease him right back. Poke out her tongue. But not today.

‘It won’t fit in the car, Mel.’

‘Oh don’t be silly. Of course it will fit in the car. How do you think I got it home,’ Melissa continued to place neat piles of clothes on their double bed – T-shirts in one, jeans in another and dresses, folded perfectly, into a third pile. For some reason she was now unfolding the dresses and starting the whole process again. She was trying not to think about this morning. About the book.

‘I don’t mean our car. Or your dad’s. I mean the hire car at the other end.’

Melissa now tilted her head to reappraise the grey, shiny case. In truth, she hadn’t thought about the hire car. Shit. She tried to imagine the boot of a Clio. Or was it a Fiesta? ‘It’ll be fine. Surely? Anyway – this way we share.’

Sam craned both arms over his head. ‘Why can’t we just take two soft bags as usual?’

Melissa stopped then, blushing and readjusting the band on her ponytail. There was an awkward pause; both looking away.

‘Oh – I get it,’ the penny dropping as Sam’s expression finally changed. ‘So – this is to reassure me?’

‘Sorry? I don’t know what you mean.’ She did.

And now they were both staring at the case.

‘You don’t need to do this, Melissa.’

‘What?’

‘Gestures. We talked this all through the other night. Closed it down. I thought we were OK.’

‘We are OK.’

‘Right. Good. So you’re not pissed off that I asked you to marry me. And I’m not pissed off that you had a panic attack.’

Melissa tightened her lips.

‘You do know I didn’t mean now. Get married now. I mean, I completely realise you’re young still. I just meant get engaged. Have a plan. I honestly didn’t mean to put pressure on. To…’

They both continued to stare at the case.

‘Look – I borrowed it from Lou. If you really hate it, I’ll give it back to her. I just thought it would be more convenient. You know – one case. It’s no big deal, Sam. Honestly. If you would rather we pack separately as usual, we can pack separately.’

Each of them stopped then, conscious of the other’s breathing. It had been like this for the last forty eight hours. Ever since the debacle of the birthday dinner.

The ring box.

Melissa had handled it very, very badly and was more sorry than she could explain. She had been winded in the restaurant – just as she had been winded this morning in James Hall’s office – so that everything had come out all wrong. She hadn’t seen it coming. Not at all, which she realised, looking back now, was naive of her. OK – so she knew that he was smitten. That he had been smitten pretty much from the off. But Christ – wasn’t she now smitten too?

She looked at Sam now and could see that other, younger version. Longer hair – ever so slightly sun-bleached. Sawn-off shorts. Awkward teenage smile but perfect teeth. She could feel that pull in her stomach – the strange contraction that happened every single time she turned a corner to catch sight of him unexpectedly.

And OK – so it had taken her longer than him to see it. Believe in it. Their story the cliché of kids growing up together; that same smile across so many rooms across so many years. But Melissa truly loved Sam now, even if this fact paradoxically and inexplicably frightened her. So was it really so terrible that she wasn’t into the whole marriage thing? She had tried so hard to explain in the restaurant. Why couldn’t they just be in love? Why did they need a piece of paper? It wasn’t personal.

‘Not personal, Mel? You don’t know if you want to marry me – and you think that’s not personal?’
He had looked completely broken.

She really couldn’t find the words to explain it because she didn’t even understand it herself.

And now Melissa could not help it. The picture of the padded envelope. Her mother at a desk.

Black ink…

‘So what was the solicitor thing all about?’ He had brightened his tone for her. She looked at his face as he changed the subject, and deliberately his expression also, and felt it. That sharp pull of a muscle, right in the bed of her stomach.

‘Sorry?’ She turned away to smooth and refold a shirt now, hoping that he would not notice that her hand was ever so slightly trembling.

‘You said it was today. The solicitor thing. The mystery letter. So what was it? A will hunter like you thought?’

‘Yes it was a will hunter. But – it wasn’t me. Wrong family. Long shot; trying to trace someone from some family in America.’

Melissa had no idea why she did not want to tell Sam about the book. She had read just two pages. Overwhelmed.

Her mother had got one thing right at least. She was in complete shock. So badly needing now to press pause. To go on this holiday and find some freeze-frame; some place to work out how on earth, on top of everything else, to hold on to him. How to show this lovely and much too kind man that the fact she wasn’t sure about the whole marriage thing did not mean that she did not love him. And yes – if she were honest – it was precisely the reason she had borrowed a case the size of a small country. Stupid. Clumsy. Panicking.

‘I can take the ring back if you like.’

‘Oh, Sam.’ In the restaurant she had asked for time to think about it. Begged him not to be hurt by this.

‘It’s OK. I’m fine about it, Melissa.’

‘Really?’ She sat down on the bed, a fresh wave of guilt washing over her.

‘Yeah – really.’ He turned to look at her properly. Not fine. ‘I got carried away.’

‘It’s not that I don’t care. You do know how much I care, Sam?’

He nodded very quickly – the kind of rapid nodding which didn’t mean yes at all.

Melissa stood back up and for a moment then was very, very still – the familiar tightening in her chest, wishing she could say something which would trigger in him the same happiness he so effortlessly triggered in her. But when she paused like this; tried to analyse what it was she was supposed to feel or to say to make things OK for him, it just made things worse. Made her feel so inadequate and guilty, as if something inside her was jammed. Yes; that was it.

As if something was
jammed.

She turned away again and continued sorting the items for packing into their neat little piles. Melissa, who felt safer and calmer in an environment of complete order – all her clothes hanging right this minute in neat sections in the wardrobe, according to colour and length.