Head Spinners (16 page)

I sure didn't like this guy. ‘Just give me some time. Okay?'

‘I can call you if someone else shows interest in the watch. How about that?'

‘Thanks,' I said as I wrote down my number.
Thanks for nothing.

As I walked down the hill to the supermarket, I felt a familiar queasiness in my gut. My heart was beating fast too, but not just from walking this time. This was a disaster!

I needed money. Lots of it. But I had no idea how to get it. I didn't have anything worth selling, and I couldn't tell my parents what I had done. How was I going to get the extra money to buy back the watch?

The only thing I knew for sure was that my great-grandmother wasn't happy.

Please don't be angry!
I begged.
Don't make my family sick! I'll get your watch back. I promise. I'll get it back . 
. .

But how?

Back at home I sneaked a quick peek into Dad's room. He was sitting up in bed, sipping lemonade and reading the newspaper. He didn't seem too sick.

But that didn't solve my big problem. How was I going to earn the extra money to buy back the watch? I had the three hundred and fifty dollars from returning the game, and twelve dollars seventy-five from the garage sale.

That made $362.75. I counted it all out just to be sure.

It was all there. But I was still $187.25 short. How could I make that kind of money
without
asking my parents?

I started thinking about selling my stuff online – even stuff that I still wanted. My cricket bat? My clock radio? My complete set of Monster Mayhem books? But what would I say to Mum and Dad when they realised all my things were missing?

Around lunchtime I wandered into the kitchen with an eye for valuable items. We had an old breadmaker in a cupboard somewhere that no one used anymore.

But I didn't get around to opening any cupboards. Lying open on the bench was a worn-out recipe book. I recognised it straight away. It was the one Dad had inherited from my great-grandmother.

A shiver ran up my spine. Was she trying to give me another sign?

I didn't even want to go near the thing, but at the same time it was hard not to take a look. The pages were all tattered and splashed with stains. It smelled ripe and sort of spicy. I looked closer . . .

‘Tony?'

I jumped, half-expecting it to be my great-grandmother. Thank goodness. It was just Mum.

‘Amazing, isn't it,' she said, and delicately turned a page. ‘There's a whole lifetime of recipes in here.'

The next page was covered with a magazine cut-out, folded neatly to fit. It was in Greek, of course. One of the recipes had been crossed out and another had been double-ticked.

‘I'm thinking of making something from here for Easter lunch next week,' said Mum. ‘What do you think? Your dad can help with the translation.'

I nodded, watching the book as Mum kept turning pages. ‘Yeah, good,' I mumbled.

The paper crackled slightly as it was moved. ‘There's meant to be a recipe in here that your great-grandmother invented,' said Mum quietly. ‘I wonder which one it is.'

The next page had an old recipe card stuck on it, but half of the ingredients had been crossed out and others added.

Mum looked at me. ‘Don't let on to your dad that I told you this,' she said, ‘but this recipe book was meant to be for you, Tony. Your dad was worried that you'd be upset and swapped his watch for the recipe book.'

Right. No wonder Dad was feeling sick. My ghost great-grandmother was peeved with him too.

‘Maybe she thought you'd become a great cook just like her!' said Mum. She squeezed my shoulders, then opened a cupboard and started pulling out pots.

I looked at the recipe book again. I was meant to inherit this?

The next page didn't have anything stuck down. It was a recipe written out entirely in pencil. It was faded but still easy to see. My great-grandmother's handwriting.

I couldn't take my eyes off that page. Years ago, on the other side of the world, my great-grandmother had guided a pencil to form each of these letters. Had she been wearing the watch when she wrote them?

A strange feeling came over me then – not fizziness or anything spooky. It was more a kind of sadness. It made me think. Not so long ago, my great-grandmother was cooking, eating, living . . .

In some ways, I didn't blame her for being angry about the watch. It made her seem, well, gutsy, to be standing up for herself.

‘See if you can find any cookie recipes,' came Mum's muffled voice from inside the cupboard. ‘Your dad says she used to sell them to the whole village.'

I flipped a page, then stopped.
She used to sell them to the whole village . . .

Could I do that? Could I make cookies and then sell them?

I wasn't a very good cook, but I knew how to follow a recipe. Would anyone want to buy something that I had cooked?

My mind ticked through the possibilities. Maybe I could do an order form and hand it out at school.

Mum had a pot on the stove and was looking at me funny. ‘Everything okay?' she asked.

‘Yeah,' I nodded, slow at first then faster and faster. Everything wasn't okay
yet
, but maybe it would be soon.

Three days later, I had a pile of order forms and bags of ingredients on the kitchen bench. Operation keep-the-ghost-happy was back on track. There were even more orders than I'd dared hope, enough to make the money I needed and a bit more. But I still had to bake the cookies, and I was nervous about that. I was going to have to make double batches, or even triple, to get all the orders cooked in time.

Dad was feeling better and had helped me translate a biscuit recipe from the old cookbook. He was having trouble with one of the ingredients until Mum walked past, took one look at the English translation and said, ‘It must be baking powder.' I was impressed.

At the back of my mind the whole time I imagined my great-grandmother hanging around – well, hovering, or whatever it was that she did – watching what was going on. She didn't send any more electricity to make everything go weird, though. A good sign, I decided.

That was, until the afternoon when I started to cook.

I felt it as soon as I pulled a mixing bowl out of the cupboard – the fizz of electricity in the air. It hit me with a rush of surprise and confusion. What? Didn't she want me cooking?

I stopped myself from gesturing rudely at thin air. Instead, I humphed loud enough for anyone who might be listening to hear it, and put the bowl back.

Right on cue, the fizziness faded.

I wasn't expecting this. For a while I frowned at the packets of ingredients spread out in front of me. They looked so . . .
ready
to be made into something more than just flour and sugar. I'd even used my own money to buy them.

I put my hands on my hips. My great-grandmother might be bossy. She might be stubborn. But her youngest great-grandson could be stubborn too.

Gritting my teeth I pulled the bowl out of the cupboard again.

Zap
went the air around me. My hair stood on end. Even my jumper felt prickly. I ignored it and picked up a bar of butter. My teeth began to tingle and I started feeling dizzy. My great-grandmother was hitting me with the works.

What was her problem?
I put the butter down and bit my lip.

It wasn't as if she had gone all fizzy on me when I'd printed out the order forms. Or when I'd bought the ingredients. Maybe it wasn't exactly the
cooking
that she didn't like. Maybe it was something as simple as . . . the mixing bowl.

I put the bowl back in the cupboard for the second time, and took a deep breath. With slow, deliberate steps, I moved around the kitchen.

Then, near a corner cupboard, I sensed something. It wasn't a zap this time, more a kind of pulsing around me. It felt warm. An invitation.

As soon as I opened the cupboard, I knew what my great-grandmother was after. It was the electric mixer. Maybe she wasn't opposed to technology all the time. I pulled it out and the air stayed normal.

I went to plug the power cord in . . .

Zap
went the air.

Okay.
I put the cord down. So she wanted me to set it all up
before
I plugged it in.

‘Do you want any help?' Mum was hovering, peering at the electric mixer.

‘Ah . . . not yet,' I said. ‘I'll let you know.'

I had the feeling that I was going to be getting all the help I needed.

At first as I began to mix the ingredients, I kept getting zapped – like little slaps on the wrist – when I did something wrong.
Too much! Too hot! Enough!
But soon I began to get a feel for what my great-grandmother liked in the kitchen – she preferred wooden spoons to plastic ones and liked a low flame on the stove. She especially liked it when I cleaned up as I went along.

It was the best feeling when I shaped my first cookie. I'd rolled out a piece of dough into a fat worm shape, then folded it in half and twisted.

When I placed it on the baking tray, the air pulsed warmly. First try and she was happy!

The cookies all came out perfect, every batch. Even Clio and Poppy hung around being friendly so they could have a taste.

I worked really hard that day and I had to get up early to cook the next morning. But when it was all finished, I had to admit that cooking with my great-grandmother had been great fun.

On Easter Sunday I helped Mum cook lunch. Not because I had to, because I wanted to. I had already used the money I'd earned to buy back the watch. I couldn't stop grinning at that nasty old shop owner as he counted out the money.

Then I brought the watch home and gave it to Dad. ‘Here,' I said. ‘I thought you might like it now.'

Dad was so surprised that he didn't know what to say. He nodded at the watch, then looked up at me with a strange look on his face.

Now it was propped up in a clear plastic case, sitting on the photo shelf in the lounge room. I imagined it looking out at everything that went on.

The watch was back, safe and sound, but I couldn't help checking for signs that my great-grandmother was still around. Now that I . . . well, sort of
knew
her a bit, I didn't want her to go.

But the last time I'd felt her was when I'd put the cookies into bags. She'd sent me on a long hunt to find a red ribbon in the bottom of a drawer. The bags had looked really good tied up with ribbons. But that had been three days before.

As I cooked with Mum I kept bracing myself for a zap on the wrist or a warm pulse. At one point I even chose a plastic spoon to see if anything happened. Nothing did. After a while I swapped the plastic spoon for a wooden one.

I hoped that my great-grandmother was still around, but that wasn't the only reason why I wanted to help cook. Now that I had a feel for it, I didn't want to stop. There was something about the process – the transformation of ingredients – that I found fascinating. The way floppy, sticky cookie dough went firm and crunchy just after being hot for a while. Who was the first person who came up with that idea? How did they work out what would happen? Who first decided to mix flour and egg, and how did they realise that something like yeast would make dough grow bigger and softer with heat? Before people knew how different ingredients worked, it must have been strange trying to cook. The first time someone baked bread in the coals of a fire, it must have seemed like magic.