The Little Christmas Kitchen (19 page)

‘No honestly I didn’t think you were.’ Maddy’s hair was hanging cold and wet around her face.

The guy nodded, his hands thrust in his pockets. ‘Ok then. I’ll go in.’

Maddy pointed inside her flat. ‘Me too.’

‘Ok. Yeah.’ The guy held a hand up in an awkward wave and reached forward to pull the windows shut.

‘Ok. Yeah.’ Maddy said back, but stayed where she was.

‘It was good.’ he added just before the French doors clicked shut. ‘The playing.’

‘Thanks.’

He nodded and then pulled the curtains closed. Maddy watched, her front teeth biting down on her bottom lip, unsure whether she was embarrassed or flattered.

When she went to bed though, her audience of one seemed to somehow make up for anything that happened at the bar.

CHAPTER 23

ELLA

As Ella was walking as fast as she could out the taverna, out into the sheets of rain, swiping it from her eyes and feeling it soaking through her skin, she was furious. The conversation hadn’t gone at all how she’d wanted it to. Her mum was meant to clutch her hand to her chest and beg forgiveness, not turn it back on Ella. As she was marching off she took a moment to acknowledge that the weather was playing its part perfectly, it could almost be a movie. But after that she just felt rubbish. Confused, sad, annoyed. Wet, cold, bedraggled.

She passed a pay phone and thought about phoning her dad but then he’d feel bad and she’d have to then tell him that she was fine and not to feel bad. Calling Veronica would be equally disastrous because she’d say her mother was melodramatic and over-emotional, which was probably true, but then so was Ella. So was Maddy. It ran in the family, along with the unruly hair.

‘Wait.’ She heard a voice call as she kept marching up the hill, no idea where she was going, rain soaking her shoes so they squelched like suckers onto the tarmac. ‘Wait!’

She slicked the water off her face and looked back over her shoulder. Dimitri was jogging up the hill.

‘Go away.’ she shouted.

‘Where are you going?’ he shouted back.

‘Up here.’ she said.

‘You can’t.’ he said with less of a shout now he was nearer. ‘The mud has slipped and the path is blocked that way.’

‘Well fine, I’ll go up there.’ Ella pointed towards where the road forked and kept marching.

‘Wait. Wait. Stop for god’s sake. Just stop. Let me say something.’ He was next to her, his hand reaching for her arm.

She shook him off and kept her eyes fixed forward. ‘We’re not talking, remember.’

‘I know. And I’m perfectly happy with that. I have no wish to talk to you. I just wanted to say one thing.’ He ran forward a couple more steps so he was in front of her jogging backwards.

‘That’s talking.’ she sneered and Dimitri laughed. The rain had soaked through her clothes, her top sticking to her body, her white jeans now a dirty wet grey as her feet kicked up the muddy water that flowed down the hill.

‘Just wait. Wait. Please.’ He held up a hand.

‘What?’ She stopped, hands on her hips, water dripping from the end of her nose.

Dimitri had his sou’wester on, the hood up over his face half obscuring his eyes. He’d rolled his jeans up and was in bare feet. As he started to talk she looked down at his toes, slippery and black with mud.

‘My father always used to say this one thing to us when we were growing up. Courage, he said, Dimitri, is not found in acts of bravery but in acknowledging your fears.’

‘Very profound. Can I go now?’ Ella said.

He laughed again.

‘Don’t go, Ella. Go back.’

‘Piss off.’

‘Honestly.’ he reached out and put his hands on her arms. ‘Go back. Go back and confront her.’

‘No.’ She shook her head, felt the rain get harder, painful as it slammed down on them. ‘Why should I?’

He shrugged. ‘To be brave.’

‘I don’t want to be brave.’

He made a face as if to say that wasn’t true. ‘Well, to be happy.’

Ella shrugged his hands off her arms and pushed past him to carry on up the path. Ahead of her were olive trees, branches shaking with the force of the water, orangey brown mud running in rivulets over the stone walls dividing up the grove. The strings of Christmas lights bounced as the rain hit them.

Dimitri didn’t follow her, but stayed where he was and she heard him sigh, exasperated, then shout, ‘Your husband is having an affair, you’ve run away to the family you claim to hate and your mum thinks you’ve never truly been yourself. What else have you got to lose, Ella?’

‘How dare you!’ She spun round, wide eyed and shocked. Then marched back down the slope, her shoes slipping as she tried to attempt downhill, so she slid a couple of paces, having to right herself with her arms. ‘How dare you.’ she said again when she was closer to him.

His eyes glinted with humour. ‘I think you’re afraid to find out that what you think about your mum isn’t actually the way it is. Because if that does happen then everything you’ve done for the last however many years will have been a complete waste of time. I saw you with that guy. What’s his name? Max? It was all show. All bravado. He was a prat.’

‘Oh fuck you. We’re not even meant to be talking.’ Ella scoffed, but she had been struck – he’d got her, the words had penetrated her skin. Sparked the fear that she had carried that perhaps, as one of the artists had said in the cafe the other night, there were two sides to every story. That, like the view out to the frothy waves, and the slate grey sea and the charcoal sky, not everything was black and white.

‘Talk to her, Ella.’ Dimitri said, more softly.

‘Why do you care?’

‘Because she’s my friend.’ He nodded back towards the taverna, rubbing his hands together against the cold of the rain. ‘And, well,’ he glanced up at her from beneath his hood, a slight grin on his lips, and added, ‘I’ve always quite fancied you.’

‘Bullshit.’

He shrugged a smile. ‘It’s true.’

‘Well.’ Ella was perplexed. Overcome. Couldn’t get any of her thoughts into place, predominantly furious about his earlier outburst when he’d shouted that her husband was having an affair but caught off guard by what he’d just admitted. ‘Well.’ she said again.

He just stood there looking at her, water dripping from the peak of his sou’wester hood.

Ella had lost all her words.

As they both stood there with nothing to say, a great wall of lightning lit up the horizon followed by thunder that boomed like an earthquake.

‘We need to get inside.’ Dimitri shouted over the noise.

‘Fine.’ she shouted back.

‘Shall we go back to the taverna?’

‘Yes. Fine.’

He held out his hand.

‘I don’t need your hand. We’re still not talking.’ she shouted and slid-slipped her way down the slope as the muddy water rippled past her feet, the sheet lightning flashed, the thunder roared, thinking about her mum back in the warmth of the kitchen, the smells of rosemary and garlic infusing the air, and trying her best to ignore the fact that Dimitri had just said he fancied her.

CHAPTER 24

MADDY

Maddy was woken by a shaft of light streaming through a gap in the curtains right into her eyes. She got up to yank the material closed, to stay in the cocoon of dark oblivion, to forget she had to go back to the bar tonight, that she was lonely, that she was exposed as naive and innocent, and to top it all, that she still didn’t have her suitcase, but her eye was caught by the sliver of view.

Outside the street was inches thick with white.

Jumping out of bed, Maddy stood with her hand holding the fabric of the curtain, looking out at the piles of snow teetering on the lip of the black railings, and branches that bowed under the weight of frosting. A spider’s web across a panel in the window shimmered with beads of ice like diamonds. On the window sill was a little trail of bird footprints, on the pavement a freshly built snowman, twigs for hair and sweet wrappers for eyes. A kid in red gloves was throwing snowballs at passing cars. Icicles hung like daggers along the eaves of the building opposite. All around it was like the world had been coated in marshmallow. The sun that had woken her was dazzling off ice crystals in the air and making the snow sparkle like the crest of the waves back home. Maddy was entranced. The glass in the window fogged as she pressed her nose against it to stare out at the wonderland of white. Never in her life had she seen anything quite like it. A world of silence where glitter danced in the air.

‘Maddy? Hello?’ The sound of Margery’s voice accompanied by a familiar sharp rap on the door made Maddy tear her eyes away from the scene.

She jogged over to the door and yawned. ‘Hi Margery.’

‘Are you not up?’ Margery said, glancing at her wrist.

She seemed to Maddy to be all dressed up in soft leather boots, and a woollen knee length navy dress. There were pearls looped around her neck and a broach in the shape of a basket of flowers pinned just above her right breast. Maddy fleetingly wondered if they were real rubies and sapphires as she ignored the comment about getting up late and said, ‘What can I do for you, Margery?’

‘Well you see–’ Margery said, turning her back to Maddy, ‘I wanted you to zip me up.’ She pointed to where the back of her dress was half open and did a little act to show how she couldn’t reach any further to do it up.

‘Yeah, no problem.’ Maddy leant forward and zippered the teeth together. ‘There you go.’

‘Oh thank you.’ Margery said, then smoothed the dress down with her hands. ‘That’s lovely. Thank you.’

Maddy waited but Margery didn’t say anything else, just ran her fingers down her sleeve, feeling the material and straightening the cuff.

‘You look very smart, Margery. Are you going somewhere nice?’

Margery glanced up, ‘Oh no. Nowhere. I just–’ she paused, smoothed down the material again. ‘Well. I haven’t worn this dress for years. My husband gave it to me.’

‘It looks lovely.’ Maddy said with a yawn that she tried to disguise, wondering if this was going to be a long chat or not and hoping she could cut it short so she could creep back into bed.

‘I haven’t been able to zip it up on my own.’ Margery said, her mouth tilting up into a half smile that seemed suddenly to make her vulnerable and shy.

‘Oh.’ Maddy frowned, realising in that instant that Margery had no one else. Maybe had acquaintances at her club or something like that, but no one who helped her, who came round and saw her. It was just her in her flat. And without Maddy she hadn’t been able to wear her dress. As she wondered for how many years it had hung unworn in the wardrobe, Maddy stepped to the side and said, ‘Do you want to come in for breakfast?’ Awake now, pulling her hair into a bun and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she added, ‘I can make pancakes with maple syrup and bacon.’

As she said it the door opposite opened and Hugo came out in his suit with his briefcase and gym bag again, and drawled, ‘Sounds like heaven.’

‘You can have some too if you like?’ Maddy shrugged. ‘You’re more than welcome.’

‘Couldn’t possibly.’ Hugo waved a hand in dismissal.

‘Of course you could.’ Maddy told him. ‘Come on.’ She ushered Margery inside and then held the door for Hugo. ‘It’s only pancakes and a chat!’ she said as though he was scared to come inside.

Hugo cocked his head, his brow raised and then with a bemused laugh headed inside, ‘Ok then, why not? I tell you though, I like my bacon cremated.’

Maddy followed them in, set them up at the big table and went about mixing up batter and popping the pods into the Nespresso machine for the coffees. Margery and Hugo had absolutely nothing to say to each other without Maddy’s intervention, so she fired off some questions in the hope that they might pick up a thread of conversation here or there and let her get on with the cooking. As luck would have it, Hugo’s upcoming golfing holiday seemed to spark Margery’s attention and they were up and running by the time Maddy was pouring the first ladle of creamy batter into the pan.

As the pancake bubbled and Maddy was slotting in the next Nespresso capsule there was another knock on the door. ‘Margery, can you get that?’ she asked.

Margery stood up and, brushing the creases out of her dress, seemed quite delighted to be given the honour.

When she came back in she looked distinctly unimpressed as she was followed by a middle aged lady with thin black hair and a shelf-like bosom encased in a tight black turtle-neck. ‘I don’t mean to intrude–’ the woman said, ‘But was someone playing the guitar last night? I just, well, it was very late and I was trying to sleep. I’m not saying it wasn’t lovely or anything but it was very late.’

‘That was me.’ Maddy said, glancing up from where she was flipping the pancake with a deft toss of the pan. ‘I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again. It was late and totally inappropriate.’

‘Oh.’ The woman gave an unsure half smile, seemed to deflate as she exhaled, almost as if she was geared up for much more of a fight.

‘Would you like some pancakes and maple syrup?’ Maddy asked, scooping the first pancake out with a fish slice.

‘Oh no. No. I couldn’t trouble you.’ the woman said, shifting from one foot to the other.

‘It’s no trouble. I’m Maddy. Please, have a seat.’ She waved the fish slice towards the table, ‘This is Margery and Hugo, my neighbours.’

‘Well I–’ The woman glanced towards the door but seemed caught as to whether it would be ruder to stay or go. Clearly deciding that the more polite option was to stay and eat, she scuttled over to pull out a chair at the end of the big table. When she sat she pushed her hands under her thighs, like she was trying to be as unobtrusive as possible so she didn’t take up too much space in the world. ‘Hello. Hi. I’m Stella Cummings. I live upstairs.’ She looked up at the ceiling then after a nervous pause said to Hugo, ‘I think I’ve seen you sometimes, leaving in the morning.’

‘Hi, yeah.’ Hugo said, arm hooked round the back of his chair, iPhone in his hand as he checked his emails. ‘I haven’t seen you, sorry. I don’t know anyone in the block.’

‘I think I’ve seen you.’ said Margery with a tight nod.

Maddy watched them all, trying to hide a smile at their ridiculous awkwardness as she dished up the thick, fluffy pancakes, crisp streaky bacon, charred for Hugo, and lashings of maple syrup. ‘Here you go.’ she said, balancing the plates up her arms and depositing them in front of her guests. ‘Enjoy.’