The Little Christmas Kitchen (10 page)

Sophie paused, a strip of courgette dripping with batter sizzled over the hot oil in her pan, and glanced up at Ella. ‘You’re getting good.’ she said, her head cocked to one side.

Ella shrugged, felt embarrassed by the praise. ‘When I’m given a job I try to do it the best I can.’

Her mum dropped the courgette into the oil and it hissed, drowning out what she said in reply, but Ella thought it was, ‘You always have.’ But decided that was wishful thinking as such a comment hardly fit in with their current dynamic.

As the chill of the night descended, Alexander wound down the storm shutters and encased them all in walls of plastic, heaters glowing down from the roof and the coloured lights stilling as the plastic blocked out the breeze. The artists ordered saganaki and Alexander came over with plates of halloumi sizzling up his arm then, enjoying the showmanship of it, sloshed the cheese with brandy and with a quick flick of his lighter shot the whole lot up in flames. The boat party looked on, gasping with envy, and a whole new batch was ordered for their table.

When her mum was called out for praise by the guests, Ella said that she’d plate up the desserts.

‘Are you sure?’ Sophie paused, debating whether to let Ella loose on her tray of crisp, sticky baklava.

Ella nodded. ‘Honestly, I’ll be fine. I’ll be good at it. I promise.’

Her mum looked at her then laughed and Ella didn’t know whether it was because she looked so desperate or because they had perhaps bonded over a hard night’s work. When her mum shook her head and walked out, insecurity made Ella plump for the former.

As her big knife sliced and cracked through the honey drenched pastry, Ella found herself remembering summers on the island before the divorce. Her aunt and cousin with them as they all sat under the vine canopy of their sprawling holiday villa, licking sweet nutty baklava off their fingers. Fat, drunk wasps buzzed from grape to grape as her grandfather swiped them out the way and argued with her dad about the cricket. Her mum’s mum would fly out as well and her great-grandmother who lived on the island would sit in a chair and chastise her for not visiting enough and check that she was keeping up with traditions. Was she making Tsoureki at Easter? When her granny said she had bought it from a Greek shop in South Kensington, along with the traditional red eggs, her great-grandmother had sucked in her breath and done a sharp shake of her head. Her aunt and her mum had stood laughing like schoolgirls, proud of their own ability to say that yes, they did make their own Tsoureki and, unlike their mum – who was shaking her head, eyes closed, unable to believe her own kids were stitching her up – were happily passing the traditions down to their own children.

Ella would watch them all laughing, would listen to the shouting and see the hugging and the boisterous arguments and the swigging of ouzo and the eventual dancing and never presume that this would just be a slice of her life. She had taken such happiness for granted, unaware of its transience.

The baklava all cut, Ella reached over and picked up the stack of turquoise dessert plates and dragged them forward across the counter. But as she started to plate up she made the mistake of licking the finger she had used to push the baklava onto the plate and in doing so ignited taste buds that had lain dormant for years. She could barely stop herself then using the tip of the knife to tease out a tiny gooey cube of baklava for herself and taking it between finger and thumb she popped it into her mouth. The taste was so sensational she had to close her eyes as the sticky honey glued her teeth and the sugary, flakey pastry dissolved on her tongue. As she chewed it was like she was tumbled backwards by the memory of the flavour. To the Christmases when they would have plates of it with strong coffee mid-morning as they opened their presents, the birthday parties when her mum would make it for all her friends, the times her and Maddy would sneak down to the fridge and see how much they could eat before they were sick on sugar. But then to the little white boxes of it tied with blue ribbon that her mum would send her at school that she would pass round and never eat herself. The same boxes that she would give to Max when they arrived every Christmas, with the excuse that she was watching her weight. The very idea of eating too much of a link to the past.

‘Ella?’ Her mum was standing in the doorway.

Ella’s eyes flew open, and she wondered immediately how long she’d been standing there.

‘Everything ready?’ her mum said, as if she had only just walked in, hadn’t caught her with her eyes shut gobbling up the guests’ dessert. But the fact she headed to the larder and said nothing about the fact the baklava wasn’t yet plated, suggested she was buying Ella some time, letting her get her armour back in place.

But Ella was in mental disarray. Caught by the image of herself sitting on her dorm bed at school, back leaning against the pinboard, her Spice Girls poster next to David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash, photos of her and her friends lying in the cornfield next door to the school. Her red MDF side table with the beautiful etched water glass that Veronica had given her one weekend when her dad had picked her up, the thinness of the rim when she drank and the fine pattern making her feel all demure and grown-up, but under her pillow had been a photo of the world she’d left behind – of Maddy and Ella clutching the cat who was clawing to escape and her dad laughing while her mum held the camera out to capture the four of them in front of their house the summer before her dad said he was leaving. The tight feeling in her chest when the cleaner had come in one day, face all apologetic, and handed her the rubbed out image explaining that it had gone through the wash, caught up in the pillowcase.

‘We can relax now.’ her mum said as she balanced plates of baklava on a tray, ‘The boat’s leaving in fifteen and the artists, well they have their coffee with us. Go outside, sit down, I’ll do this.’

Ella could still taste the honey on her tongue. She nodded.

‘You ok?’ her mum said, pausing on the threshold.

Ella was about to shake her head. To ask her for the first time why she never came to get her. But then her mum raised a brow and said, ‘Sorry it’s not all quite as glamorous as your life!’

And Ella pulled back into her shell.

The artists’ table was laden down with desserts, bowing under the weight of fruit; fat red pomegranates, sweet-scented clementines, slices of grapefruit with hot-pink flesh, pears stewed with raisins and cardamom piled high into chunky white bowls. Big dollops of yoghurt tentatively quivering over the sides of little glass pots dotted the table alongside jars of honey and the sticky baklava that dripped on the table. Steaming pots of fresh mint tea were carried over by Alexander and then a bottle of Metaxa brandy was added by Dimitri who ambled over after closing the bar.

Ella hovered in the background by the Coke machine, shy to approach the group of strangers, listening to the conversation that was lucid from retsina and more so now the brandy was being handed round.

‘My marriage was hideous,’ said a woman with her back to Ella, pulling her white blonde hair up on top of her head and then letting it fall again, her arms flapping around wildly as she spoke. ‘He just wanted a wife who looked pretty and let him shag whoever he wanted. And then when it came to assets he took half my sodding house after he announced his company was bankrupt. I hired a private detective because I knew there was money. I knew it was somewhere. He’s living in the Cayman Islands now. He can’t come back here. If he does then he has to go straight to court. I wonder if it’s punishment enough though, you know, not being able to go home?’ She paused when Dimitri held up the Metaxa and said, ‘Yes, thanks Dimitri, I’ll have a glass.’ As she took a gulp and grimaced she went on, ‘I thought I was wrecked but my therapist saved me. Made me look back over all my relationships, break my patterns of behaviour. What I thought was my type was basically just wrong.’ she said, knocking back her brandy.

‘Ella.’ Dimitri lent back in his chair, feet up on the railing, chips of blue peeling paint falling to the floor as his soles scraped against the metal. ‘Come and sit down. The topic’s probably of interest.’ He gave a wry grin.

The blonde woman turned round and looked at Ella, ‘Ahh, our lovely waitress. Have you been divorced?’

Ella shook her head. ‘Oh no. I’m very happily married, thanks.’

Ella felt Dimitri watching her, and her cheeks started to pink under the weight of his gaze. He knew she was lying.

‘Lucky you.’ the blonde drawled. ‘Take a seat. I’m Colette.’

As Ella tentatively pulled out a vacant chair the rest of the group introduced themselves. They were loud, boisterous, confident. Their frank openness was in stark contrast to Max’s world, where no one ever said what they meant.

The young guy sitting to her left, Pete, who had dreadlocks, a snake tattooed up his arm and was wearing some sort of paint-splattered boiler suit, leant forward and said, ‘I never look back.’

Colette shrugged, as if it was his life but he was clearly wrong. ‘My therapist said it’s the only way to learn from your mistakes.’

Ella poured herself a small glass of brandy and took a sip, immediately coughing with shock from the strength of it.

‘You’ll have to toughen up, young lady.’ One of the artists laughed, she hadn’t caught his name but she’d already spent a lot of the evening staring at his huge twirled moustache.

‘It’s fear.’ Dimitri kicked his battered converse off and put his bare feet back on the railing, Ella could see the cracks in the skin on his heels, the dust imbedded in his soles. ‘Everyone is afraid. It takes courage to acknowledge your fears, your mistakes, expose your vulnerabilities.’

He’s still very good-looking, Ella thought.

‘I wrote letters to my mother,’ said the Irish woman at the other end of the table to the moustached man. Marg her name was, she had a lazy eye and fabulous jewellery. ‘Notes. One every day.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ Colette sat up, drunkenly affronted that this secret had been kept from her.

‘It was the best thing I’ve ever done. I started all polite but by the end we were rowing, screaming at each other. Eventually I asked her why she’d never seemed to love me.’

Ella felt her back stiffen. She poured more brandy.

Marg carried on, ‘She wrote back to me in my head that night. I could hear everything – the complete other side of the story, all the bits I never saw – just how she’d have said it. I burnt all the letters that morning and it was overwhelmingly cathartic. Now when something happens, good or bad I find myself writing these letters in my head. I talk much more to her now than when she was alive.’ She gave a little huff of disbelief, then, seemingly suddenly embarrassed by the drunken, emotional over-sharing, tucked her t-shirt in a little tighter and ate a spoonful of the baklava in front of her. Ella wondered if it was to glue her mouth together in an attempt not to say anything else.

Dimitri took a drag on his cigarette and she noticed he had no wedding ring.

Then she looked around the group and thought, I’m not like you all, I’m just having a little break from a mistake my husband made. I don’t need a private detective or to write letters to my mother.

She took another sip of her brandy.

Or perhaps that was exactly what she needed.

‘Top up, Ella?’ Dimitri asked.

Dear Mum
, she thought, the brandy like fire,
were you happy that you had Maddy and Dad took me?

Dear Mum, I used to sit on my bed at school wishing you would come and get me. Not taking no for an answer. Just taking me home. Why couldn’t you have fought for me?

Dear Mum, I wish you had been stronger
.

Dear Mum, I’ve been doing everything right in my life. Why can’t I get what I want? Why is everyone else happily married and having sweet little babies called Alfie and Martha? Why can’t I be normal and have a normal relationship?

The alcohol fumes smoked round her brain, fuzzing the edge of the coloured lights above her and drawing images on the pebbledash wall of castles in Prague and Max and Amanda hand in hand. But then Ella’s whole past with him seemed to flash before her. How special she had felt when he’d singled her out. How adored at their wedding. His admiration for her, his pride at his clever wife. His Ella. He’d lifted her up into his world and in return she had tried to give him something that no one else ever had – the impetus to be more, she’d encouraged him in his business, pushed him to be more than just someone who lived off his inheritance and drank champagne all day in private members clubs. In theory it had been a perfect symbiosis. And it
had
been perfect. But keeping him. Keeping up. Keeping him interested. Keeping him with her, she realised as she stared at the wall, had been exhausting.

The subject changed. The mint tea was refilled, another bottle of Metaxa came out, and then some ouzo and then some more Metaxa. Dimitri put his iPod in the speaker dock and the artists danced to the light of the red and yellow light bulbs that swayed above them. The moustached man swept her mum up and they did a sort of two-step. Colette and Marg swayed happily together. Dimitri tapped his foot while blowing smoke rings up through the eaves. Ella put her head back and watched the threads of smoke as they disappeared through the slats that revealed slices of moon.

Dear Mum, Why must I always love more than I am loved?

As the night darkened and the clouds skated over one another, slipping past like cardboard cutouts on sticks, Ella found herself pulled up to dance, Pete with his dreadlocks and boiler suit refusing to take no for an answer. She was twirled and twisted as she tried to wave him away but he was having none of it. And as Pete hurled her towards the railing by the sea her phone suddenly beeped, in range of signal.

Ella yanked her hand away and opened the text. Her back to the group, the railing pressing into her stomach. But instead of more hoped for communication from Max, it was another text from Amanda’s husband. Another picture. Max and Amanda having lunch at The Bluebird. Another picture. Arm in arm down the King’s Road. Another picture. Shadows kissing in the doorway of a Chelsea townhouse.