The Little Christmas Kitchen (17 page)

Walter hadn’t stopped talking, he was waving the pipe in the air as he carried on. ‘Because you’ll always want more. Stands to reason. It’s the addiction of the dopamine rush. You’ll never believe that you’ve made it. Ever. Look at you. Tall, pretty, seem to be reasonably funny, you look smart, you have good teeth, you’ve made it already. What more do you want?’

Maddy got a cloth and wiped down the bar, just for something to do, she didn’t want Mack to think that all she did was stand and talk to Walter all shift. ‘I want–’ she started, then got embarrassed. ‘What did you want? I don’t know what I want.’

Walter put the pipe back in his mouth and said through clamped teeth, ‘Yes you do.’

Maddy screwed up her mouth and then said, ‘Ok. I want people to hear me sing. I want that to be how I make my living.’

‘Mack, this girl does not want to be a barmaid.’

Mack nodded where he stood, reclined by the bar, sipping his whiskey and checking his phone. ‘I know that Walter.’

‘Well put her on the stage.’

‘I don’t need another person on the stage, tonight.’

‘Why the hell not? Look at her, she’s much more attractive than anyone else you usually put up there.’ Walter pointed at Maddy with his pipe and then fumbled in his pocket for some matches.

More groups of guys walked in, more frigid air accompanied them. As the windows darkened and the street lights outside started to come on, big groups came in straight from work and all squeezed into the tiny booths, stealing chairs from other tables so those that didn’t fit on the velvet benches could perch at the end. That was when Betty finally relinquished her stronghold on customers and Maddy began to feel the pressure. When she had no idea where something was, like the flashy champagne or a vintage malt, Walter would lean forward from his stool and point it out for her. Betty certainly wasn’t interested in giving her a hand, and Mack was out front, circulating, chatting up the ladies and laughing with regulars, a bottle of what he called
Christmas Spirit
in his hand that he poured free shots of into empty glasses. Maddy had had a sip of it early and involuntarily shuddered while trying to stop herself coughing and it coming back up out her nose.

‘He gets them so damn pissed they stay all night and spend a fortune.’ Walter said, watching as Mack worked the crowd. ‘They love him.’ Then he looked back at Maddy and said, ‘Don’t you worry. I’ll get you on the stage.’

Maddy was trying to pour three pints at the same time and open a bottle of slimline tonic so couldn’t look up when she asked, ‘Why? Why would you help me?’

‘Because I want to see someone realise their dream.’ he said with a wry smile.

Flicking up the beer pump handle, Maddy gave Walter a massive, toothy grin and said, ‘I’d really appreciate anything you can do.’

An hour later, as the crowd had started to get more raucous, the music blared full volume and the whole place smelt of alcohol as strong as lighter fluid, Mack leant over the bar and said to Maddy, ‘Ok, you’re on.’

She looked from Mack to Walter, who cocked his head as if to say
I told you so
, and then back to Mack who clapped his hands and said, ‘Come on, you’ve got about fifteen minutes to get changed.’

‘Ok.’ Maddy stammered. Untying her apron and squeezing past Betty and the other barman whose name she’d forgotten, and joining Mack where he’d followed her to the far end of the bar. ‘Thanks Mack.’ she shouted above the noise of the crowd, ‘Thanks, I really appreciate it. I really do.’

‘Save it.’ he said, putting his hand on her shoulder and pushing her through the swing door into the back room.

The corridor was a dirty cream with scuffs all over the walls and floor, a strip light flickered and stacks of boxes half blocked the way. As the doors swung back they muffled the noise outside and the quiet made her ears ring.

‘I didn’t want to put you on because I don’t think you’re right for it. But–’ Mack was marching her forward. ‘I owe Walter a favour and well–’ he shrugged. ‘You’re old enough I suppose to decide what you want.’

She frowned up at him as he led her into a dressing room where four other girls were busy putting their make-up on, slicking back their hair and straightening the seams on their stockings. In the corner a plastic Santa was shaking his hips to a tinny version of
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
.

‘It’s up to you if you want to do it or not. I thought you seemed a bit too–’ Mack paused. One of the girls looked over, her dressing gown hanging open, underneath was a red satin bunnygirl suit with white fur trimming. ‘Innocent, I suppose. But who am I to stand in the way of someone’s dream.’

CHAPTER 21

ELLA

The Little Greek Kitchen
cooked up a feast as the rain poured. The tourists milled in the fire-warmed kitchen and watched with delight as Ella dipped little biscuits into sticky syrup while Sophie dropped batter into bubbling oil to make golden honey puff
Loukoumades
. She then bathed the donuts in thick honey and cinnamon while piping hot and handed them round on pieces of kitchen towel. Her grandfather was up from his chair and holding court where he stood, leaning against the fireplace, chatting about the move from England to Greece – how he’d never looked back, how they should all do it – and the tourists nodded with wide eyes drunk on holiday memories. The Christmas branches sparkled and the gold star winked in the light of the flames while the fibre optic angel’s wings rainbowed through all its different colours. Ella’s grandmother was handing round plates of baklava and topping up glasses with rich, black coffee with its lacy froth. Big bowls of stewed summer fruits glistened on the table next to a basket of boiled eggs and plaited loaves. As people ate and laughed and asked to book a table for Christmas if they were still stuck by then, the freshly wiped windows steamed up and from outside the kitchen glowed through the opaque glass. Ella’s mum pushed her hair behind her ear with the back of her hand, nudged Ella on the shoulder and gave her a wink, a newfound camaraderie brought about by stress and success. And Ella bit down on a smile, feeling for the first time that she was part of it. Part of
this
life with her mum.

As the first of the buses hissed back into life, crammed with stranded tourists, their accommodation now sorted by harassed, understaffed reps, Sophie pulled up a stool for Ella and said, ‘Here look, take a break, sit down, there’s not much more we can do.’

The second bus load were filing out, all waves and smiles as they ran through the rain, and the kitchen held only the final dribs and drabs of tourists who had not yet been found a room.

‘No, no I’ll help you clear up.’ Ella said, her legs heavy with tiredness but her mind radiating with an adrenaline-fuelled excitement similar to how she felt after one of her client pitches. They’d pulled something off, together, made a fair whack of cash and it had possibly been better than had there been a full complement of staff and table service. She didn’t want it to end. Wanted to hold onto the moment where the morning had peaked, where they’d laughed together when hot oil had spat or a donut had come out a bizarre shape, or one of the tourists had had to shut their eyes in pleasure from a taste – or when her grandmother had dropped a pot of yoghurt as she was coming back from the outside fridge and the yellow-eyed cat had then run through it and they’d had to hide it from the tourists, giggling as they got soaked trying to mop it up.

‘Ella.’ Her mum put her hand on her shoulder. ‘Sit down. We can clear up later. Have a coffee.’ She bit down on a smile, ‘Oh no. Sorry, of course no coffee. An orange juice.’ she said, reaching over to pour some juice into one of the little coffee glasses. ‘You know sometimes it is really hard for me to equate the Ella now with when you were a little girl. Looking at you now I can’t believe I could ever forget that you hate tea and coffee. All those oranges I squeezed for you in the mornings.’ She laughed, leaning back against the counter and swirling sugar into her own coffee glass.

Ella found her smile back was more forced than she wanted it to be.

Her mum poured in another spoon of sugar, and said, while stirring, ‘It was lovely to cook with you again. I’d forgotten how good you are.’

‘I’m terrible.’ Ella said, quickly.

‘No you’re not. Just out of practice.’

‘I can only cook the things I know how to cook.’

Her mum laughed. ‘How do you think people learn?’

‘But you, you just know what goes together, what ingredients work with what. I could never do that. I don’t have the instinct.’

‘It’s practice, Ella. That’s all. It’s cooking for your kids, or your family every night. That’s what I did. You and Max must cook.’

Ella looked at her orange juice.

‘Sometimes, you must cook sometimes.’ her mum said with a laugh.

Ella shook her head. ‘I haven’t really cooked anything since I stopped living with you.’

Her mum paused. Ella watched her run her hand over her mouth. She looked exactly as Ella remembered her from being a kid – dressed in a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, blue Levi 501s, cream Converse hi-tops and a gold necklace with St Christopher on it. Ella had the same necklace, her mum had sent it to her on her eighteenth, she never wore it but she did carry it in her purse.

Ella’s comment seemed to hang in the air, the words dancing about like little pixies, then when there was no answer, drifted off through the open back window and Ella felt like a door that she had tentatively opened swung shut in the breeze.

Her mum took a sip of her coffee. Then, as she placed it down on the surface next to the ripped packets of sugar, said, ‘I like your hair like that. It suits you.’

Ella nodded in thanks for the compliment, thinking of the Brazilian keratin straightening treatment she had every month and the GHDs she had to replace every year because they lost the power she needed to tame her hair.

‘Girls,’ her grandfather called. ‘There’s a man over here gasping for a cup of tea. Literally at the end of life, gasping.’

Ella looked up to see him pointing to himself with his thumb and smiled at the look of desperation on his face. ‘I’ll do it.’ she said to her mum, sliding herself off the stool and walking over to the kettle.

Her mum started to load up the dishwasher. Her grandmother waved the last of the tourists away. Agatha arrived for the lunchtime shift looking perplexed at the state of the kitchen.

Ella watched the steam from the kettle rise and fog the window that was dribbling now with condensation as all the people had left. As she reached forward to wipe it away she saw her reflection in the glass and paused. The beautifully straight hair that she had swept into a ponytail that morning was gone. Instead, loose around her head, strands that had escaped from the band, were curled in waves, crazy and erratic and to Ella, absolutely hideous. The ponytail, she saw as she turned her head to the side, was equally wavy, the ends flicking in great loops. Obviously the heat, the condensation, the rain had all combined to create the kind of humidity that she’d avoided for the last ten or so years. Running her hands through the escaped curls, she scraped them back into a higher ponytail so that none of them could get free.

‘Oh don’t do that.’ her mum said as she walked past with a stack of dirty plates.

‘It’s awful.’ Ella said sharply. ‘I hate it.’

Her mum shrugged. ‘You shouldn’t. It suits you. I think nature knows what suits us best.’

Ella blew out a breath. ‘I completely disagree.’

Her mum chuckled as if Ella was deluding herself.

‘Hello. The tea. A man could die of thirst around here.’ her grandfather called.

Ella looked away from her mum and made the cup of Earl Grey, sploshing in the milk and walking it over to him in a sudden hurry because all she wanted to do was escape to the bathroom where there was a proper mirror.

‘Thank you very much.’ her granddad said as he practically swiped the cup from her hand and took a sip of the piping hot tea. Ella carried on out the door, walking in a sort of fast-paced trot as she tried to disguise her hurry.

Finally, when she’d safely locked herself in the loo, she stood in front of the mirror and yanked her hair out of the hairband. Scrunching it up in her hands to loosen all the curls and teasing the shorter strands of fringe so they hung forward, soft around her face, rather than sticking out at wild angles, she made herself look at her reflection. Made herself stare. Her eyes wanted to narrow at the sight. The curls were just a constant reminder of her fat little self. The self who didn’t want to be at boarding school, who didn’t want to win the maths prize every year, and the art prize. Who didn’t want to walk alongside Maddy when she came to visit in the holidays, her sister all lithe and brown and freckled with her huge gappy smile and long straight sun-kissed hair. Ella with frizz from the sun that her crappy pre-ceramic hair straighteners couldn’t tame, white skinned from an English summer, her brain packed with knowledge about her dad and her life with him that she couldn’t talk about because it made her mum shut her eyes for a moment too long and then get up and put the kettle on. When she went home her dad and Veronica would ask politely about Greece but never really listen to the answer. So her experiences sat, caught, trapped like bugs in a web.

She pulled one of the curls in front of her face and it sprang back up.

‘I hate you.’ she said to her hair.

Then she scraped it back up again, tight as possible and unlocked the door, stepping out into the rain to rush back into the kitchen and walking splat into Dimitri.

‘Hey, hey, watch it.’ he said, holding a newspaper over his head. ‘Oh it’s you.’

Ella recoiled back and then kept running towards the door. ‘Yes it’s me.’ she shouted, over the noise of the water.

Once inside, Dimitri shook out the paper and then tossed it into the bin. Ella wiped rain from her face.

‘We’re not talking are we?’ Dimitri said.

‘No.’ Ella shook her head.

‘Good. Just checking.’ he added, and then walked over to the table and poured himself a coffee and spooned some yoghurt and stewed cherries into a bowl, as if there was nothing unusual about the set-up. ‘This all looks good.’ he said after a second, his mouth full. ‘Very relaxed. Very–’ he waved his hand holding the bowl. ‘Nonchalant.’