The Seed Collectors (2 page)

‘Mummy?’

‘I’m still trying to listen to this.’

‘Can’t you go on
Listen Again
later when you’re filling in your food diary?’ says Holly. ‘Anyway, Mummy?’

‘Hang on.’

‘Mummy? How many calories are there in a cake?’

‘What kind of cake?’

‘Like the cakes Fleur made.’

‘Did she make them? I thought she bought them. Or didn’t she say that Skye Turner sent them?’

‘No, Mummy, she said Skye Turner sent her cakes
once
. But they were like weird low-carb brownies or whatever. She made these ones. They were spicy and everything – not like stuff you can buy. Anyway, how many calories do they have?’

‘You shouldn’t be worrying about calories.’

‘I’m not worrying. I’m just interested.’

‘About two hundred, I think. They were quite small.’

‘So in a day, you could eat, like . . .’

In the rear-view mirror, Bryony can see Ash screw up his eyes like a little potato.

‘Don’t say “like”, Ash. Say “around” or “roughly” or something.’

‘Like, seven and a half cakes,’ says Ash. ‘Wow.’

‘Yeah, but only if you eat basically nothing else,’ says Bryony.

‘Awesome,’ says Ash, in something like a loud whisper.

‘Cake is for babies,’ says Holly. At the party all the girls made sugar sandwiches with white bread and huge slabs of butter and honey to help the sugar stick and the grown-ups didn’t even stop them. The grown-ups were too busy smoking at the bottom of the garden and talking about whether they would rather fuck a fireman or an anaesthetist and looking at pictures of holidays on someone’s phone. Holly’s insides now feel a bit gluey. And the thought of the butter she ate – yellow shiny poo – makes her want to vomit.

‘How many cakes does Fleur eat, Mummy, do you think, in a typical
day? Or a typical week. Would you guess at closer to ten, fifty or a hundred? Mummy?’

‘As if anyone would eat a hundred cakes a day, you total spaz,’ says Ash.

‘Mummy?’

‘What? Oh, who knows? I think she makes a lot more than she eats. I think she likes the way they look more than the way they taste.’

‘Mummy?’ says Holly. ‘Is that why Fleur’s so thin in that case, if she only looks at cakes but doesn’t eat them?’

‘Who knows? Maybe she’s just got lucky genes. She’s always been thin.’

Lucky genes. Is that what it comes down to? Or maybe Fleur doesn’t eat family packs of Kettle Chips when no one is watching. Maybe she doesn’t add half a bottle of olive oil to a pot of ‘healthy’ vegetable soup like James and Bryony do, or use three tins of coconut milk (600 calories per can) in a family curry as James does. Maybe she’s still on the Hay diet, like Bryony’s grandmother Beatrix, who always talks of ‘taking’ food, never ‘eating’ it, and has given Bryony some kind of food-combining cookbook for the last three Christmases. Food combining means not eating protein and carbohydrates together. That would mean no Brie with crusty bread, no poached egg and smoked salmon on toast, no roast chicken and potatoes. Bryony feels hungry just thinking about it.

‘Mummy? Have I got lucky genes?’

‘Depends what you think is lucky.’

They have left Deal and are driving on the main road back towards Sandwich. It’s a warm day, and very bright. Spring is certainly coming. On the right, somewhere beyond the flat fields and the country park built on the old colliery slagheap, is the English Channel, with its wind turbines and ferries and migrating birds. On the left, more fields, full of scarecrows. In the distance Bryony sees the reassuring old Richborough Power Station cooling towers huddled together like
three fat women on an eternal tea break. Then, in one of the fields on the left, she suddenly sees something hovering, perfectly balanced above the scarecrows.

‘Mummy, why are we stopping? Arrrgh . . .’

‘Oh. My. God. Mummy, you are even worse than Daddy.’

Both children wave their arms and legs about, pretending they are having a car crash, as Bryony pulls into a farm’s small driveway.

‘Look at that,’ she says softly.

‘At what exactly, Mummy?’

A huge bird of prey. Swooping. It’s beautiful, and it’s just . . . there. Bryony struggles to remember the names of local raptors that James has told her. Could it be a hen harrier? A marsh something-or-other? A kestrel? Or do you only see kestrels in Scotland? It doesn’t matter; she can look it up in the bird book when she gets home. Maybe they can all look together.

‘Oh, I must tell Daddy . . .’

She begins noting its features. And then she sees the wire holding it up.

‘What are we supposed to be looking at?’

‘Nothing.’ Bryony restarts the engine. How stupid. How could she not have seen the wire from the road? The raptor is a fake, like the scarecrows. Even the starlings aren’t fooled; hundreds of them are flying around everywhere.

‘Mummy, did you think that was a real bird?’

Ash and Holly start to giggle.

‘Mummy, you’re a right wally.’

Which is exactly what James will say.

‘So how was your swim today?’

‘Fucking awful.’

Clem is rooting around in the drawer for something. They have finished listening to the repeat of her radio programme and the kitchen is suddenly very quiet. Ollie is not going to try asking about Oleander again. Or if he does he will make sure he does not mention the inheritance, which made him sound like a total cunt before.

‘What have you lost?’

‘My vegetable peeler.’

Despite being married, they have separate vegetable peelers, just as they have separate gym memberships at separate gyms with different swimming pools.

Ollie shrugs. ‘I haven’t had it.’

Clem sighs. ‘What went wrong at the swimming pool this time?’

‘This time.’

‘What?’

‘Well, you say it as if I’m some kind of twat who can’t even go to the swimming pool without some major drama, and . . .
What
?’

‘Nothing.’ She has now found her vegetable peeler, that minimalist piece of stainless steel that looks as if it would slash your wrists in an instant. Ollie’s peeler has a sensible rubber grip. With Clem’s you can peel every which way, as if you were fencing, or literally doing battle with your vegetable, really fucking killing it. Ollie’s just peels sensibly. Clem starts killing something. It’s a butternut squash.

‘Anyway . . . ?’

‘Well, OK, so basically I’d just finished in the gym when the bus turned up. And – don’t look at me like that – I know this is going to sound cruel but I totally wasn’t in the mood for twenty – yes,
twenty
– and no, I’m not going to say the word “spaz”, or “flid”, OK? – people with “learning difficulties”. Obviously I’m sure they are all lovely and wonderful and I’d fucking hate their lives but they don’t have enough helpers. And they don’t wash them before they put them in the swimming pool. And that pool is disgusting enough to begin with, as you know. Like, for example,
the clump of hair is still there. After a YEAR. Stop looking at me like that. And try not to slash your wrists with that thing. You think I’m exaggerating? OK. Right. One of them was literally a woman with a hunchback – WHICH I AM NOT JUDGING, OK – but she was also covered in hair. I mean she looked like a
yeti
. A hunchback woman
yeti
in my swimming pool. The guys are also all perfectly lovely, I’m sure, although my personal preference would be to have them wash before getting into a pool with me, but one of them not only does not wash, he wears these huge corduroy shorts that probably still have things – like used tissues, if he actually used tissues – in the pockets, and he goes to the deep end and just bobs up and down picking his nose while I’m trying to swim. And then there’s this other one who is huge and black – YES, I KNOW IT DOESN’T MATTER BUT I AM TRYING TO PAINT A PICTURE FOR YOU – who does this superfast front crawl which is quite impressive really, but he keeps his eyes shut and his head entirely underwater so he spends his whole time mowing down babies and the elderly while the yeti shakes with fear and sort of moos in the shallow end. I mean, can’t they just shave her?’

‘Can you pass me the Le Creuset roasting tin?’

Ollie goes to the wrong cupboard and gets the wrong tin.

‘I mean, is it unethical to shave a yeti-woman if you have one in your care?’

‘I am not responding to this.’ Does she almost smile then? Maybe not. ‘I mean, you don’t shave before you get in the pool.’

‘Ha! You
have
responded. The woman hath . . .’

‘You’ve got a hairy back. That’s the wrong tin.’

‘My back isn’t that hairy. And I’m a man. Which one do you want?’

‘The Le Creuset one.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘No. Unlike you I don’t carry an inventory of our bourgeois cooking
equipment around with me in my head at all times. What does Le Creuset even mean?’

‘Don’t be a dick. It’s the one with the handles.’

‘If you mean the third-degree-burn pan, why don’t you say so?’

Clem sighs. Ollie gets the right roasting tin. And a beer.

‘They could wax her. How traumatic would that be? She could go to Femme Naturelle.’ Femme Naturelle is the beauty parlour that has just opened up around the corner from their house in Canterbury. If she’s in a good mood Clem sometimes jokes about going there for a Brazilian, or even a Hollywood. Her pubes are perfect as they are, of course: a little black triangle of something like AstroTurf or . . . The image is going wrong so Ollie abandons it. ‘
Yeti Naturelle
.’

‘That was almost funny before you spoiled it.’

When they get in, Ash snuggles up in the conservatory with his nature book. Holly gets the spare laptop and loads a DVD onto it: something with a 15 certificate about bitchy schoolgirls that her uncle Charlie got her last Christmas. Bryony suggested this on the way home, mainly as a way to stop Holly pointing out every other fake bird that they drove past. The house smells of baking bread, as usual, and also chocolate. James must have made a cake too. So much cake in one day.

‘Why is she doing that?’ asks James, when he comes in from the garden.

‘Mummy,’ wails Holly from the conservatory. ‘Tell him you said I could.’

‘I said she could.’ Bryony kisses him. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ says James. ‘Been baking.’

‘I can smell. Something lovely that I shouldn’t eat.’

‘Chocolate and beetroot brownies. Beetroot from the garden!’

Bryony doesn’t ask if it’s for a newspaper assignment. James bakes all the time: bread every day and cakes twice a week. Once James baked ‘the most calorific cake in Britain’ from a recipe in one of the tabloids so he could construct a witty piece about how he didn’t think his organic eco-kids would eat it, but of course they did. Holly was actually sick: brown and pink vomit all over her bedroom. Bryony can’t remember what caused the pink that time. Can’t have been beetroot. Must have been jam. And why has James used fresh early-season beetroot in brownies? Couldn’t he just have roasted it? Everyone loves roasted beetroot, and it roasts so quickly when it’s so fresh. He could also have put it in a salad.

‘Good to get more veg in the kids,’ Bryony says.

‘That’s what I thought. And you can have one, can’t you?’

She opens the fridge and gets out the Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc she started last night. There’s only about a third of the bottle left, so she finds another white and puts it in the freezer just in case. She walks across the room and selects an unchipped Dartington Crystal glass from the dresser. It’s three minutes past six. The clocks went forward this morning, so in some way it’s really only three minutes past five.

‘Do you want one?’ she asks James.

‘No thanks.’ He looks at his watch. ‘How was your afternoon?’

‘All right. Ash still won’t go near the deep end when the wave machine’s on, after whatever it was that happened last week. The party was pretty boring. Poor Fleur’s in a state but not talking about it. Oh, and after we left Fleur’s Holly remembered she’d left her blue scarf behind so we had to go all the way back to Deal. A lot of toing and froing, and she’s basically had way too much sugar. Cake at the party of course, and some disgusting-looking sweet sandwiches, cake at Fleur’s . . . But I guess at least she’s eaten something. She’s pretty scratchy now, though.’