Recipes for Melissa (10 page)

Melissa never told anyone about hers. Most especially not the woman back in school with whom she met once a week and then once a month for ‘special chats’.

She wouldn’t understand. No one would understand. They would all think, you see, that it was quite a nice thing. Comforting. They wouldn’t understand the confusion. That Melissa did not actually want the dream. No.

For in this dream, Melissa was walking on the beach with her mother. She was holding her hand and Melissa knew for certain that it was her mother – not only because she could feel the wedding ring on her finger as she gripped her hand, but because she knew deep inside from how completely happy and how utterly loved and safe she felt.

They were at first walking along the beach and then running and laughing and Melissa could feel the wind in her hair and she could hear the roar of the waves and taste the salt on her lips.

She was
so happy
. And that was actually the problem that no one would understand. They would think it odd – that she was some kind of freak – that she did not want to feel that.

But here was the truth: Melissa did not want to remember just how good all that felt. And the more often she had that dream the harder she had to work not to look up into her mother’s face. Because Melissa knew that if she let herself do that in the night – to look up at her mother’s beautiful face, smiling right at her – she would not be able to cope with the next morning. Or the next day. Or the next week.

And so she ran along the beach in the dream over and over and over.
Do not look into her face, Melissa. Look at the sand.

Eight eights are sixty four. Nine nines are eighty one….Eleven times twelve …

Melisa wiped her cheeks. She looked again at the bag containing the book.

How was it she could have something so very precious and be so terribly afraid to read it?

13

MAX – 2011

Max settled into the driver’s seat and reached into his jacket pocket for his glasses. He then completed the ritual of checking the car as thoroughly as possible for anything with wings.

The truth was there was very rarely anything to find – just occasionally in the summer when a tiny fly might need squatting against the inside of the windscreen – but Max was not for taking any chances. He sighed, remembering the time when it was just a joke. When it did not trigger this flicker of dread.

All their marriage Eleanor had ribbed him about it. ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Max. It’s only a fly. It can’t hurt you.’ Melissa had learnt to join in too, laughing as Daddy once waved an ice cream so frantically at a fly while on holiday in Cornwall that the sphere of raisin and rum had plopped straight onto the floor. Before he had enjoyed even one lick.

And then came the day – eight weeks into the numbness of his new life post-Eleanor – and it was a fly which brought it all to a head. A single, sodding fly pointing up just how thinly the thread now stretched for Melissa.

It was June – loads of flies about – and he was fed up to the back teeth of them; waving them away from his food out of doors and from the surfaces in the kitchen. Max just couldn’t help himself, unable to relax and ignore them as other people, including his young daughter, seemed to do. He couldn’t bear the thought of them landing on his skin. His face. His arms. Anywhere.

It went back to childhood when Max had watched a programme examining whether it was true that flies puked and pooed on you when they landed. Turned out they did. Flies, Max learned, had no mechanism to chew solid food and so their strategy was to vomit enzymes onto anything they fancied to break down the solids before slurp, slurping it up. They also drank big time compared to other species which was why so much came out the other end.

Thus began Max’s hatred of flies and on that fateful morning, some two months after Eleanor’s funeral, he was in a rush – late for the university, having dropped Melissa at school en route. Max had arranged flexible working but was still struggling to adjust to his new circumstance. He needed to get in earlier than usual to sort a presentation for later in the day and was stressed. Not coping well enough. For his daughter and for his job.

The motorway was completely clear and so he had his foot down. First mistake. And he was going over the plans for the presentation in his head. Second mistake. And then suddenly there was this tiny fly flitting to and fro right by his face. Max couldn’t help it. He took his hands right off the steering wheel to bat it away and in that split second the car veered completely out of control. Unbelievable, when he looked back on it, that from cruising straight, albeit very fast, in the inside lane one second, he could be veering across towards the central barrier the next.

He very nearly clipped the barrier, swerving alarmingly as he struggled to regain control, still terrified of where the bloody fly was. By the time he had things back under control the car had swung through 360 degrees and he pulled up, horrified and disorientated to discover he was facing the wrong way.

Still – thank Christ – nothing coming.

Max, his heart pounding almost out of his chest, executed the fastest three-point turn of his life and pulled up into the hard shoulder. He had read somewhere that you shouldn’t get out of your car on the hard shoulder unless in an absolute emergency but Max had no choice. He got out, walking around the front of the car, stepped over the low barrier and sat on the grass on the other side. And then, to his horror, it came.

The one thing he tried so hard, for Melissa’s sake, not to do.

Max completely lost it.

He lost it for Eleanor’s last breath and his last words to her in the hospital. ‘
Please don’t go… I’m not ready.’

He lost it for Melissa who now followed him around at home like a frightened puppy.

He lost it for the vanilla-scented soap he would not throw out at home because it was the last soap Eleanor had used.

He lost it for all the baking tins and recipe books that he had packed into a big box because he could not bear to
bloody… look… at… them
.

Roaring his fury. Kicking then at the bracken and the twigs and the metal barrier. Picking up rocks and a discarded Coke can to hurl them, still roaring, into the undergrowth.

All over a frigging fly. A stupid, puking, poxy insect which could have left his daughter to face all of this shit all alone.

And so – yes; Max now went over the top every single time he got in the car. He checked for flies and he would not pull away until he was absolutely sure there were no sodding, stinking distractions; at least none that were in his gift to control.

The journey to Sophie’s took just under an hour and a half. He had allowed 15 minutes for traffic and so was under no pressure.

Hartleys was her favourite restaurant – a tiny place with a huge fireplace and sloping floor of original flagstones. Just half a dozen small tables, which created exactly the relaxed and intimate environment they both so loved. Sophie was an excellent cook herself and hence quite a difficult customer to please, but Hartleys had never failed them and Max needed the meal, at least, tonight to be good.

They had not spoken since the phone call to arrange this and Max guessed exactly how this would go. They would both be sad. On edge. And he would add guilt and nerves into the mix, hoping that she would not try so hard this time to make him change his mind.

Max had broken things off with Sophie once before. Over Deborah. They had not seen each other for the eighteen months of that relationship, for Max, try as he might, could not be like Sophie.

When everything had imploded with Deborah – he winced at the thought, clutching the steering wheel very tightly – it had not occurred to him to get back in touch with Sophie again. What kind of person would that make him, for Christ’s sake?

No. It was Sophie who found out. Sophie who called. Sophie who soothed and supported and coaxed him back. And yes – it was weak of him to rewind. No strings. No stress. No future.

Tonight she looked wonderful – a turquoise Chinese-style dress, sporting deep blue dragon motifs with tiny pearl buttons down the front and a deep blue shawl. But she was unusually quiet as he drove them the twenty minutes from her place to the restaurant. And then as they sat at the table and he ordered only sparkling water for himself, she tilted her head. ‘So – you really aren’t staying tonight, Max? This is really it?’

He wanted to take her hand and was trying to remember the script he had rehearsed on the way but it was gone now.

‘You know your problem – Maximillian Dance?’

‘No.’

‘You are way too nice.’

‘Don’t, Sophie’

‘No. It’s true. Someone less nice would keep their options open.’

‘I hope that’s not how you think I see you. An option? I really never meant—’

‘No – my lovely man. I know that’s not how you see me,’ she topped up her wine and then ran a finger around the rim. ‘You do know, Max, that I still see other people. Just occasionally. And I have no problem with you doing the same.’

They had discussed this before and Max had never quite known how to feel about it.

‘I really thought that I did not want to be in love again, Sophie.’

‘Ah. That old thing.’

‘Yes. That old thing. I really did think that after Deborah and the way that all went so horribly wrong, I would face up to it. That Eleanor was IT. And that you don’t have to keep on looking.’

‘And now I hear the but?’

Max looked down at their plates. He had finished his already – sea bass fillet with ginger and spring onions. Light. Lovely. Sophie had chosen partridge roasted with juniper and thyme and was toying with the final slithers. There was a bleep from his phone then.

‘Sorry. Very rude but do you mind if I quickly check this? I’m waiting on a message from Melissa.’

‘Not at all.’

It was a text from her at last.
All fine. Stop worrying xx
He shook his head.

‘Everything OK?’

‘Yeah fine. She’s fine.’ He put the phone back in his pocket.

‘Look, Max. I know I’ve said this before but there are so many kinds of caring, and the version we have isn’t wrong.’

‘I know that, Sophie. And I have treasured it. And I have gone over it a million times in my head. But I know that all the time that I am seeing you… Well. It just doesn’t feel right any more.’

He wanted to add that there was this void; this gaping hole right inside him which he just couldn’t fill up no matter how many rocks he threw and how far he bloody ran.

Sophie put her cutlery together on her plate and patted her mouth with the crisp, damask napkin. She looked away to the roar of the fire and then back.

‘Is there someone else? Another Deborah?’

‘No. Not really. Not yet. The problem is that I have surprised myself by feeling again lately that there could be. Or rather that, if I am being honest with myself, I would still like there to be. Does that make any sense?’

‘I gave up trying to make sense of you a long time ago, Max.’

He smiled. ‘And now you are sounding like Melissa.’

‘You sure you don’t want to stay friends, Max? To wait a bit. See how this maps out?’

He shook his head slowly and so she took a deep breath and reached into her embroidered purse to produce a card. ‘My next exhibition. There’s a painting I would like you to have. A little parting gift, if you like.’

‘No, no. I couldn’t. Sophie. Absolutely not. This is hard enough…’

‘You will like it. And if you care for me at all, Max, then you will listen. These have been happy times for me. We are very different. I always knew that, but I will miss you and it will make me feel better if you will take this. I will leave the painting for you to collect on the Friday. I won’t be there. But I would like you to see the exhibition. Will you do that for me?’

He looked at the card. It was a few weeks away – at a gallery nearby.

‘And don’t look so worried. It’s not a trap. I’m not trying to lure you back. I’m just trying to say goodbye properly, Max,’ she clinked her wine glass to his water glass and tilted her head. ‘To say thank you.’

14

MELISSA – 2011

The second night on the sofa bed and Melissa was relieved again for the space to think. Sam’s leg was still very sore but, with the strong painkillers, he was at least getting by. But he was unhappy with the separate sleeping – also the excuses she was making to buy privacy for the journal. Melissa had no idea what to do about this.

During the day, Sam now sat mostly in the shade by the pool and Melissa had taken to hiding behind novels, insisting that he needed to do the same. To just chill to get over the accident. The truth – that she badly needed space herself to digest all that had happened. The accident. The dream. The journal. But Sam was unsurprisingly both agitated and uncomfortable in the heat and she would often catch him watching her and frowning. She was now worrying he would go stir-crazy if they just stayed in Polis and so put forward some ideas for trips. But this had not gone down well either.

Sam clearly wanted to talk. She didn’t.

Over the past couple of days, Melissa had found herself, on top of everything else, obsessing about a box in their garage back home. It was one of three which Max had brought over from his own outhouse storage when they moved into the flat. Two of the boxes contained useful bits and pieces – lamps and bedding and old schoolbooks and mementos which she had unpacked long ago. But the third, to her surprise, contained her mother’s old cooking equipment. Max had packed some of it away soon after Eleanor died. His argument was there was way too much of it for the cupboards – the truth obvious even to the young Melissa. It all upset him. When he brought the boxes over, he said that Melissa should feel free to give anything she didn’t want to a charity shop. Even before the book, she had found the sight of her mother’s kitchen equipment unsettling and upsetting. The old tins and boxes and the familiar Kenwood Chef mixer, wrapped for protection in a towel. She didn’t want to bring them up to the flat. But there was no way she could part with them either.