‘Why don’t we do something else?’ I suggest. ‘Why don’t you tell me something you feel grateful for, something that made youreallyhappy today?’
‘Strawberry ice cream!’ Kate says.
Emily, my goddaughter, is more ponderous. Like Dave, she considers before she talks. ‘You, Auntie Holly,’ she says, melting my heart.
‘Pancakes!’ calls out Kate, food-obsessed.
As we carry on chatting about all the things we love, I’m reminded of how much I longed, growing up, for a younger sister, a little sidekick. The sadness for Mum was she suffered terrible postnatal depression after me, so bad she feared ever going through another pregnancy. My father had hoped for a son, but Mum came first. ‘But I know you’ll make up for it by giving us plenty of grandchildren,’ she’d said emotionally on the morning of my wedding day. And I’d promised her, equally emotional, that I would. I didn’t appreciate fully, back then, that we can make plans, we can map out our lives, but often fate has other ideas.
Milla is like the sister I never had, even if we couldn’t be more different. When she first joined our school, she was independent, loud and cocksure. She seemed to know exactly what she wanted to be when she was a grown-up. Her most treasured item was her first-aid box, given to her by her parents on her tenth birthday. She used to love wrapping my arms and legs in bandages, swathing me like an Egyptian mummy, before telling me with a super grave face that my injuries would take months to heal, in fact I could die a grisly death unless she performed a miracle operation that only Professor Milla could perform. Meanwhile, my most treasured items were my books. I immersed myself in stories, devouring everything from Enid Blyton to Emily Brontë, to Jilly Cooper. I bought secondhand Mills and Boon books from charity shops, and lapped up these tales of romance, which seemed so very different from everyday life. I couldn’t imagine my father kissing my mother like that. I didn’t want to, either. ‘We are all so lucky, aren’t we, to have each other?’ I say, giving them both kisses, and a goodnight hug. They smell of strawberries, bubble bath and innocence.
‘Tell me everything,’ Milla insists, as the mince is cooking and we’re sitting at the kitchen island, perched on stools. So, I tell her exactly what the café was like, from the beginning. The delivery van dropped the food off at about nine. I was presented with a ton of oranges, grapes, watermelon, and strawberries, so I made enough fruit salad to feed an army, along with two large steamed syrup sponge puddings with a creamy citrus custard sauce, which was all eaten up. ‘I couldn’t do that,’ Milla says, impressed. ‘I have to follow a recipe.’
‘I cheated,’ I admit, thinking how I’d Googled the recipe.
‘And what about the other volunteers?’ she asks.
After my induction chat with Angus, his brother Scottie arrived, looking professional in his chef’s hat and apron. He was a slimmer version than Angus, someone who looked as if he ran to the gym, not away from it. He didn’t say much to me, except he hoped I knew what I was doing, that cooking in the café wasn’t like throwing a dinner party for six,darling. Occasionally he’d finish his sentences with a dramatic sniff, as if making his point clear.
‘He sounds scary.’
I shrug. ‘I’ve had far worse bosses.’
Scottie was followed swiftly by Monika, his head prep chef, Polish, mid-thirties and an intensive care nurse. ‘Puts me to shame,’ Milla mutters.
‘Oh, come off it, you don’t have enough time to brush your teeth let alone volunteer.’
‘Don’t remind me.’ Milla had called me the other day, saying she’d been in such a hurry to get to work that she’d forgotten to brush her teeth, plus during a meeting, when looking for her mobile in her handbag, she’d found a pair of her knickers instead. Clean, thankfully.
‘I did ask her that question though. I agree. Isn’t her halo shining enough?’
‘Exactly. What did she say?’
‘I’ve always had the urge to care,’ I hear Monika telling me in her strong accent, ‘to feel as if I am doing some good on this earth. Besides, cooking is my therapy, cooking and yoga.’
‘Well, she is ten years younger than us. Makes a big difference,’ Milla says. ‘When you get to our age everything starts to slow down, and droop.’
I laugh, thinking how exercise is another thing I’ve let slip since Jamie died. Not that I ever did that much, but Jamie and I used to play tennis during the summer. We often played doubles with Milla and Dave. We won. Nothing to do with me. Jamie was a natural and could belt the ball.
I tell Milla about the volunteers who came from a local home for adults with learning disabilities, a Romanian girl called Simona, and Tom. ‘Thomas, pull your trousers up,’ Angus had said to him the moment he arrived, before they did a high-five and laughed together like schoolboys. Simona’s job was to put flowers into vases. She did it slowly, with great pride and purpose. Tom was in charge of the cutlery, and laying the table. His job was to dip the knives, forks and spoons into warm water before drying them until they sparkled like new. I could see him working at a small table on the other side of the kitchen hatch. Yet it was hard to believe the tables were ever going to get laid, as he seemed to prefer coming into the kitchen to ask if I was married. ‘Anyone who doesn’t need to be in my kitchen, OUT!’ Scottie bellowed in our direction, before turning to me, red-faced from the exertion of getting lunch ready by half past twelve, saying, ‘For fuck’s sake, don’t encourage him, Holly.’ I’d only let Tom lick the spoon, that’s all.
Somehow, by lunch time, we were ready. Fresh flowers were on each table, the cutlery was gleaming, and it was no surprise that the smell of Scottie’s Southern fried chicken breast and homemade chunky chips, along with my pudding, lured about sixty people inside. Our first punter was Nigel, the elderly chap Nina had told me about during my interview, who arrived on his scooter every Saturday, without fail. ‘Nigel can never remember what he ordered but lucky for us he can remember all the words from old musicals,’ Angus warned me. Angus had in fact stayed close by my side for most of the day, explaining how everything worked, and introducing me to everyone. When it came to the end of the day and I thanked him for looking after me, he said, ‘Not at all, Holly. I hope I haven’t put you off joining the team. We’re a pretty good bunch, and Ninaneedsnew volunteers. We’ve got to keep this café going. It’s a lifeline for so many people.’ I liked this side of Angus. The Angus that didn’t feel he had to crack jokes all the time.
Reading my mind, Milla says, ‘Angus seems nice,’ clearly fishing as she tops up my glass, and her own.
‘Mummy.’ Emily comes into the kitchen, clutching a soft toy dog. ‘I can’t sleep.’
As Milla heads upstairs to settle her back into bed and I keep an eye on the mince, I reminisce about all the times Jamie, Dave, Milla and I have hung out in this kitchen. I see us enjoying breakfast with our coffees and papers before deciding what to do for the rest of the day. Maybe a bike ride and an exhibition or a lazy cinema afternoon. I see us singing and dancing like fools after a drunken evening out. I picture us playing a competitive game of Scrabble on a rainy Sunday afternoon. The amount of times Milla and I have cooked meals together. There is no better place to chat than in the kitchen, preparing food with a glass of wine. I recall turning forty was a major topic of conversation, along with children. Up until her late thirties, Milla had never wanted to be a mother. Jamie and I married when we were thirty-three. We wanted a family straightaway. When we were trying for a baby, she was incredibly supportive, but it only reinforced for her that she still had no maternal instincts. Yet, a year before her fortieth, something changed. ‘I want children,’ she confided to me, one evening, right here, where I’m sitting now. I recall it so vividly. She said it as if she couldn’t believe it herself. Dave, who had always longed for a family, was so happy she’d changed her mind. Months later, when she told Jamie and me that she was pregnant, it wasn’t an easy conversation. By that stage, Jamie and I had been trying for five years. My problem wasn’t in getting pregnant. That was the easy part. I couldn’t keep the baby, constantly miscarrying in the early weeks of my pregnancy. I had a series of tests; apparently, I had an irregularly shaped uterus. I didn’t know this was even a thing, that some women can be born with one. I felt such a failure. Why me? Why couldn’t I keep our child safe? Over time, Jamie and I more or less made peace with ourselves that it was unlikely to happen; we had no choice but to accept it. Yet it hurt so much when Milla fell pregnant practically overnight. I felt guilty for feeling so jealous. Milla felt guilty too, and would often try to tone down her happiness by not displaying her ultrasound scan on the fridge door, or by not telling me how she felt when she saw her babies, for the first time, on the monitor screen. It was the first time our friendship was tested. For so many years we’d walked side by side, but it felt as if Milla was moving on ahead, with the one thing I couldn’t have. This divide wasn’t anyone’s fault, but the tension inevitably brewed, and for the first time in our lives, we didn’t know how to deal with it. In the end, it was Milla who sat me down in this kitchen, insisting we talk. ‘I know you’ve always wanted to be a mum, Holly, I know how cruel this is.’ We hugged, we cried, and then we cried some more. Milla made me swear I’d be honest if it all got too much. Equally I made Milla swear she wouldn’t censor her happiness. I knew, deep down, our friendship would always survive. If anything, it’s stronger now, and I love her girls as if they were my own. Yet, only moments ago, I caught myself gazing at Milla as she took Emily’s hand and led her back upstairs, to bed. It’s those little moments of parenthood that I still crave. It’s a yearning like no other.
‘Right, where were we?’ Milla says, taking over from me, tasting the mince. ‘It needs more chilli,’ she decides, ‘and pepper. Angus. That’s right. I like the sound of him.’
‘Don’t get excited.’
‘Why not?’
Good question. ‘He’s not my type.’
‘What’s your type?’
