‘Enjoy your book and see you next month!’ calls Prudence as Tilly gives a little wave and heads out of the shop.
Alfie watches the flash of her hair until he can’t see her any more, trying to picture the expression on her face when she opens the parcel, and wondering how she might respond to this month’s book. But his job is to sell books to customers. What happens next is up to them.
8
Tilly stands at the counter in her tiny kitchen surrounded by ingredients. A box of eggs, a stick of butter, a chunk of Gruyère and a slab of Parmesan … She consults the recipe in the enormous book laid open on the counter and then glances down at Joe’s letter beside it, reading it for the third time.
Dear Tilly,
Did I make you laugh? I really hope I made you laugh. Now, I don’t want to say anything bad about your cooking but do you remember that lemon meringue pie? That’s all I’m going to say.
I know cooking has never been your thing but I’ve always found it soothing to follow a recipe, knowing that in cooking if you follow the instructions and keep practising, things should broadly turn out OK.
I hope this book encourages you to take care of yourself. You’ve made me feel so cared for, something I’ll always be grateful for. I just hope that you’ll remember that you need looking after too.
Make yourself some hearty, comforting meals (I like the look of the Souffléd Macaroni Cheese). And invite people over to share them with you. I know you probably don’t feel much like socializing right now but you have people inyour life who love you. Lean on them, Tilly. You’re not on your own.
I’m sorry I’m not there to cook for you. But I’ll be there at your side as you chop and stir and hopefully don’t start any fires.
I love you.
Joe x
She glances down again at her new copy of Delia Smith’sHow to Cook.
‘You did make me laugh, by the way,’ she says out loud, looking over her shoulder towards the urn on the bookshelves.
It had surprised her, the sound that escaped from her mouth as she peeled away the brown paper. But as soon as she saw the title she could picture Joe’s grin as he chose it and she couldn’t help but chuckle.
‘And how could I forget that lemon meringue pie?’
It was the first meal they hosted in their new flat, with Tilly’s parents visiting from Hay-on-Wye and Harper and Raj joining them. Joe offered to cook the main course but Tilly said she’d handle dessert.
‘I don’t know why I picked something so ambitious,’ she says as she weighs out the ingredients. ‘Maybe I was feeling grown-up because we’d just bought our own place, and I wanted to prove something. I’ll admit that using a blowtorch to scorch the meringue probably wasn’t the best idea …’
She did the blowtorching at the table, intending to add some drama to the occasion. Which it certainly did.
‘You were so calm about the fire,’ she continues, grating the cheese, the creamy, salty smell making her mouth water. ‘I just stood there screaming as the tablecloth caught light, but yougrabbed a jug of water and threw it over the table. And my lemon meringue pie too, unfortunately. I remember you still said it tasted good, once you’d drained the water and brushed off the burnt bits.’
She shakes her head as she recalls the memory. ‘You always were a terrible liar. But a great cook. Your sloppy joes were perfect, of course. I remember you saying you wanted to give my family the full American experience, so you made coleslaw, potato salad and home-made tater tots too.’
Thinking back to that meal, her stomach lets out a loud rumble. Her appetite has been all over the place since Joe’s death. Sometimes she completely forgets about meals, but on other days she turns to food to try to fill the emptiness, ordering takeaways and bingeing on biscuits and slabs of bread and butter. Grief has given her a yearning for carbohydrates.
She turns on some music as she cooks, the flat filling with a backing track of cheesy pop and the smell of actual cheese as the macaroni goes into the oven to crisp up. Since her visit to the bookshop she’s felt lighter than she has in weeks. She didn’t feel tempted to browse, despite having dipped her toe back into reading withMatilda. But she did feel welcomed, the warmth of the shop and the conversation with the staff acting like a blanket draped gently over her shoulders.
As she waits for the meal to cook, she flicks through the cookbook. It is geared to novices like her; there’s even a page on how to make the perfect slice of toast. She adds page markers to the recipes she’d like to try, her stomach rumbling again at the thought of crunchy roast potatoes and warming stews. Despite Joe’s encouragement in his letter, she isn’t sure she is ready to host a dinner party without him. She wouldn’t be able to get past the empty chair. But maybe he was right about making some proper meals for herself. Takeaways and pesto pasta don’t exactly make for a balanced diet.
Her attention catches on a recipe for pumpkin pie, remembering the Thanksgiving with Joe’s family after they’d got engaged. Joe waited the three months between the engagement and their trip because he was keen to tell them in person, over Thanksgiving dinner. ‘Because this year and every year what I’m thankful for is you.’
But the announcement went terribly, ending with Ellen making her feelings about the engagement perfectly clear, Joe yelling, Ellen fleeing the table in tears, Hank following after her, and Tilly comfort-eating three slices of pumpkin pie. She hasn’t been able to eat it since.
Thinking back to that trip, she remembers with a pang that it wasn’t just Joe and Ellen who argued. She and Joe fought too … They were down by the lake after dinner, and she remembers trying to keep her voice down, not wanting the sound to travel back to the house and give Ellen the satisfaction of knowing that despite the ring glistening on Tilly’s finger, they weren’t without their problems …
Before she can disappear too far down that spiral, the timer pings. She pulls the dish out of the oven, the surface of the macaroni sizzling and bubbling. She may have slightly overcooked it, but aside from a few burnt patches the surface is golden, the Parmesan crust enticing.
She sets the dish triumphantly on a mat and instead of bothering with a plate, reaches for a fork.
‘So youcancook,’ she imagines Joe saying with a raised eyebrow, blue eyes glinting. ‘Maybe you set light to that meringue pie on purpose, so I’d offer to cook everything after that. For health and safety reasons.’
