Fair enough. The waffles went in the trolley, along with fish fingers and Findus Crispy Pancakes. Rupert grabbed a bag of peas in a feeble attempt to be healthy, then steered them out of the frozen crap aisle. He couldn’t cook for shit, but he couldn’t bring himself to let Jodi subsist on junk either.
They made their way to the meat aisle. Rupert forced himself to bypass the bacon and picked up a whole chicken. “We could do a roast?”
“Really?” Jodi frowned. “Do you know how to do that? ’Cause I haven’t got a fucking scooby.”
Rupert studied the label on the chicken. “You used to. Said you learned how to cook when your ma moved down under, because her cooking was the only thing you missed about her.”
“I don’t remember missing her at all.”
“You don’t.” Rupert chose his words with caution. “Or you didn’t before the accident. You told me she worked so much when you were young that you grew used to her not being around, so when she moved to Australia, and then, um, died, it didn’t mean a lot to you.”
Jodi looked thoughtful. “It’s true. My childminder raised me until I went to school, and then I kinda raised myself.”
It was nothing Rupert hadn’t heard before. An old man jostled him from behind. He started to get out of the way, but Jodi’s hand on his arm stilled him. “So I wasn’t upset when she died?”
“I only know what you told me. You’d have to ask Sophie to be certain. It happened before we met.”
“Of course it did.” Jodi frowned, though he seemed more bemused than upset.
“You okay?” Rupert nudged him gently.
“What? Oh, yeah. I just feel like I’ve forgotten loads outside of the last few years sometimes, you know? There’s stuff I should know that just isn’t there until someone puts it back for me.”
“No one can put anything back for you. You just have to trust it’s still in there somewhere.”If only it were that simple.If Jodi had any memory of the men he’d been with before Rupert, men that had been and gone even before Sophie, perhaps the prospect of prompting Jodi to remember Rupert and all they’d meant to each other wouldn’t be so impossible.
It was Jodi’s turn to nudge Rupert. “What are you going to do with that chicken?”
“I have no idea,” Rupert said absently, his mind still on the illogical gaps in Jodi’s brain. “Shall we get it anyway and wing it?”
Jodi pulled a face. “Sophie cooked chicken the other day. It was bloody minging.”
Back to sausages then.Rupert put the chicken on the shelf, retreated, and grabbed a pack. “How about toad-in-the-hole?”
“If you say so.”
It was as close to a “yes” as Rupert was likely to get from Jodi. He threw the sausages in the trolley. “Sold. Come on. We need some other bits if we’re going to smash this shit.”
* * *
Rupert had never been an optimist, but “smashing” a toad-in-the-hole turned out to be even more complicated than he’d feared. He eyed the kitchen counter, cluttered with every pan they owned and dusty with flour, and wondered ifhewas the one who’d had a bang on the head. What on earth had he been thinking?
“Can’t you just google it?”
Rupert tossed a halfhearted glare over his shoulder. The fact that Jodi had chosen to stay in the kitchen with him, settled at the breakfast bar with his laptop rather than skulking away to the couch, meant the world to him. “I tried, but the wi-fi isn’t working.”
“So? You have a data allowance on your phone, don’t you?”
“Nope. I have a pay-as-you-go sim card. I only have an iPhone because you forced your old one on me.”
“Why?”
“Because I was as skint as a boozer’s widow when I met you. Could barely afford to pay attention.”
Jodi snorted. Rupert tore his focus from the lumpy batter he’d concocted in a jug that was far too small for it. “What’s funny about that?”
“I’m not laughing.”
The gleam in Jodi’s eyes gave him away. Rupert rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I’ve never bothered to upgrade it because there’s wi-fi here and the fire station picks up the signal from the Costa across the road. You made me take your old phone because you were fed up of my old one dying when I was on shift.”
