Mildred is either unwell/has left a kinder replacement as she goes back in time to slip into Vlad the Impaler’s head or is softening up.
Which is it?
Duh? For a smart woman, you can be very dense, Mildred says.
Dense how?
I’m your inner voice, honey. Not some randomer. Keep picking herbs and roses. Think about food, not about how you can’t come up with recipes. Lord help me for saying this, but stop running. You’ve been running.
Have not!
Oh, puhlease.
Shut up, I say crossly. I have not been running. I have been worrying myself sick because I have been terrified of my beloved daughter being taken away from me. Furthermore, I have a career which could slip away because since January, my mind has been set to ‘high anxiety’, not a setting conducive to anything but irritability and insomnia. And, Mildred, I add: I have had to cope with my mother killing herself to look after Dad when it’s plainly impossible; not to mention trying to keep my business on the road by socialmedia-ing myself to death. Lying by social media, I add. Pretending. Faking.
And lying to my darling Dan.
Take that, Mildred, I scowl.
But Mildred has vanished.
Bitch.
Muttering to myself, I hold the roses and pass the herbs again. Just like a quicksilver bird flying across your path, some forgotten part of my mind comes alive.
The scents begin to swirl around inside my head. It’s how I’ve always cooked: smelling things and imagining what they’d be like together, having visions of mixing entirely different ingredients to create food that nourished, comforted. Greece is replaced by southern France, where we ate too much boullabaisse because we simply could not stop, mopping it up with bread made in the café kitchen that morning. For breakfast, Lexi and Liam had hot chocolate in bowls first, and I made comfort food of lovely French toast with a hint of good quality cinnamon grated in and just the smallest sliver of nutmeg, because nutmeg made such a difference.
Stop running.
I allow myself to wallow in my memories of how I cooked before and suddenly, I feel the wall of pain burst and the woman who cooks is back.
In the kitchen, I lose myself chopping and searing, washing vegetables, rinsing the wild garlic and then bashing it with Mum’s pestle and mortar, letting the crushed leaves perfume the air. Scarlett isn’t up to anything with meat in it, no. Scarlett needs something simple and filling and nutritious.
We eat dinner early in the house on Summer Street and it’s nearly six when Granny Bridget comes in accompanied by a stomping Eddie.
‘You’re here,’ he says. ‘Nobody ever told me, nobody ever tells me anything around here. I’m just forgotten. Once you get old, people totally forget about you. I was only saying the other day—’
I interrupt him.
‘I came in with Scarlett and I haven’t been around to see anyone. I dropped in to do a little bit of cooking.’
‘I thought you were a chef,’ Eddie snorts. ‘In my day we called them cooks, I don’t know about the new words you young people have.’
‘Cook is a lovely word,’ says Bridget thoughtfully, ‘but I like chef too and I’ve never seen you wear one of those funny hats, Freya: you know, tall with a floppy puffy bit on the top.’ Bridget smiles, happy in her own world.
‘She doesn’t want a hat like that,’ says Eddie.
‘She might. Ooh, roses,’ says Bridget, who has noticed the flowers on the table, sprigs of lavender and rosemary threaded in amidst the blooms for added scent. ‘I love these ones.’
‘I know.’
I pat her hand and help her sit in her place, with Delilah on abe-cushioned stool beside her. Delilah has plenty of food in her bowl but has already turned her adorable pink nose up at it and is looking wistfully at the human food.
‘That cat’s ruined,’ said Eddie.
‘She’s an assistance cat,’ I say. ‘She sits on Dad’s lap and he likes it.’
‘He does, doesn’t he?’ says Eddie, smiling suddenly.
