Cuckoo (aka Claire, Darling)

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

5 October 2024

Dear Diary,

Noah and I are still dating. He came over last night and I attempted to cook him dinner. I would love to be the type of woman who has a signature dish, who can rely on this one singular, phenomenal taste sensation on a plate for their first time treating someone to a meal. But I’m not. I don’t think I ever saw Mother cook a meal for a man, so I’ll blame it on her. When she used to go out and forget to feed me, I’d make myself a meal that was basically just mashed potato with cheese and bacon bits in it. God, I forgot about that. Delicious. But sadly, serving Noah a plate of cheesy fork-stabbed mash probably wouldn’t be too impressive, and I no longer have the metabolism of thirteen-year-old Claire, so I went with spaghetti Bolognese.

Big shock, Noah is a great cook and ended up helping me as I went along. Not in an annoying, patronising way. We just fell into sync quickly after he offered to help cut up the peppers and I found him sort of cooking alongside me. It was nice. I’d bought a bottle of wine to go with it as it was a special occasion, and we had a couple of glasses. I’m not used to drinking on weekdays and ended up getting quite tipsy from just the two little glasses, then I started telling him about the girl who bullied me in secondary school. How embarrassing is that?

I hadn’t thought about Laura in years, but he’d asked about what I was like at school and it was as if all these memories were released. I didn’t tell him the most embarrassing parts, of course; the nickname they made up for me or the chunks of time spent hiding in a stall in the girls’ toilets while Laura and her little gang threw wet balls of toilet paper at the ceiling above me. But I gave him an overview, about how school was tough thanks to one girl in particular and her band of friends.

After we’d been talking for a while we put on a film. I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up it was the middle of the night and he’d turned the TV off and thrown a blanket over me before leaving. Beside me, he’d left this note made out of scrap paper that had been lying on my coffee table– he’d somehow folded it up into a little tortoise.

It was almost too beautiful to touch, until I saw the paper had been written on and obviously I had to unfold it to read the message.

Slow and steady wins the race, as it says in ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’. You’re beautiful and Laura probably peaked at school. You’re my cute little tortoise.

I laughed out loud and texted him. He said it was origami, and that next time he was over he’d show me how to re-fold it back into shape.

Tell me this: isn’t that the sweetest thing you’ve ever heard?!

Claire