Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
ELI
Things were not fine.
I had nearly lost the tips of my fingers because I hadn’t tucked them properly as I chopped.
Twice. I kept missing whole sections of conversations happening around me.
Some were casual chit-chat. Others were work-related, and I had nothing to contribute.
I was the head chef, and I had no idea what the team I was leading wanted from me.
I couldn’t stop sweating. Or breathe properly.
I thought I could hold it together enough to do my job. I had always managed to do it before. I usually thrived at work around this time of year.
But in previous years, I hadn’t forgotten about it completely. I had built my life around it.
I couldn’t get over the fact that I forgot.
And I was falling apart.
The moment the staff room door clicked shut, my knees hit the floor, hard.
I hardly felt it, though, as sobs racked through my body.
I was only vaguely aware that I had shifted into a more comfortable position, and then my head was resting against something solid.
I could hear the steady beat of a heart thudding against my ear, and fingers were running across my scalp.
Slowly. Soothingly. I focused on those two things and tried to stop crying.
I didn’t know how long I was crying for, but when the sobs finally started easing, I realised Addie was singing quietly. She trailed off when she noticed I had stopped sobbing.
“Can you tell me five things you can see right now?” Her voice was a whisper, her fingers still running through my hair.
I took a moment to look around the room and cleared my throat.
“A coffee machine, a sofa, the saddest looking rug in the world, someone’s knife roll…your right boob.” My voice sounded thick and wet.
I felt a laugh rumble through her chest before I heard the gentle sound of it. “Fair. Four things you can touch.”
“The floor, the edge of this sad-looking rug, my chef blacks, your left boob.”
Her nails drew a circle on my scalp, and I melted at the touch. “Three things you can hear.”
“Xander at the pass, something frying, your heartbeat.”
The thing that was grounding me most as I fell apart at the seams.
A scratch of nails from the top of my forehead to the nape of my neck. “Two things you can smell.”
The only thing I could smell was her. “Wood sage and sea salt.” Her perfume. The scent never left me, even when she wasn’t around. I was haunted by it. Although could it be called a haunting if you wanted it?
“One thing you can taste?”
“Hazelnut and chocolate brownie.” Kayla practically shoved it in my mouth when she noticed the second near-miss between my knife and my fingers. I only had a small bite to get her off my back, and as I swallowed it, I tried not to throw it back up.
“How are you feeling now?”
I wanted to lift my head and look at her, but moving meant the fingers running through my hair and along my scalp would stop, and I didn’t want that.
“You wanna talk about it?” she carried on.
“No,” I said simply.
I felt a hum pass through Addie’s chest. Her fingers didn’t stop scratching through my hair, and we sat there, in silence.
“My mum died six years ago today.”
I didn’t know how long we’d been sitting there. The kitchen sounded like it was still in full swing, and no one had tried to come in here, so lunch service was still happening.
“That must be difficult,” she replied, her fingers finally stilling in my hair. I managed to stop myself from whimpering at the loss of her touch.
“She had a heart attack in the middle of doing a food shop. I found out three days after it happened.” My voice sounded detached. Even to me.
Her fingers scratched through my hair again. I softened.
“Dare I ask why it took so long for you to find out?”
“You can ask.” I usually hated being asked that question.
It was too messy. Too painful. It changed the way people looked at me.
But I wanted Addie to know. My mum had always asked after her on days when we had lessons together.
I think she might have known about my crush on her, but she’d never made a big deal about it.
I felt Addie take a deep breath. “Why weren’t you told for three days?”
I took a deep breath of my own. “Do you remember what my dad does for a living?”
“He’s a wanker, isn’t he?”
I laughed. It sounded more like a snort from the leftover tears.
“A banker. Yeah. He runs an investment banking company. Which he inherited from his dad, who inherited it from his dad. I think you could call it a family business. Anyway, he spent most of my childhood and teenage years priming me to take it over. For a long time, life was just a thing that was happening to me. I did all the necessary subjects. I applied to all the top universities. I agreed to get a maths degree. I went to Oxford, where it became abundantly clear that while I was good at maths, I was not Oxford good at maths. I tried. I really did. I gave it a year, and it wasn’t for me.
So, after that first year, I told Dad I couldn’t do it. I was going to culinary school.
“He didn’t take to it too well. And by that, I mean he disowned me.
He cut me off, although the joke was on him, because the perks of being primed to take over the family business are that you learn early on how to make good investments.
Katie finally got her chance to be the golden child, so she sided with my dad.
Mum existed in a grey area. She didn’t cut off contact completely, but she didn’t exactly call Dad out for doing it either.
So my connection to my family remained semi-regular phone calls with her and not much else.
It’s been about a decade since Katie thought about my existence; hence, three days to be informed that our mother had died.
Even when she did call me about it, the conversation lasted less than a minute, and I wasn’t even sure I heard her properly.
Then I got a text with details about her funeral. ”
Addie was silent for a moment, her fingers still running soothingly through my hair.
“That sounds like a lot to go through,” she said eventually.
“It was. I had good people around me at the time. I had…Freya.” I didn’t know if I was ready to go into details about Freya. That hurt for a whole different reason.
Addie’s fingers stilled again.
“That’s good. That you had people and didn’t have to go through that alone.” Her fingers started up again. “Do you always work today?”
“I happened to have a day off after that first year, and it was…not good. I couldn’t get out of bed.
Freya tried everything under the sun to get me outside, but it didn’t work.
I couldn’t think of anything worse than going out to enjoy the sun when my mother could no longer enjoy her favourite season.
Looking back, I think that might have been the beginning of the end for us.
She lacked a lot of patience with me when it came to my grief.
You never know how you’re going to react to the big things, and she didn’t like the way I reacted.
” I guess I was giving details of Freya away unprompted, then.
“After that first year, I worked as much as I could. Work gave me a reason to get out of bed. It gave me something to focus on. Yes, I was still sad, but at least I was doing something.”
“I wouldn’t say working yourself into the ground is the healthiest of coping mechanisms.”
“I never said it was, but I work in a profession that lets people do arguably unhealthy things. Like work too much. It was what I had, and it meant that I didn’t make my grief anyone else’s problem.
Which felt like a bonus because being sad about my mostly estranged mother being dead bothered a lot of people in my life. ”
“That says more about them than you. You are allowed to process things the way that feels most natural to you. There is nothing wrong with that. And for people to make you feel bad for grieving makes them pretty shitty.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call those people friends.
I mean, I’ve not spoken to them since I left Manchester, and I’ve not missed them.
And that’s not even really why I feel so shit today.
Every year since she passed, in the days leading up to the anniversary, I have felt it.
The slow ebb of the wave of grief, getting ready to crash over me.
But that didn’t happen this year. I was so busy living my life that I didn’t even realise what day it was until last night. How could I forget something so huge?”
“Because you’ve just started a new job and you’ve relocated, and the days all blur into one another.
It doesn’t make you a bad person. It means you’re living your life.
I didn’t know your mum, but I don’t think she would begrudge you for that.
And you didn’t forget. It manifested itself differently this year, but you didn’t forget.
And you don’t have to go through it alone.
You have people around you who wouldn’t think twice about giving you a shoulder to cry on.
Just ask any one of the girls. Me. Jesse.
If you need one of us, then we’ll rally. ”
I scoffed. “I’m sure they all have better things to do than deal with my sadness.”
“That’s not your decision to make. The worst they can do is say they can’t at that time. But one of us is bound to be free. And it will probably always be Jesse because he is great at managing his time, according to my sister.”
“Can you speak on their behalf?”
“Yes, I can. Now, are you okay to walk home? The lunch shift is almost done, and I’m guessing you don’t want to be witnessed right now.”
I didn’t want to move from this safe place that she had created. But she was right. I didn’t need other people to see my red-rimmed, puffy eyes and the tear stains on Addie’s jumper.
“Yeah, we can go home.”