Chapter 27
Violet
The scent of cooking onions roused me from my stress-induced stupor, and I pushed myself up into a sitting position. There was a dent in the pillow where I’d buried my face, and smears of mascara on the white cotton. Crossing into the en suite, I grimaced at my reflection in the mirror before using a wet tissue to wipe my eyes.
It smelled as if the onions were burning.
Picking up my phone as I left the room, I made my way downstairs, paused for a moment, then put the handset screen-side down on the hall table. The calls were becoming so frequent that the cursed thing had begun to feel like an enemy. Each time I picked it up, I was confronted by a new demand, another warning, a missed call, a voicemail instructing me to make a payment.
I had so far ignored all of them.
Feeling anxious was a state I’d long grown accustomed to, and rather than tackle this new set of problems head-on, I merely absorbed them. What were a few money issues against the mess I’d made of the rest of my life? Who cared about debt when I’d already lost most of the things, and people, I cared about?
Avoiding my mother’s calls was a trickier prospect, though I’d managed to stall her by firing off a series of vague messages about ‘showing buyers around’ and ‘speaking to lawyers’. If she believed I was doing something to better my situation, she’d worry less. Although in truth, of course, I was doing nothing. Henry and I had settled into an uneasy stalemate since he’d laid down his ultimatum, neither one of us mentioning the potential sale of the house or Mags and Malcolm, whose messages I’d also steadfastly ignored over the past two days. So many people needing so many answers from me, and I could offer nothing satisfactory to any of them.
‘Something smells good,’ I said, pushing open the kitchen door to find Luke and Eliza standing together by the stove. There was a large frying pan spitting away on the hob, the blackened remains of what were once edible onions welded to its surface.
‘I think we may have the heat up too high,’ said Eliza, in a careful tone that made me glance more closely at Luke, notice the rigid set of his jaw, the hardness in his eyes.
‘It’s fucked,’ he snarled. ‘It’s all fucked.’
‘I’m sure it’s not,’ I cajoled, as Eliza took an involuntary step backwards. So many of Luke’s blow-ups began with something like this, an incidental mishap that most people would simply laugh off. The trick was not to exacerbate the problem whilst simultaneously acknowledging that his response was valid. I had described it to Henry once as walking a tightrope, telling him that ‘as long as you focus on the end point, you’ll get to the other side safely’. That was the theory, in any case.
‘Onions are notoriously fond of burning,’ I said, peering around him and down into the pan. ‘What is it you’re making?’
‘Paella,’ Eliza told me. ‘Or trying to.’
I took in the pile of chopped tomatoes on the worktop, the jar of saffron and freshly plucked bay leaves.
‘You know,’ I said, ‘if you really want to create an authentic Spanish paella, then it needs to be cooked outdoors, over an open fire.’
Luke switched his gloomy attention from the burnt onions to me.
‘What?’
‘You’ve seen how they do it down at the beach bars. Why don’t we do the same? I’m sure between the three of us, we can cobble something together. It’ll be fun.’
Luke chuntered. ‘A fire? In here?’
‘Well, in the garden preferably.’
He frowned, considering. ‘All right.’
I experienced a whooshing sensation as the tension left my body.
‘You two start,’ Eliza said, unhooking her bag from the back of a chair. ‘I need to pop out. We forgot garlic,’ she said, gesturing to the heap of ingredients. ‘I’m guessing that’s pretty much a non-negotiable?’
‘Correct,’ I said. ‘It’s one of the essential components of the sofrito. No sofrito, no paella. And this,’ I added, taking the frying pan off the hob, and marching it over to the bin, ‘is far too small for our culinary needs. We’re going to need a bigger dish.’
Having scraped off the offending onions and given Eliza a list of all the other bits and pieces we’d need, Luke and I ventured outside to Henry’s tiny work shed, where we discovered an old wok with a broken handle, and a rusty metal tripod we could balance it on. Having picked a spot in the overgrown vegetable patch a good distance away from any trees, I set about clearing a large patch of earth while Luke lumbered off to gather some stones, which he arranged in a circle on the ground. As luck would have it, Henry had already cut and stacked a decent amount of firewood for the indoor wood burner, and there was a box of kindling sticks in his shed.
‘You can do the honours,’ I said to Luke, passing across a box of matches. His fingers shook as he readied one against the strip, uncertain suddenly, his eyes flicking to mine in search of reassurance. I nodded.
‘Go on. If the house burns down, it’s on me.’
He gave a snort of laughter. ‘You’re weird, Mum.’
It was one of the kindest things he had ever said to me.
With the pan beginning to warm on the flames, I chopped more onions while Luke tackled the peppers.
‘Why do you hold them like that?’ he asked, as I curled the tips of my fingers out of harm’s way.
‘Because knuckles are harder to nick with the knife,’ I explained, and was touched when he moved his own hand into the same position. Despite the heat of the late afternoon, it felt like a comfort to have the flames crackling so close to us. There was something so evocative about the sound, and I found myself relaxing into the simple pattern of slicing and dicing. Luke, too, appeared to have mellowed, his head down and mouth slightly open. I loved him in these quiet moments, when I could allow myself to believe there was peace inside him, even if it was a fleeting glimpse.
‘Right, time for oil,’ I said, pouring a generous glug directly from the bottle into the wok, which fizzed appreciatively.
‘Onions now?’ asked Luke, but I shook my head.
‘Give it a few minutes to warm through first, then we’ll need to keep an eye on them, stirring continually to make sure they don’t stick.’
Luke shuffled along the wall on his bottom until his trainer-clad feet were level with the edge of the makeshift firepit.
‘Since when did you know so much about cooking?’
I cocked my head to one side, raised my eyebrows. ‘Well, I like to think preparing dinner for you and Dad every night for years on the trot taught me a few things.’
He considered this, the implication behind it perhaps occurring to him for the first time, as a moment later, he asked, ‘Did it ever bother you? You know, doing everything, around the house and stuff?’
The oil was beginning to smoke, so I tossed in the onions.
‘Your dad did his share of household chores,’ I said. ‘But he was often held up at work, so it usually made more sense for me to take care of dinner. I didn’t mind.’
I had minded him being late, though. I had minded that very much.
‘Did you ever consider being a chef?’
I was so surprised by the question that I laughed.
Luke looked at me nonplussed. ‘Then what did you want to be when you were a kid?’
‘A world-class gymnast. Here, give the onions a stir.’
‘Ha ha,’ he intoned, as I passed him a large wooden spoon.
‘Seriously. I was pretty good, I’ll have you know. Nowadays, I’d have more chance of sprouting wings and flying to the moon than I would have of executing the perfect backflip, but when I was a teenager, there was no stopping me.’
‘What did stop you?’ he asked, as the pan spluttered and smoked.
‘Oh, I grew out of it,’ I said casually. ‘It was never going to be a real job.’
‘Grew out of it. By that, do you mean got pregnant with me?’
‘Can’t it be both? Obviously, it’s not a good idea to do cartwheels when you’re expecting a baby.’
Luke didn’t smile. ‘Why didn’t you go back to it after I was born?’
He was focused on his task, eyes not on me but the food, and though his tone was casual enough, I suspected this was not a conversation he was a hundred per cent comfortable having. This desire he had to delve into my past, to understand who I was as a person rather than simply his mum, was new. We were both navigating uncharted territory here, and treading cautiously was a must.
‘I suppose I could’ve tried again once you went to nursery, but by that time we’d started planning the business. I was always far more passionate about plants than I was about being a gymnast anyway.’
‘And what about now?’ he asked. ‘Do you really enjoy working at the estate agent?’
I had yet to tell him that I’d lost my job, and for a moment, I fumbled for something to say that wasn’t an outright lie. ‘I don’t hate it,’ I said slowly. ‘But ideally, I’d prefer to be doing something else.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like what I used to do, designing and maintaining gardens for people.’
‘That made you happy?’
‘It did, yes – the happiest.’
And there it was. Simple, painful, truth.
‘So, do it again,’ he insisted. ‘I know you and Dad dissolved the business pretty much – he told me. But you could start up something new – a venture that was all your own.’
I was shaking my head.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s not the right time.’
It was a cop-out answer, and Luke knew it.
‘I still don’t get it,’ he muttered, going back to his stirring. ‘You and Dad. I don’t get what went wrong. You used to be so –’ he waved a hand around, searching for the right word – ‘close. Like, finish each other’s sentences close. When me and Eliza started doing that, I knew she was, like, the one. Because it reminded me of you and Dad.’
He raised his eyes, catching mine before I had time to glance away, and for a moment we were locked together, each willing the other to say more, share more, open up more, but neither of us had time. The back door had opened, Eliza emerging, followed closely by Henry, the latter’s eyes widening when he realised what we were doing.
‘You’re just in time,’ I called by way of greeting. ‘These onions are crying out for some garlic.’
Eliza skipped down the steps to join us, a carrier bag in her hand that she swung towards Luke. He stood up to kiss her, the fingers not holding the wooden spoon mussing up her rose-coloured hair. A warmth stole through me at the sight of them, and I saw the same softening in Henry’s features, too, as he made his way more slowly towards us.
There was something about being in this garden with him, in almost the exact spot we had seen each other for the very first time, that calmed me. If the scene was being shot for a movie, it would be in soft focus, the camera zooming in to capture the gentle pattern of leaves stirred by breeze, the lackadaisical path of a bee as it moved from one bloom to the next, fuzzy legs turned a dusty yellow by pollen. It represented more than simply the start of our love story; it had become our refuge, the place we found one another again in the hardest times, each soothed by the familiar scents, the uncompromising sturdiness of the trees, the heat of perpetual sunshine. What little faith I had that fate would look kindly upon us again was peaked out here. I found that I could almost believe it.
‘What do I do with this, Mum?’ Luke asked, extracting a bulb of garlic, and peering at it as one might a tarantula.
‘Remove the cloves but leave them in their skins,’ I told him. ‘We’ll toss them in with the onions, get a lid on the pan, and give them ten minutes or so to roast up nicely.’
‘Yes, chef,’ he quipped.
‘Will you join us?’ I said to Henry, unable to stop the cadence of my voice rising.
‘It’s a good day,’ I wanted to tell him. A good Luke day. Don’t miss it.
I read his answer in his features before he’d even uttered a single word.
‘I have a... thing. It’s... I can stay for a bit. I really just came out here to give you this.’
I stared at the phone in his hand. My phone.
‘It was ringing when I got in, and there are some messages, I think. Don’t worry,’ he added, as I took the handset from him. ‘I didn’t read them or anything.’
There was only one message, and it was from Juan: Are you available tonight?
This could only mean one thing.
I can be, I typed back, rapidly calculating how much time it would take to finish the paella, eat it, and not seem as if I was being rude by slipping away.
Meet me at U Gallet, 10pm. I have some information for you.
‘Everything OK?’ asked Henry. ‘You look—’
‘Fine,’ I interrupted. ‘All fine.’
‘You’re not going to say who it was?’
‘Oh, you know,’ I said, feigning indifference as I slipped the phone into my pocket. ‘It was nothing. Nobody.’