The Lonely Fajita

by Abigail Mann

  ‘Well, I’m pretty sure it’s the first and last time I’ll ever get to call somewhere like this home.’

  ‘I’ll help you unload, but then I’ve got to get over to Grandma’s – she gets quite upset when I’m not there on time. She has the tea poured at ten on the dot and if you’re not there to drink it she won’t make you another one on principle.’

  Once we’ve unloaded the last box onto the pavement, I say goodbye to Maggie through the window and she drives away in a spluttering of fumes that make my eyes water. Nigel wafts his hand in front of his face and coughs. ‘Miss Evans! So nice to see you again,’ he says in a measured Nigerian accent.

  ‘Sorry, I’m a bit early.’

  ‘Not a problem. I will see to it that your things are brought over to Mrs De Loutherberg’s home. Am I to expect another vehicle with the rest of your belongings?’

  ‘Er … this is it, actually.’ Nigel raises his eyebrows. ‘Minimalist living and all that – cluttered house, cluttered mind. Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of clutter if that’s what you like …’ I laugh and feel my cheeks grow hot. Thankfully, Nigel leads me through the archway and around the green before I can say anything else.

  I look over my shoulder at the sum of my possessions: two boxes, a suitcase, an IKEA bag, and a lamp. They look so small and pathetic sat out here on the kerb. Nigel mutters something to a bald man with a belly that bulges above and below his belt, and he disappears, reappearing a few seconds later with a brass luggage trolley that he wheels towards my things.

  ‘Annie is out, but Mr Biggety is inside to welcome you.’

  ‘Sorry, who?’

  At that moment Annie’s front door jerks open, revealing Craig standing on the doormat. ‘A big hello to our new companion!’ How can he be so sweaty already? It’s barely ten o’clock in the morning. Nigel touches his cap and nods at us before slipping away to the porter’s nook. Man’s got the right idea.

  ‘I rearranged my rounds just to make sure I could be here to see you settled in. Great, isn’t it?’ He stands next to the door to let me in, leaving barely enough room to inch past. When I do, I feel his knee graze my thigh, and from his breath I can say with near certainty that he had scrambled eggs for breakfast. ‘Lovely,’ says Craig, but what he’s referring to as ‘lovely’ I’m not entirely sure. ‘The room Annie’s set out for you is upstairs at the end of the corridor. Shall we go and have a look?’

  ‘Um, I think I should maybe wait for Annie?’

  ‘No, best to get you settled in first. Our Annie gets a little muddled with all sorts of pernickety little things, so if we sort you out she won’t have to worry, will she?’ Craig says, his voice bright and sickly. ‘I’ll follow you up the stairs.’ No bloody thanks! I’m not going to have creepy Craig scoping out my arse the whole way.

  ‘No, after you.’

  He surveys me for a moment before shrugging his shoulders and smiling, his eyes tiny slits in a pudgy face.

  ***

  The room he takes me to is small but flooded with sunshine. A wooden single bed is pushed up against the wall by a window that looks down onto a magnolia tree that shades the kitchen window. Annie has left the drawers of a chest and bedside table open to show that they’re empty, and a wardrobe is neatly hung with flocked hangers. I walk over to the drawers and look inside. They’re lined with lavender-scented paper which is patterned with tiny bees. A new pair of sheepskin-lined slippers sit next to the bed with a pink envelope balanced on top.

  ‘For you, Elissa. The floorboards get cold at night. X’

  My chest pangs with the thoughtfulness of Annie’s gift, and it makes me even more annoyed that Craig is standing around being gross.

  ‘I think I’ll be fine now, Craig,’ I say. He widens his stance in the doorway, shoulders hunched.

  ‘Annie won’t be long. You know what ladies are like. They gabble away and forget to check the clock.’ Craig smooths his hair down over his forehead and then clumps down the stairs, his footsteps muffled on the rich burgundy stair runner. I listen for the door. Click. Thank God for that.

  I spend some time unpacking, pausing briefly to send a message to Suki who asks how the ‘granny pad’ is going. After I hang up my clothes, I shove the IKEA bag into my empty suitcase and slide it underneath the bed next to a shallow wicker basket stacked with neatly folded linen. I look around the room that’s to be mine for … I’m not sure how long. A varnished dado rail splits the walls in two, the top half painted sage green and the bottom half wallpapered with old-fashioned illustrations of duck ponds and farm animals. There’s a small fireplace too, on which I’ve put a framed polaroid of me and Maggie on our graduation day, her beaming and beautiful, me wincing and clutching my head as the tasselled cap I’d thrown a second before lands on me.

  I don’t know if Annie would think it rude of me to be upstairs when she gets back (in my experience, older people are funny about doing things ‘the proper way’), so I head down to wait for her in the kitchen. Not long afterwards, there’s a scratch in the lock and Annie walks through the hallway with a bright pink yoga mat under her arm. I stand up by way of a greeting, faltering when it comes to verbalising a ‘hello’ because she looks surprised to see me.

  ‘You all right, love? I wasn’t expecting you until later!’ She props her mat against the table and slides her feet into slippers. ‘I told Craig earlier in t’week that I’d be here from the afternoon. They must have got it wrong.’ She looks a little frazzled and her cheeks are pinched pink.

  ‘Oh. I’m so sorry, Annie, Alina said to come from ten. Craig seemed to be expecting me …’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘He was here when I arrived. Like, in here. In the house.’

  ‘Was ’e now?’ Annie looks triumphant. ‘That sneaky bastard. ’Scuse my French, love.’ She scowls and looks towards the door. ‘I have a feeling … I tell you what, if he comes creepin’ round here when I’m out again, you let me know straightaway, all right? I don’t trust him. He’s the sort whose picture’ll come up on Watchdog, you mark my words.’ She hangs up a padded gilet on the coat stand, walks over to me, and puts a chilly, soft hand on my cheek. ‘He ever say anything … odd to you, you go over to George and Margaret’s. George is a sweetheart, and Margaret … well, she’s always got a face ache, but she’ll do right by you. They live over the other side – the house with all the roses growing at the front – okay? I’ve tried reporting him before but they said being a git wasn’t grounds for dismissal. I reckon they put me on his rounds every week as punishment. They think we exaggerate, us old folk.’ Annie sighs and she waves like she’s shooing a fly. ‘Anyway, I haven’t asked you how you are, my love. You don’t talk much, do you?’ she says.

  Considering the impression I had before meeting Annie, it’s clear she’s as far from quietly doddery as it’s possible to get without being Cher and filling your face with a litre of botox. She grins. ‘I’m only messing, Elissa. I know I don’t half go on. Used to put such a face on my Arthur. Tea?’

  ‘I’ll make it!’ I jump up and scoot around Annie as she walks towards the kettle, opening and closing cupboards to find the mugs. When I turn around to ask, Annie brings over two cups and saucers, the china rattling as her hands shake. I take them off her.

  ‘Bloody hands. Might as well chop them off,’ she says, rubbing at her thumb joints. ‘Could never get used to mugs. Big, bulky things …’ She trails off and looks a little embarrassed.

  ‘That’s okay,’ I say, ‘these are lovely.’ It’s true, they are. I mean, the pragmatist in me is thinking about how you’d have to boil the kettle again after the first cup because there’s no way that the amount of tea in this Alice in Wonderland crockery is enough to satisfy me. Maggie only just persuaded me to leave behind a huge, chipped pint-sized mug in the old flat because she thought it was ‘a bit too studenty’. Old flat. It’s a nice thought.

  We sit at the kitchen table and Annie puts down a small bowl of white sugar cubes, a tiny flowery ju
g of milk, and a plate with four Jaffa Cakes on it.

  ‘Doctor would smack me hand for this,’ she says, motioning to the plate, ‘but if you can’t have a couple of packets of Jaffa Cakes when you’re eighty-three, what’s the bloody point?’ Annie puts one in her mouth whole and closes her eyes in delight. Her skin is so thin and pale you can see blue veins traced underneath. She pouts her lips to meet the wobbling cup and sips. When she smiles, her eyelids crinkle into concertina wrinkles.

  ‘I once ate a whole multipack of Kitkats during an episode of Gogglebox, so I’m the last person to judge. They weren’t even mine.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘Not that I steal, or anything! I went to the shop and replaced them. I don’t often eat other people’s food.’

  ‘Not that regularly, anyway,’ says Annie, popping a sugar cube in her mouth. She traces the handle of her cup and looks out of the window. ‘I never used to get away with eating treats like this when I was married. Or before, actually. Arthur always expected scones, or a teacake when he got home from work, but he’d make a comment if I ate it too. You know, about how I’d get fat or something.’ She tuts and rolls her eyes. ‘Blokes. Double standards, in’t it?’

  ‘I know, tell me about it …’ I say, in an attempt to sympathise.

  ‘Your fella like that too?’

  ‘Um, well … not really.’ I pause. It’s too soon to unpick what me and Tom are now. ‘He gets a bit disgruntled when I eat his cereal bars. Most of the time he doesn’t notice.’

  ‘Good for you,’ says Annie, although I didn’t say it to make Tom look good. He wouldn’t notice if I gained a few pounds because he barely notices when I’ve had a haircut.

  We chat about how long Annie has been in Evergreen Village (since her husband took up lecturing in the Sixties), how she likes Hampstead (she loves the Heath, but hates how many people let their dogs crap on the path), and some of the other residents of the village (Gwen, George, Margaret, and Gloria. They play boules together, but Annie doesn’t join them).

  ‘Why is it called a village, Annie? If that’s not too stupid a question?’ I ask, filling up the kettle again.

  ‘Well, Hampstead was a village itself before the city kept creeping closer and closer to meet us up here on the hill. I haven’t got a clue why we’re called Evergreen Village. Posh people, in’t it? It’s a way of keeping out the riff-raff. I managed to slip through, somehow.’ She winks and takes another Jaffa Cake.

  ‘You’re not from round here?’ I ask.

  ‘Nope. Sheffield. I met Arthur at a dance when I was studying engineering at the university. He was in the last year of a doctorate in medieval theology. Different tastes, you could say.’

  ‘Wow, that’s really impressive,’ I say, and I mean it.

  ‘Ended up a professor at UCL. Buried himself in documents and scrolls at the archives. Slept in the library, some days.’ She smiles sadly.

  ‘I meant you, being an engineer. I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Oh, I never ended up an engineer. We got married straight after I graduated and moved down south. That were the way things were, back then.’ Annie stands up from her chair on a second attempt, her forearms shaking as she slowly shifts her bodyweight. ‘Got me books though,’ she says, patting a squat shelf below the mirror lined with dozens of clothbound books in hues of navy and green. ‘Got to keep the ol’ brain ticking over.’

  ***

  Every time I think I see Annie a little clearer, she reveals something totally different to what I’d expect. First, the bold Yorkshire accent I’d only ever heard horrible people use as a parody of someone stupid, then the library of engineering books that may as well be in Mandarin for all I understand. From the sound of it, both Annie and her husband would have been great lecturers.

  By the afternoon I get a sense that Annie wants some time on her own. I tell her about my job (she finds it very hard to grasp what social media is, let alone how it could be someone’s job), but twice mentions that Gardener’s Question Time is coming on and that I’ll probably find it dull. I mean, she’s not wrong.

  I go upstairs to work on my re-branding presentation and jot down a few lines in my notebook. I read back what I’ve got so far. It isn’t a pitch, as such, but it’s … something – a loose marketing idea with a heavy emphasis on social media, so I can at least justify the need for my job in the future. I throw in a couple of statistics too, which sound good because you can’t dispute numbers, even if the survey size was seventeen (a detail I choose to omit). I time myself and read through what I’ve got so far, but when I get to the end of my page and glance at my phone, barely a minute has passed. Bollocks. I tear the page out of my notebook, fling myself back on the bed, and shove a pillow over my face to muffle the sound of a barely restrained scream.

  Just before nine o’clock, Annie taps on my door and peeps around the corner. I stop staring at the ceiling and invite her in.

  ‘Would you like an Ovaltine?’ She doesn’t meet my eye and instead glances around the room, rubbing the joints in her hand. ‘I always have one before bed.’

  ‘Er, yeah, sure. That’d be great.’ I feel like a kid again. It’s at once jarring and extremely comforting, like re-watching a favourite film from childhood; the dialogue is like a lullaby, but you notice things that once weren’t important. ‘Hey, Annie?’

  I hear her slippers scuff the carpet as she walks back to my room. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘What made you choose me? Over the others that ElderCare wanted you to take on?’ I tap my notebook with the end of my pen.

  Annie scrunches her mouth to one side and pops a hip.

  ‘The others were all right. Bit … vanilla. I thought you seemed different. In a good way, mind. If nothing else, it’ll be an experience.’

  Chapter 14

  Annie is at geriatric chair Pilates, so I thought I’d bake something as a surprise to commemorate our first week as housemates. So far, Annie has cooked dinner for us twice, we’ve had Caribbean takeaway once (her idea), and one night I boiled up some tortellini and covered it in passata. Annie added some fresh basil leaves at the end, which made it at least 80 per cent tastier. I’m not entirely sure if she’s keeping me out of the kitchen on purpose, so I thought I’d use her absence as a good excuse to make something from scratch.

  I rub my nose with the back of my hand and accidentally inhale a line of flour. Together with my red cheeks and flustered appearance from standing over an Aga with a leaky rubber seal, I look like a Home Counties girl just back from a heavy night out. I open kitchen drawers with my elbow and try to find a utensil of some kind that will make my crumble … crumblier. The dough has turned sticky and warm, which I’m pretty sure is the opposite of what it’s supposed to be like.

  I chop the dough up into smaller chunks and shove it in the oven. That’s as good as it’s going to get without scrapping the lot and starting again, which I can’t do because I only bought the ingredients for one attempt, such was my level of confidence. Baked stuff always looks weird before it’s cooked, right?

  The spring sunshine filters through Annie’s warped windows and steadily warms the kitchen to tropical levels, so I throw open the double French doors and walk barefoot onto the paving stones that are still cool in the shade. I can’t remember why I thought baking was a good idea. I’d googled ‘easy recipes for people who can’t bake’ and yet I’d still managed to fluff it up.

  I used to bake with my nan, back when she was still trusted with an oven. However, she claimed she’d been baking so long she didn’t need to weigh anything, which was a complete lie, because she consistently produced rock cakes whether the original recipe was for scones, buns, or bread.

  I sit down on the back step and use my knee as leverage to twist sideways and stretch my back, which clunks somewhere near the base in a way that is both deeply satisfying and a little nauseating. As I turn the other way, something sharp pokes me through the material of Annie’s apron. I pull the front pocket open and take out a crumpl
ed envelope, the seal heavily worn and hinge-like, with a slick of glue long hardened and yellow along the paper’s edge. I flip it over and read the rounded cursive of Annie’s name and a handwritten date in the top right-hand corner, but there’s no evidence it was ever in the post. 1962. Jesus, that’s a while ago.

  I try and smooth out the creases, no doubt caused by my leaning over to peer into the kiln-like oven, prodding at my unconvincing bake with the wrong end of a wooden spoon. I flip the letter over, but just as I’m about to open the concertina paper, I notice a kiss on the back page, bigger than the rest of the writing and dashed off at speed. If that ‘x’ was real, it’d be a brazen peck on the lips, I’m sure of it. I flip the letter back over and run my nail along the fold, but it’s so worn I’m terrified of tearing it.

  When I glance over my shoulder towards the house, the scene isn’t how I left it. Curling smoke winds through the branches of the magnolia tree next to the kitchen window, and as the fire alarm starts shrieking, my stomach falls to the base of my spine.

  The smell of burnt sugar hits the back of my throat when I get closer to the kitchen and makes my eyes sting. I slide the letter back into the envelope and shove it in the apron’s pocket. Smoke billows from the sides of the oven door. I cover my mouth with the crook of my elbow, fumbling for a tea towel, and pull the ceramic dish out from the top shelf, swearing loudly as a globule of molten apple pulp lands on my thumb. I thrust it onto the counter and the singed pudding slides along the bench until it bounces off the tea and coffee tins and comes to a halt with a loud clatter. I’d only been out in the garden for ten minutes. How is it possible to start a house fire in such a short time? I squat down below the smoke that hangs at chest height, and squint at the temperature gauge. I’d never seen an Aga before, let alone used one. Annie did say which was the ‘fast cook’ oven and which the ‘slow’, but as there weren’t any numbers on the thermometer, it was impossible to tell.