Me, You and Tiramisu

by Charlotte Butterfield

  Wedding? ‘We’re really big on surprises in our family.’ Jayne flashed him a smile that hovered between sympathy and commiseration. ‘Shall I carry the tray in? It looks heavy.’

  As they walked into the living room the atmosphere was dripping with vitriol. Unpleasantries had obviously been exchanged and the three of them were sitting in stony silence. Will and Rachel, who shared a sofa, were staring at the floor in front of them, while Crystal was flicking the screen on a jewelled iPhone that she tossed under a cushion before flashing Stanley and Jayne a wide smile that ended at the corners of her lips. Will stood up and Jayne thought he was going to take the tray from her, but instead he said, ‘You know what, Jayne, I don’t think we’ve got time for tea, I think we better hit the road.’

  Rachel rapidly jumped to her feet, ‘Absolutely, come on, Jayne.’ They both bundled her out of the door, leaving a bewildered Stanley standing in the middle of the lounge holding a teapot and Crystal idly lounging, Cleopatra-style, on her chaise longue, giving a cursory wave to their departing backs.

  ‘What the hell was that all about?’ Jayne snapped angrily as soon as they reached the newly crazy-paved driveway, ‘that was so rude – Stanley had made tea.’

  ‘Darling, seriously, it’s much better for us to go now.’ Will slammed the passenger door on Jayne as soon as she’d sat down. ‘Your mother’s not right in the head, and I wanted us to go before she upset you.’

  ‘Why, what did she say?’ Jayne caught Will flashing warning eyes at Rachel in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Nothing in particular, she was just a bit off.’

  ‘She’s been a bit off all our lives – that’s no reason to just up and leave! I think we should go back in there to apologise!’

  ‘Jayne, listen to Will, and Will start the sodding engine.’

  ‘Guys, what’s going on? What did she say?’ Jayne turned around in her seat to look at her sister as the car reversed down the driveway at top speed, ‘Jesus, Rach, I can take it, I’m a big girl, what did she say?’

  Rachel sighed and Jayne was sure she detected a note of uncharacteristic embarrassment in her voice, ‘She asked Will how much you were paying him to pretend to be your boyfriend.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She thought I was a gigolo,’ Will added, rolling his eyes to emphasise the lunacy of this suggestion.

  ‘That’s not entirely idiotic – if I pimped you out we could seriously earn a fortune. None of this teaching and chutney-making, we could make big bucks.’

  ‘Jayne, you don’t get it. She was serious. She said that there’s no way that you could pull someone like Will, so you must have hired him to impress her. She started naming figures that you’d paid him.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Will snapped, and reached over to put his hand on Jayne’s thigh, ‘she was probably high on something, Jayne, take no notice. You’re gorgeous and fabulous and worth ten of me.’

  ‘But she needs to know what Crystal said. You don’t need to protect her, Will.’

  ‘Rachel’s right, it’s okay.’ Jayne shrugged. His reticence was sweet, but unnecessary as far as her mother was concerned. She wouldn’t be surprised at anything Crystal had to say. Her mother’s lack of diplomacy and social niceties didn’t surprise her at all, but Crystal had probably merely said what most people were thinking. She’d seen the double-takes of people in the street whenever they walked by holding hands; that moment that lasted a split second too long between her saying, ‘let me introduce my boyfriend’ and the polite but baffled responses.

  Even when she was introduced to Will’s best friends, Duncan and Erica, for the first time, they’d failed to conceal their split-second surprise that she wasn’t a petite blonde with a tiny waist. As the wine started flowing that night in Ping Pong in Soho, Jayne had soon reverted to a tried-and-tested method of winning people over by sticking chopsticks in her upper lip and pretending to be a walrus, doing one heck of a Aretha Franklin impression and dancing like a robot. Admittedly doing all three of her party tricks on the same night was neither big nor clever; it meant their next meeting was inevitably duller, but at least the ice had been broken.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Jayne told Will and Rachel, who were both taking Crystal’s meanness far more seriously than she was pretending to, ‘I just feel sorry for her poor new husband.’

  ‘Her what?!’ Rachel spluttered.

  ‘Her husband. The hunky Stanley. Who, by the way, is actually a lovely bloke.’

  Will looked in his side mirror before indicating, ‘Looks like Crystal’s taken her old trick of getting money out of widowers to an entirely new level by actually marrying this one. My dad had a lucky escape.’

  ‘Jesus. And I suppose he’s the bank behind the new house and flash car?’

  ‘Yep. And, get this, she’d told him that me and you, Rach, are some sort of MI6 undercover agents in Iraq, which is why we never visit! She’s even pinned a photo of a pair of randoms onto the fridge, pretending it’s us.’

  ‘What, that she’d found on the internet or something?’

  ‘She must have done. That’s why I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to poke around a bit more.’

  ‘We should tell him the truth,’ Will said, pulling out onto the roundabout, ‘I’d want to know if I’d married a con artist.’ Jayne visibly recoiled a little at hearing Crystal described like that. She wasn’t necessarily in denial about Crystal’s ability to get money through dubious means, but taking advantage of Stanley was a new low. He obviously just needed a sympathetic smile and a reason to get dressed in the morning. How long, Jayne wondered, until the poor man realised that his wife’s smile was as fake as her sympathy?

  Jayne leant her head against her window, watching the small droplets of rain racing across it, each in their own lane, like a staggered relay. Her breath made a misty patch on the glass that receded as she inhaled, and grew with each sigh. Crystal had always played the doe-eyed victim for whom life had a distinctly citrus twang, but there was no real reason for it as far as Jayne could see. She’d had two parents who adored her and funded her year away to ‘find herself’, and, yes, it must have been a bit of a spanner in the works to find yourself drinking potent Indonesian rice wine under the stars one day and the next be back in Paignton pregnant with twins, but it was hardly the immaculate conception. During their entire childhood she’d jumped from one job to another, disappearing for months at a time, blindly following whatever man or whim had potential. She would describe herself as a ‘lost soul’; her daughters saw it rather differently.

  She tuned back into the debate Rachel and Will were having, about how to break the news to Stanley without prompting a premature reunion between him and his late wife.

  ‘Stanley seemed so happy, though,’ Jayne interrupted, ‘we don’t want to ruin his life.’

  ‘I think Crystal’s probably going to do a good enough job of that on her own,’ muttered Rachel, ‘it’s just whether we let him enjoy it while it lasts or step in before it all goes horribly wrong.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure she’s banging their gardener as well,’ Jayne murmured into the window.

  ‘You were in the kitchen with the man for about seventeen seconds, how can you know all this!’

  ‘I have a way of making people talk. I learnt it at spy school.’ Jayne exhaled loudly and leant her head back on the headrest, ‘I don’t know, guys; the whole thing is completely messed up. I mean, fancy making up such outlandish lies about us. We’re her children!’

  ‘Why are you so surprised? She’s been doing it since we were born. Remember when Granny gave us tickets to the pantomime in Exeter and she made you sit in a wheelchair so we got upgraded to the front of the stalls? Or whenever there were people in front of us at Tesco or the dentists, or wherever, she’d tell them in that whisper that people only usually reserve for the words ‘cancer’ or ‘lesbian’ that one of us had ‘special needs’ and it’s only a matter of time before we kick off and so can we go in front of them? Taking advantag
e of every situation is as natural to her as drinking white wine is to us. Speaking of which, God do I need a drink. Wake me up when we get near London, I need to put my make-up on before we get home as I’m going straight out.’

  ‘So are we not turning round? We haven’t got onto the motorway yet. We could still go back and speak to Stanley?’ Will asked.

  Rachel gave a non-committal shrug, as though anything their mother did was of no relevance to her. Jayne felt torn. On the one hand she didn’t want to be part of the deception, but also, a little part of her was hopeful that perhaps Stanley might be good for Crystal, that maybe the stability of being married to him might actually change her. ‘No, keep going,’ she said. ‘I’ll speak to Granny about it and see what she says.’

  They travelled along the motorway in silence for almost twenty minutes before Will stroked the side of Jayne’s leg with the tip of his finger and asked tenderly, ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘Yes of course. You forget, like Rachel said, we’ve had a whole lifetime of this.’ She shrugged her shoulders, ‘I don’t know, I guess I just always hope that one day she will be like that for real. This whole ‘tell mummy everything’ routine. It would just be nice, I guess, if she actually did want to know everything. But we both know that will never happen.’

  ‘Well at least your granny seemed chuffed to see you.’

  ‘Crazy old bird. I hope I’m like that one day.’

  ‘You already are, darling. You already are.’

  Chapter 7

  Abi had told Clive, the life model for her art class, that his services were no longer required. She’d never fired anyone before, but assumed it couldn’t be that different to putting a full stop at the end of a sexual liaison, so had practised the ‘it’s not you, it’s them’ speech until it played on a loop in her head. He’d only had the job for four weeks but already his previous jaunty gait had been downgraded to a disheartened shuffle, his once-proud shoulders were now stooped, and she swore that during the last class she could actually see his body hair turning grey as the minutes slowly ticked by. As it turned out, never before had a man been so relieved to be sacked. The weekly taunts directed at his manhood made the seven pounds an hour seem ten times too cheap and Abi didn’t want to be the reason for his spiral into self-loathing depression. So it wasn’t entirely altruistic when she offered her students up as unpaid graphic-design artists. She needed a new module for them and Will needed flyers for a new venture he’d been brainstorming.

  Will had mentioned it to Jayne for the first time a month or so ago. They’d started taking a rug and picnic basket down to the Green in the early evenings and lying on their backs staring at the swirling shapes the clouds were making in the pink sky, pointing out rooster heads and octopuses, or octopi as she’d lovingly corrected him. It was reminiscent of the summer of 2000, where everything seemed possible and probable. Dreams were intentions, not fantasies.

  Will had started tentatively outlining a plan he had been mulling over to supplement the limited income the deli was making. He had realised that even if he sold every jar of roasted peppers, every bottle of chilli-infused oil and every last sliver of decadently creamy, oozing goat’s cheese, the profit hit its ceiling somewhere around the ‘alright, but not great’ mark.

  Jayne could tell how excited he was with his idea by the earnest notes that had crept into his speech. He had tried to disguise his boyish eagerness by cloaking it in a mature and well-thought-out strategy. It was clear that his plan to start running cooking classes from the deli after closing had gone beyond the ‘what if’ stage and was firmly implanted in the ‘when and how’ phase.

  ‘So I thought that if I chose simple Italian classics each week, and showed people how easy it is to make them at home – like how to make your pesto and pizza dough–’

  ‘And tiramisu, don’t forget tiramisu,’ Jayne interrupted,

  ‘Definitely tiramisu. I’ll make extra that lesson, just for you.’

  ‘Well in that case, you’ll have my unending support and unconditional love forever.’

  ‘But will it work, do you think?’

  She had found it endearing, his craving to seek her counsel and pursuing her approval. She knew that all he wanted her to do was to stroke his head and tell him in the same soothing tones that you find on a hypnotherapy tape that he was a strong, confident man, capable of global domination of the delicatessen industry. He needed her to say, ‘Yes, darling, jolly good idea.’ So she did.

  ‘I think that’s a fab plan, baby, you’d be great at teaching, and unlike my charming delinquents, your students will actually want to be there.’

  ‘What if nobody comes?’

  ‘That’s not going to happen – it’s going to be awesome and you’ll be turning people away.

  ‘How do you do that?’ Jayne had experienced a jolt of déjà vu as he flipped over onto his stomach so he could see her better, his white t-shirt rising slightly above his studded belt, giving a hint of his muscular lower back.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Know what I needed to hear and then say it.’

  ‘Because I know you, and it happens to be true.’

  He leaned closer until his lips brushed hers. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. That’s what we do. Anyway, tell me what sort of things you’re planning on teaching?’

  He had stretched out and put his head on his interlocked hands, looking sideways at Jayne, ‘I’ve put together three eight-week lesson plans with recipes using natural, fresh ingredients, sort of low-maintenance dinner with friends.’

  ‘Oh, you mean an organic kitchen supper?’ They had both sniggered at Jayne’s sarcastic reference to how a recent customer had described her upcoming informal dinner party to Will – a term that hadn’t been rolled out since cousin George got Julian, Dick and Anne in a spot of bother. Will had even scrawled organic kitchen supper on a notepad next to the till after the customer left so he wouldn’t forget to relay it to Jayne later, that’s how much it had amused him.

  ‘Yes, I thought what the world needs more is organic kitchen suppers,’ he laughed. ‘But it’s not the food bit that’s bothering me. You know me, I’m at my happiest pottering around a kitchen throwing herbs in a pot.’

  ‘And on the floor.’

  ‘Touché. And on the floor. But I don’t know how to spread the word. I really can’t afford an ad in the paper, and I’m not sure just having a notice up in the window is going to grab people’s attention enough.’

  ‘We should get some flyers designed and hand them out around Richmond,’ she’d suggested, picking the white petals off daisies and watching them flutter down, trying hard not to repeat ‘he loves you, he loves you not’ in her head, but finding it impossible not to.

  On reflection, Jayne wasn’t sure that it was entirely ethical for her to ask Abi to make Will’s new commercial venture her students’ Spring-term project, but apparently they had embraced the task with unbridled gusto. These were Abi’s words not hers as Jayne knew the kids in question only too well. She imagined the only things they did both unbridled and with gusto happened behind the public library in the nine minutes between last orders and their dads picking them up in battered Nissan Sunnys. But Abi swore that after getting over their initial disappointment that the assignment had nothing to do with the weekly viewing of a stranger’s gonads they were really chuffed that the winning design would actually be used and people would actually see it.

  ‘Wow, Chinese child-labour lords have nothing on you!’ Will exclaimed when he saw the large pile of designs Abi was getting out of her bag. She’d come round early before the deli opened and spread them all out on one of the café’s tables. The smell of freshly ground Kenyan coffee lingered in the air and the first batch of croissants and muffins were slowly baking, emitting delicious notes of cinnamon and toasted almond.

  ‘I quite like this one,’ Abi said, pointing to a garish graffiti design, where the words ‘GRUBS’ UP’ were spray-painted on. ‘
It’s edgy and urban.’

  ‘Um, I’m not entirely sure that that’s the feel I was going for …’ Will said diplomatically, shuffling through the other papers.

  ‘And it’s got appalling punctuation. Apostrophe abuse at its worst. Who did it?’ Jayne asked, adding a dramatic shudder, to emphasise her disgust, both at her pupil’s ignorance and her own apparent inability to impart vital grammar rules.

  ‘You can take the English teacher out of the classroom …’ Will mumbled.

  Abi flipped the design over and looked at the childish scrawl on the back, ‘Michelle Whittaker.’

  Jayne grimaced. ‘Of course. I’m not telling her, though, I value my face.’ She held a page up to show Will, ‘What do you think of this one?’ It was classic monochrome, with italic scrolls around the edges.

  ‘Nice, but a bit posh, and I’m not sure that I’d describe a beginner’s guide to chutney-making and bread-baking as a Culinary Masterclass …’

  ‘You’re doing yourself a disservice – it’s food, therefore culinary, and it’s a class. But I take your point, perhaps a little bit too country manor-house wedding circa 1900.’

  ‘Now, this one I like,’ Will held a simple white card aloft. It had a simple pencil sketch of the outside of the deli, with its striped canopy, a few metallic bistro chairs and tables outside and an understated, but inviting window display of exotic olive oils in a pyramid. The words Taste, Enjoy, Savour floated above the drawing, while in the bottom-left corner the words Learn the basics of beautiful flavours at Scarlet’s School of Food.

  ‘Scarlet’s School of Food?’ Jayne imitated his voice, ‘It’s a beginner’s guide to bread-baking.’