‘Thanks.’ I take a seat and feel the sun warm my face.
‘I got you a cappuccino, and a brownie for us to share.’
‘You eating brownies nowadays?’
She smiles gently.
‘How was Miami?’ I say. ‘You’ve still got a bit of a tan.’
‘It was fine,’ she says, nodding. ‘And I hear I missed the wedding of the year. I saw Poll yesterday, she showed me the photos.’
‘It was wonderful,’ I say, thawing slightly.
‘And I hear you had a good time with Daniel McKendall?’
I spoon the froth off my coffee. ‘What did Polly say?’
‘She said you were all over each other on the dance floor, that his marriage is on the rocks, and that you’re going to run off into the sunset together …’ she says, giving me a warm smile.
‘That is beyond stupid,’ I say.
‘And you went on a date to the zoo?’
‘Just as friends,’ I say.
‘You might as well shag him,’ she says. ‘Get some action, why the hell not.’
‘He is married.’
‘But you’re not.’
‘Oh Dalia, it is bad karma. And of all people I am not the type. And nor is Daniel, I’m sure.’
‘He’s still a man though, isn’t he? Sooner or later they all do it.’
‘That is totally not true, how can you say that?’
‘Come on! My ex cheated. And Polly’s ex cheated,’ she says, counting out on her thumb and forefinger. ‘Oh, and so did yours.’ She holds onto the dark red nail of her middle finger. ‘Three out of three. Isn’t that a jackpot? Or even a Jakepot?’
Ouch.
‘Sorry,’ she says slowly rubbing the end of her finger softly. ‘That was unnecessary. I … I’m having a bad week …’ She shakes her head.
‘Which of your exes cheated?’ I say.
She takes a deep breath. ‘You mean Polly didn’t already tell you?’
‘Tell me what? Oh. Oh I see. Oh! I’m sorry.’
‘Look, there’s no need to pretend you’re upset about it, I know you guys don’t like him.’
‘I’m still sorry that he let you down.’
She nods slowly. ‘I can’t really imagine the thought of not seeing him again,’ she says.
I nod. ‘It’s hard.’
‘I just feel so good when I’m with him. Like really alive,’ she says, her eyes starting to fill with tears.
‘But not so good in the times in between …’ I say.
‘I guess so,’ she says, taking a tissue from her bag.
‘Is it definitely over?’ I say. They’ve been on and off for so long now, I don’t know whether this is finally it.
‘Who knows … yes. I think it only happened once, maybe twice. Some girl he met in a bar.’
‘Oh. No. I meant you and him.’
‘I don’t know … I don’t want to think about any of that.’
‘Fair enough,’ I say.
‘And I’m sorry I’ve been giving you a hard time about Jake. I suppose now I get why you’re still so hung up about him.’
‘What?’
‘You know, you kind of block that stuff out.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ she says, quickly shaking her head. ‘I didn’t come here to have a row.’
‘Well then explain what you’re talking about,’ I say, feeling myself start to get angry.
‘When I was last round at yours … oh forget it,’ she says.
‘Say it.’
‘Well I asked what you missed about him, and you said …’
‘And I said everything.’ I nod.
‘Like what?’ she says.
‘His smile, his optimism, his energy,’ I say, counting out on my fingers. ‘The fact that he always gave people the benefit of the doubt. His sense of fun. The way he used to …’
‘… stay out till 4 a.m. on a week night and you didn’t know where he was or who he was with?’ she says.
I ignore her. ‘The way he used to get the papers for me on a Sunday morning, even if it was pouring with rain …’
I can see she’s itching to say something. Something along the lines of, ‘He was probably leaving the flat just so that he could text her …’
I really don’t want to have this discussion. ‘Dalia, you can slag off Jake all you like. The point was, regardless of how it ended, he was on my side. And I miss having someone on my side.’
She grabs my hands in hers. ‘Susie: we are all on your side. I’m not trying to upset you. But you see that relationship through rose-tinted glasses. You never remember the bad bits. I’m not saying he was a total wanker but he was far from perfect.’
‘I do know he wasn’t perfect,’ I say quietly. ‘But no one is.’
And of course I’m selective with my memories. Why would I want to remember every last thing?
A year of feeling paranoid, except it wasn’t paranoia.
Of Jake staying out drinking late with work mates. Or maybe just that one work mate.
Of him picking fights. And that awful birthday weekend, when it hit me like a rock – we weren’t going to make it. And then it was OK, because we had a good week, and then it wasn’t OK because we had a bad month.
That last Christmas, the way he’d looked at me when he’d unwrapped the watch I’d bought him: delight, rapidly followed by guilt.
And then that awful phone call.
‘It is what it is,’ he’d said.
No excuses.
No apologies.
Five little words – two of which he’d used twice, and that were so piddly they’d get a terrible score in Scrabble.
My grandmother had an expression Jake used to love.
‘Hai delle fette di prosciutto sugli occhi.’
‘You must have ham over your eyes.’
You must have ham over your eyes which is preventing you from seeing the truth.
I think perhaps I’ve had a whole ham sandwich.
Sunday
I am proud of myself. I’ve been working hard. I now have a total of twenty recipes up on the blog. I made myself eat pasta for lunch and dinner; tough job but someone’s got to do it.
Today I wrote up posts for these seven recipes:
1) Pasta for a dreary, cold Monday night after a long and tedious day in the office.
2) Pasta for a hungover Wednesday night in front of some trash TV, incorporating two of your five a day!
3) Pasta for a lazy weekend day when it’s raining outside and you have a dear friend coming for supper.
4) Pasta for when you Google Image your ex’s new girlfriend and find a photo of her, arm in arm with your ex, drinking champagne at a fashion party on Bond Street:
Stortini are small, smooth, semi-circular tubes – a younger cousin of macaroni. While their primary function is as a soup pasta (their size means they cook quickly) they also provide the perfect shape for this troublesome and unsettling occasion. What is needed is instant happiness, combined with something to bite on. Stortini take only eight minutes to cook and offer a hugely satisfying mouth feel for such an itty-bitty shape. More importantly, stortini closely resemble smiles: genuine smiles, not fake fashion-party smiles. And 100g dry weight of stortini provides you with 436 of these smiles. (This number is accurate. Believe me, I have counted.) If 436 little smiles smothered in lightly salted butter don’t cheer you up, try opening a bottle of wine. Picpoul is a nice, dry white and hugely effective in removing any lingering bitterness that the aforementioned photo might have brought to the fore.
5) Pasta for when your oldest friend has just put a total downer on you by bringing up your ex’s bad behaviour, which you’d been doing such a decent job of burying.
6) Pasta for when you realise that you really might die alone without even an Alsatian to eat you, and that Helen Fielding has a lot to answer for.
7) Pasta for a productive Sunday in spring, for when hope, and new season broad b
eans, have returned:
Broad beans are almost as big in Italy as the scale of Silvio Berlusconi’s sexual ambition. Broad beans are also known as fava beans, and so will forever be associated with Hannibal Lecter. While Dr Lecter might not be your ideal dinner guest, you can’t knock his taste in legumes.
Beans, legumes, are they the same thing? If not, what is a chickpea? You can ponder these, and other significant questions, such as ‘Will my upstairs neighbour ever move out?’ and ‘How did Ryan Gosling go from being this slightly skinny, sweet-looking guy in The Notebook to being the world’s biggest sex symbol?’ while you are podding your broad beans.
Then, after a three-minute boil in salted water, comes round two – the double-podding, where you can further ponder the important questions raised in your earlier podding session: ‘If my upstairs neighbour gets someone pregnant, maybe then he’d have to move out?’ and ‘In Gangster Squad Ryan manages to look even hotter than he looked in Drive. How is that even possible?’
Double-podding a bowl of fresh broad beans is an excellent way to spend an hour or two on a Sunday afternoon. It is immensely therapeutic. It is also physically quite soothing – popping out those perfect little beans from their velvety green bunkers.
More importantly it is symbolic: an act of hope, a sign that you are investing in the future. Yes, it takes time – one bean after another, after another – but it is worth it. Put in all that work, go the extra mile, and eventually you will be rewarded on the plate.
Add a touch of fresh mint, right at the end, before serving.
When I climb into bed I feel a little tingle of excitement start to spread through me.
This could actually be something. This could actually be something good.
w/c 14th May
Status report:
Chase new brief
Write Happy Hour speech – URGENT
Do more on the blog
Wednesday
I’ve chased Fletchers for this new brief but Ton of Fun Tom has been uncharacteristically quiet on the subject. Strange. I’d have thought there’d be at least some mumblings about the next hugely game-changing, mega-strategic project. But nothing, except an email from Tom saying, ‘Devron will be in touch.’
I’ve chased Devron. He’s made vague noises about ‘gestation periods’ and ‘work in progress’. But for now I have nothing to do but sit and wait.
I hate not being busy at work.
It so rarely happens that I actually forget I’m much happier when I have too much to do, rather than too little. Not only am I happier when I’m busy, I’m more productive. But now that the only urgent thing I need to get on with is to draft my Happy Hour speech for two weeks’ time, I find myself unable to write a word.
What am I going to say? The truth, the whole truth? Not even close to the truth, of course. No doubt I’ll end up sounding just as tedious as every other speaker that gets up there, wanking on about brands and consumers, when what I’d really like to be talking about is my top fifteen pasta shapes of all time. Oh, and I need to source some music too, for the opening. I’ll speak to Sam about that.
Still, not being busy means I can leave work on time, and in the evenings I’ve been researching other blogs, and working out a better layout for this pasta blog that disguises the fact that I’m not terribly good at taking photos. I’m really enjoying the whole thing.
And of course all this free time means I can’t help but think about Daniel.
We’ve spoken quite a few times on the phone this week. He rang me from the airport the other day to ask if I still like Toffifee.
‘They’ve got them on two for one in duty free.’
‘I don’t think I’ve eaten one for about twenty years, Daniel. Not since that time we OD’d on them up on your roof.’
‘Me neither. We’ve got a lot of making up for lost time, you and me. I’ll bring you a box next weekend. What am I talking about? I’ll bring you two.’
I feel like we’re becoming friends again, but with a flirty undercurrent. But not a Jeff mega-flirty undercurrent; something quieter yet more significant. The foundations of our relationship are already in the ground, immoveable. I know how Daniel thinks, I know what he cares about, I know that when he smiles a certain way it’s actually because he’s feeling sad.
And I know how he smiled at me when we said goodbye the other day at the tube station. I know what that smile means too.
Daniel and I: we knew each other pretty well back in the day. We may have grown up but neither of us has really changed. Though I guess along the way we’ve both learnt – the hard way – about love and disappointment.
Maybe the universe has a backlog of unanswered teenage prayers and it’s only just getting round to dealing with mine now: please let him come back to me, I’ll be good, I promise, I’ll even tidy my room, I swear.
The other day Daniel texted me a photo of these beautiful lavender fields down the road from his house in Kent. Fields of lush, bright purple-blue flowers as far as the eye could see. I thought they only had lavender fields like that in places like France; I didn’t realise it grew so happily just an hour from my door.
Daniel McKendall is starting to inch back into my world.
I’m getting used to hearing his voice every couple of days. Having someone ask me about my day, and tell me about theirs.
Having someone to share the tiniest things with.
It’s nice. It’s so nice. It really is.
Saturday
It’s a gorgeous spring day and Daniel is sitting in my flat drinking a cup of tea. We were planning a walk up to Hampstead Heath but Daniel is transfixed by the view from my window.
‘It’s amazing,’ he says, staring out across the City. ‘That’s the London Eye!’
‘And then there’s the Post-Office Tower.’
‘Hold on, there on the left, is that Canary Wharf?’ he says.
‘See the skyscrapers? And then those ones a bit to the right are Liverpool Street … there’s the Gherkin,’ I say, pointing it out to him.
‘Ooh, look at the Shard! Have you been up it yet?’
‘No, have you?’
‘Me and Joe are planning on buying tickets. It’s supposed to be phenomenal.’
‘It’s so big, it’s insane. You can’t really see the scale properly from here, but if you see it from the roof it makes St Paul’s look like an Iced Gem.’
‘You’ve got a roof terrace?’
‘Yes. Well no. Sort of. It’s amazing up there, really, the best view ever – well, maybe not quite as good as the Shard, but you don’t need a ticket, and there are no queues …’
‘Let’s go up!’ he says, a glint in his eye.
I’d love to go up there and show him the view. It would make him happy. But I’m not meant to take anyone up there. Least of all a married man. Still, nothing untoward’s going to happen on a concrete roof in broad daylight.
‘Come on, let’s do it,’ I say. ‘We have to stay low so the Langdons don’t see us. But it’s perfectly safe.’ Well, it’s perfectly safe when I’m not up there with you.
Me and Daniel McKendall, up on the roof again, talking about clouds.
Just like old times. Lying on our backs, looking up at the blue, blue sky. Pretending nothing’s about to happen.
The only thing that’s different from twenty-three years ago is that now Daniel has a wife. And a son. And a wedding ring. Just those three little things. Things that mean I shouldn’t be up here with him, horizontal, our sides lightly pressed together from shoulder to foot.
‘You were the first girl I ever fancied who was also a mate,’ he says. ‘In fact I don’t think I’ve met another girl since who I can talk to about anything and everything and just feel so comfortable like this.’
‘Are you comfortable?’ I say, propping myself up on one elbow so that our heads aren’t so close together. ‘This concrete’s killing my back. We should have brought up some cushions.’
‘Take this.’ He sits, and
as he reaches his arms over his head to pull off his cotton jumper his t-shirt rides up, showing three inches of reasonably flat, firm stomach. I resist an urge to lay my hand there. It has been more than a year since I’ve been this close to a body I desired – I don’t know what a normal response is any more.
He balls up his jumper in a makeshift pillow for me and I lie back down, feeling a sense of expectation tightening inside me. I’m starting to worry that something might actually happen. Something might happen … Funny how my brain makes it sound like this something is nothing whatsoever to do with me and entirely out of my control …
‘You know what I mean by comfortable, Suze. I mean comfortable mentally, not physically,’ he says. ‘Just being able to talk to you. It feels … like coming home.’
‘What about your wife? I say quickly. ‘Surely you talk to her all the time about everything?’
He turns on his side to look at me. Don’t turn on your side, I think. That’ll mean more of your body is in contact with more of my body.
‘Yeah,’ he says, his voice sounding suddenly defensive. ‘Of course we talk. Well. We talk about stuff. Like bills. And who’s going to pick who up from where …’
‘But that’s just having a kid, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘Lots of logistics. You’ve got to be a team. Being a parent forces you to grow up. You can’t just sit around chatting nonsense.’
‘Sure, no, I know that,’ he says. ‘But I mean I don’t ever remember doing that with Brooke. It wasn’t ever really like that.’ He turns again onto his back, and his palm reaches up to rub his forehead, as if he has a mild headache.
Like a photoflash I remember a story Polly once told me, about how Brooke had thrown a tantrum the night Daniel proposed. She’d berated him for asking her against the wrong backdrop – a local pub rather than a Michelin-starred restaurant or at Tiffany’s. She’d refused to speak to him for forty-eight hours. When Polly told me this story, she’d said, ‘He’s so dumb and loyal to that woman. He should have left her there and then.’ I guess the loyalty’s starting to slip …
For a moment I feel so sad for him I want to reach out and put my hand to his face. Then a thought stops me: he has all the things that you want – a spouse, a family to belong to, security. What on earth gives you the right to feel sorry for him? He probably feels sorry for you, you deluded cow.
Leftovers Page 25