The Dish

by Stella Newman

  What does that mean? What does that lead to?

  ‘And I’ve got him for the afternoon – probably why I look so tired.’

  ‘You’ve got him today?’

  ‘Mum’s round the corner with him, we didn’t want to bring him into a hospital.’

  ‘No, of course not . . .’

  He looks at me intently and I hold his gaze. My body’s so confused. It’s exhausted from all the recent stress, and right now it feels nervous – my arms are slightly tingling. My brain feels unsure of what’s going on between Adam and me, but I do know I feel a definite physical longing, and a slight sickness in my stomach at the thought of Katie.

  Adam looks like he’s trying to remember something at the end of a long list – then his face relaxes again, and he nods. ‘Come and say hi. Come say hi to Mum, come and meet him.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Come. She’d like to say hi. He’d like to say hi, too, or maybe he’d like to sick up on you, which is his way of being friendly.’

  ‘I don’t have time . . .’

  ‘Laura,’ he says, reaching for my hand. I look down at his fingers entwined in mine, and my body stops being confused. Adam standing here, holding my hand, makes my heart feel calm and it’s as simple as that. ‘Please?’ he says. ‘Just for one minute – we’re literally around the corner.’

  Anna Bayley is sitting at the back of the quiet coffee shop with a small white bundle wrapped up in her arms, gazing at the baby with adoration.

  ‘You forget how perfect they are when they’re asleep!’ she says, gently rocking him, peering more closely at his sleeping face and then smiling all over again.

  ‘It’s so nice to see you,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you after all the stuff that’s been happening . . .’

  She waves the comment away. ‘Times like this you realise what actually matters. How is he? Adam said he’s out of Intensive Care?’

  ‘On the mend.’ I watch, as Adam comes over to his mother and the two perform a gentle, already deft handover. Adam stands, cradling Josh in his arms – his face lit up, transformed. Since I’ve been out of the picture, he has fallen in love.

  Adam proudly holds the baby up for me to see. Josh is dressed in a super-cute blue and orange stripy Babygro, grey trim at the cuffs. He’s fast asleep, his left arm curled over his body, nestling into his father, his right hand spread out slightly across his left cheek, as if really, he’s just had the most tiring of days. He is tiny. Perfect. New hope. A blessing. I’d like to reach out and touch his cheek, feel the softness of his skin, hold those adorable little fingers in my own.

  Adam asks if I’d like to hold him, but I hesitate as my mind spins off to its own peculiar place. I hadn’t fully imagined what seeing Adam with Josh for the first time would feel like; I thought I’d be fine, but now they’re in front of me I feel utterly unsettled. This should all be a big Athena poster dream – the gorgeous hunk nursing the even more gorgeous baby. But I feel like I’m a long shadow cast across the picture. This tight, happy unit isn’t mine to waltz into – it belongs to someone else.

  When I look at this beautiful child, my heart starts to open like a flower. But a moment after I see the baby’s perfection I see my own imperfect thoughts. I wish this baby was mine and Adam’s – not only Adam’s. And I wish it was ours – not today, not now – but perhaps in two years’ time, or even three, when I’m a little more ready for it. And these are blemished and selfish thoughts, and they’ve been quick to rise to the surface – and from a sense of deep shame I blatantly look at my watch and pretend I didn’t realise it was already nearly four o’clock.

  ‘I’m so sorry but Roger will be wondering where I’ve got to.’

  ‘Give him a call, say you’ll be five minutes?’ says Adam.

  ‘They never answer the phone on that ward. Anyway, the doctor should be doing his rounds and I wanted to speak to him directly. Anna, so nice to see you again.’ I do my best at a smile, but I can tell she’s not buying it. ‘Thank you, Adam, for coming by. It was great to see you . . . really, it was.’

  And I drift out of the coffee shop, carrying a world of regret on my shoulders: I regret all of it. I regret the way I’ve just behaved, I regret not being a bigger, better person, but most of all I regret ever meeting Adam because I have realised I am in love with him – but this isn’t going to work out for me, I don’t think I can do it.

  I think back to Anne-Marie’s words. If I’m going to be adding a few more significant regrets to my list, I’m really going to have to clear out the backlog.

  ‘Dad, it’s me, can you talk?’

  ‘Are you at home, shall we Skype?’

  ‘Let’s stay on voice call.’ This is going to be hard enough, without having my own foolish face looking back at me from the screen. ‘Dad, I can’t speak for long but I wanted to tell you something important.’

  ‘What is it darling?’

  ‘I needed to say I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why, what have you done?’

  ‘I mean I’m sorry for giving you such a hard time over the years, about Mum.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, quietly. ‘Oh, you don’t need to apologise for that.’

  ‘I know I’ve been harsh with you about it, I know you did what you thought was right, and I should have just accepted that.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it, with Roger’s situation,’ he says. ‘How different a heart attack is, how hard it must be to have no warning, when death is not even on your radar. When your mother and I were in the consultant’s room and he told us the news, my heart sank,’ he says, softly. ‘The timing of it was so terribly cruel. Of course, we wanted to tell you – but we talked it through endlessly and truly, we could not have done it differently. If we’d told you about the operation, you’d have wanted to postpone the wedding.’

  ‘But Dad – I would rather have done that and been there for her, been there while she was still conscious, been there to support you guys.’

  ‘Of course. If any of us had known, but we didn’t know what would happen either . . .’ He lets out a long sigh. ‘I don’t suppose you ever look at your wedding photos do you, Laura?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘There’s one I took, of you and your mother sitting in the garden, just before the car came to pick us up.’

  I remember it well – us laughing about how Dad wasn’t exactly Muswell Hill’s answer to David Bailey. Jess standing behind Dad, fussing with the strap of her dress, Mum holding both my hands in hers, giving my left hand an extra big squeeze, then lifting it to touch her cheek. She’d insisted that photo was taken without her beautiful new hat on; I remember her being quite adamant, placing it carefully down on the grass and saying, ‘Oh, but it hides too much of my face. Better without.’

  ‘Your mother was as happy as I’ve ever seen her, as happy as the day you were born,’ he says, his voice heavy with sadness. ‘That wedding was the best gift you could have given her; so, regardless of what came later, how can I regret our decision? Whenever I do, I think of her face in that photo – the way she was smiling . . .’ His voice trails off, then comes back. ‘And the way you were smiling too.’

  That’s the other reason I didn’t want to do this on video call – I didn’t want to see Dad in any pain.

  After a long pause, he clears his throat loudly. ‘So you forgive me?’

  ‘Dad – you should be the one forgiving me.’

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive you for.’

  And when he says these words I feel something in my mind shift ever so slightly; because if he can forgive me, then maybe I can finally start to forgive myself.

  58

  Roger’s sitting up in his striped pyjamas with a copy of the New York Times crossword, a copy of Gourmet magazine and May’s The Voice on the trestle table over his bed.

  ‘How are you today, Roger?’ I say, ignoring the fact The Voice is open on my column.

  ‘Very much ready to leap out of bed and wring
your neck.’

  ‘Oh, come on! I didn’t roll over totally.’

  ‘No – I liked the Fergus part, bolshy. But I did not appreciate your resignation without consulting me.’

  ‘Roger, they were smashing a hammer on your legs and you were out for the count, I wasn’t quite sure how to reach you!’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Roger – the world is not going to stop spinning if I don’t write that column.’

  He leans forward for his cup of water, his hands still shaky. I move to help but he bats me away. ‘So have you started to think about what you might like to do now?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Oh.’ He looks surprised, then slightly shame-faced. ‘Have you not spoken to Sandra?’

  ‘Roger?’

  ‘Ah. I thought she’d have sent the email already. Oh well, we only discussed it this morning, I suppose she’ll do it tonight.’

  ‘You are going to come back to work eventually, aren’t you?’ I say. The magazine won’t be the same without him – he is the magazine.

  ‘After close consultation with my bossy daughter, and my equally bossy doctor who looks the same age as my daughter, it might make sense to take it a little easier, a “staggered” return to work – maybe one day in the office, spend more time on my Elbert Hubbard biog.’

  ‘OK . . .’ Don’t say it – I know it’s coming, I know it’s inevitable but not yet.

  ‘Which leaves Sandra Acting Chief,’ he says.

  ‘Oh right, OK,’ I say, swallowing a lump of dread as fast as I can, and layering on a smile.

  ‘Oh, Parker, you’d make a God-awful actress, that’s the least convincing performance I’ve seen since Nicole Kidman in Grace.’

  ‘So . . . I guess Sandra’s said she doesn’t want me to be her secretary.’

  ‘Be honest: would you want that job?’

  He is, of course, right, but that’s so not the point! ‘Couldn’t I do one day a week for you and—’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘But the systems I’ve set up are quite complicated; I’m kind of the only one who knows how things work.’

  He suppresses a small laugh. ‘I know you’re irreplaceable and all that, but the world is also not going to stop spinning if you don’t book my cabs.’

  ‘Roger,’ I say, shifting in my seat as I try to figure out what this means for me. ‘Is this a friendly firing?’

  ‘Not in the slightest. Parker, do you know who first came up with the concept of turning the lemons life gives you into lemonade?’

  I’m sure this one came up in the charity pub quiz, it’s on the tip of my tongue, I know it, I do. ‘Wasn’t it in some Billy Wilder movie?’

  ‘Tut tut, Parker. Have you been paying no attention whatsoever?’

  I stare at him in disbelief – he gives a small, amused nod.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Roger, is there anything Elbert Hubbard didn’t say? Next you’ll be telling me he wrote The Collected Works of Shakespeare.’

  ‘I’ve always rather liked lemons myself. Sharp. Acidic, but at least you know where you stand with a lemon. You’re rather a lemon yourself.’

  ‘Oh, cheers!’

  ‘I mean it as a compliment.’ He looks at me a while, then nods abruptly. ‘You like a good pastry, don’t you?’

  ‘That is clearly a rhetorical question.’

  ‘And you know where to get one in London?’

  I think of asking Adam to make a batch for Roger, then think: bad idea for a number of reasons. ‘Roger – I don’t want to bring you in anything unhealthy, the nurses will confiscate it if they find it—’

  ‘How would you feel about doing five thousand words on the quest for the perfect croissant, in the home of the perfect croissant?’

  ‘I take it you don’t mean Greggs on Peckham High Street?’

  ‘Parker – has your brain turned to jelly while I was out for the count?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Do the article for July’s issue, I’ll pay you the same per-word rate as we give any other feature writer. Jonesy will drum up some more food advertisers, if it means more lunches for him. Have a look at the longer length piece on Singapore laksa in here,’ he says, handing me the copy of Gourmet. ‘Make it part travel piece, part food description, all Parker.’

  ‘Roger – are you sure?’ I feel slightly overwhelmed with excitement about the idea of writing a piece all about croissants; slightly terrified at the thought of having no permanent job; and slightly conscious that Adam is floating around at the back of my thoughts, an unresolved source of anxiety all of the time.

  ‘Parker,’ he says, with a smile both gentle and sad. ‘When you joined us, you were a different person. Don’t you think now might be a good time to go out and see what you could do if you truly set your mind to it? I can clearly see what you’re capable of. It would be marvellous if you could see it too.’

  59

  ‘Write one sticker for each flavour,’ says Sophie, placing her fingers to her temples as she surveys the brownies piled on platters on her kitchen counter. ‘From the left: cream cheese and raspberry jam; butter salted caramel; toffee; Paleo with dates; gluten-free cherry and chocolate fudge and finally,’ she says, pointing to the last plate with a troubled expression, ‘Campari.’

  ‘Campari?’

  ‘Celina insisted; her “people” want to pitch her to some drinks brands as “the face of fashionable summer cocktails”.’

  ‘I thought she was AA?’

  ‘She’s NA.’

  ‘But I thought they were all sort of connected?’

  ‘Not when she’s after a sponsorship deal, they’re not.’ She picks up one of the brownies, sniffs it and takes a small bite. ‘The balance of bitter and sweet actually kind of works, now I’ve added the orange zest. OK, stick one label on the lid of each box and I’ll pack.’ She checks her watch. ‘The courier’s picking them up at ten p.m. so we’ve got loads of time.’

  ‘They’re shooting these tomorrow?’

  ‘Bloody Fletchers glossy in-store magazine has to go to print end of May for September. Celina fakes her party tomorrow, the ad agency send along a bunch of catalogue models to pretend they’re her multi-ethnic best mates, and they do a Hello-style spread: “Celina’s Sparkling Fortieth”. I have to do stunt-double brownies for the background shots.’

  ‘Three months before the actual party?’

  ‘They probably need three months for all of Celina’s retouching. Three months, and I’ve done nothing about getting anyone in to help,’ she says, rubbing her face wearily. ‘I’ve been so flat out on the day to day – the made-to-order’s picked up massively – and now I’ll end up having to pay some agency person double—’

  ‘It’s four weeks of help you need in August?’

  ‘Five – from twentieth of July.’

  ‘Could I do it?’

  She laughs. ‘Don’t you think Roger might notice you’re not at your desk after a day or two?’

  ‘He won’t mind – I’ll be a free woman, a week on Friday.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m leaving my job,’ I say, raising my eyebrows.

  ‘When the fuck?’

  ‘About three hours ago.’

  ‘Because of your piece?’

  ‘Nothing to do with it,’ I say. ‘Roger’s not back for a month, then he’ll only be doing one day a week. I’m going to help line up my replacement – and then I’m off.’

  ‘Are you OK about it?’

  ‘I guess I’m still just celebrating the fact he’s alive. In a way, he’s done me a favour. Jess said a while back, about the day job being a comfort zone.’ It does feel a bit like a warm bath which has started to get cold, and Sandra in charge is like a tonne of ice cubes being poured in, straight down my back – the thought alone makes me shiver.

  ‘So you could help out with Celina’s! You know, I could use a hand one day a week, even before then? Lisa from Fletchers has
asked me to cater her engagement party. Did I tell you she went on a date with a guy from Soulmates – sixty-five but claimed he was forty-five, and when she called him on it, he claimed forty-five was his “biological age”?’

  ‘And she’s getting engaged to him? Jesus, times are hard . . .’

  ‘No. She walked out on the date and met a lovely man on the train home – turns out they grew up two miles down the road from each other.’

  I smile, though the story reminds me a little of meeting Adam after I stormed out on Russell – and the memory of that first encounter makes my heart throb like one large bruise. If only he’d told me on day one. If only I’d told him . . .

  ‘What do you reckon?’ she says. ‘Fridays – you could help out with shopping, prep and managing the website?’

  ‘Great. I wouldn’t be able to do anything for the next month or so though . . .’

  ‘Are you going on holiday? I would, after the amount of stress you’ve had this month.’

  ‘Roger’s given me a dream assignment – five thousand words on the perfect Parisian croissant. I’ll go out and spend a bit of time with my family. I’ll need the holiday after a month with Jess.’

  ‘And dare I ask what’s happening with Adam?’

  ‘What – so you can play fairy godmother and email him again?’ I say, shaking my head.

  ‘You couldn’t just leave him hanging like that, it’s not fair.’

  ‘It wasn’t deliberate but you’re right. And seeing him the other day helped. It made me realise I can’t do it. The baby, his mum, this whole happy families thing – it’s too much too soon. It’s too messy and it’s too complicated.’

  ‘Laura – so is life.’

  ‘It’s more than that. With his hours it was hard enough seeing him before, but he’s going to want to take any access Katie gives him – he’s just not thinking through how he’ll have any sort of personal life. He won’t. And I don’t want to feel like I’m in constant competition with the baby for his time.’

  ‘People make time for the things they want to.’

  ‘Not with that job. And it’s more than logistics, Soph. The way Adam looks at that little boy is with pure love – you’d be worried if he didn’t. But I don’t think I could ever look at a kid that way if it wasn’t mine. And now this has happened with my work, I have to sort my life out, not hover around playing part-time step-mum.’