Recipes for Melissa

by Teresa Driscoll

  ‘Look, Anna. The truth? I’m not very good on the grapevine and I don’t socialise with colleagues as much as some others – perhaps as much as I should. But Sarah, from the snippets I pick up, is very open to getting to know colleagues outside of the treadmill. She’s a really nice person. I’m sure the call was genuine. Not an excuse.’

  She seemed pleased with this – smiling and serving the paella with a large green salad. The dish was exactly as it was supposed to be – the seafood not overcooked but the rice with a slightly sticky crust on the bottom. They discussed the differences. Paella and risotto. Both clearly enjoying the food. The company.

  And then suddenly, before Max realised, they were on a second coffee and Anna seemed agitated, checking her watch. It was just past ten thirty.

  ‘Better just send a text.’

  He could see then that she was not quite following his conversation as the next fifteen minutes ticked quickly by. No return text. No key in the door.

  ‘Look. I should probably go, Anna. Unless I can help? Collecting Freddie for you perhaps? I’ve only had the one glass. As I’m driving home.’

  ‘Well you heard him. Lift is supposed to be sorted, though I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have had that second glass myself now,’ she was now standing to dial her mobile. ‘Would you excuse me, Max?’

  ‘Hello – Andy? Hi. Sorry to be a nag but just checking that you’re OK to bring Freddie back. I said ten thirty to him. Don’t know if he passed that on.’

  And then there was a pause; Anna’s face changed and Max guessed immediately.

  ‘No. Not your fault. What are they like? I’ll ring around. If you could just check if Jack knows anything. Thanks.’

  ‘He’s not there?’

  Anna just shook her head, the same change in her face that he recognised from that awful time in the office when she had lost it.

  ‘Right. Don’t panic. Melissa did this to me more than once. You start the calls – to his other friends – and I’ll make more coffee.’

  ‘You sure? You don’t think I should just ring the police?’

  ‘Not my call, but – no; I would suggest a ring round first. He’ll turn up.’

  ‘And you don’t need to get off?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  And then she had her mobile up to her ear again and was pacing towards the French doors, trying friend after friend, while Max refilled the cafetière. Anna smiled thanks as he put a cup of coffee alongside her which she allowed to go cold, untouched, as she continued to phone and pace.

  ‘That’s it. I’ve tried everyone. No one has a clue where he is. So what now? Do I just wait? Phone the police. Go out looking?’

  Max didn’t want to say it. He had been listening in to the calls. Impossible not to.

  ‘What about his father? Could he—’

  ‘He’s in Germany.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I don’t want to call him about this. Not yet.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well it’s not for me, Anna. But I would give it a little bit longer. He’s not replied to your text?’

  ‘No. Still straight through to answerphone. I’ve left three messages.’

  More pacing. More phoning. Another coffee allowed to go cold. And then as she emerged from the cloakroom, eyes clearly red, Max stood up.

  ‘You don’t think that I might have unintentionally upset him. That he might have the got the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. He knew I had invited Sarah. No. At least I certainly hope not. I mean – I explained. I told him yesterday—’

  And then suddenly there was the sound of the key in the door and Anna’s whole body changed shape.

  Freddie appeared, still wearing his headphones.

  ‘Nice evening?’ Anna’s face was in transition from relief to fury. It was ten to midnight.

  Freddie signalled that he could not hear. Anna signalled that he had better take out his earphones.

  ‘I asked if you had a nice evening?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he shrugged. ‘All right.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ Max was whispering, gathering up his keys from the coffee table. ‘A lovely supper, Anna. And it was good to talk your plans through properly. I’ll see myself out.’

  Anna nodded, mouthing ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ before turning back to her son. ‘No, Freddie. No disappearing upstairs. You need to sit down and we need to talk.’

  26

  MELISSA – 2011

  Melissa watched Sam limp his way through customs and started to rehearse an edited version of events for her father. She had decided to tell him about the journal in her own time over a nice, quiet dinner. But not now. Please. No big inquisitions now.

  ‘What the bloody hell—’ Max’s face at the arrival gate was everything she feared.

  Melissa glanced at Sam’s heavily bandaged leg beneath his frayed shorts. ‘It’s all right, Dad. We’re all right. Honestly.’ She hugged her father, regretting the defensive tone.

  ‘But what’s happened? Why didn’t you ring me? What on earth has happened to you?’

  ‘Look. It was an accident. Up in the mountains. A motorbike. He’s fine. Just some stiches.’

  ‘You hired a bike?’

  ‘No, Dad. Not us. Look. Can we move out of this cramped area and I’ll tell you everything. In the car.’

  ‘So is this why you didn’t answer my texts. Are you hurt as well, Melissa? Is there something you’re not—’

  ‘No. Dad. Just Sam.’

  ‘We’re doing fine, Mr Dance,’ Sam tried to smile. ‘We didn’t want you to worry. Just need to get home now.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. Right.’

  Max insisted on taking the handle of the monster case, frowning at the addition of the bright pink holdall which Melissa was carrying as they all turned towards the exit.

  ‘I can’t believe you needed an extra bag? With this thing?’

  ‘Long story. Are you in the short stay, Dad?’

  ‘Yeah. Just across the way. Follow me.’

  ‘God it feels cold here.’

  On the drive, Melissa provided the bare minimum of details, feigning tiredness. And then on arrival home as Sam moved into the main hall of the block of flats, Melissa stood in the doorway to bar her father’s path.

  ‘Look. I really don’t mean to be rude, Dad. Or ungrateful. But it’s been a bit exhausting. I’ll tell you everything at dinner. Next Wednesday?’ she was whispering, glancing behind her.

  ‘Look I’ll come in. At least help you with the heavy stuff.’

  ‘No. It’s OK, Dad. We’re fine. I’ll see you Wednesday.’

  ‘And you won’t cancel on me?’

  ‘No. I promise. In fact I’ve had an idea. I’ll text you about it,’ she turned again, staring into the large hallway as Sam wheeled the case behind him. ‘Just a long journey. We’re exhausted.’

  Max fidgeted with the keys now in his pocket.

  ‘Well. If you’re absolutely sure you’re OK?’

  ‘We’re fine.’

  By the time she joined Sam in the sitting room, he was already phoning home. Melissa was not surprised. He had put on a brave face the last couple of days but was obviously more worried about his brother than he was letting on. He would no doubt want to go straight over there and it was now dawning that, if so, he would need a lift. The leg still not safe to drive.

  Melissa began sorting through the pile of letters in her hand and sighed. Her mother was right. It was so much easier to go with the gut; to justify an opt-out than to do the right thing. Be kind.

  She went through to the kitchen to make coffee and looked around the room. There was that strange and momentary frisson of adjustment that returning home always brought. The shift from the picture of the work surface on holiday to this one. Supposedly so familiar and yet for just a few seconds – strange. She had completely forgotten quite how dark this marble was.

  And then she was thinking of something else. The cardb
oard box in the garage. Melissa paused and pushed the thought away. No. Not today. She would let Sam rest, visit his brother and then check out the box when everything had settled down a bit.

  ‘I’ll pop to Waitrose, shall I? Get us some steaks and salad and some basics,’ Melissa picked up her own car keys ready, calling through to Sam who had just finished on the phone. ‘And when we’ve had supper, I’ll drive you over to Marcus if you like.’

  He came through now to check her face. ‘I thought you’d be too tired?’

  ‘I don’t mind. But I’d like to pop to the shop and eat first.’

  ‘Are you really sure you don’t mind driving me later?’ He was looking right into her eyes. ‘It can wait until tomorrow.’

  ‘No. I don’t mind. He’ll be pleased to see you.’

  They drank their coffee, sorting through the post and then Melissa moved through to the bedroom to recover the grey silk bag with her mother’s book from the case. She placed it in a striped raffia shopping basket, before kissing Sam briefly and setting off.

  At Waitrose she went straight to the cafe, ordered a large cappuccino and, heart pounding, placed the book on the table.

  Roasted squash and spinach soup with feta

  Whole butternut squash – peeled, de-seeded and cubed

  Half bag of washed baby spinach

  Two red onions – chopped in large chunks

  Small pack of good feta

  Two big springs of rosemary – chopped

  Good olive oil

  Several cloves of crushed garlic

  Two to three pints of good stock (vegetable or chicken)

  Toss the butternut squash and onions in a few glugs of olive oil, sprinkle over sea salt, crushed garlic and chopped rosemary and roast for 45 mins to an hour until soft and gorgeous. Put the veg with half the bag of spinach and simmer for just a few minutes in the stock. Add the feta and allow to melt. Season to taste and blitz in a processor or with a hand blitzer. You can adjust the amount of stock to make a thinner or thicker soup to taste. Ditto the amount of spinach you use is trial and error. The colour of this is a bit dark but I absolutely love it.

  * * *

  I have chosen this as what I rather think may have to be the final recipe for you, Melissa. A real favourite. Simple but more delicious than it deserves to be for the work involved. It was an accidental discovery, as so many good recipes are. A friend gave me a recipe for a roasted squash and feta salad on a bed of baby spinach and one day I made too much. Loads left over. So I threw it in a pan with some stock for soup and, of course, everyone RAVED about it. So now I make this soup more often than I make the salad.

  And I’m rambling.

  Which I always do when I’m nervous.

  The truth?

  I want to ramble on for ever, my darling girl, as we are running out of time and I am finding it difficult to hold things together here, trying to work out how to end this when I still have so much that I want to say to you.

  I am not done here, Melissa, but I am getting weaker. And you have noticed. Your eight-year-old self, I mean. The truth is I am quite sure you have realised for a good while than I am unwell. You are a clever little girl and children miss very little. I have said it is just ladies’ tummy trouble and you do not seem to want to ask many questions. I write this not to upset you but because I wonder how much you will remember and how much I may have misunderstood.

  Yesterday I did your hair in my bed in the morning and suggested that Daddy might like to learn how to do it and I sensed from the way you reacted that you have probably guessed more than I would wish.

  I hope not.

  But today – here’s the truth. I am not feeling very well at all so I have been in touch with the lawyer by phone – explaining what must happen with this journal. He is to come and collect it very soon. By Wednesday at the latest. But I am hanging on as long as possible – hoping, hoping, hoping… that the test will come back.

  And now – deep breath – that other thing I may now have no choice but to tell you.

  You may well have noticed a few pages stuck together? I am trusting and hoping that you have not meddled and torn them open. My thinking was that you would assume some mistake. The truth actually is that I was hoping I would be able to tear them out. And this page too. But obviously if you are reading this and the ‘stuck pages’ are still here… Well. It’s not gone as I hoped.

  The important thing to say before you read them is that I love you and your father more than life itself. But even good people can carry things in their head and in their hearts that they wish they did not have to.

  So separate the sticky pages very, very carefully my darling girl. I stuck them like that so that you would not flick through the journal the minute you got it and jump to the most difficult part without giving me a chance to talk to you a while.

  I just hope you will remember, please, to be kind and to believe that this has all run away from me – turning out very differently from how I planned…

  * * *

  Melissa closed the book and looked around her. Not for the first time she felt the extremity of this shift. From the black ink and the terrible place in which her mother was writing, to the banality of the place in which she was reading.

  Every single time she looked up from the page, ever since the whole theme of the book had seemed to change – to darken – she would feel this same shock at the normality around her. Yes. The sheer banality of it all. All these people smiling over their lattes and their cupcakes, their crosswords and their mobile phones. All these people who knew absolutely nothing of the world to which the words now took her.

  For a time, in this dazed state, she watched a woman sitting with a friend, leaning in with some apparent gossip. They were in their late thirties, well-dressed and with that hairstyle that everyone was still copying from Friends, as if in mourning that the series was no more. One of the women was laughing and then took out a small compact to refresh her lipstick before checking her watch and signalling that they should get on.

  At the next table – a younger mother with a toddler in a high chair, its flat plastic tray covered with cake crumbs. The mother took out a packet of wet wipes from a tartan rucksack and cleaned up the tray and the child’s face – to loud protest.

  It all made Melissa feel like such an outsider. All this normality. It made her feel angry on her mother’s behalf and now it also made her feel very, very alone.

  She remembered her father lecturing her once when she was a child about this very thing. Shutting herself off. Sitting ever so quietly and just overthinking.

  You try to carry too much on your own shoulders. You can talk to me, you know, Melissa.

  But there were some things simply too difficult to share. With people who, for instance, considered it perfectly normal. All the ups and down with their own mothers. The fallings in and out. People who had never lost someone and assumed that after a couple of years grief would surely drift away, leaving only the happy memories behind.

  Bullshit. Grief, Melissa had learned through her childhood, did not actually go away. It was the thing that had shocked her most of all and in the end set her so apart. The ugly truth that the emptiness did not disappear. It just hid itself and tricked you into believing you were perfectly fine until you turned a corner one day – and smack, there it was again. Like the first day she won the merit badge in school and was suddenly overwhelmed with sorrow as it was pinned to her jumper. When she got into university. Fell in love with Sam. Got the job offer. All these things that her mother would never know.

  Even in that restaurant when Sam produced the ring, she was thinking – not just that she did not actually believe in happy ever afters, that she could not risk it – she was thinking also that she had no one to choose a dress with her. No one to wear a silly hat and cry in the front row of the church.

  She could not talk to anyone about any of this because it made her feel selfish and utterly ridiculous.

  It had been seventeen
years…

  It was not supposed to be like this.

  And now, suddenly, after all the good things in her mother’s book. After the happy memories had been slowly and preciously stirred, it was taking her to a very different place now and she was more confused than ever. No longer just cricket on the beach and happy birthdays and cupcakes and biscuits.

  Melissa was feeling more and more uneasy. She was thinking about the children playing in the fountain. How there was no way she could get married and become a mother. Not when she knew what it felt like to be left. And – no. She could not talk to Sam about it because he would say – you could not live like that. Worrying. That it was ridiculous. That anyone could get run over by a bus.

  But she wasn’t just anyone. And she suddenly had no idea where the hell her mother’s book was going.

  27

  ELEANOR – 1994

  Eleanor read back through the last few lines of the journal and checked her watch. Just time.

  She looked over to the bed alongside which there was Melissa’s hairbrush and a carved wooden bowl containing her collection of hair ties. A tumble of colours and textures – polka dot silk. Deep burgundy velvet. Faux fur black. Why had she not thought of handing this ritual over to Max sooner?

  She ran her finger around the two, glued pages about two thirds into the journal – just before the special section on motherhood.

  Eleanor had written these secret pages only recently, using a glue stick to seal the edges. It was a risk. All a bit basic; a bit boy scout – she was banking on Melissa assuming a mistake; that she would read the rest of the journal first as she was supposed to. If it came to that…

  What was contained between the two pages was the memory of what she and Max had come to call ‘the madness’. It was their one cataclysmic blip in the early part of their relationship. A time when all hope of the happy, married future she had come to dream of had been suddenly yanked from beneath her like a rug on a polished floor. Whoosh. Gone.

  It was Max who had started it and yet she could never quite bring herself to blame him entirely. For, like so many blips, it was complicated.