by E. R. Murray
Caramel Hearts
Caramel Hearts
E.R. Murray
ALMA BOOKS
ALMA BOOKS LTD
3 Castle Yard
Richmond
Surrey TW10 6TF
United Kingdom
www.almabooks.com
Caramel Hearts first published by Alma Books Ltd in 2016
© Elizabeth Rose Murray, 2016
Cover image © Jem Butcher
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
ISBN: 978-1-84688-392-7
eISBN: 978-1-84688-406-1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.
FOR MY SISTER TRACEY
Contents
1Delicately, as though Handling a Bird’s Egg
2That’s OK – Sisters Together?
3It’s Not Fair to Stress Her Out
4Like Magic, It Begins to Mould Together
5The Three Amigos
6My Cool Stakes Will Fly through the Roof
7Don’t Air Your Dirty Linen in Public
8A Regular Little Goody-Two-Shoes
9Some of Us Would Like to Eat Today
10Shame Hangs Over Me Like a Cloud
11Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain
12Through the Ocean, Guiding a Calf
13You’re a Right Fat Pig
14Clues in the Curve of His Shoulders
15It’s the Least I Can Do after Knocking You Flying
16In Full Swing, Marching Up and Down
17Screwing Up Her Nose Like I’m Diseased
18Trying to Decipher its Special Code
19Is This a Trick?
20I Didn’t Know Pigs Could Cry!
21The Monstrosity Staring Back at Me
22Something Resembling an Abandoned Nest
23Like Jekyll and Hyde on Spirits
24Blood Is Thicker than Water
25Mint and Chopped Lavender Flowers
26An Outcast for Eternity
27Attached by an Invisible Thread
28Placing It Carefully on the Spring-Loaded Donkey
29Did I Say Something Funny?
30A Glimpse of How Things Used to Be
31The Frosty Air Lifts Like Fog in the Rain
32Sharp as a Carving Knife
33It’s Time to Come Clean
34If I’m Already in Trouble, What Do Manners Matter?
35The Crust Was Designed for Dirty Hands
36Disquiet Spreads over the Room Like Mist
37I Have to Tell You Something…
38My Words Have Pierced Her Heart
39Blue, Isn’t It?
40You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do
41Pretending Not to See or Be Seen
42Trapped in One Spot Isn’t Fun
43Battered Leather Suitcases and All Sorts of Junk
44Fake Candlelight and Long
45One of Life’s Cruel Games
46Stripped Bare, Like Skeletons
47There’s No Point Crying over
48There’s Something I Have to Do First
49Rules Are Rules
50I Refuse to Repeat the Pattern
Acknowledgements
Caramel Hearts
Before We Begin, I’d Like to Share a Memory…
It’s a cold, blustery day and sand whips against my face. But I don’t mind. Whitby is almost two hours away from home, and on its beach I’m as free as the howling winds.
I reach into the scrunched newspaper in Mam’s hand and take another steaming-hot chip loaded with salt and vinegar. Popping the chip into my mouth, I wait until Mam’s distracted, then turn to my sister Hatty and open my jaw wide, showing the contents.
“Yuck! You’re disgusting!” cries Hatty, copying in return.
We giggle, one eye on Mam, but she’s completely unaware. Her eyes are closed, her lashes fluttering contentedly as she faces the North Sea, as though remembering something special. I take Hatty’s hand.
“I told you, Liv,” whispers Hatty. “She’s getting better.”
I turn a wobbly cartwheel, and my hair leaves snake trails in the sand.
“Yay!” cries Hatty.
Mam joins in the celebrations. We must have disturbed her. We check she’s not cross and touch our left ears – our signal that it’s all clear.
“Olivia Bloom, youngest of the Bloom sisters, takes gold!” says Mam in a commentator’s voice.
Not to be outdone, Hatty kicks up her right leg and spins her body in a perfect arc.
“Harriet Bloom performs a stellar round also! It’s joint gold for the Bloom sisters!”
Mam lifts her arms high into the air and nearly upturns the chips. We scramble through the deep, powdery sand to rescue our lunch. Mam’s quick: she turns tail and runs towards the cave. We follow in hot pursuit, laughing and shrieking, but by the time we reach the cave, Mam’s mood has changed. She stares blankly at us as we catch up, panting. The air is flat and damp. The wild, free winds are left outside.
“Mam, do you want to rest for a while?” offers Hatty.
“I want Max,” says Mam, bursting into tears.
We sit next to her, close enough for her to know we’re there but not close enough to touch. And we wait. To pass the time, I gather Hatty’s treacle-coloured locks and plait them into seahorse tails. I think, Please don’t let Mam get angry.
Mam stops crying and turns her soggy face towards us. Her fringe sticks to her forehead in swirls.
“If your dad was here, I wouldn’t get these moods.”
I stop plaiting, draw my knees up and rest my chin on them.
“If you hadn’t driven him away, Liv, everything would be fine.”
“Sorry, Mam,” I say.
They split up when I was two. That’s six years ago.
“If only you’d been a better baby. If only you hadn’t scribbled on the walls. Thrown your food bowls.”
I squash my chin onto my knees as hard as I can, trying to make a bruise. A bruise helps to take your mind off things. When you poke it, all you think about is the pain, and you forget the bad stuff you’ve done – like driving your dad away.
“Hatty never threw her food bowls. Max didn’t leave when there was just me and Hatty.”
“I did other naughty stuff though, Mam,” says Hatty in a shaky voice.
It’s as though Mam hasn’t heard her at all.
“You always were a naughty child, Liv. He couldn’t cope with it. He had to leave.”
“Sorry, Mam.”
I feel the soft touch of Harriet’s fingers searching out my own, followed by a warm, gentle squeeze. I know it’s meant to mean “don’t listen”, but I can’t help it.
“You’ll always be that way, I guess. You’ve got my blood, Liv, that’s the problem. Bad blood.”
She shuffles closer to me, so I turn my eyes to Hatty and wait for the signal. Mam hugs into my back, whispering, “Sorry, love, don’t mind me. Don’t pay any attention,” and eventually Hatty touches her ear. When Mam pulls away, she’s all smiley again.
“Who’s for more chips?” she says and, squealing, we all run back into the daylight.
Chapter One
Delicately, as though Handling a Bird’s Egg
I drop the crumpled postcard from Whitby back into Mam’s knicker drawer and quickly cover it up: staring at a six-year-old memory won’t bring those times back, even if my mouth waters at the thought of those salty
, tangy chips. The sleeves of my dressing gown catch on the drawer handle as I carry on rummaging, uncertain what I’m looking for but determined to find it anyway. Ever since Mam went into Ashgrove House Recovery Centre for Women, I’ve been searching for something that reminds me of her before the drink took over. But a postcard of the Whitby whalebones doesn’t quite cut it.
The floorboard creaks underfoot, and although I’m hidden in shadow, my heart still pounds. If Hatty finds me going through Mam’s things, she’ll lose her head – and it wouldn’t be fair to wake her when she’s trying to catch up on her assignments. My sister’s almost twenty-one and should be completing her studies at Edinburgh University, but instead she’s looking after me while Mam recovers – if you can call it that. Mam’s track record isn’t great, and although Hatty swears she’ll dry out this time, I can’t help being a little sceptical. This is Mam, not EastEnders.
I hold my breath for what feels like eternity, straining my ears for any sign of movement. Certain it’s all clear, I rifle through the last few drawers and check under the bed. Reaching out, my hand touches something cool. It’s only an empty whiskey bottle.
“Should have known,” I whisper, before returning it.
Disappointed, I lie down on Mam’s bed, face towards the ceiling. My hair spills across Mam’s pillows as I close my eyes and try to make myself tired, but thoughts race through my brain at lightning speed and there’s no way I can sleep. I try the relaxation method my counsellor showed me – slow breaths, counting to three as you inhale and three as you exhale – but it doesn’t work. Flipping onto my stomach, I cuddle the pillows instead. My fingers bash against something hidden in the pillowcase; this time, it’s not made of glass.
I tease out the object delicately, as though handling a bird’s egg, and light the reserve torch Mam keeps in her bedside cabinet for when we can’t afford the ’leccy bill. The dim yellow beam reveals a chunky book. Its wrinkled cover is made of rough cream card, decorated with dried leaves and real pink rose petals. As I lift the book closer, I spot a neat, handwritten title: Recipes to Make Happiness Bloom.
It’s Mam’s handwriting.
Flipping open the cover, I realize I’m holding my breath: it’s not like I’m reading her diary, it’s just a book of recipes, but my hands are unsteady as I peek inside. On the front page, there’s a recipe for “Lovers’ Lemon and Choc-Chip Shortbread” in the same careful hand. She’s decorated it with loads of cute drawings of ingredients and a nicely shaded sketch of the finished product. I’d almost forgotten that she could draw. She used to make colouring pictures for us when we were kids – they were always much more pretty and intricate than the ones you got in books – but that feels like a lifetime ago.
“Why would Mam write a cookbook?” I whisper to myself. “She only ever goes to the kitchen to pour another drink or microwave some beans.”
I fling the book aside; I’d been hoping for something better. But then I feel mean for thinking such negative thoughts about Mam. At least she’s trying. Snatching the book back up, I flick through the pages to give it a second chance. This time, I notice the inscription on the inside cover.
To the love of my life, Abigail “Happiness” Bloom. May we have many adventures together. Yours always, Max. Christmas 2000.
I lift the cookbook higher to inspect it more closely. Max is my dad’s name – now we’re getting somewhere. When Mam’s around, she’s the only one that’s allowed to mention Dad. Like she’s the only one that feels his absence.
Tracing the words with my fingertips – the words my dad wrote – my stomach feels like it’s full of eels. Hugging the cookbook to my chest as I drift off to sleep, I swear I can smell baking shortbread, cold sea air and a man’s cologne seeping from its pages.
Lovers’ Lemon and Choc-Chip Shortbread
Guaranteed to set anyone’s taste buds tingling and their dreams soaring, this is the perfect antidote to grey clouds and cold winds…
INGREDIENTS
115 g/4 oz plain flour, plus some extra dabs for dusting
125 g/4½ oz yummy butter
60 g/2 oz caster sugar
1 tsp aromatic cinnamon
Pinch of salt (unless the butter is salted)
Zest of 1 lemon
Big handful of chocolate chips (the more the better!)
Dainty splash of icing sugar
HOW TO MAKE THE MAGIC HAPPEN
1. Preheat the oven to 220 °C/425 °F/Gas mark 7.
2. Use a wooden spoon to cream the butter and sugar together. Then add the flour, cinnamon and salt, a little at a time, and combine together in a bowl, using your fingertips. Keep going until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs – breathe in those delicious smells!
3. Add the lemon zest and chocolate chips, stirring well to combine the ingredients. When doughy, collect the shortbread mixture and plop it on a lightly floured surface, then knead for 2–3 minutes.
4. Roll that pastry! Make it about 1½ cm/¾ in. thick, depending on how you like it (it won’t rise much when cooking). Use a heart-shaped biscuit cutter to get as many biscuits as you can out of the dough. Pop them on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 8–10 minutes, or until golden-brown, like summer hayfields.
5. Cool on a wire rack, dust with icing sugar – and whatever you do, don’t forget to seal with a kiss.
Chapter Two
That’s OK – Sisters Together?
Waking to the sound of the shower running and the boiler creaking, it takes me a moment to realize where I am. I sneak out of Mam’s room and across to my own, Recipes to Make Happiness Bloom tucked inside my dressing gown. I hadn’t meant to sleep in Mam’s bed all night – or at all, if I’m honest – but I’m grateful for the decent kip. For once, my brain feels alert and my eyes don’t sting.
Before I do anything else – drink a glass of water or brush my teeth, even – I cover the recipe book in polka-dot paper like my schoolbooks, as a disguise. Then I plump the pillows on my bed and open the book to see what gems are hidden inside. There might even be more messages from my dad. Scouring the lists of ingredients, my taste buds tingle. There’s nothing boring in there, like salads or shepherd’s pie – just sweets and puddings. Mam always had a sweet tooth. Each cake, biscuit and dessert sounds tastier than the last, and the instructions are almost poetic – telling stories that make the recipes come to life. Stories from a time when my mam and dad didn’t hate each other. Just by reading, I can imagine how delish everything will taste. I wonder what it would be like to try and bake some cakes; imagine the smells wafting from the kitchen and filling the house, hiding the smell of damp.
At school, our English teacher, Miss Clyde, says that smells bring back memories more acutely than any other of our senses. She always makes us add aromas into our creative writing to help our readers feel what’s going on. I close my eyes and think about the smells I love: hot chips, acrylic paint, new books and cinnamon bubblegum. Then I think about Mam – violet perfume, face cream that smells like freshly cut grass, plummy red wine, whiskey stale and sour on her breath – and I decide not to go down that route. When I try and think about Dad, it’s just a void, so I return to my recipes.
After a while, my stomach starts rumbling and I realize it’s almost noon. I hide the recipe book under my pillow and race downstairs for food. The cereal boxes are empty so there’s only toast to eat. I conjure up images of croissants and pain au chocolat – like they eat in France. Imagine living in a country where you can eat cake for breakfast!
As the slices of bread warm between the hot filaments of the toaster, my mind races. I fantasize about serving the treats up to Hatty on elaborate silver trays, and making boxes of them for summery picnics. It’d be a “thank you” for all she’s done. Just like a scene from one of those period dramas that Mam likes to watch, snuggled under a blanket on the sofa with a bottle of wine. I’m not a huge fan myself, but I do like sharing the blanket and seeing Mam’s eyes light up when the handsome hero comes back for his girl.
* * *
“What are you doing?” asks Hatty, as she catches me rifling through the backs of the cupboards that evening.
Amazingly, I’ve gathered most of the ingredients I need, except for icing sugar and a lemon. The stuff’s mostly out of date, but seeing as I’ve never even held a wooden spoon, I’m not going to fret about details like that just yet.
“Do you like shortbread?” I ask.
“Yeah, why – have you found some?”
Her voice is so excitable, I can’t help grinning.
“Nope,” I say, and Hatty’s shoulders deflate. “But I was thinking of making some.”
“Make? Like, from scratch?”
“Yeah, from scratch.”
Hatty’s eyebrows lift high on her head.
“You know how?”
“I’ve got a recipe. How hard can it be?”
Hatty laughs as she puts some fish fingers under the grill.
“So long as you don’t go nuts and make a mountain of the stuff,” she says. “I’m watching my weight, remember.”
Like I could forget. She’s been watching her weight for ever. Always fussing over calories and fat content – but then she just eats it anyway, cos we can only afford cheap food and neither of us can cook anything except bolognaise. And even then we use a jar. I don’t know what she’s worried about anyway – she’s a size 12, and I think it suits her, but she’s obsessed with getting skinnier. Believes everything in life will get magically better if her waist shrinks a few inches.