by Lucy Wood
Her mother kept buying bags of food from the shop. Just in case, she said, looking out at the snow. She bought bags of bread and about a hundred tins. Huge bottles of water. She put the bread in the freezer and whenever the power went off, the bread would soften and crumble.
It was Saturday morning. The mid-January sky like dusty slate. Pepper was under the kitchen table, looking for a piece of toast she’d just dropped. The phone rang and her mother answered it. Her voice sounded surprised, then went very quiet, then she didn’t speak for a long time. ‘OK,’ she said finally. She came back into the kitchen, sat at the table and went back to beating the mixture in the bowl. But a lot slower than before.
Pepper stayed under the table. ‘Who was it?’ she asked. ‘Are we going to the pub tonight?’ She studied her mother’s legs and feet.
‘Not tonight,’ her mother said.
Pepper found the piece of toast but didn’t eat it. She pushed crumbs around the floor, waiting for as long as she could. ‘Who was it then?’ she said.
Her mother stopped mixing. ‘It was Ray,’ she said.
Pepper’s stomach jolted. She stabbed the crumbs into the floor. ‘He said he didn’t want it.’
Her mother’s foot twitched. ‘He wants to come and look at it again,’ she said.
Pepper stayed very still. ‘He said he didn’t want it.’
The spoon moved slowly in the bowl. ‘I thought that too,’ her mother said.
A heavy, pumping feeling worked its way through Pepper’s arms. Her hands felt very hot. It was her fault, it was her fault.
Her mother pushed the chair back and crouched down so that she could see under the table. ‘He just wants to talk about it.’
‘Talk,’ Pepper said. ‘Ha.’ She pointed wildly at nothing.
Her mother was quiet for a long time. She shifted and her knees cracked softly. ‘Maybe you won’t have to go to school for much longer anyway.’
Pepper picked at her lips. Either way it was a trap.
‘We can try somewhere else,’ her mother said. Her voice was strange and quiet. ‘We’ll find somewhere else, OK?’ She breathed out slowly.
The sharp crumbs bit into Pepper’s fingers. ‘But is he definitely going to come?’ she said.
Her mother suddenly reached out and held Pepper around the wrists. They stayed like that for a moment, then she tugged her out from under the table. They both lost their balance, her mother fell sideways, Pepper sprawled face down across her mother’s chest and hip. The tiles were dusty. Her nose dripped onto her mother’s neck. They lay there on the cold floor. The clock ticked loudly. ‘What are we doing?’ Pepper asked after a while.
Her mother sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
Pepper wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘I suppose you are trying your best,’ she said. Her heart beat hard and fast and she could feel through her chest, like an echo, her mother’s heart doing the same.
Chapter 28
Ada got out her crumpled bit of paper and looked at it again. She’d written down a plan for the evening service but had suddenly decided to put meringue on the menu. There were a lot of egg whites that she didn’t want to waste, but they took a long time at a stupidly low temperature which meant nothing else could go in the oven at the same time. Skewed her whole timetable. She looked at it again. What was it that Ray had said on the phone? Something about coming over to look at the house again. But when? What had he actually said? She stared down at her schedule. If she got the onions on at four and the meringues were already in the oven then maybe . . . there was a loud clattering up on the roof. Loose tiles in the wind. Tristan said he needed to come and nail them down but Ada kept making excuses: that the weather was too bad, that she didn’t want him to catch her flu. Trying to untangle herself. She hadn’t seen him since New Year.
She sat down at the table and crossed out the thing about onions. If she moved them back, then maybe there would be enough time for everything else. The lights flickered. The fridge stopped, then struggled and started up again. She got up and checked the fire. There were enough logs in there but she put another one in anyway; at least there would be heat when the power finally went. Back into the kitchen. The potatoes needed to roast at some point. It was like those horrible maths questions at school. If she put the meringues in at four, and the sausages in at five, how long would she have to roast the potatoes? There was another loud thump on the roof. And if the potatoes were stubborn bastards that happened to take over two hours to roast, what then? The sound of a tile slipping. Or if the meringues went in earlier and were completely done and out the way by four . . . then she would have to be at the pub right now and already have them in the oven.
She needed to prep some of the food now. Val had asked her to pick potatoes up from Mick, so she could parboil those – that would be something. She started washing and peeling. Someone knocked on the door and she went to answer it. It was Tristan. He looked at the knife clutched in her hand.
‘I don’t know how I screwed up all the timings,’ she told him. She went back into the kitchen and carried on chopping. ‘But I should have started this about three hours ago.’
‘Listen,’ Tristan said. ‘I just thought I’d come over and . . . ’ He looked down at her schedule. ‘Well, you’ve got two o’clock written twice here, for a start,’ he said.
‘Where?’
‘Just below where you wrote, why the hell doesn’t Val have a decent oven by now? in capital letters.’ The lights flickered again. His hands looked cold. He took his coat off and put it over the chair. ‘I could help you peel,’ he said. ‘If you want.’
I could help you peel. It sounded like something someone had whispered to her once in a sleazy bar, a long time ago. She passed him a knife. They stood hip to hip at the sink. Loops of peelings by the plug. Ada’s in hacked chips, Tristan’s in long, curved strips, almost peeling a whole potato in one go. She and Judy had once peeled apples whole and thrown the skin on the ground – it was supposed to show the first letter of the name of the person you would marry. Judy had thrown hers carefully and made a skewed R. Ada’s had twisted and broken apart and didn’t look like any letter at all.
It was snowing again. Just the sound of the knives working, the tap sending out slow drips. A small frown on Tristan’s face as he concentrated. Graceful with the knife, giving it the same careful attention he would to carving something out of wood.
She watched his hands. The wide knuckles, the pale skin under his thumb. A bit of potato stuck to his sleeve. Remembered the way he had held her shoulder blades as if they were delicate ornaments. ‘You have nice fingernails,’ she told him.
‘Do I?’ He looked at her ragged nails. ‘You have bloody fingernails,’ he said. ‘Is that normal?’
Pepper came into the kitchen. ‘I’m meant to be at Judy’s,’ she said.
‘Shit,’ Ada said. ‘I was supposed to take you.’ She looked at the potatoes. Wondered for a second if she could simmer them on the car’s heater.
Tristan put down his knife. ‘I’ll take her,’ he said. ‘I’m going that way anyway.’
Ada pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’ Reluctant, now that he was here, to see him go.
She helped Pepper wrap her old purple scarf around her neck; it looped down twice over her chest. Something she had started wearing to school. No fake illnesses to get out of it yet, no phone calls from teachers, although Ada still jumped whenever the phone rang. On their way out, she heard Pepper ask Tristan if Shep minded sleeping on newspaper.
She put the potatoes on the hob, then started packing up ready to go. But the snow was falling a lot heavier now and settling over the ice around the front steps. Suddenly seized by the urgency of it. The clouds were dark grey and swollen. What if they couldn’t get back through tonight? Or snow started to drift up against the door?
She went outside and found the shovel. Carried it over to the front steps and began scraping. The front door creaked open and her mother wa
s standing in the doorway watching. Ada carried on shovelling. The cold bit into her fingers and she couldn’t seem to shift the snow properly – she was just making a different pile in the middle of the path instead.
‘There’s no point doing that,’ her mother said.
Ada scraped at the snow, which was icy and grey and smeared with mud. ‘I’ve got to try and move some of it,’ she said.
Her mother looked down at the steps. ‘The snow was getting in through the kitchen window,’ she said.
‘What?’ Ada said. She looked up quickly, but the windows were all shut. She worked the shovel over a slab of ice; it slipped and grated against her heel. She bit her bottom lip, had to stop herself throwing the shovel down and kicking it.
‘Through the kitchen window,’ her mother said. ‘I’d left it open when I was out shovelling in the lane.’ She bent down and picked up a chunk of ice.
Ada looked out at the lane. The snow was settling on it. ‘Should I clear the lane instead?’ she said.
‘I was shovelling all morning. And all the time the snow was getting into the kitchen.’ Her mother studied the ice carefully. ‘It soaked into one of the sockets and blew it.’
Ada raked hair out of her eyes. ‘The windows are all shut,’ she said.
‘And another time, I was shovelling snow away from the steps when I should have been shovelling around the car,’ her mother went on. ‘I couldn’t get out for four days.’
Ada looked over at the car. The wheels were surrounded by an inch of snow. She stopped scraping the steps, started walking over to the damn car.
‘There’s no knowing which is best,’ her mother said to the ice.
At the pub, Ada whipped the egg whites into peaks. Made her think again of the snow. Couldn’t seem to get away from it. A difficult and slow drive over, a thin layer just starting to settle on the roads.
Val steered her over to the fridge. ‘I got landed with all this garlic-cheese stuff,’ she said. ‘So maybe in the next week or two you can make something good out of it. Look up some recipes or invent something. It’s stronger than you’d think. Pungent almost. Got to get it used up before it stinks the fridge up. And I need to talk to you properly about longer hours. Got to get the summer menu planned, make a big deal out of it. Bring in some of the tourists; they go straight past up here. And Valentine’s Day, only three weeks away now. Have you had any thoughts on what we might do? I was thinking filled pasta in the shape of hearts, something red stuffed in there. Something simple. Perhaps a dessert with champagne in it, charge more than usual – champagne jelly, although I wasn’t sure if jelly made it sound cheap. Do you think you could do that?’
‘I’ve got to get these in the oven,’ Ada said. Couldn’t deal with all Val’s pressure at the moment. She needed the money to sort the house, but couldn’t sort it if she was always working. Either way she was stuck. Unless Ray finally came over to talk, like he’d said he was going to.
Howard was back. He came in from the bar and looked in the fridge. The stocked shelves seemed to fill him with despair. ‘I can’t plan for summer at the end of January,’ he said. ‘I can’t even look at that cheese stuff without my heart twingeing.’
She asked how his heart was, as if asking after a relative. Then wished she hadn’t when he launched into a long and complex explanation. Vascular tubes all wrong, weak muscle condition. He pumped his hands like he was playing an accordion, oomp pah, he said. Then showed it slowing and wheezing. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘I’m not touching anything to do with that cheese. Do you read your horoscope? Mine says: “Now is not the time.” I think it could be applied to this.’
He’d made a batch of his special hotpot – potluck, he called it – but she managed to convince him to leave out the raisins, remembering the weird tough consistency and the way they stuck in people’s teeth. Pepper picking them out one by one saying, rabbit poo, rabbit poo. She put the meringues in the oven, then got out the onions for her stew. Realised how similar it would be to hotpot and quickly switched her idea again. Something with pasta, some kind of rich sauce. She started chopping the onion, found the bunches of kale she’d asked Val to get in – it always tasted sweeter after frost and ice.
‘I could help you do that,’ Howard said. ‘Chop it up and wash it.’ He put the kale in the sink. ‘I could do a few easy jobs. I don’t mind doing prep.’
‘OK,’ Ada said. She hated prep the most, or maybe the washing-up. She crouched down and peered into the oven, checking the meringues. Howard added a handful of raisins to his pot with a sly look when he thought she wasn’t watching. Then he got to work slicing, working the knife like a lever so that the kale came out in very thin, even pieces. ‘Learned that technique in catering school,’ he said. ‘Took a month. Like a card trick – it’s all in the sleight of hand, see?’ He showed again. ‘We used to have competitions. Learned to slice pig cheeks so thin they were translucent.’ He smacked his lips against his hand.
‘Listen you two,’ Val said, coming back in and carrying on where she’d left off. ‘What about a themed menu in the summer, eh? I was thinking, June, you build it around strawberries – strawberry salad to start with, strawberry mousse to finish, what main courses could have strawberries in do you think? Does strawberry lasagne sound weird to you? And then maybe a saffron thing for July, conjure up the sun. Everything bright yellow. You’d have something like smoked haddock, the stuff that’s dyed yellow, maybe mushrooms in a sauce, colour it with turmeric. Paella, lemon posset for dessert. Although what is posset anyway? I thought it was baby sick, but I just read a recipe in a magazine the other day.’
‘It’s a cold dessert,’ Ada told her. ‘Chilled and set, like syllabub.’ But also the slushy, milky sick a baby brought up. Had never been able to eat the dessert herself.
‘Syllabub?’ Val said. She turned the word over in her mouth. ‘Syllabub?’
‘I can’t think about this now,’ Howard said. He rubbed over his old burns with his thumb.
‘We need to talk about it,’ Val said. ‘I’ve got a feeling about this.’
‘I won’t be here in the summer,’ Ada said. Strawberry lasagne would be a bloodbath. But liked the sound of a strawberry salad, could play around with colours, maybe the sharp contrast of vinegar drizzled over.
‘I’ve got a feeling about this,’ Val said again.
Ada stirred her sauce. ‘Arseballs,’ she said. It had got lumps in when Val distracted her.
‘That always happens to me,’ Howard said. He passed her the sieve. ‘There’s nothing else for it.’
Val went out and a moment later called back in again saying, someone wants a slice of the pie you made the other day, is there any left? And two hotpots, put them in bowls not on plates. Put some of that kale with it.
Ada looked over at the hotpot. ‘Howard?’ she said. ‘Could you go and ask Val which pie she meant?’ Howard sighed, dried his hands on his apron and went out. Ada quickly picked out all the raisins and threw them in the bin, before dishing up two servings.
Just as she was leaving, Clapper came over to her from the bar, holding something. It was a green box wrapped in layers of elastic bands.
‘It’s for the little one,’ he said. ‘From Petey. Strict instructions that no one else can open it.’ He tapped his nose.
She took the box and put it in her bag carefully. There were coded symbols on one side. Couldn’t believe that Pepper had made a friend, and that they had a secret language already.
It had stopped snowing but there was a smooth layer on the ground and the trees. Everything silvery. She stood for a moment, breathing in cold, grainy air. It felt good. The sudden hush and chill of being outside, the air raw and hard. A sense of being scoured. Under the pub’s lamp, the world glinted. Black branches against white, like lines of ink. The valley suddenly changed, draped in snow like furniture draped in sheets. But the same smokiness to the air, the same dry tang in the back of her throat. The air crackled. She stood and breathed it in.
T
he road had been gritted. She drove slowly. Another car’s lights emerged in the distance like dim moons. She turned into the road towards Judy’s, the headlights swept over the hedge, and she slammed on the brakes. The car stalled and was silent. Tristan stepped out of the hedge, where he had jumped back to get out of the way. He came over to her window and put his hand on it. He was wearing a black coat, scrappy at the edges like an old biscuit, and a navy knitted hat. A simple recipe for death: narrow lanes and dark clothes.
‘You shouldn’t wear dark clothes at night,’ she told him. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?’
‘I was just going for a drink,’ he said, gesturing towards the pub. But he walked round the car and got in and she started it up and drove.
Snow had been pushed to the sides of the road in heaps, like crumbling walls. More snow collected in potholes. She glanced at Tristan, saw the freckles on his cheeks, thought of the tea-coloured freckles on his back. Stopped herself. Looked again. Tapped her fingers against the wheel.
‘I should have finished nailing the tiles on,’ Tristan said.
Ada turned down a narrower lane, which looked like a white carpet unrolling. Then another. She had no idea where she was going. ‘You know I’m leaving soon,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Of course I know that,’ he said. ‘I’m working on your house.’
There were lines in his face she’d never noticed before, faint etchings around his eyes and mouth. Ada nodded. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘That’s good.’ She kept tapping her fingers.
Tristan wiped the steamed-up window with his sleeve and looked out.
‘Because I don’t know when it will happen exactly,’ she said.
‘I know,’ Tristan said.
‘It’s just too much work,’ she went on. ‘And too isolated, too hard to get around. That’s what I always said.’