by Poppy Dolan
We’d all been invited for the apple harvest celebration at the house. Even as these words pop into my head, denial takes over and I imagine rosy cheeks, a friendly elbow to the ribs as an apple is dropped, cups of tea and sponge fingers, maybe a roaring fire. But when Marie and Bee say ‘celebration’ they also mean ‘bloody hard work’. They turn the apples they’ve nurtured from their trees all year into a nice ethical business: making organic juice, cider, some spiced chutneys, an apple cake or two. And it all gets flogged at the local Co-op. As Pete would say, they’re like The Good Life with a small business loan. But I see a twinkle of pride in his eyes at the same time.
So there we are at my in-laws’ place, getting stuck into our harvest manual labour funtimes: the twins and Bee are out in the windy shed, operating the creaky old juice press. I’m assuming Bee either made it himself or it was once new but made some serious enemies, hence its knackered, slumped shape and rusty bits. I won’t go down the road of contemplating how hygienic it may be; let’s just say it’s lucky the juice is cloudy anyway. And the odd bit of extra protein is always good for you. I’ve got the job of peeling apples which Skye is then chopping into neat cubes and Marie will be sprinkling with her spices to be cooked down into mulchy chutney. Pete is organising the jars being sterilised and Rich is sort of hovering, being allowed the role of supervisor by his eldest brother.
After half an hour of rigorous peeling, chopping, steaming, drying and seasoning, all the while listening to some quite pleasant Classical FM and me getting lost in a daydream about making a giant apple strudel big and fluffy enough to take a nap in, Skye coughs.
Then Rich coughs twice.
Then Skye gives another, sort of squeaky cough.
‘Right then,’ Rich claps his hands together and rubs them vigorously, as if a car salesman about to sell us a Volvo made of cheese. ‘Right then. Ah …’ He looks at Skye.
‘We’ve got something to tell you,’ she starts him off, gently.
‘Yes. She’s pregnant.’
I drop a massive length of peel on my foot.
‘Hmmm?’ Marie looks up from her spice jars, idly rubbing away a layer of dust from some mace. ‘Sorry, darling?’
‘Skye’s pregnant.’
And it’s as if by rubbing that mace, Marie has awakened the genie of screeching Mother-in-Laws. There’s shrill screaming, arm flapping, cheek pinching and even cheek slapping. Before the whirlwind has died down, I have a glass of homemade cider in my hand and am toasting the grandchild-to-be. Pete’s arm has snaked round my waist and I swear I can almost feel some of his weight leaning against me. He’s blinking and looking anywhere but at his brother, Skye or me. The hysterical parrot that is Marie has gone out to the shed to tell the others and I think I can almost hear her ‘A baby!’ from fifty feet away. Lots of heavy, quick footsteps follow and then Bee’s wiry frame appears.
‘Wonderful, wonderful girl!’ he says to me. ‘I thought you were looking a little rounder!’ he leans in for a hug, bringing the smell of damp wood and the burning feeling of shame with him.
‘No, Dad …’ Pete starts, futilely, just as the twins spring on him.
‘You dog! You stud!’ They shout in unison as they hug him tightly in a double helix, big arms everywhere as Pete tries to wrestle his way out.
‘No! Ooof … seriously, no … Ellie!’
Once the lava-like flood of hot embarrassment has knocked the frozen shock out of me, I robotically remove Bee’s hand from my ‘blossoming’ stomach and step away from the fray.
‘It’s Skye,’ I say and they don’t twig.
‘SKYE IS PREGNANT!’ I bellow.
If you were drawing ‘Awkward’ in Cranium, then you would draw my stick figure in-laws with sheepish expressions and me tunnelling my way down through the kitchen floor with an apple corer.
After the confusion is cleared up and Skye and Rich are rightly congratulated by the whole family, Pete makes a lame excuse about covering up the press and sneaks out the back door. I sneak after him.
‘Psst,’ I grab his arm from behind, ‘are you OK?’ He doesn’t exactly pull away but he doesn’t exactly stop either, so I trot on after him to the shed.
He pauses outside the doors. ‘Of course. I just don’t want debris in the juice.’
‘I’m not buying it. That juice is ten per cent debris and you know it.’
Pete puts his hands in his pockets and gives me a searching look. And now I’m the one who wants to avoid questioning all of a sudden.
He clears his throat softly. ‘I don’t know, this baby stuff … Rich, Skye, and I’d thought … the timing.’
‘Hey guys.’ Rich is eyeing us from the back door, two flaky logs tucked under one arm. ‘Everything OK? I know this is a bit quick, but we’re happy. It’s good. Honestly.’
Rich and Skye had both broadcast this clearly during our celebratory sips of cider. They may as well have had leaflets printed up that said: We’ve been together eighteen months and that’s just fine with us. Use of the word Accident will not be tolerated.
‘I know, but …’ Pete shrugs. I know what he so wants to say, but he can’t. And in that moment, he gets blokier than I’ve ever known him. Instead of walking into an honest conversation about hurt feelings and hurt pride, he headbutts his way into a tangle of stubbornness and arrogance, albeit in accountant mode.
‘… But you guys barely know each other. And you don’t have a mortgage. How are you ever going to save for one when Skye’s on maternity leave? And what about childcare? Have you thought about that? On an average thirty-seven thousand pounds a year in London. I just don’t think you’ve thought this through. And can you really know all you need to know about someone after eighteen months, enough to splice your DNA together? It’s borderline irresponsible, little brother.’ Pete stalks away down the garden, knowing he’s been a shit. I don’t know where to look, so I choose a leaky drainpipe.
After a deep breath Rich says, with a tiny shake to his voice, ‘I’m not getting into this, not today. I’m really happy, Ellie. I hope you guys will be too, when you’re ready.’ He takes his logs inside and I just stand there, in a very chilly garden limbo.
Marie decides that enough squawking is enough and we need to get back to our appley posts. Pete is still mooching around outside in the half-light. I think he’s found a compost system that needs reorganising or something but whatever the reason, he isn’t coming back to the house in a hurry. I sit at the scratched kitchen table, peeling away like Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle (only without the bad pastel turtlenecks) and staring out through the window to get a flash of that big head as it potters about grumpily.
Perhaps my sighs are becoming a bit insipid, because Marie taps me gently on the shoulder and says, ‘Come away with me.’ Sometimes she speaks like a Shakespearean fairie, but that’s hardly her worst mother-in-law trait, so I calmly go with her.
We clamber up the creaky stairs and through to Pete’s old room, still painted with faded watercolour stars, moon and yin yang symbols. She lightly presses me down by the arm so I plonk on the bed. After rummaging in a chest of drawers, Marie turns and smiles.
‘Darling, I’m so sorry about the confusion before. I see how much that has put my Sunflower in a spin.’ (Pete’s the Sunflower, because he’s tall. Thank God they didn’t have any short sons or they may have been lovingly called The Toad.) ‘And you too, dear creature. So let me help.’
Marie has put crystals on my shoulder blades before: I can take the bonkers. It’s the polite thing to do, after all. I resolve to smile plainly throughout, so that at no point can I be said to be either encouraging or discouraging her. Again, the politeness gene kicks in. Thanks Mum.
She motions for me to open my hands palms up, by making the same movement with her own. I comply. From the top of the dresser she picks up what looks like a lovely big yellow buttercup and gently places it in my right hand, then takes a little cloth bag that makes a rustling noise and pours some seeds into my left.
&n
bsp; Bonkers. But also normal, for Marie.
She kneels down in front of me. She takes my hands carefully and raises them up, pressing them against my tummy. And suddenly I think we’re going off the usual bonkers textbook. And I don’t like it.
‘Flaxseed and Evening Primrose. Nature’s fertility-enhancing herbs. Breathe them in, Ellie, breathe them in through your uterus.’
My head goes a bit funny and I roll back onto the bed like a weeble, somehow getting some flaxseeds in my mouth as I do.
‘Darling! The surge of nature’s power overwhelms you! Feel it healing the withered stems of your flower within.’
I spit the seed out with perhaps more venom than is needed. ‘Marie. I. Am. Not. Withered. Why would you even think that?’
Marie flips her long red hair out behind her and makes a kindly, Mother Teresa Does Henna face. ‘Sunflower said you were thinking of trying and that was a little while ago. I saw how upset he was at Ickle’s news so I thought it was perhaps time to help. You both seem so …’
‘Yes?’ I snap.
‘Wound up,’ she finishes firmly.
I scrabble up from the springy old mattress, using the power of my huff to propel me upwards. ‘We’re not trying. Yet. And when we do everything will be fine. Don’t worry yourself.’
Stomping down the stairs, I see Pete at the bottom, his coat in his hand. Without having to say a word to each other, I grab my coat, he opens the door and we get the hell out of crazy town.
The ‘not saying a word’ has continued all Sunday morning. Pete’s not cross, but then he’s not happy either. And I’m still feeling a bit violated by his mother’s Holland and Barrett’s attack. Not made better by the fact that I don’t see why Pete’s brother having a baby is somehow my fault in Pete’s eyes. On the other hand, I hate seeing Pete miserable. We are like two sulky teenagers not invited to the same party but too up ourselves to admit that’s what we’re upset about, and blaming it on worrying about the ozone layer instead. I wish I could channel cool Claire Danes in My So-Called Life in these moments. But I get crazy Claire Danes from Homeland instead.
As I’m sulkily making some banana bread (Pete is banging his muddy boots on the porch wall outside unnecessarily hard), I catch myself wondering whether my Facebook picture is original enough. Pete and I were almost unrecognisable as Mario and Luigi at last year’s Halloween party but, in the wrong light, the sight of me with a giant ‘tash isn’t very welcoming. As I fold the squidged bananas and yoghurt mixture into the flour, I realise I am just hideously wasting time. What I should do is march right outside and have The Conversation with Pete and finally get to the bottom of all this baby business. If I was any kind of woman at all, if Caitlin Moran had taught me nothing about being empowered – and eating all the cheese I want –I would just face the things that worry me, instead of producing yet another cake my colleagues will barely tolerate.
Right, that’s it. Enough is enough.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Oh wow, did you make these yourself?’ I pick up a shrunken-crisp-packet earring and hold it up against my left ear. ‘I must have them, and two pairs for my friends!’ My voice has the ringing clarity of a primary school teacher with burst eardrums. The woman elbow-to-elbow next to me at the stall looks over ever so slyly.
‘Great choice, Smells.’ Lydia drops the earring and its mate into a purple paper bag and flips it over, classic cockney trader style. I try not to flinch; but in our rehearsals I did remind her not to use my name. The whole secret shopper thing tends to be blown if, well, it’s not a secret.
But actually, we needn’t have clumsily workshopped a little fake purchasing to drive sales – there’s loads of punters milling round Lydia’s stall, trying on oversized necklaces made from ping-pong balls painted and Hockney-splashed. Buttons of all sizes and colours and ages have been slotted onto thin Indian bangles and turned into incredibly jangly bracelets, and Lydia has decorated the frame of the stall with cardboard bunting stapled onto dressmakers’ measuring tapes. Each cardboard triangle has a letter spelling out You Don’t Need It. This is the darn clever name of her company. And the reverse psychology is working.
Her flatmate Matilda spots me eyeing up the bunting as it shivers in the late autumn breeze. ‘It is a comment on the culture of commerce,’ she drawls in her pan-European accent. Sometimes I would bet my Moulinex on her being German, but other times she has a Spanish twang. Not helped by her skin being stupidly tanned and her hair changing colour every three days. The fact she speaks so slowly doesn’t really help either: it just elongates all her vowels so she sounds stoned or even Californian. Seeing as it is very much not the done thing to say ‘Where do you come from?’ I once tried to trick her by saying, ‘Isn’t it weird that they have Australia Day? I mean, when’s … Welsh Day, for example? And do they have a special day for your home country, Matils?’
She fixed me with her pale blue eyes, peeking out from under a vermilion fringe. ‘St Daaaaaavid’s Daaaaay,’ she said. Slowly.
‘Hmm?’
‘That is the day for Wales.’ And then I was too shamed to carry on my lame counter- questioning.
Today, the right side of her head is cloaked in dead-straight black hair and the left is bleached perfectly white.
‘We are saying commerce is ridiculous. But it can also be beautiful.’ She nods towards a bird-shaped brooch made out of varnished hundreds and thousands.
‘Yes. Pointless and very pretty,’ I reply with completely earnest enthusiasm. I really have been blown away by how much work Lyds has put into the venture and these folks on Portobello Road are eating it up, especially the Italian students in their electric-blue framed glasses and asymmetric hairdos. Money is passing back and forth, Lyds is beaming and I am fully distracted from the real problems at hand.
Nope, I did not talk to Pete.
‘This hog is mine.’ Lyds wraps her lips around her full-to-bursting bap, somehow keeping her baby- pink gloss unsmudged. ‘It’s amashing haw hungrig you get jus staning up!’ Words wriggle out past her gob full of pig and stuffing.
‘Here’s to you, buddy!’ I chink my can of Tango against hers. ‘An artist, a businesswoman, a bloody legend!’ We slurp in celebration.
The hog roast man gave us stupidly big portions when we queued up for our lunch. And suddenly I twig why.
‘Oh, so hey, how’s things with the jacket potato guy?’
‘Guy?’
‘Yes, that guy.’
‘Yes, Guy.’
‘Well, I didn’t think it would be a girl, unless there’s a bigger conversation waiting here. Which I would be cool with and always love you forever.’
‘Smells Bells, his name is Guy. Guy the Potato Guy. And don’t look but he’s behind you, second to the left of vinyl, just by vintage doorknobs and enamel buckets. He has this earthy, wild man thing going on. Like he digs the potatoes himself.’
‘Wild. So you’re seeing him, or …’ I love to fish in Lydia’s love life. It’s like an episode of This Life. I never thought people actually shagged about with the abandon of that show until Lyds moved to London.
She chews and considers, a strand of slightly brittle hair twitching across her eyes as it gets caught in her lashes. I’ve made Lydia promise that if she ever has a terrible, below-the-neck fatal accident, I have her permission to have her lashes surgically attached to my eyelids. They are long and full and flick up at the ends all by themselves. That kind of beauty should not go to waste and I would then also have a part of my best friend with me forever. I had to throw that bit in when the initial idea grossed her out.
‘I’m not seeing him, but I’m seeing him, you know?’
‘Nope,’ I abandon my crackling. It’s that or more fillings. ‘I’m married, so nope, don’t understand that. Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?’
‘No!’ She spits this out like I’ve asked if they’re also brother and sister. ‘Whoah, lady. We’ve only been on a few dates, only had a few shags. Still testing the sexual waters
.’ She whispers this bit but I swear it still startles the pigeons near our park bench.
‘And if his waters are … too shallow, are you still interested in Baking Boy? Because I can ditch the class if you’re not bothered. I should really spend a bit more time with Pete. Things are a bit weird, we probably need to do the coupley thing and feed each other croissants on a new Ikea sofa or something.’ Swiping a finger along my tissue to stop my jeans being customised with apple sauce, I avoid Lydia’s gaze and swallow a sigh.
‘What have you done to Pete?’
‘Nothing! God, why do you assume that I’ve done something?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Because he’s super lovely and rational and you think baking should be an Olympic sport.’
‘Well they’ve got to do something with that massive Olympic village. What’s so crazy about a top flight patisserie college hosting international competitions? Then you could hop on a bike and work off the calories next door.’
‘Don’t distract me with baking bollocks. What’s going on?’
‘Um. We’ve just felt weird together since we came back from his parents’ place at the weekend. His littlest brother is having a baby and Pete thinks—’
‘That he’s way too young? Well, of course. Blimey, he’s only an infant himself.’
‘Lyds, he’s twenty-seven, it’s not that young.’
‘Yes it is, when there’s so much in life to do. Travelling, trying new things, meeting new people. All the good stuff that you can’t do when a limpet is stuck to your hip. Nah, put it off till thirty-five, even forty. Or just Madonna it and order them on Amazon.’
I press my lips together as I take that in. ‘I don’t think Amazon sell babies.’