The Little Christmas Kitchen (18 page)

Ella’s mum laughed, ‘Thank you, Dimitri. Very helpful.’

‘I’m serious. It’s a good look. Self-service. I like it. I’m going to sit out there.’ he said, nodding towards the patio where the rain was beating on the roof and rivulets of water were trickling across the floor. Before heading out he walked back to the bin and, picking up his paper, shook it out. Realising he could salvage the middle pages, he tucked them under his arm and went to sit at a table overlooking the small grove of olives.

Ella watched him for a moment, watched as he put his legs up on the chair next to him, opened his paper and took a sip of coffee, seemingly without a care in the world, and then she walked towards the table and started to stack up glasses and scrunch up dirty napkins.

‘I’m sorry you didn’t cook again.’ her mum said. She’d cleared the island unit and was chopping up rabbit for what looked like a
stifado
, a bottle of red wine next to the saucepan alongside jam jars of cinnamon and allspice.

Ella paused, taken by surprise that her mum had brought the subject up again. ‘It was no big deal.’

‘It must have been sort of a deal, you used to love cooking. It was Maddy that hated it.’

Ella shrugged a shoulder, then picked up a stack of glasses that wobbled as she walked to the dishwasher. ‘I had other stuff to do. School. Uni. And when I was at home Veronica cooked.’

Her mum snorted. ‘I’m surprised she knew how.’

‘She’s ok. She’s an ok cook.’ Ella said, wanting to defend Veronica but also wondering why on earth she’d ever mentioned her name.

Her mum raised a brow in disbelief. ‘All that woman knows how to do is look good. She bedazzles. That’s her trick.’

Ella tried not to laugh at the word bedazzles and kept her head down, stacking the dishwasher, squeezing in the remaining glasses.

‘She got your father–’ her mum carried on, hacking at the rabbit carcass with a huge square knife. ‘And then she turned you into a little carbon copy.’

Ella’s hand stilled on the Start button of the dishwasher. ‘She didn’t turn me into anything.’ she said quietly.

‘Oh come on, Ella.’ Her mum blew out a breath to get her hair out of her eyes. ‘Look at you.’

Ella stood up straight. ‘She helped me.’

‘She ruined you.’

Ella felt her mouth drop open slightly. ‘No she didn’t.’

‘You were lovely. So lovely, so pretty, so clever and then bam, you follow after her like a duckling and you’re suddenly all Parisian chic and married to a man who–’ her mum paused, almost realised suddenly what she was saying and who she was saying it to.

‘Who what?’ Ella asked.

The chair in the corner creaked as her grandfather got up and walked as quickly as he could manage outside to sit with Dimitri.

Her mum threw the pieces of rabbit into the pan of hot oil and it spat and sizzled, steam rising in front of her face. ‘Who didn’t know how lucky he was to have you.’

‘That’s not what you were going to say.’ Ella said, walking round the counter to stand opposite her mum.

‘No, probably not.’ her mum said, turning the meat over so it browned, the smoke still rising and twisting, the rain still pelting down hard against the window. Outside it looked like a curtain of black had been drawn over the sky, birds were twisting in the wind, the sea was a rain-flattened grey.

‘You may as well say whatever it was you were thinking.’ Ella leant her hands against the counter top, tried to stay relaxed but could feel her mouth tensing.

Her mum threw in some onion halves that fizzed for a second then simmered down to a sleepy hiss. ‘I was going to say–’ she wiped her hands on her apron. ‘That it didn’t seem that he loved you for you. It always felt like you couldn’t be yourself around him.’

Ella licked her lips.

She heard rather than saw Dimitri appear in the doorway, and when she glanced to the right she saw his reflection in the big mirror over the fireplace – he had stopped on the threshold, mouth slightly open, empty coffee glass in his hand. He’d clearly heard what her mum had said, and backed away as quietly as he could, but not before he caught Ella’s eye in the mirror and she saw what she took for sympathy.

Infuriated by the direction of the conversation, humiliated that Dimitri had heard, annoyed that her mum had never said any of this before, Ella said in a low hiss, ‘Maybe I was happier that way.’

‘I very much doubt that, Ella.’ Her mum was sloshing vinegar into the pan along with big handfuls of rosemary, fat juicy tomatoes and cloves of garlic as big as marbles.

‘Do you know what I don’t understand?’ Ella said, her voice low and controlled, as she watched the contents of the pan bubble, ‘Is why you wait this long to tell me any of this?’

‘Because–’ her mum paused, stirred the stew, took a taste from the wooden spoon and then ground in more pepper before saying, ‘I suppose I never thought it was my right before now.’

There was a moment where only the sound of the rain filled the room, like white noise.

‘No.’ Ella shook her head. ‘No I don’t suppose it was.’ she said, before deciding that she’d had enough of the conversation and, pushing herself off the counter, started to walk away with the intention of going upstairs.

But just as she was leaving, the Christmas tree sparkling next to her, she heard her mum say, ‘You aren’t defined by Max. I just want you to know that. You are so much more than him.’

‘And how on earth would you know that?’ Ella asked, looking back at her over her shoulder. ‘You know nothing about me. You let me go. You chose to know nothing about me.’

‘I didn’t let you go, Ella.’

‘Yes you did.’ She turned round and took a couple of steps back towards the table. ‘You slag off Veronica but she was amazing to me. She helped me with school stuff, she helped me with uni, and yes, when I begged her because I was so damn miserable with who I was, she helped me with myself.’

The rain was incessant. The noise enough to drive a person mad. It battered the roof like ball bearings, splashed into great puddles on the concourse, cascaded down the windows while needles hammered into the sea.

‘You let me go.’ Ella went on, swallowing over a slight hiccup in her voice, watching her mum’s face, her big wide eyes, her lips parted about to speak, the lock of hair that fell forward from behind her ear as she shook her head as if to say no, steam from the pan rising in front of her like a wall.

‘You chose to go, Ella.’

Ella paused, hand on the back of one of the chairs. ‘How can you ever think that?’

Her mum sighed. ‘Because it’s true.’

CHAPTER 22

MADDY

‘Why are you back here?’ Walter asked as Maddy sloped back behind the bar. ‘Why aren’t you up there?’ he said, pointing to the stage where the girls were lined up on chairs, all lounging and lazy eyed, dressed in their Christmas corsets, lips slicked red, long satin gloves up their arms, black stilettos like skyscrapers, singing a sultry version of
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
.

‘Because that’s not the kind of singer I want to be.’ Maddy muttered, cheeks red, embarrassed that she’d had to come back past Betty with her smug smile on her lips, humiliated that she’d had to shake her head at Mack and run away from the girls in the dressing room, angry that Walter was sitting there with a big grin on his face.

‘You said you wanted to make a living out of it. That was your dream.’

‘You set me up. You made me look like an idiot.’

Walter laughed. ‘You’ve never met me before. You know that I’m a grumpy old man and yet you trust me to help you. It’s bizarre behaviour. And now you’re angry with me. I gave you the chance to realise your dream. Handed it to you on a plate. I even cashed in a favour I was owed.’

‘But that wasn’t my dream.’ Maddy shook her head, felt the annoying, unwanted prick of tears.

‘It’s never going to be how you want it to be.’ Walter said, packing his pipe with tobacco and staring across at her with a look of pity in his eyes. ‘It’s like Christmas. A mirage. Get there and it’s just like any other day. Young Madeline–’ he said, sliding himself off his stool and opening his arms wide, ‘You’re already living the dream.’

At the end of her shift, the night bus deposited Maddy two roads away from Ella’s flat. It was dark and the snow was falling thick, wiping out her footprints so when she turned around it looked like she’d never even been there. The main road was busy but the side street she turned down was deserted and, spooked by the stillness and aware of her aloneness, she wrapped her coat round her, pulled her hat down low and almost ran to the front door.

The light in the hallway never turned off. While she’d thought it completely un-eco, as she turned the key and slid through the doors into the warmth of the municipal space, she was suddenly grateful for the twenty-four hour blaze, the scary, dark city outside shut out for now. It was only when she was in the flat with the door shut that she allowed herself a moment to wallow in her naivety. In her stupid, hopeful sounding innocence. In her absolute terror of the girls, all casually confident, in the dressing room. She was out of her depth, sheltered, trusting. At Dimitri’s bar they played backgammon, they watched X-Factor on YouTube, they flirted with tourists and added the shot after the mixer so the seasonal customers thought they were getting a super strong holiday drink, they spent their tips on locally brewed beer, they ate bread warm from the bakery when they walked home at four in the morning and prickly pears that she held in her jumper and skinned with a pen-knife, they watched the sunrise on the jetty and, when it was really hot, lay down on the boat to sleep. When she sang she had her guitar. She wore her holey jumper and her hair scrunched up on top of her head. Her grandfather would sometimes cut in midway through a Bob Dylan cover and people in the crowd would whoop and cheer.

Maddy leant her head against the back of the front door and tried to ignore the smell of stale beer and vodka that infused the air around her, seeping out of her clothes. Rolling her head to the side, she saw the dark shadow of the Christmas tree and felt a moment of calm, like it stood steadfast, familiar, welcoming. Still with her back pressed against the door she slid downwards so that her fingers could reach the plug, and flicked on the fairy lights she’d taken from the decorative fruit bowl in the kitchen and wrapped around the tree.

In an instant it glittered like gold dust.

She reached a hand out and touched one of the branches.

She wondered what her mum and Ella were doing. Whether they were talking and what they were talking about. In her imagination they were baking together, like they used to do on Christmas Eve, watching their crap films – Ella making witty little quips at the expense of their mum who would giggle like a school girl. Maddy would sit in the living room listening, trying to be as funny with her dad but never quite getting it right. When it was all of them together Maddy was like a little entertainer, she could have them in stitches while Ella stayed quiet. But in smaller groups, Ella came into her own, when she was given the space to talk, to be herself. At the time she’d been jealous, but now when Maddy remembered those moments she had a feeling the same as the snow falling outside, like if she could she would capture it in a jam jar and put it in her pocket.

Staring sidelong at the tree she realised that she was really homesick. Alone, everything seemed so serious. So important. But had she someone to share it all with, she was in no doubt she’d be laughing by now. She thought about phoning, but her pride made her decide it was far too late in the night to ring. Instead she pulled her horrible alcohol sodden t-shirt off and walked across the moonlit living room to the vast wet room and tried to power shower the evening off her skin.

Clean and dry, Maddy wandered into the kitchen wearing Ella’s pyjamas and a huge puffa jacket she’d found in the cupboard, her wet hair in a towel turban, her guitar tucked under her arm. Opening the French windows she sat half in half out, her woollen socked feet resting on the balcony and watched as the snow fell silent. Over the back wall she saw the Christmas lights attached to the lampposts switch off and heard a car drive by, its tyres churning up the slush. Margery’s lights were off but in the other flat she could see the flicker of a TV screen through a crack in the curtains.

She had intended to just sit there, not play her guitar but just let it rest on her thigh, feel its weight, its comfortable familiarity, but her fingers didn’t listen. Her right hand strumming lightly, the sound floated out into the soft silence of the falling snow. She started with her favourites; Janis Joplin, Joan Baez’s
Plaisir d’amour
, a bit of Dolly and then made herself smile by playing
Make You Feel My Love
, which her mum adored. But it suddenly became a bit much – too sentimental, too foolish when she compared it to the girls in the stilettos who held the room in the palms of their hands. So she changed to Christmas carols,
O Little Town of Bethlehem, Away in a Manger, Silent Night
. Over and over she played them, like lullabies.

She stopped when the snow got heavier and her feet felt frozen to the balcony. Her hands were too cold to play and snow had drifted in and landed on her eyelashes. Brushing it away, she leant the guitar against the glass, stretched her back and pushed herself up to standing. It was only then that she saw the TV was no longer flickering in the flat next to hers. The window was ajar and the guy with the baseball cap was standing, watching, leaning against the frame.

Maddy jumped, shocked, then immediately apologised about the noise. ‘I’m sorry if I kept you awake. I thought all the windows were closed.’

‘Mine was.’ the guy said, the light behind him silhouetting his outline. ‘I opened it to listen. Sorry. Sorry. I should have said something.’

‘No, no you’re fine.’ Maddy said, suddenly realising that she still had the towel turban on and trying to untwist it surreptitiously while also holding her puffa jacket closed so she wasn’t standing there in her pyjamas.

‘I wasn’t watching.’ he added. ‘I promise. I’m not some creepy watcher or anything. I was just listening.’