The Lonely Fajita

by Abigail Mann

Apart from a lava-like substance that has hardened on the bottom of the oven, there isn’t much damage that I can’t disguise. I’d clearly been too liberal with the sugar, because the crumble has formed an impenetrable crust that refuses to budge, even when I stab it with a kitchen knife. I try and plunge down double-handed, but my fist slips off the handle and down the blade. ‘Motherfucker!’ I yell, dropping the knife in the sink. It speckles the white ceramic with blood.

  Oh, shit. I don’t do blood. It makes me feel weak and woozy and yep, that’s my knees sliding down onto the floor. I put my head between my legs and breathe deeply. I wonder if I’ve got the strength to call 999. Either the ceiling and floorboards are actually blurring, or I’m about to pass out. I rest my cheek on the floor, blowing away dust particles with each breath. If I die, at least it was in the pursuit of approval from an eighty-three-year-old.

  ‘Elissa? Oh, Jesus Christ. Gloria! Gloria, go and get Shaunae. Elissa, love, what’s happened? Sit up for me.’ Annie wiggles my shoulder and I lever myself onto my uninjured hand. Did I actually faint? Annie pushes a mass of hair out of my face and I blink up at her and a woman wearing floaty trousers. They each hook me under the shoulder and pull me to my feet, which takes a couple of attempts because my knees feel wholly incapable of holding my body weight.

  ‘Annie, the girl’s gone and cut herself,’ says the woman, who looks extremely concerned now my vision is sharper.

  ‘Come on, let us have a look, chicken,’ says Annie. I shakily open my hand to let her inspect the wound and squeeze my eyes shut, drawing in a big shaky breath as Annie runs her warm fingertips over my palm. ‘Chuffin’ hell, Elissa, is that it? I thought you’d chopped a finger off!’

  ‘What?’ Oh. It’s tiny; hardly bigger than a paper cut. It definitely felt more life-threatening when I first did it.

  ‘Panic over, Gloria. She’ll live.’

  Gloria clutches her chest and laughs wheezily. ‘These young ’uns! I delivered my own baby, child. You try staying conscious doing that!’ I try and smile, but my brain isn’t quite communicating with my face and I twitch instead. ‘You’ve got a soft one here! I’ll make her a tea. Extra sugar,’ says Gloria, shuffling over to the kettle.

  ‘Honestly, I thought it was way worse than that,’ I say, as Annie walks me over to a chair.

  ‘I knew something were wrong when I came in and it smelt like a bonfire. What’ve you been up to?’

  ‘This?’ Gloria asks, grimacing at the charred mass that now features Jackson Pollock style droplets of blood.

  ‘It’s an apple crumble,’ I say, taking a scalding sip of the sugary tea that Gloria has just put in front of me.

  ‘If you say so.’ Annie squints, bending down to look at the blackened oven dish. ‘Well, Gloria, now you’ve met Elissa. She makes apps about dating.’ Annie’s overtones of pride, combined with the effects of the tea, put some colour in my cheeks.

  ‘Ooh, apps, is it? I’ve got one of those for my knitting patterns. Shaunae, my daughter, set it up for me. She does our yoga class as well. Very good girl, is my Shaunae. She’s taking me for lunch today, so I’d best be going.’ Gloria delicately picks up her yoga mat, which is rolled up neatly in a drawstring bag. ‘I hope you make a full recovery from your injuries, Elissa,’ she says with a hint of irony that feels unnecessary.

  I hear the door shut behind her. ‘Let’s have a look, sweetheart,’ Annie says to me tenderly, peeling back the damp kitchen towel that she’d previously placed on my palm. She’s so gentle, even though her hands shake more violently the more delicate she tries to be. ‘Gloria is a bit of a boast. It becomes white noise after she’s told you her grandson’s won a French-speaking spelling bee for the fourth time in as many days. Not one for a two-way conversation,’ she adds, wiping the pads of my fingers clean where the dried blood has turned copper-coloured. ‘You best let that air, love. Try and keep it dry.’

  ‘Leave the crumble dish for me to sort out. I don’t know what happened. I must have put it in the wrong oven. I forgot which one does what.’ I feel a bit tearful and that in itself is so infuriating I want to cry from frustration. I can’t seem to do anything right at the moment. I’m flailing at work and can’t convince them to pay me, Tom thinks I’m useless, and I’ve fucked up a recipe so easy they don’t even bother including it on The Great British Bake Off.

  ‘Oh, Elissa, stop flapping. I think it’s lovely you wanted to make something. I want you to think this is your kitchen just as much as mine. You’ve got to learn to cook somewhere, haven’t you? Even if you said your skills were a tad more advanced on your application.’

  ‘Was it that obvious?’

  Annie tilts the dish up towards me and grimaces.

  ‘Fair point,’ I reply. She’s wrangled a smile out of me.

  ‘I know this isn’t very enviro-eco-friendly or whatever you call it, but I’m going to put the whole dish in the wheelie bin. Arthur gave it me on our fortieth anniversary. This and a wooden spoon.’

  Oh God, I feel horrible. I’ve nearly set fire to the kitchen and destroyed a gift from Annie’s dead husband in a single morning. ‘Annie, I’m so sorry. Please let me see if I can salvage it.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t let you, Elissa.’ She picks up the dish and twists it round in her hands. ‘I’ve always hated it. Now I’ve got a good excuse to get rid of it.’ Annie slips into her garden shoes and disappears around the corner. When she returns, she walks straight over to the fridge, pulls open the door, and hides something behind her back, knocking the door shut with her elbow.

  ‘Lucky I’ve got a plan B, eh?’ Annie reveals two ramekins topped with foil. ‘Melt-in-the-middle chocolate pudding. I know it’s all made by machines, but they’re so good they make your teeth hurt.’

  ‘I haven’t even had breakfast yet.’

  ‘I won’t tell if you won’t.’ She winks and puts them in the microwave.

  I look around at Annie’s kitchen and through into the living room. Apart from the mass of engineering books from the Sixties and Seventies, it looks like any old person’s home. I mean, the high Victorian ceilings and wood panelling are leagues apart from my nanny’s two-up-two-down council house in Hereford, with its polystyrene ceiling tiles and textured plaster. There’s the same winged armchair, stacking side-tables, and talcum powder in the medicine cabinet. But Annie’s house lacks something that my nanny had in abundance. Here, there isn’t a single photograph on display.

  My whole family frames and displays photos in the same way teenagers upload onto Instagram. There’s barely a surface in the house that doesn’t have a picture frame on it. They’re tacked to the back of the bathroom door and they dangle from key rings. Walking up the stairs is like experiencing a flipbook of your own face ageing in yearly increments from reception to sixth form. It was stifling, at times, to have that many versions of yourself presented back at you, especially the dodgy teenage years where cheap, thick foundation dominated the scene.

  I pull my sleeves down over my hands as the microwave pings. ‘Annie, did you and Arthur ever have children?’ Annie peels the film off and turns the puddings upside down onto fluted porcelain plates. ‘Yes. Richard. He lives in Australia. My two grandsons are there as well.’

  ‘Have you been over to see them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ We both dig into our puddings. Chocolate sauce oozes out and pools around the cake. Annie puts her spoon down, but I put mine in my mouth.

  ‘I want to. I’m desperate to meet ’em. I’ve seen a picture, from when they were babies. Codey – he’s a big lad. Chubby little arms and legs.’ She smiles. ‘Just like his dad.’

  ‘Why don’t you? Go and visit them?’

  Annie twists a ring round on her finer. ‘Oh, I can’t manage travel at my age. And I’m not sure they’ll ever come here. Do you want to finish this?’ she says, motioning to her plate and the half-eaten pudding on it.

  ‘No, better not. I already feel a bit sick. Not in a bad way! Like when you’ve eaten a big
Christmas dinner and feel like you’ve earnt a nap.’ I’ve scraped my plate clean and if I was on my own, I would have licked it too.

  Annie is definitely being a bit weird about her family. Why would someone move to Australia and never come back to visit their mum, who, as far as I can tell, is a treat of an old person?

  Annie is busying herself around the sink, carefully washing up jars for the recycling bin. I’m going to poke a little bit more.

  ‘You could borrow my phone to video call Richard if you like.’

  Annie stiffens, her shoulders hunched. ‘No, no, he doesn’t do that sort of thing. The time difference is awkward. He’s very busy. Works in a bank in Sydney and flies out to Hong Kong a lot. No, I shan’t.’

  ‘But I’m sure we could figure something if—’

  ‘He’s his father’s son, Richard, always was.’

  ‘I could send him an email if you like—’

  Annie puts a plate down hard on the draining board. ‘I said no, Elissa.’ She clutches her hands together as though she’s hurt her fingers. ‘Don’t waste your time worrying about me, all right?’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  The tea towel, held tight in her hand, dances as her hand shakes. ‘I’m sorry, love. I don’t mean to snap.’

  I stand up, scraping my chair noisily across the kitchen tiles. ‘No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kept going on about it.’

  ‘You don’t have to fix me, Elissa. I’m fine. I’m doing just fine,’ she says as she scoops a glass up with the tea towel, turning it round in her hands to dry. She places it on a shelf and puts her hands on my arms.

  ‘Come ’ere. I’ve upset you, haven’t I?’

  ‘No, no, of course you haven’t,’ I lie, letting her pull me into a hug. She smells of lavender and a delicate mustiness from clothes that are worn too irregularly to wash that often. ‘No offence or owt but I think you need a bath. You smell like Guy Fawkes after Bonfire Night.’

  I nod and turn to go upstairs.

  ‘Elissa?’

  I stop at the doorway. ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Thank you for the crumble. I mean it. And for getting it out of the oven before it burnt the place down.’

  I laugh weakly. ‘Any time.’

  ***

  I shut myself in the bathroom, wrapping my hand in a flannel to twist the taps of Annie’s coral-coloured bath, set in the corner amongst flowery tiles in shades of brown and mustard. Whilst it’s filling up, I sit in a king-size bath towel and scroll through old pictures on my phone. Talking to Annie about her family has clearly touched a nerve, which is weird, because I swear older people normally can’t stop spouting off about their grandchildren.

  As I scroll through my phone, I find sad reminders of how colourless my life has been of late. My diminishing enthusiasm for London is there in my camera roll, as New Year’s fireworks and sun-soaked beer gardens flick to a picture of Tom holding a burnt pizza, looking slightly pissed off, a strange-shaped banana, and the feet of a man on the tube who wasn’t wearing shoes. Then, a flurry of blurred pictures of the back of Suki’s head and a selfie of Maggie kissing me on the cheek – the first night out I’d had in months. Like Annie, I’m not sure I’d invite questions about my life either.

  I have to wipe the screen every couple of minutes to clear the steam that’s slowly filling the bathroom. Eventually, I pull the window open and a cool spring breeze tempts the steam outside. I get in the bath and feel the hot water loosening the strain I’m holding in my joints and spine. Lifting my knees up, I let my head drift below the surface of the water. My hair looks like a mushroom cloud when I open my eyes and look up. I barely last ten seconds before I break the surface and gulp breaths like a goldfish. There must be a reason why Annie got so funny about me asking questions about her son. I mean, of the people I know who don’t like their grandmas, it’s either because they’re horribly racist or keep asking why they haven’t got a boyfriend. Annie doesn’t strike me as either kind. Then there’s the totally unbelievable list of reasons why she barely speaks to her son. And that comment about Richard being ‘his father’s son’, what did that mean exactly? From the sound of it, Arthur liked having a clever wife at home, but then again, weren’t most husbands like that back then?

  I run a hand along my leg, where the stubble has grown and is so rough it could pass as Velcro. I really need to sort it out; you could light a match on my knee. I lean back, my lips bobbing on the water line. Old people always seemed so … pedestrian to me before. My nanny was a nice, uncomplicated type: milky tea, Countdown on telly, dinner at 5.00 p.m., that sort of thing. It barely crossed my mind that she had once been a young woman, perhaps with different ideas about how her life would end up. Clearly, I hadn’t been as insightful as I could have been.

  Chapter 15

  As I wait for my eyes to adjust in the early morning light, I squint at my phone, alarmed that Mitchell sent an email at 3.47 a.m. reminding us about The Big Pitch this morning. Like I could forget. During the night, hours were spent staring at the ceiling, mentally rehearsing lines. In a weak moment, I messaged Tom and lamely asked him to wish me luck. If it goes tits up today, I’ll know why. He never messaged me back.

  When we were packing clothes on Saturday morning, Maggie and I found £2.65 in a pair of jeans, as well as a handful of coins in the ‘odds and sods’ drawer of the bedside table, so today I piss off the Hampstead commuters yet again by topping up my Oyster card with coppers and a stack of 20p pieces.

  I arrive at The Butcher Works half an hour later. Rachael narrows her eyes from the reception desk as I push through the revolving doors.

  ‘You’re in early.’

  ‘I am!’ I say proudly.

  ‘That’s unlike you,’ she states, drumming her acrylic nails on the table.

  ‘Oi! I’m not that bad,’ I say with feigned disbelief.

  ‘Oh, I know. Sorry, did that sound bitchy? Too many late nights.’ Rachael blinks rapidly and rubs her brow bone. She picks up the phone, which flashes with a call. The phones don’t actually ring here; it’s seen as too corporate. ‘What’s up! Butcher Works here, Rachael speaking, unless you don’t want me, in which case I’ll transfer you …’ I close the door to her laughter and walk into Lovr’s space, which is busy with movement and noise for the first time in days.

  Mitchell is completely electrified. He’s got a very loud purple shirt on and is walking around the office with his sleeves rolled up. I scan the room. I’m still the last person to arrive. Adam is rolling up his brown paper and Rhea is, for once, not at the treadmill desk. She’s wearing an incredibly tight tailored dress that rings with ‘don’t challenge me or I’ll crush your skull between my thighs.’ I look down at my too short floral trousers, the result of a one-time trip to the laundrette last winter when our clothes refused to dry in a windowless living room.

  Oh, shit. I’ve completely underestimated this, haven’t I? Why is everyone looking so … professional? Bismah doesn’t seem to notice me as I turn my laptop on. She’s walking back and forth, practising her pitch from an iPad that she’s using as a scrolling autocue. The only person who doesn’t look bothered is Rodney, who is uncharacteristically visible, placidly typing out lines and lines of code. I open up my drawer and put on a bit of emergency eyeliner, which isn’t usually something I do unless I’m bored or procrastinating. We’ve reached desperate times.

  I pretend to nip outside so I can run over my pitch, but instead furiously wipe my hands on my jeans, panic setting in. After a few minutes spent pacing the artificial grass, I unlock my phone to make a call.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi. It’s me. It’s Elissa.’

  ‘Oh, ’ey up. You all right?’ says Annie, brightening.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I’ve got five minutes at work and thought I’d check in.’ There’s a pause and I hear the muffled sound of Annie crunching on a biscuit.

  ‘Bees still buzzing. Same bloody adverts on telly. All as normal. You?’

  ‘Er, yeah. Sorry to jus
t call out of the blue. I dunno why, but I’ve got this really weird feeling.’

  ‘Dicky tummy, is it? I should have checked the date on that tin of salmon. I’ve been fine, but I’ve got a strong constitution, mind.’

  ‘No, not like that. More of an … overwhelming sense of dread?’

  ‘Right. Go on.’

  ‘I’m about to go into this big meeting at work and I’m terrified.’

  ‘Why? You about to be sacked?’

  ‘No! I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, that’s already better. What’s the problem then?’

  ‘I’m not prepared. I’ve got to pitch this big, grand idea, and every time I try and say it out loud, I sound really simple.’

  ‘If it’s your idea, you should be the most confident one in the room. I know you work with technology and I won’t pretend to understand it, but it’s all the same. Bullshit.’ Ah, nihilism. How encouraging. Unaware of my increasing sense of dread, Annie continues. ‘Bullshit your way through. If you’ve got an inkling that your idea is good, take that thought and ramp it up. Bullshit until they’re on your side and it’s over, then work out the details. You’ve got to believe in it yourself first, otherwise why would anyone else?’

  A rapping sound comes from the glass doors of our work space, and I turn around to see Bismah pointing and mouthing ‘upstairs’.

  ‘Thanks, Annie. Honestly.’

  ‘’S all right.’

  ***

  When we get up to the conference room, Mitchell is already there, along with an unfamiliar, clean-shaven man with high cheekbones. For some reason, all the tables have been moved out and a number of mismatched stools, chairs, and other pieces of furniture have been pulled into a circle. With Mitchell’s restless leg bobbing up and down and his companion stony-faced and silent, it feels like a very unsupportive support group.

  ‘How are we all?’ he asks. There’s a little chorus of replies.

  ‘I didn’t hear anything, did you, Vlad?’ The other man shakes his head, looking awkward. ‘I said, how are we all, team?’ Bismah does a little ‘woo’ and Adam smacks his thigh as though he’s at a rugby match. Rodney remains silent and I give a half-hearted thumbs-up.