Was that a hint about how hot I look? I do look hot. Am I tempting? My mum tells me that electric blue brings out my green eyes and makes my skin look glowing. STOP BEING COCKY. How have I turned a comment about a sandwich into a compliment about myself?
“I don’t like to give stingy portions. It’s not fair. You have to leave a bathroom the way you would want to find it, and make a sandwich the way you would want to eat one.”
Max nods and smiles.
“That’s true.” He peers over my shoulder. “It says quite a lot about a person, the way they make a sandwich.”
PLOT TWIST. “Does it?”
“Oh, for sure.”
“So what does this sandwich say about me?”
MELTING PANINI
Let’s talk about Max. If I’m weighing him up as somebody who could potentially have their tongue in my mouth we need to discuss him. Properly…Firstly, is he too pretty? I realise you can’t see him and this is just a conversation between my head and me, but the risk that he could be too pretty is actually really important for me. We are all beautiful, but pretty is a completely different word with an entirely different meaning. I don’t want to make him my boyfriend and every three steps we’d have some annoying model-scout girl ask him if he’s “ever considered modelling.” Perhaps he has considered it and is waiting for his moment to shine? His jaw does have the same angles as a packaged sandwich. I don’t know. I guess you can’t judge a person by their “alien” clothes either because this is stuff they don’t mind getting covered in the soot of coffee and the splat of bleach. But he always wears cool trainers.
And he smells of figs.
* * *
—
“I think it shows that you clearly understand the good things in life.”
He’s right.
“I never understand why anybody who works in catering of any kind would ever want to shortchange a customer with their portions. It’s not like the money is coming out of our personal accounts! There’s no excuse to be tight. That actually stands for everything. You’re going to get further in life if you’re generous. In EVERY sense of the word.”
“Wait, I haven’t finished psychologically analysing you by your sandwich making….” Then he snatches the panini from the board and bites into it.
“MAX!”
“Ummmm…”
“Max! That’s for a customer! You can’t do that!” But he doesn’t care.
“Oh yeah, the vision is coming across much stronger now. Oh yes, I can really taste the personalities and character of the—”
By now a few hangry faces are staring at us. The panini-making machine is so slow too.
“Max, you’re gonna get us in trouble.”
“Oh sorry, my bad. It’s just when I’m…summoning up this kind of…energy from the sandwich-making spirits I can’t have anything…you know…disrupting my flow….” He closes his eyes, opens one to see if I’m still looking and tries not to laugh. His lips are pink. Full. Bee-stung. “It means your…” He starts again. The queue of people are tutting angrily. I should be getting on with it, making new paninis, cutting bread and dicing tomatoes…but I want to know what Max is going to say about me. I don’t want him to use one of those ugly fat-people words like “caring” or “motherly.” I realise I hate the idea of him deciding if he fancies me….Is she too fat for me? Too bubbly? I don’t want him to usually only fancy skinny girls and then make me his wild-card exception to the rule and that I should feel grateful for that. I don’t want him deliberating over me to his friends, asking their advice on whether they’d date a fat girl or not. I once had a situation with a boy I really liked. We’d spent all day kissing at a skate park in the sun only for him to turn to me on the walk home and say, “My friends think you’re fat.” As if I was meant to advise him on the tricky situation he now had on his hands, like I could help him out somehow. Half expecting me to respond with, Well, should I lose weight, would that make your dilemma easier? I was so embarrassed, I didn’t even tell anyone.
Just tell me what you’re thinking, Max. SPIT IT OUT. GO HARD OR GO HOME.
Is he really going to tell me if he fancies me or not by using the metaphor of a sandwich?
I do hope so.
Maybe he’s having the same image right now: us walking side by side on a sunny Saturday only to be stopped by a plus-size model scout who asks me if I’ve ever considered being a “curvy model.”
I’m just gonna ask him what he’s thinking to save myself. I can do that. I think I look pretty today. And I’m nice. And kind. And interesting. And I’ve already proved that I can make a pretty decent sandwich. Equalling a completely stunning life partner/love of your life/mother of your future children.
But how to say the words?
“Oi, Max, so is this a thing or…?” WEIRD. WHY AM I TALKING LIKE THIS?
“Huh?”
ROLL WITH IT. A few customers lose patience and walk out. Others stare.
KEEP GOING. OH CRINGE. WHAT AM I DOING?
I’ve turned into my dad and he’s a complete tit. Blush. Blush. Prickly red map-shaped rash darting up all over me and why have I even opened my mouth? My teeth feel all loose and wobbly and weird and my eyes are jolting left to right like a lizard. Where do I stare? Where do I look? Where am I meant to look when looking somebody in the eyes? Wait, where do I normally look? How do I normally look at somebody in the face? Your eyes can’t look everywhere at once—hold on, in the middle? At the edges? Why am I being so…Just look in the middle, the top of the nose. I’m cross-eyed…I’m cross-eyed and—just shut up and carry on…
“What I mean is, if this is like a thing…”
I can hear Cam telling me to shut up, Dove pointing and laughing, Alicia snorting.
“…there’s a lovely place near me, well, sort of near me, that does vegan crepes….It sounds horrible, but it’s not. I’m not a vegan. I mean, I couldn’t be vegan, not that there’s anything wrong with vegans; in fact, if you’re a vegan I think that’s totally cool…because obviously I know all about the fact they fake-impregnate cows and stuff to make milk and all the boy chicks that are born they just, like, whizz into a blender to make a meaty milkshake…” Max looks disgusted. “Horrible, HORRIBLE…but if you wanted to, if you fancied it, like, if you’re free and…”
“GREETINGS, EARTHLINGS!” Oh, here comes Alicia. That woman has the worst timing. “Want to know why I’ve called you earthlings and NOT aliens?”
OH NO, ALICIA! NO. YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS. You’re blatantly pregnant, you’ve had your time to shine, let me at least have a chance of TALKING to a boy without you getting in the way.
HERE SHE GOES….
“Nobody wants to have a guess? OK, sure, let me fill ya in. You’ve spent sooooooo bloody long standing here cruising like tourists that I’ve been left like Neil Armstrong bloody walking the moon on me lonesome. And it’s only school holidays! And there’s a queue. A big one. Marcel is about to lose his rag. Come on, aliens, get to it. Snap, snap, let’s get to work, BLAST OFF!”
“Sorry,” I mumble, and watch Max walk away from me. Behind Alicia he turns, widens his eyes and pushes the whole panini into his mouth in one move. Then he grins. Mouth full of squished bread. He coughs. Chokes. Splutters. Alicia turns around and growls. And I am laughing my head off but secretly melting, like a soggy panini gone soft.
CHEESE
The day goes on FOR-EVER. It’s like it’s stopped in time. I have a totally new understanding of the phrase “school holidays” now that I see it from the other side of the desk. School holidays mean HOT, BUSY and STRESSED. It’s long, hard work. A chaos of mums and dads and nannies and babies and prams and soggy bread crusts and tiny hands clutching raisins and smushed-up grapes and flattened Wotsits. And kids just coming in like they own the place. And me, making green tea after chai latte after peppermint tea after stupid b
abyccino. And gossip and leggings and iPads and nobody eating. Just sip. Sip. Gossip. Gossip. This is so dry. Nearly as dry as the brownies that I’ve suggested a new recipe for to make them more gooey. And every baby is crying because it’s so hot. I find myself counting nine months backwards from August so I know for my whole entire life how never to have a baby born in the summertime so I don’t have to stare at their screaming red scrunched-up face. I realise how jokes it is that I’m writing this all down in a doctor’s journal. I never thought I’d get so into writing this thing. How cringe it is that I’m now writing about a boy too. Well…I don’t want to keep you in suspense….Plus…it’s kind of nice talking to you, really; it’s like having a little friend.
All I’m thinking is Max and trying to figure out if he’s my species or not. He’s never seen Jurassic Park. But he’s still not mentioned anything about the crepe place or me or being vegan, even though he did eat a panini, but I can’t quite remember if it was a cheese one or not—no, it was, I know it was, but anyway, why does it even matter and I’m just going mad and my eyes are slowly blinding. Blurred by sweat and exhaustion and more sweat that’s giving me rings under each armpit and my thighs are scraping against each other in scabby agony and I feel like a hideous monster walrus cattle girl and why would anybody like Max fancy me when a trillion and one astoundingly beautiful girls of every kind come into our coffee shop every day? And I am just here, taking up ALL the room. Conscious of the bobbly cheese-grater red dots on my arms that make my skin feel like the crust of a seeded loaf. Conscious of the fact that my boobs might be sweating but I don’t have the guts to even look down and check because if I see hideous half-moons of sweat under there I will begin to believe I am as horrible as the rest of the world might think I am.
I am a tree trunk.
A grand piano.
I puff my Ventolin.
* * *
—
It’s the end of the day when Max comes up to me and says in the cutest voice ever, “So if it’s vegan I’m guessing no cheese, which is gonna be hard as cheese is one of my all-time favourite foods, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, Blue.” He grins. “For you.”
OH BOY.
It. Is. On.
MOULD
I have to take the bus home. My thighs are rubbing like mad. It’s like rubbing your cheeks on tree bark. Plus, the sweat is making it so sore; every step sticks and chafes. The bus is so hot and everybody is covered in a gammy sheet of glueyness. But I don’t care. I am going on a date and I can’t help but feel really good about that.
Obviously I want to get home and just put a soaking wet bedsheet over my whole body and watch TV and eat ice cream but Mum doesn’t seem to have the same agenda. Plus, the only ice cream we ever have in our house will be a quarter tub of something old that has thawed so badly it will have snowflakes, or a gammy singular solitary ice lolly dating back to the early 2000s. The front door is wide open and both dogs are yawning and scratching around the front garden. The house is ripe with the throat-thwacking stench of bleach and Mum is padding around in Dove’s Nike sliders and a pair of yellow gloves.
“Right, BB, get your gloves on. Come on, we’re having a clear-out.”
Dove looks at me with one of those faces and I can see she’s already been put to work by the grot and grime all up her arms and on her cheeks. I don’t even own the gloves she means.
“You two can clean the larder out; it’s full of all your dad’s crap. He hasn’t touched half the stuff in there for years.”
I don’t want to remind her that I used Dad’s larder to cook the shepherd’s pie the other day but that obviously made me poo out the whole of south London into the dog bowl, so I keep quiet and say, “Yeah, but what if we throw away stuff he, you know, wants?”
“I don’t care if his bloody dead mother’s ashes are in there: out. OUT. OUT!”
Harsh. I raise an eyebrow at Dove.
So I guess Dad isn’t coming home yet, then.
Dove holds open the bin bag and I open the larder door. It’s the same height as me, like an airing cupboard, and stinks of spices and savoury musk. It’s the cupboard of every ingredient that can change a tin of tomatoes into a chilli, a curry or a bolognese. The cupboard where everything and anything goes. The cupboard you don’t dare touch in case it avalanches on top of your feet and breaks your toes. In fact, both dogs have had injuries from the cupboard: 2B once ate a whole sack of sugar and was sick for days and Not 2B had a tin of golden syrup dropped on his head.
* * *
—
It’s floor-to-ceiling chaos. Jars of spices balanced on top of vinegars and oils, tins shoved in in all directions, some upside down and slanted, and open packets of lentils, rice, flour, almonds and pasta ready to roar open at you and skittle across the floor.
We travel all around the world inside the globe of Dad’s larder. Yellow turmeric and baking powder, shreds of saffron, smoked paprika, vanilla essence and Tabasco, sticky Marmite and banana ketchup, oregano and fish sauce, coconut milk and cayenne pepper, balsamic vinegar and palm sugar…We find doubles of almost everything, triples in most cases: three open bags of couscous, three jars of curry paste, three bottles of soy sauce. And the whole thing, nearly everything in there, is all out. Of. Date. Crawling with fluffy reels of dust and strings of spider webs carrying spools of flies. I sneeze as the mixed itchy-scratchy powders irritate my nostrils. My eyes water and bleed my makeup as I reveal what should be jars of dried coriander leaf that are now a muted gunmetal grey and turned to dust. Flour is damp, vinegars are dehydrated and sauces are pungent and ripe, gone off.
The jars of jam are thick with mould sporting hay bales of silver fur.
I feel crap about chucking it out, to be honest. Plus, some of this stuff is really good quality. Even if it is out of date. Dad would still use it but it seems every time I try to hold something back, Mum glares at me like I’m thrusting a knife into her shoulder.
Everything is…
Best before…when Dad still lived here.
Best before…when Mum and Dad were happy.
And it all goes in the bin.
SPRING ONIONS
People always say how much Mum and Dove look alike. Having a mum smaller than you makes people look at us like I’ve given birth to a mum rather than the other way round. Imagining me squeezing out of her is like imagining a sausage dog giving birth to a desk. I watch Mum and Dove move around the kitchen, hopping like little robins looking for somewhere to settle.
I’m a pregnant cow.
A gaggle of spring onions hold tight like hugging girls in the grasp of an unnatural blue plastic band; their spindly legs are strangled around one another, bruised and brown and wilted. Have you noticed that, if you look closely, spring onions wear pin-striped power suits? Mega babes.
“Why are these bloody things in the cupboard?” Mum very over-the-toply roars. “Bin. NOW!”
“All right, calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down, Dove. I’m sick of this man’s rubbish everywhere. He’s not even here and he manages to infest the whole place with his everlasting debris of sh—”
“You don’t need to throw all of this stuff away, Mum. Just cos you don’t want to live with Dad doesn’t mean you have to throw perfectly good food away.”
“Perfectly good? Perfectly good? I can’t see what’s perfectly good here. What’s the point in buying all this stuff if it just goes in the bin? Do you think I like seeing food go to waste?”
“OK. OK. Calm down!”
“I am CALM.”
She’s not. What is WRONG with her tonight? I am wondering if there’s any natural yoghurt or ANYTHING in the fridge that I can slather on my thighs to take the venomous sting away. Does it have to be in date if you’re just rubbing it on your thigh chafe?
“What’s wrong with you tonight?” Dove venture
s. How brave. I mean, I was thinking the exact same thing but, like, I’m not dumb enough to say it.
“What’s wrong with me?” Mum says. “What’s wrong with me? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me. Your stupid father is an absolute incapable moron who lives his life like a student and can’t sort himself out and thinks just because he is an old man that he can patronise me and squish me into compromising conditions so I’ll buckle. You know, he hasn’t got a clue. Do you know that? Not one clue.” Her voice gets louder. “He’s an egotistical parasite,” she barks. “And then, to top it off, I’ve got you two taking a FULL three hours to clean out a larder that I already said needs completely throwing out!”
“We didn’t want to throw away anything edible, anything Dad might want.”
“Oh, Dad wants it,” Mum snarls. “Dad wants it ALL!” She throws a tea towel onto the table. “But Dad doesn’t live here, and I, me, MUM, am asking you to throw it all away, all of it. You both suck up to him nonstop. Why don’t you ever listen to me? It’s MY house and I want that cupboard and everything in it gone, do you hear? And I want to start fresh without that ugly rancid rotting jungle looking at me. I can’t even make a risotto without the whole thing crushing my foot. LOOK AT MY FOOT.”
OH. So this was the trigger. A bright-purple swelling of a bruise shines on Mum’s toe. The pan is burnt, lined with burnt onion, the elderly cousin of the spring onions. (Why do Americans call spring onions “scallions”? It’s such a diversion…like, how an aubergine is an eggplant, and coriander is cilantro. Aubergine—all day. Eggplant, though? A plant of eggs. No thanks.)
“It wasn’t Dad’s fault that happened, though, Mum. Stop shouting at me just cos Dad isn’t here to bear the brunt of it.”
“Bluebelle, don’t even start with me. He stacked the cupboard like an absolute boob. Dad is NEVER here to bear the brunt of ANYTHING!”
My Ideal Boyfriend Is a Croissant Page 14
