My Ideal Boyfriend Is a Croissant

by Laura Dockrill

  “Sort of.”

  “You look smart….I like your hair like that; you look like a wrestler.” Dad’s never been one for compliments.

  Dove knows this only too well and replies, “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Right, you two ready, then? Sure you don’t want me to follow behind?”

  “You’re not our security guard, Dad.” Dove shakes her head.

  Dad puffs his shoulders out and puts on a New York gangster voice, his two swearing fingers in a V shape at his eyes and then on us. “You know I’ll be watching you, don’t you?”

  We roll our eyes but we can’t help but laugh.

  “B, are you really wearing that?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “It’s my first day back and…well…”

  “Dove, you’re in a wheelchair with your legs in two casts. Do you think anybody is gonna care what I’M wearing?”

  “Actually, I reckon she should wear that. Everyone is going to be SO concerned with Miss Barbara Glastonbury’s terrible outfit they aren’t going to care about Dove!”

  Mum comes down. “Ahhhhh, you both look brilliant!” She applauds us.

  “All right, Mum, we’re only walking down the road!”

  “I know, I know but I want to get a photograph of you both.”

  “A photo? No, Mum, why?” I howl. “You see us every day.”

  “I want a photo,” Dove says, “to prove to my kids that I broke both my legs when I was thirteen.”

  “Come on, then, let me see if I can ugly myself up a bit so you girls don’t feel intimidated.” Dad ruffles his hair up, muscling in on the photo. “I don’t want you girls to feel a laughingstock next to me, eh?” His coffee smell is a toasty wave of comfort; his bad jokes seem to warm me from the inside out.

  “No, Bill, I want a photograph of the girls, not you, you big naan bread.” Mum moves Dad out of the way.

  “You know naan actually means bread? So when you order a naan bread at the Indian restaurant you’re basically ordering bread twice?” Dad smirks cockily.

  “Bread bread.” I laugh.

  “See? Joke’s on you.” Dad clicks his tongue.

  “Whatever, Bread Bread, I’ve got MORE than enough photos of you. Out the way!” Mum shoves him now.

  “Do you?” Dad manages to somehow find flattery in this and stands back, pretending to read the week-old newspaper.

  “That’s it, OK…right, closer, OK…Now, girls, on the count of three say ‘Cheese!’ ”

  “Ready?”

  “Three. Two. One.”

  “CHEESE!”

  Cheesy indeed.

  Cheese is delicious. Cheese is mould. I don’t like cheese with blue veins in it.

  BLUEBELLE’S

  The world is the same, tumbling on as we whoosh by. The shopkeeper waves, the faces stare, smile. Dove is looking at her phone, not even looking up as I pant and sweat behind her, little teardrop beads squeezing out of my head. Hasn’t this gym business paid off yet? My God.

  “Ahhh, look at this message from Lottie, isn’t that cute? Ah, look, Echo liked our picture and Reena, ahhh. They are so cute.” Dove coos. “Ah, and Jordan…and Olivia. Oh…I can’t wait to see everybody.”

  “That’s good. That makes me happy.”

  “Are you nervous to see any of your old school friends? They’ll all be there for sixth form, won’t they?”

  “Yeah, I hadn’t really thought about it, actually.” I had. I can imagine them now. Clucking and screeching. Excited. I am happy for them. They’ll run to Dove; they’ll want to push her around all day. They’ll want to ask her about me. And I know she’ll say nice things about me. Tell them I’m doing well.

  “What is wrong with you? You’re shaking like a leaf,” Dove says as I fix her hair by the school gates.

  “I’m just nervous….I don’t know.”

  “Why are you nervous? There’s nothing to be worried about,” Dove reassures me.

  And I hold her so tight and she wraps her arms around me and we say goodbye.

  “Good luck.” I kiss her head.

  “Thanks. Love you.”

  “I love you, and remember, be a firework.”

  “Be a shooting star!”

  “Be a rocket ship!”

  “Be a stick of dynamite!”

  “In real life, though, be the candles on birthday cakes, the ones that never blow out!” I pretend to blow candles. “Until the icing on the cake is just covered in spit.”

  “Ha! Yeah! Oi, you, be a cannonball!”

  “That I can be!” I crouch into a ball and Dove cracks up. “Drive safely!” I shout after her. She spins round and whips her wheel up at me, skidding a tyre mark on the ground.

  I watch her leaving me, heading towards the crowd. Towards the long hair, the short skirts, the plaits and braids, hijabs, the glasses, balls and singing, the sweets and crisps and snapping of biscuits, the unscrewing of bottle caps, the screaming and hugging and shouting, the hearing aids and braces, the whispering and gossiping, the cussing and hugging and kissing and music and phones and lip gloss and hair gel and unbuttoned shirts and plaster casts, the howling and laughing…and Dove. A confetti-stuffed grenade I’ve had to let go of.

  I walk along the high street in my rainbow kaftan and pom-pom shoes. I walk along, past the people, past the faces.

  I sit in a coffee shop, one I’ve never been into before. They have a ramp at the entrance but the door is a bit narrow.

  Their cakes look all right. I could do better.

  Mine will be called “Bluebelle’s.” It will serve proper iced coffee and proper coffee, without boobs on top. We will serve real cake with proper icing and a proper crumb that is baked fresh every day. The whole place will smell of sugar and coconut and banana and toffee. We will do meringue angels, Victoria sponge, blueberry loaf and polenta cake. We will serve macaroons and apple pie and proper jam tarts. Moist cupcakes and cookies and brownies that are soft and squidgy. Millionaire’s shortbread EVERYWHERE. We will smile when babies come in and open up the windows and invite the sunshine inside and the breeze and the thunder and the storm and blankets and heaters for when it’s cold. There will be seats outside and a garden, and dogs are allowed. And breastfeeding. And I will write “muffins” in a swirly pen with the fs joined up. The sandwiches will be stuffed full and delicious, the soup homemade. The Bakewell tart slices will have toasted almonds on top. Not pale soggy fingernail ones. The flapjacks will be soft and full of seeds and nuts. The sugar won’t come in packets. Tea won’t be a ridiculous price, even though I’ll give people a whole pot to themselves and it will always be made with those lovely cotton tea bags, unless they like the dregs—people like what they’re used to. The camomile tea: flowers; the bread: freshly baked on site.

  This became more than a food diary. But eating is a story of your life, so when people say food is a comfort, they are right in a way; it’s always there with you. It’s always a friend. Your favourite foods travel with you your whole life, taste everything you do. Even if you’re crying over a plate, the plate is still there.

  Full of hope.

  PISTACHIO ICE CREAM

  It’s not a flavour you would choose, I know, but it’s the only flavour ice cream Mum actually likes and she gets it from the Italian near us. She says it’s the ONLY flavour worth having. I get chocolate. It’s dense, rich and sweet.

  “Want to taste mine?” Mum asks, offering me a lick.

  “No, it’s only because you want some of my chocolate because you’re regretting that green flavour.”

  “No, I’m not. Come on, try some….” She barges the thing in my face.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Come on, this is the year of new things.”

  I give her ice cream a lick. It’s green, nutty, almondy and tart. It’s actually delicio
us.

  “WOW. That’s so nice.”

  “Told you!” She licks it. “Uh-oh, you like pistachio ice cream; you know what that means, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re turning into your mother!”

  She laughs.

  “Shut up, you, do you really need to say that before I’m about to get weighed, as if my day isn’t depressing enough as it is?”

  “Do you really need an ice cream before being weighed?” Mum comments.

  I laugh. “I do, yeah.”

  “And I love that about you.” She strokes my hair.

  VITAMINS

  “You again!” The nurse grins when she sees me, her gold tooth glinting.

  We are back here, back in her office. Surrounded by the antismoking posters and the five-a-day reminders and the various ways to check your boobs for breast cancer. I probably need to start doing that too.

  Vitamin adverts are everywhere. I’m sorry. I know you lot probably think they’re all good, don’t you? But I don’t get why you’d not just eat the actual food instead of having a dehydrated powdery tablet version of something good for you, because they didn’t have vitamins in the olden days and my grandma is still alive and she’s, like, nearly a hundred and has properly never had a vitamin in her life. I hate them anyway. Who in their right mind wants to spend the whole day with a pod of fish organs lodged in the back of their throat slowly dissolving? NOT ME. And anyway, I’ve heard that actually the vitamins aren’t even effective once you’ve got them home because all the goodness in them dies on the supermarket shelf, which kind of makes sense; nearly all the healthy good stuff should be served fresh. When you get those little white lines on your nails, is that really actually to tell you that you need more calcium? You should know. And why is it just calcium with the warning sign? Like, why doesn’t your skin get covered in little orange dots if you need more vitamin C or whatever? Maybe you doctors look for those signs and know how to find them—perhaps to you deficiencies are really easy to spot? I find it mad to think about how little we know about the human body.

  “So.” The nurse sits and stretches her legs; she lets the back of her Crocs slide off her heels, the cracked dry backs of them like elephant skin. “What’s been going on?”

  “You can read it all here,” I say, sliding the beaten-up book towards her. She lowers her glasses, peering over the frames, locking eyes with me.

  “You did it?” She shakes her head.

  “You didn’t think I would?”

  “I won’t lie. No, I did not.” She places a hand on the book, the book I’ve written in, a friend. “To be honest, Bluebelle Green…” She raises a brow to Mum. “You’ve surprised me.” She smiles at me. “And how did you find it?”

  “It was OK.”

  The nurse lifts the diary and begins to flip through the pages. “Oh my word.”

  “What?”

  “I thought you were going to list your food, not”—she looks again, eyes wide—“write a whole…book!”

  “I kind of had a lot to say.”

  “I suppose I have to read it now, don’t I?” She slaps her leg. “I stitched myself up there, didn’t I?”

  She won’t read it. As if.

  “OK, let’s get you on the scales.”

  “She had an ice cream on the way here, so don’t be too hopeful,” Mum volunteers. Oh shut up, Mum. THE ABSOLUTE BETRAYAL.

  “And she’s got a boyfriend!” DOUBLE BETRAYAL. What is going on here?

  “MUM!” The scales yield underneath me.

  “Ooooooooh! So you’re a happy girl, then. See, I told you you have a pretty face.”

  “Surprised you two haven’t been texting, such best friends.”

  She winks at me. “You’ve lost weight.”

  “I haven’t tried to.”

  “Well done.” She slaps me on the back.

  “Don’t ‘well done’ me. It wasn’t deliberate.”

  “She’s been exercising.” Mum strokes my back. “Plus, I guess she’s just growing up.”

  Mum looks me up and down. I see myself in her; for the first time ever she looks just like me, and me like her. I gulp. I know I have something to tell her….

  “Mum, I didn’t get the apprenticeship at Planet Coffee,” I tell her.

  “Uh-oh, not again.” The nurse walks away. “Leave me out of this.”

  “Sorry?” Mum’s face slides off.

  “It didn’t happen.” I shake my head. “Alicia didn’t sort it.”

  “But I thought you said it was all happening. For a year. That you were being paid, that it was all fine with Julian from Careers.”

  “No, they lied. It was fine and then it wasn’t. They said it was too big of an ask of them or whatever and that I had missed a few too many shifts, but that was a bit because of Dove and everything at home.” Mum looks horrified. “And then stupid Alicia started practically making me BEG for this letter to take back to school to explain that it was their fault, not mine, but she was being so nasty about it. She’s also pregnant and in a horrific mood because she’s sick quite a lot and can’t drink white wine like it’s going out of fashion anymore. And I wasn’t going to be the brunt of that. So…I quit. I walked out of there and told them to get an accessibility ramp.” The nurse chuckles at me; Mum does not. “And then I maybe stole a jar of marshmallows.”

  “You stole what?” the nurse says in disapproval but Mum just says nothing.

  So I carry on….

  “Look, I know you’re mad and this wasn’t what we agreed and I sort of exaggerated it and made out as though the apprenticeship was a done deal when it wasn’t completely sorted but that’s just what I was led to believe, Mum, and also I wanted you to be proud of me and think I could sort stuff out for myself and I know this isn’t exactly what we talked about when we made our deal and you’ve been so cool about stuff and supportive with me and had a lot with Dove and so I’ve just decided—if they let me—that I’m going to go back to school and do sixth form. I’ve got my A-plus in art so I think if I can go back and just talk to Julian from Careers, then—”

  “No. No. No. Hold on.” Mum puts her hands out and closes her eyes to take it all in. “Just stop there….”

  “Sorry,” I say. The nurse sits down to enjoy another episode of our family show, and has the audacity to go ahead and pop a mint into her mouth.

  “There is no way you’ve come all this way and done all this to just not do what you want to do because of that absolute idiot.” I feel her look at me like she’s looking at an adult, not her daughter, not a child at all, and she says, “I had to grow up so quickly when I had you, Bluebelle, that I didn’t get a chance to think about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Sometimes I wonder if I actually ever will grow up at all, if it’s too late and I missed it all. But if I ever do get a chance to grow up again and do it properly…I hope I grow up to be like you. It’s all I could ever ask for.”

  My eyes water.

  “If Dove taught us anything, it’s that life is too short. If going back to school is what you want to do, then please do it. But I don’t believe that that is what you want. I want you to do exactly what you want. And maybe you don’t know what that is yet, but let’s find out together.” She reaches out to hold me. “You won’t have to do anything on your own.”

  And I fall into her and hug her.

  “Oh dear!” The nurse reaches for a packet of tissues out of her handbag and wipes a tear from the corner of her eye.

  We are all laughing and crying at the same time. We are a mess, basically.

  “What am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not like we’ve ever had a plan before and look at us; I reckon we’re doing all right, us lot,” Mum says. “You’re a girl. And you can do whatever you want. The whole world belongs to you.�
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  A FAVOURITE RECIPE FROM THE AUTHOR (BB LOVES IT TOO!)

  Salmon Tacos with Mango Salsa and Toasted Sweet Corn

  This is one my favourite recipes. I made it up as a complete accident and it has become a home necessity! These tacos are like a theme park in your mouth. They feel like party food. My boyfriend loves them. My sister stole the recipe. They’re fun and messy and great to bring to the table. Pretty healthy. Vibrant. Colourful and quite easy to make, and they look impressive. You can use chicken or vegetables if you don’t eat fish, and they’re a great low-carb option for people who are into that stuff or are gluten intolerant. You can serve them with green rice and quesadillas or just munch them on their own. This is playful yummy relaxed handfood that I like to eat!

  SALMON TACOS WITH MANGO SALSA AND TOASTED SWEET CORN

  Serves 4, making 2 large tacos or 3 to 4 smaller tacos, depending how big your lettuce leaves are.

  FOR THE TACOS

  4 salmon fillets (I use ones with the skin.)

  Olive oil

  Cajun spice mix

  Sea salt

  Romaine lettuce leaves (You want outer leaves that you can stuff, so pick large, healthy green leaves. You can use the smaller inner leaves in a salad another time.)

  2 avocados (or one big one), thinly sliced or mashed

  FOR THE SALSA

  1 large mango, diced

  2 limes (one for serving)

  1 bunch of cilantro

  ½ red onion, chopped (Sometimes I leave this out.)

  FOR THE SWEET CORN

  1 large can of sweet corn

  A chunk of butter

  ½ teaspoon of smoked paprika (more if you like hot)

  Sea salt

  METHOD

  Start with the salmon fillets. Place them skin-side-down on a baking tray lined with foil. Cover the fillets with olive oil and the Cajun mix and salt to taste. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in a 350-degree oven, until the fish is firm and cooked through.