by Heide Goody
“You can’t engage in stalking and anti-social behaviour to find them,” said Sergeant Fenton.
“No,” I said.
“Where are you currently staying?”
I gave her my brother’s address and she noted it down, with my name.
“Does this mean that you’re not treating my parents as missing persons?” I asked as she and her colleague got back in the car.
“No, Miss Belkin. People who want to be left alone are not missing.”
Cookie was sitting on the campus green outside the University Museum when I returned. We walked back to Adam’s flat and I told her about my awful day. Cookie walks slowly when she’s got a joint on the go.
“Rhythms of the universe,” she had once explained. “I listen and step to their beat.”
But now, having heard my tale of woe, she stopped on the pavement and turned to face me.
“This is epic. You know that, right?” she said.
“No,” I scowled.
“There is only ever one story,” she said and drew an arc in the air with her arm. “A hero rises. She struggles. She falls.”
“That’s cheery.”
“You’ve set out on a new path. Your adventure is ahead of you. See how awesome that is?”
I sighed.
“I’m struggling to see the awesomeness, Cookie. My parents have abandoned me. I’m like those two kids in the wood who have to live off gingerbread cottage and kill a witch. And, you know what, I’m kind of angry about that.”
“Because you don’t have a gingerbread cottage?”
“Well, that, yes, but also that my parents could be so selfish as to bugger off and leave me to fend for myself. Like the boy in The Jungle Book left to be raised by wolves and run around in his red undies. And he had a singing bear to help him! No gingerbread cottage. No singing bear. I suspect Mom and Dad don’t really love me at all.”
“Course they do. Just in a really distant kind of way. This is your moment to shine, meow-meow. And you know it. You’re standing at a crossroads,” said Cookie. “Mostly we all take the paths we take in our lives and we never know where the important junctions are, but yours is right here in front of you.”
“It’s not a crossroads, Cookie. It’s a roundabout and I’ve been going round and round it all day with no food and no money. Maybe I’ll be able to think about how awesome it all is when I get some of the small stuff sorted out like not starving to death.”
She clapped her hands together as we climbed the stairs to Adam’s flat. “You’re looking at someone who’s a black belt at creating a meal from an empty cupboard. I’m your singing bear and I will build you a gingerbread cottage.”
“You’re the best.”
“I am. Also, I’ve seen you running around in nothing but your red undies. Stirring stuff.”
“That was a one-time thing,” I said.
“Ah, you say that. Put something on YouTube and it’s there forever.”
I made her put the joint out and we went inside. She walked into the lounge and tried all the chairs before deciding which was her favourite.
“Check this out,” I said. “Lexi.”
“How can I help you?” said the cylinder on the table.
“Turn on the lights, please.”
The lounge lights came on.
“You’ve got a ghost butler,” said Cookie. “That’s neat.”
She produced an Aldi carrier bag with two bottles of wine and plonked them onto the coffee table.
“Yo, ghost. Get us some glasses.”
Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I said.
“Fine. Why don’t you get us a drink poured and I’ll check out the kitchen, see what we can get to eat?”
I found wine glasses and a corkscrew while Cookie made her voyage of discovery through the kitchen cupboards, much as I had done earlier, except that Cookie knows what she’s doing. She’s been bin-diving behind Sainsbury’s for years. And she’s been trying to educate the world in the ways of innovative cooking with cheap ingredients for almost as long, but it’s yet to take off. The closest she ever got was when a comedy website mentioned her YouTube channel in a feature called Ten culinary experiences that are worse than eating insects in I’m a Celebrity, which I thought was a bit harsh.
I passed Cookie a glass of wine and looked at the ingredients that she’d lined up on the counter top. A bag of flour with a picture of a windmill on the front, some lemon juice and something called bicarbonate of soda.
“What is this? I thought you just used this to make model volcanoes,” I said.
“It’s a raising agent,” said Cookie. “It means we can make soda bread. Watch and learn!”
As she found bowls and spoons I leaned against the counter and sipped my wine.
“I’m always learning,” I said.
“Course you are. Even in stillness, we move.”
“Right. My parents think I haven’t moved on since I was a teenager,” I said.
“That’s not true.”
“I drink white wine now,” I said, swilling my glass. “And not only when it’s the last alcohol in the fridge.”
“Same goes for salad,” said Cookie.
“It’s true. I no longer fear the lettuce. And I’ve even developed a taste for blue cheese since last Christmas. Ooh! Sausage!”
“You’ve always had a taste for sausage,” said Cookie salaciously.
“Cookie!” I slapped her.
“And penis,” she added.
Cookie stirred things together as I dashed off to find my loukaniko sapio. I presented it to Cookie with a proud ‘ta-dah!’ She sniffed.
“That’s off, mate,” she said.
“No, no. It’s Greek. It’s piquant and aromatic.”
“It stinks of death.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Nor do you. You don’t even know what piquant means.”
“I do,” I said. “It means…”
“I bet you can’t even spell it.”
“P,” I said. “Um. E? I don’t know. How do you spell piquant?”
“P-I-Q-U-A-N-T,” said Lexi from the counter.
“You sure?” I said. “Q? Really? You do know that Q makes a ‘kwa’ sound?” I picked up the box of quinoa. “How do you pronounce this, Cookie?”
“Keen-wah,” she said.
“Smart arse.”
“And we’re going to use it in our bread. That way, we can eke out the flour so you’ve got enough for another one tomorrow. But either way, that sausage is not coming anywhere near my floury loaf, Baby Belkin.”
I put the sausage to one side and smelled my fingers. Okay. It was a bit overpowering.
“I’m sure that’s not the only Greek sausage you’ve handled recently,” said Cookie. “Do tell, boon companion, has your taste in men moved on? I know you didn’t spend all of your time looking at frescoes in churches.”
“I had to look at a couple of frescoes. It was supposed to be a research trip. You might think that drawing cartoons is simple, but it’s important to seek out fresh inspiration.”
“Yes. Tell me more about the fresh inspiration.”
I toyed with the idea of playing coy and then thought, what’s the point?
“There were a couple of lads in Crete.”
“A couple? As in two? As in two in two weeks? My, what a jammy tart you are.”
“There was this one guy, Vik.”
“A Greek waiter?”
“He ran a Jet Ski hire place in Malia. A real man, he was.”
“I hear there’s been a lot of knock-offs about.”
“No, you should have seen him. He had a beard and everything.”
“Tell me more,” said Cookie. “I’m particularly interested in the ‘everything’.”
I sighed. “It all fell apart a bit. He took me out for the evening on his scooter. There was a problem with the spark plug and he ended up spending
the whole time trying to find the right sort of spanner to take it out. Then he got grease on my dress, so I stormed off.”
“Shame. You didn’t have another try?”
I shook my head. “I saw him later with another girl. She was carrying a tool box, so I could see there was no competition.”
Cookie gave me a look. “Only you, mate. Listen, the bread’s going in now. Let’s go and put the fire on in the lounge, yeah? Refill our glasses, snuggle down, get some bi-curious tension going.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“Okay. Scratch the bi-curious tension.”
“I mean, Adam’s watching what energy we use. If we put the gas fire on he’ll be on the phone before you know it telling me that I need to pay attention to my environmental impact.”
“Well we need to think outside the box,” said Cookie. “He’s got a fireplace, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, we use it to have a fire in, old style. Have you got anything to burn?”
“Yeah!” I went to find the pile I’d sorted out for throwing away. I lifted off the pendant that was holding the papers down and carried the pile through to the lounge.
“How are we going to do this? There’s already a fake fire in here.”
Cookie glanced across as she topped up our wine. “Well if it’s a fake fire that has flames, then it’s going to be fireproof, isn’t it? We just make our fire on top.”
I cleared aside the weird brass dish ornaments my brother kept in the hearth, knelt down and balled up the old papers, one by one. Cookie passed me her lighter. It flared up in moments.
“Needs something more to keep it going,” observed Cookie and she went into the kitchen. She returned moments later with both hands full of wooden spoons and spatulas. “Your brother has got a spatula addiction.”
“There are worse addictions.”
“Depends what he does with them,” said Cookie. “There’s got to be at least twenty in there. Nobody needs twenty wooden spatulas.”
She threw them down on the fire.
“Nice,” I said.
“’N’ cosy,” said Cookie.
The fire flared up around the wood.
We finished the wine, so I went to find the bag I’d brought back from Crete.
“Drop of raki?” I asked, pulling out a bottle of clear liquid. “It’s made with herbs and stuff, for your health.”
She knocked back a large shot with a satisfied gasp and grinned. “Rocket fuel with herbs! You can put that in your Jet Ski!”
I wasn’t able to knock it back quite as quickly, but I did find that the less time it spent in my mouth the better, so that I didn’t suffer too badly from chemical burns.
“Why did you try to hatch a coconut?” I asked.
“Because my cousin told me it was a bear’s egg,” said Cookie.
“Ah. Makes sense.”
I gave a little sniff. “Can you smell something burning?”
“Dur, mate!” laughed Cookie, lolling off her chair in mirth. “We lit a fire, remember?”
“No, but it smells wrong burning. Like something plastic maybe,” I said.
I realised with horror that something was seeping out of the fireplace, across the floor. It looked as though it was the melted remains of the living flame fire.
“Shit!” I yelled. I grabbed the raki and upended the bottle onto the flames.
I hadn’t expected that it would be so very flammable. It went up with an audible whump. I leapt aside and, unfortunately, immediately kicked Gida the goat and the small coffee table into the flames. We both spent the next few moments using Adam’s cushions and eventually a small and expensive looking rug to put the fire out.
“Your hair!” yelled Cookie.
“What?”
My hair was on fire.
Cookie rugby tackled me to the ground. She rolled me over, beating the flames (and my head) with her hands. We ended up entwined and panting on the floor. Cookie gave me a look that made me crease up.
“You see, a bit of bi-curious tension,” she said.
“Do lesbians usually set fire to the living room before wrestling on the floor?”
“I don’t know. I cancelled my subscription to Lesbian Monthly and fashions move on so quickly.”
Extricating myself from Cookie, I realised two things: there was a lot of evil-smelling smoke in the room and we were finding it hard to navigate the tricky terrain of the floor. We were, I concluded, quite drunk.
“We’re drunk,” I informed the world.
What would a grown-up do? Fresh air was needed so I went over to the sash window and opened it. Immediately the air seemed clearer. I turned and smiled at Cookie, trying to ignore the wreckage of Adam’s fireplace and soft furnishings. Before I could speak the phone rang.
It was Adam.
“Hi, bro.”
“Hi Lori. I saw from my home security app that you’ve opened the window.”
“Did you?” I said.
“You did open a window, didn’t you?”
“Ye-es.”
“You know that the whole flat is environmentally controlled with heating and air con that cuts in when needed, don’t you?”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Oh absolutely, but Cookie and I were just saying that there’s nothing like fresh air, is there?”
“Cookie?” Adam’s voice took on a stern tone.
“Yeah, she’s popped round to bake some bread and…”
“That’s a euphemism, right?”
“What?”
“Now I know she’s your friend Lori, but I won’t tolerate drug use in my flat. She’d better not be smoking weed there.”
“I wouldn’t let her.”
“You can’t lie to me. No smoking in the flat, got it?”
I couldn’t help turning to look at the charred and melted remains behind me, which still sent up noxious twists of pungent smoke. I turned away and concentrated on sounding like a responsible adult. “No, Adam. No smoking at all.”
At that moment, the smoke alarm went off.
Chapter 6
Cookie took the bread out of the oven while I wafted smoke away from the smoke detector in the ceiling. The bread had overcooked a bit while we were putting out the fire, but my stomach still rumbled. The burning smell was unpleasantly sharp and acrid, but it was hard to tell if it was from the bread or the fire in the lounge.
Cookie tapped the base of the loaf. “You can tell when bread is cooked because it will sound hollow when you do this,” she said.
It didn’t sound hollow, it sounded dead and solid. I took it off her wordlessly and banged it on the counter to see if it made a better sound, but I was a bit worried that we might shatter the granite.
“The road of trials is littered with obstacles,” she said with a frown.
“And rock-hard loaves,” I said.
“I need to think on this.”
Cookie took herself into the lounge. I placed the loaf on a plate, found a long, serrated knife and attempted to cut a slice. Five minutes sawing produced a lot of shard-like crumbs but made virtually no impact on the bread. I tried to break the loaf with my hands, but I just wasn’t strong enough. I opened my mouth really wide and tried using my teeth but it was impermeable. Eventually, I set the loaf on the floor and slammed a kitchen chair down on top of it. On the fourth attempt, I managed to break through the crust, and I almost yelped with joy as I stuffed a mouth-sized piece of soda bread into my mouth. Have you ever eaten a gobstopper and wondered for a few panicky minutes if it might actually be impossible to eat and you might have to present yourself at hospital to have it removed from your exhausted jaws? Well it was like that but without the sugary relief. I think I might have burned more calories chewing than it delivered to my exhausted body. I gave up after that first mouthful and dropped the remaining bread on a plate. I should have been more careful, as there was a dull plink of breaking crockery.
Growling with hunger, I tur
ned to the loukaniko sapio. I cut into it. It offered no resistance at all. The smell that came pouring out was…. wow. If I had to give a name to it, it would have to be Poorly Dog or Campsite Latrine.
Suddenly, I wasn’t hungry anymore.
I went through to the lounge. It turned out that having a think meant passing out on the settee. A joint burned in Cookie’s right hand and a glass of raki lolled toward the cushions in her left. I tutted slightly and took them off her, keeping them well apart to avoid igniting the powerful spirits. I took another sip and pondered the life-giving herbal additives touted by the seller in Crete. This stuff seemed more akin to paint thinners than health food.
I looked at Gida the goat. She was still intact, although her head was a charred sleek mess. From the neck up, she now looked more like a racing greyhound than a carefree Cretan goat. I went into the bedroom and put her next to the rocking horse. The boxes in the room, Lori’s life in three little boxes, were still mostly unemptied. I rooted through and found my fluffy onesie. I put it on and it felt good.
The day had not been a great success. In the plus column was me getting my first ever proper job. In the minus column was me losing my home, not getting any food or any money, setting fire to my brother’s flat, oh, and having to start a proper job in the morning.
I was wondering how many weeks’ wages it would take to restore Adam’s flat to its former state when I heard a sound. It was a light creak, coming from outside. I crept over to the window and looked out into the rear yard of the building.
It was a naked man.
Definitely a man and definitely naked, his body pale and golden in the streetlights from the next road over. And he was coming up the fire escape.
I went into the kitchen to look out of the window, turning out the lights as I entered to improve my view of what was outside. Was the naked guy returning to one of the other flats? Why was he naked? In the moments that it took me to get to the kitchen window he’d disappeared. He’d either climbed up to the next floor, gone down to the ground, or entered the building. I swallowed hard as I realised that the most likely explanation for him vanishing so quickly was that he’d entered the building somewhere.
