The Sunshine And Biscotti Club

by Jenny Oliver

  ‘What? Sorry, I got confused about who you were talking to,’ Eve had said, laughing.

  ‘I’ve got to give the guy directions. You’re coming to mine aren’t you?’ Peter had frowned, clearly suddenly remembering that it would have been polite to ask first.

  ‘And they say chivalry is dead?’ Eve had said, as coy as she could be after most of a bottle of Australian sauvignon blanc, picked without consultation by Jake.

  At the time she’d been more interested in the fact that she was about to have sex with Peter than with anything he had to say about Jake.

  But now, when she couldn’t talk to him because of their agreement, now she remembered what he had said, she wanted to tell Peter that she knew exactly what he’d meant. That the idea of Jake being like a man in a film playing the part of Jake was a very clever observation. The kind of thing that she hoped was in the script he was writing. But if she said that now, in the current state of their relationship, it would sound patronising and if she told him what had happened he’d find out that Jimmy was there and that would lead to a whole other set of problems.

  But he wasn’t talking to her anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

  ‘Night, Mummy,’ said Noah. ‘We missed you but then Daddy took us to the pet shop to look at the puppies and that made it go away.’

  ‘That’s a lovely story, sweetheart.’ She laughed and then wished them goodnight and they all three kissed the screen and then the kids hung up.

  Dex was just coming back down the garden and she waited for him to draw level with her.

  ‘She says she’s fine.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t push it.’

  Eve nodded. As they got back to the table Dex returned to his seat, pouring himself another vodka, but Eve didn’t sit; instead she carried on down to the end of the garden where Jimmy was still standing.

  ‘Everything all right at home?’ he asked as she came up next to him.

  ‘Yeah. Just the kids going to bed.’

  He nodded.

  ‘You like it there? In the country?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Eve nodded, looking out into the falling darkness, at the forest of pine trees rising like witches’ brooms that started at the bottom of the garden and stretched out until they fringed the edge of the lake. Through a gap she could just make out the water, black and shiny like tar.

  ‘I can’t imagine it. You in the countryside. Someone said you have chickens,’ he said, laughing. ‘I told them they must be wrong. Eve would never have chickens.’

  ‘I do have chickens. I think I’m a chicken person.’

  ‘You weren’t a chicken person when I knew you.’

  ‘Well, we grow up, don’t we?’

  ‘And you’ve grown up into a chicken person?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said with a firm nod.

  Nothing had ever happened between her and Jimmy. They had sort of danced around each other like storks on a nature documentary. All show and bluster. All long lingering looks as they lay in bed together, the light from the TV flickering across their faces. Jimmy was a player. He liked fun and he liked women. But where other girls came and went, Eve stayed. She was the one he couldn’t have. Because Eve too was a player. In a different way to Jimmy—more coquettish flirt, more of a tousled blonde-haired, big-eyed fun lover who boys followed like the Pied Piper. And she loved it. Like a big game. At the time Jimmy was still at medical school and she’d come back from work, all stilettoed up thinking she was it, and they’d go out together to see what havoc they could cause, what fun they could have. And more often than not they’d come home together, a trail of longing behind them; they liked to leave people hanging. Leave them wanting more.

  Eve’s mum and dad were the kind of parents who took her to Glastonbury every year from toddlerhood. And she would dance with flowers in her hair and appear on the front page of the papers like an angel in a field. They were the kind of parents who wanted nothing more than for her to have fun. And Eve liked to have fun. But quite often Eve had also lived with her grandparents, dropped off when her parents needed some together-time. They’d drive off in their van and get so high they wouldn’t sleep for a week. For Eve, her grandparents became her safety net—the safe, predictable harness that underpinned all that fun.

  And as a result she went through life always just checking behind her for a similar net in whatever shape or form it might take. When she moved into the flat, the tether was her job in marketing at a top cosmetics firm. A job where she shone, where she rose fast, where she had a nice, familiar routine to fill her days so her nights could be filled with fun.

  But then Jimmy had packed in his course to cycle round the world. The moment he told her was like a photograph stamped forever in her mind. ‘Come,’ he’d said.

  She’d stared at him.

  The paths diverged in her head.

  She saw herself on a rusty old bike, untethered, freewheeling down some dirt track, flowers in her hair.

  But she had to go to work the next day.

  ‘No,’ she had said.

  She had lived since then wondering what would have happened if she’d said yes. Like a dull background noise. Now, though, as she stood at the bottom of the garden next to Jimmy it was beeping like a metal detector, stronger than it had ever been.

  ‘And marriage?’ he said. ‘That’s good?’

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ Eve nodded. She picked at the leaves of an olive sapling. ‘It’s not fine actually. We’re on a break.’ As soon as she said it she knew she shouldn’t have. Shouldn’t have entrusted her secret to this other man. She shouldn’t have casually handed him something so precious—because just him knowing their weakness made it infinitely weaker. It felt immediately disrespectful of Peter. Making him, them, foolish.

  Jimmy had turned to look at her, his eyes bright in the darkness. ‘Are you happy about that?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ Eve shook her head, pulling another leaf off the olive tree. ‘I don’t want it to end, especially not for the kids.’

  Jimmy shrugged. ‘I think kids adapt. I did. You shouldn’t stay just for the kids.’

  ‘I’m not.’ Eve threw the leaves on the ground and brushed the tree where she’d absently plucked its branch bare in an attempt to make it better. ‘That came out wrong. I’m not at all. I just …’ She paused. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.’

  Jimmy made a face. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. It feels wrong.’

  ‘You liked marriage?’

  ‘It’s not over, Jimmy, it’s not past tense, it’s just a little break.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘And yes, yes I did, do, like it. I love it.’

  Jimmy didn’t reply; he just laughed lightly before finishing his drink.

  Eve turned her back on the view and suddenly saw smoke filling the outhouse. ‘Shit, did anyone take that woman’s biscotti out of the oven?’ she said, jogging over to the glass door.

  ‘What woman?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘The moody one. Giulia. Her biscotti,’ Eve shouted. And the rest of them sprang up from the table and followed her into the outhouse as she ran to the back of the room and yanked open the oven. A cloud of smoke engulfed her as she pulled out the baking tray.

  She felt Jimmy’s hand on her shoulder as she started coughing.

  ‘Open the windows,’ he called, and Dex pushed the handle and the whole front wall concertinaed open. The smoke escaped like a trapped animal, streaming out into the fresh evening air.

  They all peered at the tray of blackened biscotti.

  ‘Well, they’re definitely twice baked, aren’t they?’ said Dex, picking one up and then dropping it, his fingers burnt.

  Eve looked at the little charred biscuits and thought about Libby alone somewhere in the hotel. There couldn’t have been a more obvious symbol. ‘We shouldn’t have cut that class short,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Miles solemnly.

  They all stared at the tray.

  Then Jimmy laughed and s
aid, ‘They’re only biscuits.’ And Eve nudged him because he was ruining the moment.

  LIBBY

  When Libby couldn’t find any of them at breakfast the following morning she asked Giulia who said that she thought she had seen someone go into the outhouse. When she walked down the garden to have a look she found them all in there, standing to attention like soldiers behind their stations.

  Someone had made coffee, there was a fresh cup on her table, the steam catching the rays of the rising sun. She looked from the cup to the group to see Dex raising his mug to his lips, scrolling through something on his phone. Eve had her hands wrapped around her mug, blonde hair all awry; she looked like she’d either slept really deeply or not at all. Jimmy was bent forward, elbows on his table, his fingers toying with a teaspoon. Miles was reading the paper. Jessica had retreated to the back, to Giulia’s previous workstation where the smell of burnt biscotti still lingered.

  Libby had remembered about the biscotti in the middle of the night and gone running down to the outhouse in a panic, only to find them in the bin, black and burnt, the oven off. Wide awake, she’d stood alone knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep if she went back to bed. So instead she’d done her make-up, styled up her silk kimono dressing gown, and decided to record a midnight feast video for the blog. The garden outside, silent and eerie in the moonlight, was the perfect backdrop.

  She made biscotti because she could make it with her eyes closed and wouldn’t need to rehearse. She flavoured it with liquorice because it always split opinion and that would make for good comments. To camera she explained her decadent love of liquorice, the tangy bitterness that fizzed on her tongue. She talked about how they always caused a stir at the supper club, some guests devouring them with their coffees, others too scared to even give them a nibble. She dropped a casual mention of a celebrity wedding that she had catered and how they had insisted on pink and white striped sweetshop bags of the liquorice biscotti as the favours.

  She didn’t mention that it had been her aunt Silvia who had taught her to make them here at the Limoncello Hotel. She didn’t mention that she had made them when she got home and how her younger brother had spat his out on the table, making all the other younger ones spit theirs out too. How they had then thrown them at one another, a big biscotti fight across the table. How her mum had come in from work and gone mad about the mess. How her youngest sister had then been sick on the floor and Libby had cleared it up, along with all the biscotti everywhere. How she’d got annoyed with them all and her mum had told her to go and calm down while she made the dinner that Libby was meant to have made for the little ones. How when she sat and looked at herself in the mirror she saw her dad’s face and wondered if that was what her mum saw and whether that affected the way she felt about her.

  She never talked about her family in her videos. Never talked about its crazy, hectic boisterousness. She never talked about how she would be given a reprieve every summer when she was sent to the Limoncello where she would cook in the restaurant and read books in the shade of the lemon grove. Where she would take herself off on her bike and scour the local flea markets and buy old Italian enamel saucepans and flour jars. Where she was just Libby and allowed to exist as just Libby rather than as one of the mass of chaos where she was sister, half-sister, step-sister, nanny, daughter, peace-keeper. A chaos that often left her unable to breathe, with a tightness in her chest and a desperate need to escape.

  In the videos she didn’t talk about any of that. She talked about her life in the present. All polished up, her lips always red, her hair always shiny. She could edit it down nicely to portray exactly the life she wanted.

  After she’d taken the biscotti out of the oven she had a piping hot bite for the camera; she’d hidden the burn of the roof her mouth with a laugh. She’d staged it so her followers would think she was taking the rest of the plate to bed with a cup of hot chocolate but, in reality, she’d turned the camera off and sat for a minute or two, her mind straight back to that haphazard family kitchen table. Straight back to the noise and the bluster. She’d realised she hadn’t made liquorice biscotti for herself for years. Jake hated liquorice.

  She’d sat in the darkness and wondered where he was.

  Every time the bell rang on the front door of the hotel she found herself catching her breath thinking it might be him. Equal amounts hope and alarm.

  Dex clicked his phone off and straightened up. ‘Listen, Libby, we’re all sorry. We shouldn’t have been talking about you last night. It was completely out of order.’

  She saw Eve nod in agreement.

  ‘And rest assured, from this moment on, we are all fully committed bakers. Aren’t we?’ He glanced around the rest of the group.

  Everyone nodded really earnestly.

  Libby felt herself blush. She wanted to say something but was a little overcome. They had surprised her by being there without any cajoling.

  By being there for her.

  And the sight of them all standing there was much nicer, more comforting, than she could ever have imagined.

  In the end she simply said, ‘Thank you,’ and then busied herself handing out new laminated recipes.

  Jimmy frowned at his. ‘A cornetto? Isn’t that an ice cream?’

  ‘No,’ Libby said, passing out the rest and going back up to the front. ‘It’s like a croissant but Italian. Which means less butter, more sweetness, and an egg to give them their sunshine yellow. Cornetto—it means little horn.’

  Libby held up a picture of the finished product. ‘Now it’s heavier than a traditional croissant and usually has a slight hint of orange but we’re going to substitute the orange zest for lemon—mainly because we have so many but also to tie it back to the region.’

  ‘It’s never really occurred to me that you can make a croissant,’ Jimmy said, picking up one of the lemons on his counter and giving it a sniff.

  Eve frowned. ‘Where do you think they come from?’

  ‘I literally have no idea. I just see them as sort of appearing,’ he said with a shrug.

  ‘I hear you on that, mate.’ Miles nodded, frowning down at the recipe as if it was algebra. ‘I mean, how do you get all those layers?’

  ‘That’s part of the pastry.’ Eve shook her head like they were complete idiots and turned to roll her eyes at Libby. It was only after she’d done it that she seemed to catch herself in the gesture. Without thinking about it, she’d thrown a ball on the assumption of their friendship.

  Libby smiled.

  Eve half smiled, and looked shyly down at her bench.

  Just that one tiny piece of shared communication had Libby’s confidence spreading through her like one of those fancy Japanese flower teabags that unfurls with hot water.

  ‘OK, first thing we need to do is make friends with our yeast,’ she said, picking up her little bowl of yeast and holding it so they could all see what it was.

  ‘Why?’ asked Dex, peering into his bowl with distrust.

  ‘Because it’s alive.’

  ‘Like an oyster, Dex,’ Jessica said from the back.

  Dex narrowed his eyes, unconvinced.

  ‘Your yeast is what’s going to do the work for you on this one so you have to treat it well. We’re going to dissolve it in warm water—not too hot or you’ll kill it and there’ll be no layers in your croissant. Use your thermometers,’ Libby added, holding up the vintage metal kitchen thermometers she’d lovingly sourced from various flea markets.

  ‘These are nice,’ said Eve, and Libby nodded, unexpectedly pleased at Eve’s approval.

  The kitchenware had been Libby’s vision entirely. Probably because it wasn’t something that interested Jake. He had involved himself in the symmetry of the building design, in sourcing shiny metal sheets for the work surfaces and stainless steel shelving. It had been him who’d painted the whole thing white and hung huge burnished metal ceiling lamps over the workstations. Libby had worried it was a bit clinical but he’d said it was cutting-edge and th
rown her one of his patented ‘leave this kind of stuff to me’ looks before giving her a hug. The type that always felt like a boy hugging his teddy bear.

  ‘This is like a physics lesson,’ Miles said, running his eye down the recipe.

  ‘Don’t read ahead.’ Libby went over and took the recipe out of his hands, laying it down on the counter. ‘Just go with what I say.’

  Miles laughed like he’d been told what to do for the first time in years and Libby felt herself soften. Seeing him again was like watching her younger brother grow up. Gone was a tall, gangly, sullen dude who went to gigs and played in a band and chain smoked Marlboro Reds. He’d been replaced by this quiet man who’d filled out and bulked up; his jaw had sharpened, his features had all found their place and settled into being not bad looking.

  She glanced behind him and saw the same in Dex, both of them finally fitting their skin. Trying less hard and being much better for it. She remembered how nice Dex had been when he’d come to find her the night before, hovering on the threshold of her room, clearly awkward as he politely checked if she was OK.

  If she lined them all up next to Jake there would suddenly be a battle for chief that there never was in the past—Jake ruled the roost with his king of the jungle swagger.

  But then she realised there would be no battle at all. Miles wouldn’t care, his strength was already too hard won. And Dex wouldn’t compete. He was probably the natural born leader among them, but Dex simply wouldn’t want it, giving him a silent power that Jake had never had.

  She was talking about yeast as all this was flowing through her head. The group were measuring and stirring and then covering their bowls with cloths so the yeast could do its stuff in the comfort of darkness.

  All the while Libby was thinking about Dex and Miles and how she never would have expected them to be the yardsticks against which Jake could be measured and found wanting.

  ‘My water’s too hot,’ Jimmy said, struggling with his thermometer.