by Zoë Folbigg
Maya cranes her neck. ‘Are you hiding behind that menu?’
‘No, it’s just I’m crazy busy rehearsing through to March, so I can’t take any time off now, not even weekends.’
Nena’s star is soaring: her presenting has gone down brilliantly at the corporation, she’s done a few glossy magazine interviews and there’s talk at work of her being giving her own dance-based show for kids. Thirty and forty something parents have started saying hi to Nena in the supermarket, thinking they must know her from playgroup or Tumbletots, when actually she’s the girl from the TV who their kids love and laugh along with.
‘Thanks though. I do appreciate it. Why don’t you take Clara? Gawd knows she’d need some peace and tranquillity with all that running around after three boys. I don’t know how she has the energy.’
Maya has never seen parental empathy in Nena before, but it’s a good suggestion.
‘Yeah, maybe I’ll ask her. I’m not sure she’s ready to leave Oscar though.’
‘How come your boss gave it to you anyway? Gold star for Maya again?’
‘Well it’s a bit weird. I kind of got it for something I did, but it feels like a bit of a payoff.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh it’s too boring to go into. I’ve just noticed a few changes around work lately.’
Maya is conveniently interrupted by a waiter with slicked-back hair and stubble as black as his shirt.
Maya and Nena decide to share a mezze platter of baba ganoush, hummus, tabbouleh, falafel, pitta and pickles, washed down with a rose and rum daiquiri for Maya and an Arak mojito for Nena.
‘Easy on the rum though,’ says Maya, a private joke with Nena about the mayhem of Valentines past.
Nena suddenly feels very exposed without a menu in front of her face, and very guilty about what she’s going to do later. She can’t keep this secret from her best friend any more.
‘Happy Valentine’s Day!’ Maya toasts when the drinks arrive. ‘All these losers will have split up by Easter anyway.’
Nena looks down while she chinks her Moroccan tea glass against Maya’s.
‘Actually Maya… I may as well tell you now, otherwise I’m going to be feeling rotten all night…’
‘What what?’
‘I’m going on a date later.’
‘Wow!’
‘Well, not really a date. More of a booty call.’
Maya can tell when Nena is playing something down.
‘It’s OK, you can tell me…’
‘Well you know my boss,’
‘Tom!’ they say in unison.
‘I knew it, Nena, he’s lovely! And he so clearly had the hots for you.’
‘Well I did worry that that was the only reason he hired me, but since it’s taken off and other people like me too, I’ve relaxed about it, I’ve relaxed about him. He’s amazing.’
‘What about Liam?’
‘Who’s Liam?’
‘Your electrician!’
Nena takes a sip from her cocktail to wash down any parsley, mint or cracked wheat that might have got stuck between her white teeth.
‘Oh him. The spark went out.’
The girls laugh. Nena relaxes.
‘Wow, so you’re not seeing anyone else?’
‘Nope.’ Nena looks proud and happy. Her face lit up with a flush of love.
‘What about his kid, didn’t you say he has a son?’
‘Yes, and I am as in love with him as I am with Tom. He’s amazing Maya. Arlo. He’s so sweet. So funny. So cuddly. He lives with his mum, who has been pretty cool about us, and he stays with us – with Tom – every other weekend and a night or two in the week, depending on when Tom can get him from the childminder.’
Maya knocks back the rest of her sweet fragrant drink and feels instantly heady.
‘You said the L word. Wow.’ She smooths down the chiffon of her love-heart print dress – her only nod to romance this year; she couldn’t bring herself to give Train Man a card. ‘It takes a lot for you to shock me, Nena, I think I’ve seen it all – but… monogamy! Parenthood!’
Nena pauses to read Maya’s familiar face, hoping that her friend is happy for her and not upset that, if she were to know the truth, she would rather be with Tom right now.
‘It’s amazing. I’m so happy for you.’
Maya squeezes Nena’s hand and accidentally gets some hummus on it.
‘Oops. Sorry.’
Relief.
‘That’s why I can’t really go to the spa with you… thanks though lovely.’
‘It’s OK, I get it. But you have to help me now otherwise I’m going to be the annoying third wheel. How do I make Train Man mine? I’ve got to do something to initiate a conversation on an otherwise silent train. Help me out, you’re the master at this.’
Eyelids painted as brightly as the flowers in her hair flash as Nena blinks slowly and thoughtfully. ‘Shit you missed a trick with Valentine’s Day. You could have given him a card.’
‘I did think about it, but no… too schoolgirl.’
‘Well I’m assuming you’ve done the ticket drop,’ Nena says, as if it’s standard procedure.
‘Ticket drop?’
‘It’s textbook, Maya! “Accidentally” drop your ticket on the floor – in Train Man’s vicinity – and see if he picks it up. If he does, you are on his radar, so he’s secretly tracking you too. If he doesn’t notice and someone else picks it up, then it’s curtains, game over, move on, sit in another carriage.’
Suddenly Maya feels sad.
How can she be so flippant about this?
The thought of moving to another carriage and no longer experiencing the best thing about her day is too much.
*
Under the fan on the high ceiling of a small kitchen, Maya is using tonight’s meal as inspiration for her next attempt at macarons. The whizzing motor of the heavy white KitchenAid won’t disturb anyone; it doesn’t matter if a dusting of icing sugar coats the surface of her kitchen. It doesn’t even matter if Maya doesn’t get as much sleep as she ought to tonight. She has too many ideas whizzing around her head. Rose and lemon and almond and orange blossom flavours whisk and blend and fold and pipe and rise and come out of the oven looking almost perfect in rows of yellow, pink and orange. The few shells that are slightly too brown on one side make a good midnight treat.
As Maya sandwiches her Valentine’s gift together and stacks the finished articles in a box, she thinks of Nena. How happy she is that Nena has found love. How surprised she is that Nena wants to be a mother to a toddler. How proud she is that Nena’s career is soaring and soon she will have her own TV show. But as Maya turns the oven off at 12.59 a.m. and walks the two flights of stairs to the top of the maisonette in silence, she can’t help feel sad about how, when she turned back to say one last thing to Nena as they parted, she couldn’t. Nena was already running away from her down Oxford Street, desperate to be somewhere else, a rainbow of flowers darting into the distance.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Maya pretends to read One Hundred Years Of Solitude in the hope of making a connection, in case Train Man looks up and recognises that same cover of that same book. Perhaps he’ll be impressed that Maya’s edition is older, more dog-eared and loved. Her hot face is flushed with fear and excitement on a cold morning, her ticket lies on the train floor. Angry Man has just huffed off, marching up the train, nearly knocking the delicate box of macarons nervously resting on Maya’s lap as he created a mini tornado in his wake. Stamping a heavy footprint onto Maya’s ticket as he left this irksome carriage.
Well Angry Man clearly doesn’t fancy me.
Maya laughs on the inside. Anticipation giving her tummy ache. After the Superior Train stopped to pick up the Unfortunate commuters from their Unfortunate town and everyone was present and correct, Maya heeded Nena’s advice. Nena was right. Why hadn’t Maya thought of this before? So simple! So telling! And now, she and Train Man happen to be sitting diagonally on a set of
four seats, him facing backwards reading Harper Lee with nothing but a dirty little table jutting out in front of him, her facing forwards. Maya had no choice, this seemed like too happy a happenstance. Edge, edge, drop. Off her knee, making sure she didn’t throw the macarons down onto the floor too. Now the plastic wallet that contains Maya’s ticket is slightly soiled by Angry Man’s tread, but she hopes that won’t stop Train Man from picking it up.
Maya turns down the music in her ears in preparation because if, out of the three people around her, Train Man is the one to pick up her ticket, the one to speak to her, she will need to drink in his voice. Maya puts on her best reading face while the ticket on the floor in her peripheral vision calls her; calls him. The large woman sitting opposite Maya, next to Train Man, is chewing her nails in ignorance – blissful ignorance to Maya. The small man, who Maya imagines might be a jockey in another less nine-to-five life, is asleep on her left.
The ticket has been on the floor for eleven excruciating seconds. In his peripheral vision, James saw it fall. He saw the angry man with the goatee tread on it, half deliberately, half accidentally, and he can see that its owner, the girl with the pink coat, the pink cheeks and the brown hair, hasn’t yet noticed that it fell. He puts a thumb between two pages to stop Atticus Finch in his stride and leans down, uncomfortably close to the large woman chewing her nails.
‘Excuse me, you dropped this,’ James says, proffering the ticket.
A heart soars.
Maya is finally able to look at Train Man. Maya could melt and disappear, through the seat, through the floor, into the scorching rails on a freezing February morning. She is elated. She fumbles to take silent earphones out of her ears.
‘Sorry?’ Maya says, pretending she didn’t hear him, so she can reabsorb his calm and cautious voice.
‘You dropped your ticket.’ James looks up from where he has leaned down to pick it up. Wide, lovely eyes.
‘Thanks,’ squeaks Maya as she takes it. And that is all that she can manage to say.
I am on his radar.
*
‘I made these for you!’
Maya hands the pristine oblong box over the great divide of the desk. Pride fills her.
‘What are they?’
‘Open them and see.’
Emma unties the apricot-coloured ribbon.
‘You made these?’
Maya nods.
Alex turns around from his seat back-to-back with Emma’s by the window. His strawberry-blond whip bounces perkily.
‘O.M.Gee. No way, Maya!’ he says, looking over Emma’s shoulder.
A row of six pastel yellow, pink and orange macarons alternate gleefully.
‘Where are mine?!’
‘You’re next, Alex, one at a time though, I only just mastered them last night. While all you loved-up losers were out having fun with your special someone, I was tearing it up in the kitchen. On my own.’ Maya is good at laughing at herself.
Emma looks sad.
Other members of the team start to arrive for a full-on day ahead. Chloe’s corkscrew curly mane wobbles through the glass door, Liz has a red face from cycling in the cold and Sam saunters in wearing flip-flops.
Emma walks around to Maya and Olivia’s desks.
‘You are lovely, thank you,’ she says, wrapping wispy arms around Maya. ‘I needed a little pick-me-up today.’
‘Are you OK?’
Eyes well up but Emma brushes it aside. ‘I am now, look at these, Sam!’
Maya has a thought and lowers her voice. ‘Hey, Emma, what are you doing next weekend?’
‘Not sure, why?’
‘Well don’t tell Lucy, but how about you take this?’ Maya rummages in her bag and pulls out the envelope with Cypress Manor Hotel & Spa written on the front in a frou-frou font.
‘Maya it was for you, Lucy was really happy with your work. And you worked so hard!’
‘It’s wasted on me. You take Paul. You could have a dirty weekend and some pampering. A couple’s massage isn’t much use for one. Besides, we’re a team, FASHmas wasn’t just down to me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Wow,’ says Sam, peeping into the box of macarons in Emma’s hand and looking at Maya in awe. Sam has a bit of a sweet tooth himself. ‘You made those?’
Maya smiles at Sam, who starts up his many machines, and turns back to Emma.
‘I can’t go anyway,’ Maya lies, in hushed tones.
‘Thank you.’
Emma rushes back around to her desk to grab her phone and call Paul.
Maya slinks into her chair. She’s desperate to tell her friends that she spoke to Train Man this morning, but she’ll save it for lunchtime; Emma is already walking out of the office with a phone clutched to a rosy face. Eyes shining like sapphires again.
Maya hears Paul’s voice on the other end of Emma’s mobile as she walks through the doors and tries to remember what Train Man’s voice sounded like sixty-seven minutes ago.
Chapter Twenty-Six
March 2014
‘I booked my flight, I’m actually doing it!’ says the jubilant old woman.
Maya and Velma are sitting in the first-floor lounge of Maya’s Victorian maisonette. Budding branches dance high in the wind outside the peeling sash windows and the room looks bright and white since Maya painted the entire flat a shade of I’ll come back to that. The first-flutter-of-spring afternoon accentuates the fresh feeling reeling from the walls and it’s nice to have a visitor. Most of Maya’s friends live in London, her siblings are all in relationships and Nena has been too busy with Tom to come and see the flat yet. But afternoon tea with Velma brings as much cheer as the blossom in the sky outside, despite a sadness in the pit of her stomach that Maya is trying to ignore. It’s become something of a Sunday ritual since the grey January afternoon Maya first visited Velma’s town square apartment. The hostess always bakes. The agony aunt always listens. Although today she is even giddier than usual, brimming with excitement.
‘Heathrow to Miami, July 22nd. Although I’m going to take a little trip to New York before that when my granddaughter is born.’
Velma is beyond excited about becoming a grandmother. She didn’t have Conrad until she was thirty-six – ‘which was practically ancient back then!’ – and ever since her sons were young she had this niggling fear in the back of her head that she might not live to see her children have children.
‘When is Madison due?’
‘May 1st. I cannot wait.’
‘Well I’ll give you a pass off class to go visit the baby, but I am very glad you’re not moving to Miami until the end of the academic year!’ Maya jokes as she pours tea from a pot into two little handleless cups with sunbeams on them.
‘Well that was a consideration, my darling, it really was! I wouldn’t miss class for the world. I’m genuinely going to miss Spanish with Miss Oh Just Maya. And our afternoon tea dates and chats…’ Velma rests an elbow on the cushion of Maya’s brown leather sofa. ‘But you know you will always have a home in South Beach if you want one.’
Words an adventurous girl like Maya likes to hear, although she hasn’t been anywhere in a long time.
‘Oh just try keeping me away! I’m thrilled for you, Velma, and your Spanish is coming along really well. You’ll be teaching me when I visit. Cake?’
Maya lifts the cloche off her favourite cake stand to make a big reveal.
‘Honey, that’s something else!’
It certainly is. The cloche almost squished the top of the cake, it’s so bountiful. Four sponges create a tower of caramel in four different ombres of brown. Pale vanilla sponge with just a hint of caramel in its light muscovado sugar sits at the bottom; next up, pure caramel, made even sweeter by dark brown treacly sugar in the mix; then choco-caramel with a hint of cocoa; and sitting on top, dark chocolate sponge. All sandwiched with dulce de leche, which oozes out from between the layers, stopping at varying altitudes down the side.
‘My dentist is gonna kill me!
’ Velma claps.
Maya is happy.
Ever since Maya was a little girl she loved to bake. Chubby legs would climb onto a kitchen stool and soft dimpled hands would pull down the ingredients from the cupboards, as instructed by her mother. Baking transferred Maya to a world away from the raucousness of boisterous baby brothers, a loud big sister and chaotic parents. Dolores the dressmaker, who made dresses for her girls and dungarees for her boys, but always managed to forget she had left pins in them, so they prickled little legs on the first wear. Herbert the teacher, the poet, the symmetry obsessive. But oh the results! Maya could make such sweet triumphs that would bring Clara, Jacob and Florian to the table and silence them for five whole minutes. Maya loved watching little faces light up for those brief moments, people-pleasing even when she was six.
By the time she was ten, Maya would get so lost in a recipe, she would forget she was in her parents’ kitchen and silently pretend that there was a TV camera watching her knead, fold and smooth. As if she was one of those precocious children from the TV show only children presented. Dolores Flowers didn’t know there was an imaginary camera crew and invisible studio lighting watching her and her daughter in the kitchen. She didn’t know her little girl was being watched by millions, but she did know that sharing her baking knowledge was a Good Thing To Do. Dolores didn’t communicate with Maya much – Maya was such a quiet little thing – and it made her feel like she was getting through to her daughter in her own imaginary world. A freckled mystery who would play entire games just by sitting, staring at the bookcase. Dolores often asked Herbert where he thought Maya went when she was sitting still.
‘She’s fine, my love, we all need space to meditate.’
Feeling distant from her daughter, Dolores was relieved that they were so similar looking, it aligned them.
A mini version of me.
