The Family Gift

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘That mismatched look is so over!’ they’d said, all equally horrified. ‘Like, the noughties, almost.’ It takes them a while to recover from this frightening image of old, cute things which are so not . . . now. Nowness is everything in cooking shows. In life! Arrive at the correct sort of nowness and you might have a hit.

  ‘The show is called Simplicity and we need simplicity,’ they said in unison. ‘Cool. You in geometric shapes – we’re thinking Cos clothes?’ they said, half to me, half to the director and producers. ‘You’re tall enough to carry it off. No jewellery. White everything and the odd twig in a vase to lighten it up.’

  I held my tongue about the concept of a mere twig lightening things up. I’m more of a fan of vast bouquets of wildflowers with plenty of blue irises, myself. I dither over mentioning that the food was to be simple rather than the decor but the whole team agreed with the less-is-more approach. I say nothing. This TV lark is new to me.

  I swear the whole cool/simplicity schtick started because I’m tall, blonde and have clear, pale skin and high cheekbones.

  They instantly saw me as a strong, modern woman who would live in a minimalist apartment and have no knickknacks whatsoever, so now, every kitchen implement is Scandi modern, the plates are snowy white and even the twig didn’t make the final cut. I do mourn my idea of pretty things but the team were proved to be right.

  ‘The sheer simplicity of the food and the set means Simplicity with Freya is a welcome relief after a recent TV flop in the US with a female chef trailing around in devoré tea dresses,’ said one review.

  ‘Simplicity with Freya is a gem. Freya is quirky and clever, cooking modern food with healthy ingredients: it gets a thumbs up from us,’ said another, from one of the most influential TV reviewers. And I was off to a good start. I yearn to be allowed to use my floral bowls and cups, but it’s too late to change it all now. I am Ms Minimalist in the public’s eyes and that’s that.

  Dan jokes that the devoré fringed kimono (pink and purple with jangling beads) that I bought in an Amsterdam market must hide in my closet forever or my reputation will be ruined.

  Scarlett unearths a glass teapot with a central sieved container for tea leaves, and pours hot water on the jasmine buds.

  ‘Isn’t this nice,’ says Granny Bridget, watching the flowers open through the glass. ‘I don’t hold with all these strange new teas, but this is so pretty to watch.’

  We drink some tea, talk a little and I begin to unpack, feeling my anxieties drift away.

  All my cupboard essentials are there, the vast array of unusual ingredients that a good chef needs.

  Despite my many protests, Mum insists on cleaning out the big pantry cupboard that made me drool when I saw it on the first house viewing.

  ‘I can’t sit still,’ she says cheerfully. ‘Let me help, darling.’

  Soon, she’s installing my precious things in it, while Granny regales us all with a tale of a woman from down the road who has taken up with her widowed next door neighbour despite already having several gentlemen friends.

  ‘I don’t think she’s after a new beau,’ Granny muses. ‘She’s a marvellous cook, you see. Men will go a mile for a decent meal. I told her to charge them for dinner and make a few bob out of it. Not to marry any of them, obviously. But with the money, she could go on a nice cruise with her sister.’

  ‘I really should get you to show me how to cook, Freya,’ says Scarlett idly, picking up some pomegranate molasses and gazing at the jar as if it’s from Mars.

  ‘I can always teach you,’ I say. ‘Delighted to, although here I have a book for just €9.99.’ I plaster on a fake smile, mime holding up a book and we all laugh.

  ‘Oh I don’t know, I couldn’t be bothered buying it, maybe you’d give it to me?’ Scarlett teases and we all laugh again.

  One of my mother’s newest neighbours said this to my mother when my first book was published. Said neighbour blithely pointed out that she couldn’t possibly buy it, but she would deign to read it were she handed a copy.

  My mother has not said what she replied to this generous offer but there has been no mention of this neighbour since.

  ‘You’re a great cook, Scarlett,’ I say. ‘Ignore all the mad stuff I have. Chefs just need more ingredients than normal people because we have to start coming up with new ideas. Thinking up ten novel ways to make interesting meals requires a bigger than average store cupboard.’

  I think of all my nights spent reading and rereading my cookery books, frantically scanning new ones and then I think of how I haven’t thought of one single idea for my yet-to-be-written book. It’s as if all the fresh ideas had been knocked out of my brain in that garage four months ago.

  I’m still doing cookery festivals with my Simplicty with Freya demos, which is exhausting and means lots of time in the car, but my cookbook inspiration has dried up. In October, I’m due to go into pre-production for the next TV series which is to be broadcast next spring. In August, I planned to pitch my new cookery book and let’s face it, we need the money.

  ‘How’s it going?’ asks Scarlett. ‘The new recipes?’

  I cannot plaster on a fake smile because my family would be on to me like a shot. Subterfuge is required.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, pretending to search a box for something. ‘Look! Moroccan spices and rose pepper. Smell it: it’s divine.’

  My mother looks at me thoughtfully.

  ‘Work’s going terribly and I have no new recipes!’ I want to scream but I can’t.

  They all have such faith in me, all think I will be able to do this, that new ideas are coming, but they’re not.

  ‘How are you sleeping?’ Mum asks, and I think that Dan needs to be killed when I see him.

  Has he told Mum about the sleeping tablets? He promised he’d tell nobody. No, Dan is steadfast.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, brightly. ‘I thought I might go to one of those victim support groups to talk about January. Just to put it to bed, you know.’

  Mum looks at me with a certain scepticism.

  ‘It’s on a Thursday night,’ I add.

  Thursday night?

  It appears that when I lie, I lie big.

  ‘Darling, that’s brilliant,’ says Scarlett, hurrying to hug me. ‘My infertility groups help me so much.’

  ‘I want to put it behind me,’ I add.

  There’s nothing wrong with counselling groups – just not for me.

  I can’t sit around in a group and let my deepest fears out, no way José. I don’t want to talk about this, I just want to be better quickly. There ought to be an app for this: Group Therapy on your own. I’d download it.

  I feel the flush of guilt hit my pale face and I search for diversion.

  ‘Are you hungry, Granny? Because somewhere in the bottom of this box is a beautiful container of Turkish baklava they gave me in the office to celebrate the move. Let’s get it out.’

  The men arrive when they hear the clink of the teapot and the rattle of plates.

  Jack grabs me in a bear hug.

  ‘Hello, Duchess of Kellinch.’

  ‘Jealousy, darling,’ says Dan, winking at me. He pulls me out of Jack’s embrace. ‘Hands off my wife, you knave,’ he says. ‘The duchess only likes me pawing her.’

  The men roared with laughter again.

  ‘No tea bread or baklava for you lot,’ says Maura. ‘In fact, I am taking the cheese out of the sandwiches to punish you all.’

  Somehow the cheese stays in. And eventually, we heat up the meatballs because everyone is hungry. I heat some pre-packed and part-baked white rolls in the oven, knowing my career would be irreparably damaged if such a thing were known. Chefs are not allowed to cheat the way normal people do. We must make all our food from scratch or else we are charlatans. Sad but true. In fact, I cook frozen pizzas and have eaten plenty of baked beans in my time. Re
al life does not always allow for hours in the kitchen.

  Lexi is still doing tours of her, Teddy’s and Liam’s bedrooms. This time, my mother is being shown everything.

  Apparently, the tour guide’s spiel goes along the lines of: ‘Liam’s is messy. Don’t bother going in. Teddy will kill you if you rearrange her cuddlies. And mine, isn’t it the best? Mum and Dad say I can have one whole wall for posters. I want a big mirror there.’

  Two lovely hours have passed, much vacuuming has been done, the men have shifted the furniture around and the boxes have all been installed in the correct rooms. I know it’s time for Mum to go because Dad’s carer is only on the clock for another half an hour.

  Granddad Eddie has finally stopped his monologue about how it was ‘. . . far from detached houses you were raised, lassie’, directed at me. The tales of his old home on the East Wall, where apparently the whole Abalone family lived in premises about the size of a matchbox and only the posh people had indoor toilets, has gloriously ground to a halt. I think Dan has given him a drop of whiskey, a known cure for Eddie’s ‘in my day . . .’ monologues.

  Mum is getting her charges ready to leave when Lexi races up to me, waving the magazine from one of the newspapers Maura and Pip brought.

  I have no idea why: animal instinct? But a frisson of fear hits me at the joyous look on my daughter’s face.

  ‘Mum!’ she says. ‘Elisa’s got a contract with Surella. It’s in the papers. Isn’t that brilliant?’

  My mind races over the implications of this at high speed but I manage to keep smiling.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I say and hug Lexi, wishing Maura had not bought any Sunday newspapers and that we were living in a hut on an island somewhere.

  My daughter’s birth mother has reinvented herself as a style influencer of mild reputation in Ireland but not beyond these shores – despite the fact that she lives in Spain.

  This gig, in Lexi’s eyes, makes her on a par with, oh, I don’t know, Lady Gaga.

  I have a real job, get paid real money and put dinner on the table every night. But compared to Elisa poncing around in Spanish sunspots wearing tanning oil, minuscule alleged bikinis on her admittedly fabulous for a forty-year-old body and Tom Ford sunglasses she has bought with her trust fund, all the while rattling on about ‘how juicing changed my life’, my job seems to mean nothing. Personally, I think liposuction and surgery have changed her life; but that’s me.

  Elisa comes back to Ireland occasionally to ‘model’ but is thankfully never around long enough to ask to see her daughter. Astonishing, right?

  But what if that changes? It is three years since she saw Lexi. Three years. And now, Lexi is interested in her.

  It hurts so badly I can hardly bear it.

  ‘So Surella . . .?’ I say, stifling the urge to say that these Surella people must surely make cream for badly sun- damaged skin for women who like photographing themselves around pools drinking cocktails.

  Careful, your bitch is showing, says Mildred.

  Ignoring this, I zip up my second-wife mouth and manage to politely ask: ‘What do they do?’

  Lexi rolls her eyes and the hurt locks around my heart.

  ‘Surella are the best new make-up brand around, Mum. Ask anyone.’

  She leans in to me and puts an arm round my waist.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she says comfortingly. ‘It’s not your thing, Mum. They’re really cool. Everyone in school loves it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I manage to say. ‘An Irish brand?’ I manage a bit of enthusiasm. If they’re international, I will know that there is absolutely no justice in the world.

  ‘Yes, they’re Irish and they are just huuge! I might WhatsApp Elisa – just to say hi,’ she adds, in a tone that’s questioning because even though she has her birth mother’s phone number – given to her last Christmas by Dan’s interfering ex-mother-in-law, who needs to die horribly and who is so not coming to our house anytime soon – she has never till now made any attempt to get in touch with Elisa by herself.

  ‘Why not?’ I say blithely.

  Be a grown-up about this, I tell myself. I knew this could come. I have read the adoption books. I know the drill but the fear overwhelms me. What if Elisa hurts her?

  And, even though I do my best to smother this selfish thought, a pain of a different type hits me like a small truck.

  I am Lexi’s mother. Me!

  A tiny china cup falls victim to my rage. The small handle, stuck on for possibly seventy-five years, comes off in my hand. I stare down at it.

  Lexi is at an age when a girl longs for approval, and now she appears to want it from the woman who gave birth to her and then, casually, forgot her.

  That is what I hate Dan’s ex-wife and my daughter’s birth mother for: not caring whether she hurts my precious Lexi or not.

  Why does Lexi not realise that this woman she is now interested in has no interest in her? Lexi was two when she came to live with us and since then, Elisa has barely seen her. She has not comforted a screaming and itchy Lexi when she got chickenpox or cheered her on at school three-legged races or spent hours making princess hats out of toilet roll cardboards, glitter glue and tinsel for the school play.

  I did. I have been there for all the good times and the bad, and she is my precious darling.

  But Lexi’s not thinking of any of this.

  ‘I’ll WhatsApp her now,’ she says, delightedly, and races off with the newspaper to her room.

  My mother’s eyes meet mine but for once, I find no comfort in her gaze.

  I look down at the little china cup, broken now.

  ‘Will you show me the garden?’ Mum asks, taking the broken china out of my hands.

  I shake my head. ‘Give me a moment,’ I blurt out.

  My mother is so wise that Scarlett, Maura and I think she is a witch. One who helps, like the witches and wise women of old, rather than the made-up ones in horror movies.

  ‘Elisa will come into your lives again in the future,’ she told me once, a long time ago.

  ‘Never,’ I’d said. ‘Anything could have happened that day in the restaurant. I can never forgive her for that. Besides, she’s gone off to Spain.’

  My mother had reached over and taken both my hands, which were shaking at the very mention of Lexi’s birth mother.

  ‘She might never come back but one day, Lexi will seek her out. Children want to see their birth parents: it’s natural. You have to be ready for that.’

  ’Lexi won’t . . .’ I began, feeling my chest swell with anger and fear.

  ‘She will, lovie. Children need to search for who they are and that’s no criticism of the parents who raised them. Remember, no matter how much you want life to be simple, it never is,’ Mum had said.

  I didn’t answer. It was simple. Elisa had walked away: end of story.

  Except now, she was back.

  The simple life was Pinterest-happy: dance like nobody’s watching. Damn that crap. Who has the energy or the heart to bloody dance at all? And if anyone gives me a lemon, I’ll hurl it at them so hard it’ll take an eye out. Lemonade, my backside.

  Finally, we make it into the garden: just the two of us. Scarlett and Maura are taking care of Granny and Eddie, and clearing the table after the impromptu feast.

  ‘Why now?’ I say, ripping the head off a flower viciously.

  ‘Hollyhock,’ says my mother, automatically, scanning the flowerbeds. ‘I’ll buy you secateurs and you can have cut flowers in the house.’

  ‘I haven’t time,’ I mutter. ‘I have to go back to work, try to sort out the house when I get time and be ready with plans for the kids for the summer holidays.’

  ‘Of course, love,’ says my mother, who is one of the few individuals on the planet who knows how to change the conversation when it is too painful, when the other person needs time to think. ‘Eddie�
��s probably wheedling more drink out of Dan. Time to get them both home.’

  When everyone’s gone, Dan and I decide that we’ll order up pizza for dinner.

  We sit at our old kitchen table while Teddy eats the ham and the crusts from her mini pizza, complaining that she can’t possibly eat the rest because she now hates tomatoes. ‘They’re too squidgy,’ she announces crossly.

  Lexi ignores the no-phones-at-the-table rule to search up mentions of Elisa and Surella.

  I can’t tell her to put the phone away. I am afraid to speak about Elisa beause I am terrified that if I talk, a monster will emerge.

  ‘Eat up, Lexi, honey,’ I say instead, and Dan stares at me, dark eyes slightly narrowed.

  ‘You OK?’ he mouths.

  A flood of words is waiting to come out but I can’t say a thing. Lexi must be allowed to see Elisa. I cannot interfere. It is the right thing to do but oh, how it feels so wrong.

  I compromise with the best fib I know: ‘Fine. I’m just tired.’

  5

  The universe gives you what you need

  On Monday morning I wake up at six to the sound of my phone alarm. I haven’t been very good at getting up during the past four months because of how badly I sleep in the second half of the night, but today it feels worse than ever.

  I should have slept because orgasms at least are the ultimate in sleeping aids, but despite feeling the comfort of Dan’s strong body melding with mine in bed until we were one hot, sweaty mess, and I’m moaning his name and he’s moaning mine, I still couldn’t drift off afterwards the way he did.

  In my humble opinion, orgasms do not hold a candle to major pharmaceuticals when it comes to sleep – for women. Unless someone’s doing a survey somewhere and an orgasmic sleeping tablet is being invented. Forget female Viagra – that’s where the medical money needs to go.

  After lovemaking, Dan curled around me, almost instantly asleep, naked except for the boxers he pulled on, his strong body spooned against me. At about four, when I had gone round in circles thinking about Elisa and how she could hurt Lexi, I finally uncurled myself from his warm skin and went into the bathroom where I stared, hollow-eyed, into the mirror.