by Jenny Oliver
She put the towel down on the back of one of the club chairs next to the window and thought about standing on that stage in front of people who didn’t really care what she sang and how she sang it. She shook her head.
‘Exactly. Now go and live your life. This–’ he pointed round the office at the posters of pop stars and framed platinum albums. ‘– is not for you.’
One of the interns knocked on the door and came in carrying Maddy’s stuff. ‘Thanks.’ she mumbled, taking it from him, then turned to Rollo and said, ‘I really appreciate you talking to me. Thank you.’
‘You do? I haven’t broken your heart? Trodden on your dreams?’ He raised a brow.
‘Maybe.’ She pulled on her still damp coat. ‘But it’s probably for the best.’ she said, draining the last of her coffee, coughing from the brandy, and walking away to the big glass door.
‘Hey and Maddy,’ Rollo called out as she was just about to leave.
‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t go hating on your dad. He was just trying to help.’
She didn’t reply. Just gave him a quick wave and walked out of his office, down the light-up corridor and out the building. There was a tramp sitting outside High Street Kensington tube who asked if she could spare any change. She handed him her Fortnum’s bag, the stilton and the Lapsang Souchong, and said that it was all she had.
CHAPTER 35
ELLA
Ella was conscious of the severity of her outfit as she ran from the phone box to the taverna. Dimitri looked up from his coffee and croissant and she saw a smile dance across his lips as he gave her a quick up and down. Her mum only showed her surprise fleetingly and Ella wondered if she realised that she’d been planning to leave.
‘They don’t think the ferries will run till after Christmas.’ her mum said as she started to rummage round for some pots and pans. ‘The hotels will do the day themselves but we’ve been offered Christmas Eve.’
‘Gets the tourists out,’ said Dimitri as he dunked his chocolate croissant into his little glass of coffee and looked up at her for a touch too long. When he spoke Ella blushed scarlet, reading too much into their every exchange.
‘It means–’ her mum said, looking at her watch. ‘We have two days to prepare. And that’s not enough. So-– she glanced up at Ella, her eyes dancing with emotions that they were past discussing – apologies that had been refused, olive branches that hadn’t been accepted, explanations that weren’t good enough – then back down to the pans she was hauling out and onto the surface. ‘You’d better go and get changed. It’s going to be a long day.’
Ella sloped back in the kitchen like a sulky teenager and quite enjoyed the feeling. She was dressed in her old lacrosse tracksuit bottoms that she’d found after rifling through Maddy’s drawers. Holding the material up to her face, soft and worn, the red now a washed out pink, she realised how familiar the smell of the washing powder her mum used was, how much it reminded her of being young. Pulling them on, she remembered the frayed hems around the ankles from where she’d worn them in the rain and mud and let them trail along the floor. She didn’t even bother to go to tie the chord around the waist because she knew it was missing, lost years ago. Looking down at her legs, at the name of her school emblazoned down one side, she saw that Maddy had sewn one of the rips together with yellow wool. It baffled Ella that Maddy had even kept them. Made it hard for her to ignore the possibility that Maddy wanted to keep something to remember her by.
In the kitchen it seemed that all hands were on deck. Dimitri had been set up at the kitchen table to prepare the filling for cheese pies and the taramasalata, while her granny was chopping herbs for the mini meatballs and checking the oven every couple of minutes for her sausage rolls.
‘Ella, where do you want to work?’ her mum asked curtly as she walked in.
Dimitri kicked the chair opposite him out and she saw a grin on his lips as he looked down at the feta cheese he was crumbling.
‘I can sit here.’ she said, pointing to the chair, and then perched herself on the seat.
‘Ok fine. There’s a list here of everything that needs doing.’ Her mum held up a sheet of A4 paper. ‘Do you still know how to roll Dolmades?’
Ella nodded.
‘Ok, well start with that. I’ve rinsed the grape leaves so if you make the stuffing now you can wrap them and we’ll put them in the fridge.’ It was like a military operation, there was none of the flap and panic of the impromptu breakfast, this was Ella’s mum on fire. Christmas was her forte. Ella remembered big parties at home with all the neighbours, them working like mad to get all the canapés ready – chopping vegetables for dips and skewering cheese and pineapple onto sticks were her and Maddy’s jobs and they took it so seriously, while her mum and aunt whipped up plates of delicacies that disappeared in a flash when the guest arrived. The whole village would come. Their’s wasn’t the biggest or grandest house but with the fire burning and the big table laden down with treats it was a date in the Christmas calendar that no one missed.
She looked up at her mum, her hair pulled back neatly, no make-up on, white chef’s apron wrapped double around her waist and thought of when she’d stand in the kitchen at home, cup of tea in one hand, list in the other calling out orders just as she was doing now. But then, when it all got too fraught, her dad would come in, pinch a sausage roll and swap the cup of tea for a glass of champagne and her and Maddy would shut their eyes and make faces when he kissed their mum under a sprig of mistletoe.
‘Dimitri, are you going to make the cheese pies? Because if you are, they need to be neat.’
Dimitri swivelled round in his seat and did a mock salute, which made Ella’s mum roll her eyes and walk away towards the larder to get supplies for the next dish on the list.
‘Why are you here?’ Ella whispered across the table to Dimitri.
‘Because I wanted to spend the day with you.’ he replied.
‘Really?’
He laughed. ‘No.’
‘Oh.’ Ella felt herself blushing as she diced some onions.
‘I supply the alcohol, Sophie does the food.’ He shrugged then leant forward, his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hands. ‘Would you like me to want to spend the day with you?’
Ella had no idea. What good would a holiday fling do her now? It would just add to the awkwardness of her relationship with the island. She was barely out of her marriage. Barely able to work out who she was. But… She looked up, he was watching her, thick dark lashes blinking slow like a lizard in the desert, smile lazy on his face, like he had all the time in the world and wasn’t fussed either way.
Ella raised a brow. ‘Would you like me to want you to want to spend the day with me?’
Dimitri sat back and laughed. ‘I can’t even work out what that means.’
‘Can you two please concentrate?’ her mum called over to them as she reappeared from the larder. ‘There’s so much work to be done.’
‘I know, we’re doing it.’ Ella said, holding up the bowl of finely diced onions so her mum could see, hearing a twang of teenage attitude in her voice.
‘I don’t need that, Ella.’
‘What?’
‘That tone.’
Ella huffed a sigh.
‘Look. D’you know what, I’d rather if you don’t want to be here that you go. Go and see the island or something.’
‘Soph–’ Dimitri swivelled round in his chair. ‘You’re totally over-reacting. We’re working. It’s fine.’
‘Thanks Dimitri, I don’t think I am.’ She had her hands on her hips. ‘I have about two hundred people, probably more, coming in two days, there’s no time to chat.’
Ella rolled her eyes and got ready to chop some dill and parsley, not allowing herself to say anything else because she knew she’d lose her temper.
‘Ella, you can use this hob and this pan when you’re ready.’ her mum said after a moment’s silence, ticking off her list and clearing some work space.
> ‘Fine.’ Ella muttered, focusing on her herbs.
Dimitri glanced up, a frown on his face. ‘What’s going on? Are you two ok?’ he whispered.
‘We’re fine,’ said Ella, not meeting his eye. ‘Like we always are.’
When she thought back to that morning as evening fell it actually seemed calm in comparison. As the day had unfolded Ella’s Dolmades had been deemed too baggy so she had had to roll them all again, her mum watching over her so her hands shook with fury. Her gran tripped, dropping the bowl of finely chopped herbs all over the kitchen and half onto the fire making the whole room cloud with smoke. Dimitri made an amazing taramasalata but lost concentration when it came to the cheese and spinach pies and the filo pastry stuck to the table, the fine sheets tearing as he tried to salvage them. When Ella’s mum balled the whole lot up and chucked it in the bin, saying she’d do it, Dimitri had to go out into the rain and have a cigarette. As water continued to pour down the wind picked up and there were murmurs of the mistral. Two trays of mince pies burnt and the yellow-eyed cat nabbed a dish of battered anchovies that he crunched on the doorstep until her granddad shooed him away.
‘This is ridiculous!’ Her mum ran her hand over her forehead and looked like she might cry as she pulled out the second of the charred little star-topped pies.
It felt to Ella like the mistral had already come. Everyone on tenterhooks, the atmosphere between Ella and her mum deteriorating as more and more went wrong.
‘Sophie, honey.’ her granddad called as he came back from shooing the cat away. ‘I think you’d better come and see this.’
‘What?’ Her mum rubbed her hands with her apron and walked over to the doorway, a frown on her face.
Her granddad nodded towards the toilet block outhouse. ‘The roof’s coming up.’
‘It can’t be, it’s new.’
He shrugged. ‘Then they did a bad job, but the wind’s got the under the felt.’
‘Shit.’ Her mum slapped the wall with her hand.
They all stood in the doorway looking out through the fairy lights at the roof, flapping away in the wind.
‘It’s going to leak into the toilets. Who the hell is going to want to fix it in this weather? Oh god! Why? Why now?’
Ella watched as her mum turned away and went and slumped down in her granddad’s hideous old chair. She looked old suddenly, worn out, worn down. When Ella had first arrived and they’d cooked together for the breakfast feast she’d seemed vibrant, scatty, fun. Now it was like the life and energy had been stripped out of her.
She thought of her dad just forgiving Maddy. Of wanting her in his life so much that it didn’t matter what had happened in the past.
She thought of her dad handing her mum a glass of champagne. How her face would brighten. Her shoulders would soften. Who handed her champagne now? Ella didn’t even know if she had a boyfriend, if she’d ever had a boyfriend. She looked at her, remembered how beautiful she’d always thought her, how funny, how kind. How she’d always aligned her with Maddy but actually there was a softness, a vulnerability that Ella felt in herself.
Her mum shut her eyes and she watched her take a couple of deep breaths, her hand gripping the arms of the chair. She caught sight of the list sticking out of her apron pocket. Two sides of A4, really small loopy writing. They had so much to do.
Outside the wind knocked over an oil can of geraniums, she heard it roll over the concourse and out into the road. Bashing and clattering against the stones. Dimitri and her grandparents were sheltering in the doorway talking about the roof.
Ella had told her mum that she needed someone to blame otherwise it all meant nothing. But maybe it wasn’t that she needed someone to blame, it was that she needed the courage to forgive. Perhaps her fear wasn’t that she thought her mum wanted her to be more than who she was, but instead had become how to move on from this point, how to admit that she was perhaps too afraid to stand up on her own with nothing in the past to blame for her mistakes.
She’d stayed in a marriage that she knew wasn’t working. In a company that was safe, where she was a big fish. She was too scared to rely on her own fashion sense, for Christ’s sake. Was she strong?
She looked from her mum to the rain lashing down outside, the wind tearing more of the felt from the roof, the path almost a flood of brown mud, the waves smacking the beach, the sound of the pebbles crushed and thrown in the surf. Up the road the decorations across the street were tossing in the wind like birds, their ropes holding steadfast against the growing gale.
‘I’ll go up.’ Ella said suddenly. ‘I’ll go up the ladder and fix it.’
Dimitri almost choked on a laugh. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t go up, I’ll go up.’ He shook his head like she was bonkers.
‘You can’t, you’ll have to hold the ladder. I’m not strong enough to hold the ladder.’ Ella said.
‘Well we’ll get one of the guys down here to help.’ Dimitri frowned at her.
‘There’s no time. Look at it.’ Ella pointed to where the nails were being ripped out one by one as the wind got stronger.
‘Ella–’ Her mum sat up from the chair. ‘You’re not going on the roof.’
‘Why not? You need it done. Dimitri can hold the ladder. It’ll be fine. There’s no other choice.’
They all looked at each other.
Her granddad took a couple of steps back from the doorway. ‘I think she’s right.’
‘Michael!’ Her grandmother slapped him on the arm. ‘Don’t be stupid.’
He shrugged. ‘Give the girl a chance. For god’s sake. Dimitri’ll hold the ladder. She’s sensible. Come on. Like she said, there’s no other choice. I can’t do it.’
Ella could feel her legs trembling. ‘It’s really high.’ she shouted over the sound of the rain as Dimitri held the ladder in place – he only had his leather jacket with him so had her granddad’s yellow fisherman’s mac on with the hood up.
‘It’s ok, just hold onto my hand for the first couple of steps. You won’t fall, I promise.’
Ella gave him a look. ‘How the hell are you going to help me from down there?’
‘You don’t have to do it.’ he shouted.
Ella had a hammer and nails in a bag over her shoulder and her mum’s Millet’s pack-a-mac on. She put her foot on the first slippery rung. ‘Yes I do.’
‘She’s missed you, you know.’ he said, his hand on her back.
‘Who?’
‘Your mum. She talked about you all the time. How well you were doing at work and stuff.’
Ella could feel the rain hitting her face, sliding down her collar and her back. ‘I don’t need to hear this now.’ she said, gripping onto the bars.
He didn’t reply.
She hoisted herself up another couple of foot, the ground seemed really far below her.
‘When you’re at the top just hammer it in at random. Just as long as it stays, don’t worry about it. Just do it quickly, don’t take any risks or anything.’ he instructed.
‘I can’t hear you.’ Ella shouted as she neared the top.
‘It was nothing.’
‘What?’
‘Just–’ he shouted, ‘… just take care.’
She looked down at him, his face upturned, lit by the outside light, his brow furrowed, his mouth tight with worry. She smiled, taking a hand off the rung to push back her hair that was falling in her eyes. ‘I will– Oh shit.’ Her foot slipped at the same time as she tried to put her hand back on the ladder. ‘Fuck.’
As she slid down the cold metal Dimitri shot up the ladder, holding onto her waist while she flailed about getting a new grip on the slippery rung.
‘Thank you.’ Ella turned her head and was level with his. She could see the water on his eyelashes.
‘You’re welcome.’
A couple of beats of silence passed. The ladder swayed.
‘I’ve got to go back down and hold this thing. Don’t take your hands off again, ok.’
Sh
e nodded. ‘Except to hammer in the nails.’
‘Just get on with it and get yourself back down.’
‘Ok.’
She thought that maybe he was about to kiss her from the way he paused and looked at her. The way his eyes narrowed and his grip on her waist loosened, like he was going to move his hand up to her shoulder. But then the ladder wobbled again and he slid like a fireman to the bottom and held it tight.
Ella didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed. All her family watching from the doorway. ‘Right,’ she said to herself. ‘Let’s get this bloody done.’ Then as she hammered the nails in, all skewiff and haphazard, all she could think was that she’d just thought of them as her family.
CHAPTER 36
MADDY
There weren’t many people in Big Mack’s but enough to cause a stir when Maddy sent her dad packing.
‘I don’t need to talk to you,’ she’d waved a hand in his direction and started to walk away towards the swing doors.
‘Maddy–’ he’d pleaded.
‘Please just go. Honestly. I just feel like you set me up. Why couldn’t you have listened to what I was saying.’ She paused, her hand on the bar top. She could feel Walter watching as he sipped his Guinness. Could see that her dad was embarrassed, wanted her to come back towards where he stood so they could have a private conversation.
‘Maddy,’ he said, trying to keep his voice neutral. ‘I just wanted to help you.’
‘But I didn’t want your help.’ she shrugged and walked out to the back room where she waited for ten minutes until she knew that he had gone.
‘God you’re a spoilt brat aren’t you?’ Betty, the other barmaid, muttered as she came out the back to get her cigarettes.
