The Cookbook of Common Prayer

by Francesca Haig

  I hadn’t thought about that. The holidays are different in England, like the seasons. At home it must be getting cold now. Teddy will be wearing his winter uniform, the sleeves of the jumper too long, like all the rest of his hand-me-downs from Dougie. Papabee will be leaving a trail of gloves and scarves wherever he goes. And to Sylvie it will make no difference – there are no seasons in Paediatrics 3.

  I offer to take Rosa out for lunch. There’s no real food in the flat – I’ve been living on toast, mainly. We wander down the High Street until we find a small Turkish place and we order mezze. It means we have to share everything, all those little bowls of hummus and tabbouleh.

  She orders wine – a carafe of the house rosé, which is terrible, and which she seems to enjoy. I remember being young enough to enjoy bad wine. Today, I drink it anyway. I don’t think I’ve had a drink since Dougie died, and it doesn’t take much to make me feel drunk.

  ‘Do you mind if we get more?’ she asks, lifting the empty carafe.

  ‘You don’t need to ask me.’

  I like seeing how Rosa eats. She rips up the flatbread with her hands and digs in until the table between us is littered with small empty bowls, scraped clean of hummus. She gnaws the olive stones clean. I think of Sylvie, and the time I watched her cut a single grape into six pieces and pick at them for forty minutes.

  ‘Have the police or the coroner been in touch with you again?’ I ask.

  She nods, still chewing. ‘Yup. A few times.’

  I wait, but she doesn’t say anything else. ‘What do they want to know?’

  ‘Everything,’ she says. ‘What happened.’

  ‘And what have you told them?’

  She puts down her glass. ‘You can just ask me directly, you know. You don’t have to edge around it like that. Just ask me if I remember what happened.’

  ‘OK. Sorry. Do you? Has any of it come back?’

  ‘A bit.’ She picks up another piece of bread, then puts it down again. ‘The weird thing is, I thought the roof had collapsed. I didn’t realise the water had gone up. It happened so quick – one minute we were in knee-deep water, and the guide said he was going to take the kids back. Then, when he was gone, Dougie and I were suddenly lifted up and crushed against the roof. My head was scraping on the roof of the cave. So at first that’s what I thought: that the roof had come down. I couldn’t work out why it had stopped, just above the water – why it hadn’t come all the way down.’

  She’s twisting her yellow paper napkin around and around itself until it’s a fraying rope.

  ‘We had a couple of inches of air – that was it. And my headtorch was gone – it was knocked off, by the roof I guess, and it was under the water, shining somewhere on the other side of the cavern.’

  I think of the police inventory: One purple headtorch (not working).

  ‘Did Dougie’s torch still work?’

  ‘I think so. I can’t remember. But I think it must have, otherwise I couldn’t have seen him. That’s right, isn’t it? That must be right. Because I could see him.’

  ‘And what did you see?’

  Another pause.

  ‘He was just like me. Face pressed up against the roof, and trying to look around. We could still stand, but only just. He—’ She stops for a second. ‘He grabbed my hand. Or I grabbed his. I don’t remember. But we were holding on to each other.’

  ‘Then?’

  She swallows.

  ‘That guide – Phil – came back the way he’d gone. He sort of bobbed up right next to us. He looked at us, just for a second. Then he grabbed me, shouted, Hold your breath. And he pulled me through the passage out.’

  ‘Did he say anything to Dougie? Or you – did you say anything?’

  She shakes her head impatiently. ‘You don’t know what it was like.’ She’s dropped the napkin now but her hands are still busy, clawing at the air in front of her – trying to carve a space in it for this story. ‘There was no time, no air. Our faces were pressed against the roof. It was nearly totally dark – just Dougie’s headtorch, and then Phil’s.’ Her voice is rising. ‘And the water was loud. I never thought water could be so loud.’

  I try to picture it: Dougie’s face against the cavern’s roof, under the glare of his headtorch.

  When we leave the restaurant I’m shocked by the brightness of the day. It’s only two pm; the city is going about its daytime business, but I feel like I’ve emerged from an underground cavern, not a cheap restaurant.

  I walk her to the tube station, and we say goodbye. I wonder whether we’ll hug, but we don’t. I watch her making her way down the crowded stairs. She holds her body awkwardly, a bit sideways, so that nobody can jolt the injured arm. I watch until I can’t see her white hair any more.

  Gill

  I get called in for another meeting with Louise, Sylvie’s doctor, in her tiny office.

  ‘You and Gabe still haven’t told her about her brother?’

  I used to like that Louise usually gets straight to the point. These days, I’d be grateful for a little prevarication.

  ‘We agreed to go along with this for the initial period,’ she continues. ‘Just while Gabe was away. To buy you some time to get on top of things.’

  ‘He’s still away,’ I say quickly. ‘Until the inquest. It could be months.’

  ‘It’s been nearly four weeks already,’ she says. ‘How long do you plan on lying to Sylvie?’

  I bridle at the world plan. None of this has been planned. I’m just scrambling to keep my daughter alive.

  ‘Not lying,’ I say. I’m thinking of the broken leg. The truths that only a mother knows. The lies that only a mother can tell. ‘Just not telling her. Waiting until she’s well enough to handle the news.’

  ‘I have to act in the best interests of my patient,’ says Louise. ‘You know that.’

  Her patient. My daughter. Today Sylvie was wearing a singlet with thin straps. Her shoulder blades jutted out like the small wings of a gravestone angel.

  ‘Is it in Sylvie’s best interests to kill herself?’ I say. ‘Because we both know that’s what’ll happen if she hears this news.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Louise says.

  ‘Oh, come off it,’ I say. ‘This whole thing started not long after one of her grandfathers died. And look what happened after Katie P killed herself.’

  ‘That was two years ago.’

  ‘And she’s so much better now, is she?’ I jerk my head towards Paediatrics 3, down the corridor. Sylvie’s in there with the tube up her nose, her left arm cross-hatched with scars, and her organs even more wasted than at her last suicide attempt.

  ‘You said Not necessarily,’ I say. ‘A moment ago, when I said Sylvie will kill herself. I need more than Not necessarily. It’s her life we’re talking about. Not necessarily isn’t going to cut it.’

  ‘We have measures in place to keep her safe.’

  ‘For how long? How long can we watch her for?’ My voice is shaky and too high. ‘She can’t stay in a secure ward forever.’

  ‘You can’t lie to her forever.’

  ‘If you’re saying you’re going to tell her, we’ll take her out of the hospital.’ I stand, snatching up my handbag and coat. ‘We’ll take her out of here – find a private clinic. Or a hospital on the mainland—’

  ‘Sit down, for God’s sake,’ Louise says.

  I slump back into the chair, holding my bag across my chest. Louise leans towards me. ‘We want to be able to continue working with you and Gabe, as a team, to help Sylvie. It’s not in anyone’s interests for me to alienate you, or to have Sylvie removed from here.

  ‘But you need to understand: if you keep lying to her, there’re going to be consequences in the long term. I understand why you’re doing it. Yes, Sylvie’s weak at the moment, mentally and physically. But when you finally do tell her, the grief that you’re trying to avoid will still come, and it’ll be complicated by resentment and anger towards you.’

  In the parallel vertical li
nes between Louise’s eyes, I recognise some of my own tiredness.

  ‘Look,’ she says. ‘I understand that you’re trying to protect your daughter. I don’t necessarily agree with your choices about that. But I’m not sure it’s even relevant, to be honest. She’s in no fit state to face the underlying psychological issues – let alone her brother’s death. Right now, my pressing concern is keeping her tube in, and keeping her stable.’

  I nod. This is the Catch-22 of this disease, the problem that Gabe, her doctors, and I have circled for more than three years. It’s a mental illness with physical symptoms. Terrifying as the physical aspects are, they’re almost irrelevant. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t kill her.

  Louise continues. ‘We can’t address the mental stuff – any of it – until we get the physical stuff under control. If we don’t treat the malnutrition, she’s not capable of rational thought. The brain doesn’t work when it’s starved. All we can do is feed her up, try to get her to a point of rationality where we’re in a position to tackle the psychological issues. And that will include coming to terms with her brother’s death.’ She leans back in her creaky office chair. ‘To be perfectly honest, my realistic assessment of this ward’s value – the value of my work here – is that we keep these girls alive until they’re ready to start actually doing the work of getting better.’

  I feel a wave of sadness for Louise. She’s a good doctor – an excellent doctor. She’s one of the reasons Sylvie’s survived this far. It’s awful to hear her give such a bald assessment of her life’s work.

  ‘What we do here has its limits, but it’s not nothing,’ she goes on. ‘We give them some strategies to cope with food; we try to get them to start the process; we let them know what support’s available. But until they’re ready, all we’re doing is keeping them alive.’

  ‘So you won’t tell her about Dougie?’ I ask. ‘For now?’

  ‘For now,’ she echoes.

  I’m halfway out the door when she calls after me. ‘Sylvie’s a highly intelligent young woman.’

  Young woman, not girl. I must stop thinking of Sylvie as a girl. She’s nearly eighteen, for all that she’s starved her body back to pre-adolescence. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She’s always been like that.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ says Louise. ‘So don’t underestimate her.’

  I take up the knife. The leg of lamb is so heavy that when I drop it onto the chopping board the whole counter shakes.

  I make deep incisions all over, to stuff the garlic cloves into. There’s a violence in the stabbing, and a tenderness in the filling. I don’t know if I’m destroying something or making something, and sometimes it’s both, and sometimes it’s neither. The meat is slick with white fat and leaves a film of grease on my fingers. Before roasting, I rub the meat with sea salt, oil and pepper. I relish the sharpness of the sea salt on my skin.

  Louise can’t understand that I’ve been lying to Sylvie for a long time. Parents lie – it’s our job. A kiss from Mummy will make your knee all better. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you. Then the lies get bigger: We’ll find a way to get through this. The doctors know how to help you. I’m fine.

  Lying to Sylvie about Dougie has become normal now. Anything becomes normal, if it lasts long enough – Sylvie’s illness taught me that. When she went into hospital, it became normal to have the hospital ward’s number saved as a favourite contact in my phone. Normal to know that there are sometimes parking spaces in Argyle Street, around the corner from the hospital, and that the quickest way up to Paediatrics 3 is to go past the oncology clinic and take the fire escape stairs, instead of waiting for the lift.

  So when people used to say to me, I don’t know how you do it, the answer is always that I don’t know either. You just do it: you learn what needs to be done, and you do it, and you keep doing it because you don’t have any choice, and because this is your life now.

  Teddy

  Mum puts the tray of lamb in the middle of the table. It’s huge – so huge it looks wrong.

  ‘Goodness,’ says Papabee. ‘What a marvellous sight.’

  For the first week or two after she came home from London, Mum would mainly cook late at night, or she’d make something and then I’d find it in the bin. Sometimes she’d serve up dinner so spicy I couldn’t eat it, even when I mixed in half a tub of yoghurt. It didn’t really matter – so many people dropped off food after Dougie died that there was always something to eat. But the Death Casseroles ran out eventually, and maybe that’s a good thing, because even though Mum’s cooking’s still a bit weird, at least she’s making stuff we can eat again.

  She cuts the meat and drops slices on my plate – slap, slap, slap. She stops and looks up at me. ‘How hungry are you, love?’

  I stare at that huge piece of meat. Behind it, the other half of the table’s empty, where Sylvie, Dad and Dougie used to sit.

  I’m already pretty full from biscuits at Papabee’s this afternoon. But I know how Mum’s hands hang on so tight to her knife and fork while she eats and pretends not to watch me. Pretends not to count the bites.

  ‘Starving,’ I say, and Mum smiles. More meat lands on my plate. Slap, slap.

  Sometimes my tummy gets hard and sore, from always saying Yes please and Starving. But I want to show Mum I’m different from Sylvie. I want to show her that she doesn’t need to be afraid. And I want the edges of my body to go out, where Sylvie’s go in. I want to be too full to have any room left in me for secrets.

  In my room after dinner I get out the things I keep hidden in my drawer: the envelope of my Papa J money, and the photo of Sylvie grinning. Both the wrong price – either not enough, or the wrong thing altogether. I open the notebook with the list of all our family’s private words in it. I lie on the floor and chew the end of my pen, and try to write down more of the words, because if I can’t figure out the right price for Sylvie’s story then all the words will be lost for good.

  Mum pops her head through my bedroom doorway.

  ‘Bedtime in five minutes,’ she says. ‘Want me to read you a story?’

  She’s got a tea-towel over her shoulder. It’s an old one from the market, and because it’s folded in half longways, instead of saying, ENJOY BEAUTIFUL TASMANIA it just says:

  JOY

  FUL

  MANIA

  Dougie would’ve understood why that’s so funny. He would’ve laughed a lot, I reckon.

  ‘I’m OK without a story tonight,’ I tell Mum. I want to work on my list instead.

  ‘What’re you up to?’ she asks.

  I put my arm across the page of the notebook and try to make it look like I’m just leaning on it.

  ‘Book report for school.’ I don’t want to explain about my list of family words, because it sounds silly when I say it out loud. It’s not silly though – it’s serious. As serious as a flood, or a digger-load of dirt.

  Everyone has their own little superstitions. Even Mum and Dad do it: saying Bless you when somebody sneezes; counting magpies. One for sorrow, two for joy. My list, and my prices for Sylvie, are just the same. I don’t think I could stop even if wanted to. It’s a little bit habit, a little bit fear.

  ‘Need a hand with it?’ asks Mum.

  ‘Nope,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Good old Teddy,’ she says, walking away. She calls back, ‘Five minutes, OK? Remember to brush your teeth.’

  I close my notebook, and tuck it back under the jumpers in the drawer so nothing shows. I know what Good old Teddy means. It means not sick, like Sylvie, and not dead, like Dougie. ‘Thank God for you,’ Mum says to me sometimes, kissing me on the head, and I know it’s meant to be a good thing. Good old Teddy. But I’d like to be something, instead of just being not something.

  And I know how. When I showed Sylvie that photo – the last one of her smiling – she said Thirteen and a half. Every day since then, I’ve tried to figure out how to use that number to find out the price of her story. Once, I wat
ched a TV show where the detective could tell what time a guy was shot because the bullet smashed a clock on the wall too, and it got stuck at that exact time. I think Sylvie is a bit like that. Something happened when she was thirteen and a half, and her whole life stopped like a smashed clock.

  Gabe

  The next morning the doorbell rings again.

  ‘I have croissants,’ Rosa says, instead of hello. She holds up a brown paper bag with her good arm, and heads past me up the stairs before I even reply.

  After that, she comes nearly every day. She never rings or texts, and we never make any plans, but about eleven she shows up, straight from the station. I’ve got into the habit of making sure I’m there. I get up early, work on the laptop for a few hours; pop out for coffee in the Turkish café down the road, but always make sure I’m back for when the doorbell rings. Sometimes she stays for an hour, sometimes four. If we get lunch, she always orders wine, and I always drink it with her. She doesn’t talk any more about the cave, and if I ask her, she changes the subject, pours more wine.

  ‘Rosa comes here pretty much every day,’ I tell Gill.

  ‘That poor girl,’ she says. ‘What for?’

  I don’t know the answer. I only know that it’s begun to feel like part of my daily routine: Reply to work emails. Research the cave’s catchment area. Let Rosa in.

  Often we barely even talk. For hours at a time she lies across the couch and scrolls through her phone, while at the table I concentrate on stuff for the inquest, forms for the repatriation of the ashes, paperwork from the school’s insurer. I never imagined that death would involve so many forms.

  On all the paperwork relating to the inquest, I’m referred to as a P.I.P. The first time I encountered the term, I had to ring Heather at the coroner’s office to ask what it meant. ‘A Properly Interested Person,’ she said. ‘You know: immediate relatives, partners – that kind of thing.’