How to Find Your (First) Husband

by Rosie Blake

  Reaching for the matchbox by the side of the oven, I felt a flood of pride. My ingredients were neatly chopped and ready to go, the chillies cut to perfection, the pile of mange tout crisp and inviting, the chicken cubed as if by an expert. It was going to be a fantastic dinner. The boys would fill their bellies, shout for more and we would sit around the small table in the hut laughing, sated and happy. Liz would begrudgingly raise a glass and toast me because my Thai curry would be THAT good she would be compelled. But then she would remember she had to be somewhere all of a sudden and would rush off. Maybe Duncan would go and help her, leaving me and Andrew alone, the candles rasping their last gasps, the hut plunged into darkness as we giggled and fumbled to light them again…

  Bending down to light the oven, I drew the match slowly along the box. There was a brief scratchy sound, an almost imperceptible background hiss and then, before I really knew it, a quiet poof and suddenly flames.

  Big flames.

  I shot backwards, alarmed at the sudden appearance of orange. I needed to reach the dial and turn them down, but I was nervous at getting so close. In my haste I had knocked the kitchen roll over and, as if in slow motion, I watched it roll across the counter, nearer, coming to rest next to the oven and then, as my eyes widened and I started to squeal, the kitchen roll started to burn. Strong smells filled the air, the flames leapt higher and, panicking, I ran out onto the balcony flapping my hands and calling for help. It came out quietly in a strangled voice I didn’t really recognise as my own.

  ‘Fire, curry,’ I jabbered, flapping some more, the night air silent in response. Even the sun had sunk, not interested in helping. The empty beach stretched before me, the sand a ghostly pale blue, the ocean a dark smudge of nothing. The lights from other huts and cafes were further along the beach, feeling impossibly far away.

  I looked back at the open door of the hut, a glow now emanating from the smeared window to the side, pale smoke escaping from the cracks and door. I tried to remember what I had learned about fire safety. Vague memories of a visit from the fire service at my last workplace told me I needed a fire blanket or an extinguisher, or water, but then something warned me gas was different and this was a gas fire. What was it about a gas fire? Which one was bad? One of them was definitely bad. Argh. I had to make a decision quickly, I thought, looking once more at the lights in the distance. Too far. I would have to face this myself.

  I stepped back into the hut, scared now as I saw the tea towel I had put near the oven had caught. The flames were impossibly high, licking the top of the hut. Seeing the towels nearby, I took a breath and bundled them into my arms, edging closer to the flames and throwing them quickly at the fire.

  The tea towel stopped smoking and the towels seemed to have some effect, but the flames on the other side of the counter had reached the thin net curtains and they were now alight. Squeaking, I looked around for more things to throw at them. My heart was drilling like a rabbit on speed and I was sweating from the heat and the panic and the fear. There were voices in the distance and I became vaguely aware that I might not be alone. Emerging into the balcony I shouted again for help and then watched, as if it were happening elsewhere, as Duncan and Andrew piled past me, rounded eyes huge in their faces and moved through into the hut, swearing and waving hands in front of their faces to clear the smoke. I started to cough, hand over my mouth and cried, ‘It was gas,’ so they could remember their fire safety, too.

  We started throwing things out of the hut onto the sand: the bedding, the rolled-up camping mat, clothes. We stamped on towels and trapped the fire with them. I felt my hands, blistered and hot, and then when we had put it out we emerged coughing and hacking on the shadowy sand. My eyes stung as the smoke billowed out in clouds around the windows, door and roof, leaking out into the inky sky above. We stood side by side on the sand staring at the hut.

  Duncan turned to me. ‘So what’s for dinner?’ And that’s when I started to cry.

  Two hours later, we were eating pizza out of a cardboard box, sitting in deckchairs wrapped in rugs that smelled of smoke and drinking Coca-Cola. Andrew was quiet. Duncan found the whole thing vaguely amusing and took great delight in dubbing me ‘Girl On Fire’ and singing the chorus of the Alicia Keys’ song at random moments. I found myself avoiding Andrew’s gaze as he sighed wearily and looked out on to the horizon, the noise heavy and depressing.

  Sifting sand through my fingers, my hair still smelling of smoke, I pictured my mum all the way back in England, and wanted to be there, have her give me a hug and tell me it wasn’t a complete disaster. People had bounced back from these kind of set-backs before and at least no one had been hurt.

  ‘At least no one was hurt,’ I said in a soft voice.

  Andrew looked at me, unable or unwilling to nod a response.

  Duncan gave me a sad half-smile. ‘Tell that to Nemo here.’ He lifted a soft toy shaped as a clown fish with one singed eye and waved it at me. I sniffed, and started to cry again. Duncan scooted over and threw an arm around me. ‘It was a joke, Iz, a joke, it’s okay. Nemo made it, it’s all good.’

  ‘I’m just so sorry about Nemo,’ I pointed out. ‘And the hut and the fact we were all having such a lovely time and… And…’ I trailed off, hiccoughing through the words.

  Duncan had started to slowly circle my back, making ‘sssh’ noises repeatedly. The rub got slower and slower and I was aware his fingers seemed to be grazing around the side of my body. I shifted, whispering my thanks and then turned to Andrew.

  ‘It’s not a big deal; we’ll let it die down and you guys can sleep in my hut tonight. That’s good news isn’t it, mate?’ asked Duncan, slapping Andrew on the back and making him wince.

  That was when Liz appeared in this fresh cloud of pale yellows and pinks. Her skirt wafted around her ankles as if she was in a Fairy Liquid advert, her hair was in ringlets like she’d just stepped from the salon. There was no smudge on her face, no smoke-filled hair around her ears, no sooty smears on her legs and arms. I looked like I’d just stepped out of an audition for a role as an eighteenth-century chimney sweep.

  She raised both hands slowly to her face and covered her mouth. Her subtly kohl-lined eyes widened in horror and then she looked at the hut, hands still over her mouth, and back to us. Andrew held her gaze as she lowered her hands and whispered in the most wounded voice, ‘What happened?’

  Andrew flinched, twitching his head in my direction and then looking at the sand.

  Duncan was the first to answer. ‘Iz was showing us how well she can cook.’

  Dear diary,

  I can’t believe it but Jenny and Andrew are married now, even though I never broke up with Andrew and Annie said that wasn’t allowed because you can’t marry two people at once unless you live in America. She said that Jenny said that I should never have married him as she wanted to marry him all the time and now he has married her I don’t want to look at him because Jenny is rubbish and so Andrew must be rubbish too, even though I thought we were friends. Mum said I shouldn’t worry about not being married any more as she was quite surprised when I said I was. She said, ‘Gosh that was sudden’ and then she made me promise her I wouldn’t get married again unless we both went shopping for a dress first.

  I x

  Chapter 28

  Liz offered me her spare bed and I couldn’t think of any good reason not to take it. At least Andrew was with Duncan and not her, I thought, annoyingly pleased to be tucked up in such a fragrant hut.

  ‘I normally light a scented candle but I think tonight…’ She trailed off, looking at me as if at any moment I might make something spontaneously combust.

  Putting on an eye mask, removing her nose ring and inserting ear plugs, she got into her bed and turned her back to me, bidding me a slightly louder ‘Goodnight’ than she perhaps meant. An end to a conversation that had never really started.

  I curled up in a sad little b
all, as small as I could make myself, disappearing into my T-shirt and wrapping the thin duvet that smelled of the hotel laundry tightly around my shoulders. Despite three showers, I still felt smoke cloying in my nostrils. Closing my eyes, I tried not to focus on the fire and what I had done. Andrew’s face swum into my vision, though, his horror as we had lobbed all his T-shirts out onto the sand, the charred towels and pans, the sooty remnants of his wash bag. Blinking quickly, not wanting to cry, I reminded myself it would all seem better in the morning. I listened then to Liz’s breathing in the darkness. Slow and steady and normal. And then I tried to sleep.

  Walking along the sand the next morning, the weather overcast and miserable, banks of cloud lapping over other clouds, promising peaks of blue sky too few and far between, I shivered. Nearing the hut, I noticed Andrew already up, scrubbing down the wood wearing yellow Marigolds alongside a short man wearing a stripy apron who was directing operations – the owner of the hut. Duncan was sitting in a deckchair on the sand, pretending to clean pans but actually sleeping. And then, as if my eyes had conjured him, I felt my shoulders lighten as Zeb appeared, carrying a bin liner and giving me a toothy grin when he caught my eye.

  ‘Hey, Iz, I heard what happened, you okay?’ he asked, making my eyes well up.

  Forcing a smile, I said, ‘Of course, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to see how you were, and er…saw this. Thought I’d help.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s nice, what can I do?’ I avoided Andrew’s eyes as I asked it. He was brushing backwards and forwards with his cloth; tiny, furious movements, the muscles in his shoulders tense, the knuckles of his hand squeezing the cloth tightly.

  ‘Actually, it’s pretty much done,’ Zeb shrugged, depositing a bin liner and wiping his forehead. ‘It looked a lot worse than it was, you know,’ he added.

  Andrew gave us both a sideways glance, a ‘Tsk’ escaping from his mouth.

  ‘So why did you come?’ I asked, desperate to change the subject and lighten the mood. Andrew’s glowers seemed to invade every pore of my body.

  ‘I wondered if you wanted to trek north of here later. I’ve found this incredible pool in the forest. I think you’ll

  love it.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was distracted by Andrew again, scowling at the wood he was scrubbing. ‘Oh that’s nice but I suppose I should stay and um…’ I indicated the hut. ‘You know, help here,’ I said, licking my lips and looking at the sand.

  Zeb shrugged. ‘Fine by me, I’ll be off then,’ he said and before I could change my mind he had shaken the man in the stripy apron’s hand, waved at Andrew and was on his way, camera bag over his shoulder, not looking back.

  ‘Well,’ I said forcing cheer into my voice and picking up a cloth, ‘that was nice of him, wasn’t it?’

  Andrew gave me a tight smile, lips stretched tight.

  Duncan was stretched out in his chair. His eyes lit on me as he woke. Then, smiling, he held up a pan he should have been cleaning. ‘Morning, Iz,’ and then he pretended to make the pan talk in a squeaky voice, ‘Don’t hurt me, lady, that’s the lady who made me hurt…’ Chuckling at his hilarious joke he scooped up a tea towel, singed at the corner, and put on another voice. ‘Why did you try and kill us, lady? What did we ever do to youoooooo…?’

  ‘Duncan, that’s not funny,’ Liz’s prim voice came from behind me.

  ‘But…’ Duncan continued in the tea towel voice, ‘but that lady made me burn…why she make me burn, why?’

  I stepped towards Duncan, keen to see the funny side now that it really did look like no real damage had been done. ‘No,’ Duncan squealed, holding the tea towel up as a shield, ‘don’t come closer, lady, I don’t want to hurt no more.’

  ‘Okay, you can stop now,’ I said, knowing Duncan was only trying to lighten the mood. ‘Ha, ha.’

  ‘But, Isobel,’ he said, grabbing a spoon that had completely melted at the top, ‘I will never live again as a spoon, you have killed me, killed meeeeeeeee.’

  I grabbed the spoon and hit him with it, feeling gloomy again when I turned to see Liz talking in a quiet voice to Andrew.

  Duncan put a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s fine, Iz,’ he laughed. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I smiled.

  ‘Well, apart from spooney here who really will never spoon anything ever again.’

  Pushing him, I took a breath and walked over to Andrew who was sitting on the step of the hut looking morosely at the grubby cloth in his hand. I should face this: I knew he was angry with me. When we were children he could get like this. I had a flash of memory: he’d once ignored me for a week after I’d teased him about loving Kylie.

  ‘Hey,’ I said quietly.

  He didn’t acknowledge me and I felt a brief flicker of annoyance that he was making me feel so bad. But it had been his hut, it had been a shock and all his stuff might have been ruined. Reaching out and grabbing his hand, my desperation making me bolder than I would normally be, I said, ‘Andrew, I am truly sorry, about the

  hut. Truly.’

  He looked at me, a hint of red colouring his cheeks and clashing with his sandy-coloured hair. ‘It’s okay, Isobel, no real harm done,’ he said and then added in a stiff voice,

  ‘it’s okay.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I gushed, ‘thank you, it means a lot.’ And then I added, ‘I won’t do it again.’

  He started, his eyes widening. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, I mean I won’t, you know, do anything silly,’ I said, trying to avoid adding, ‘I will try not to burn all your possessions again.’ I didn’t want to remind him of what he had just lived through.

  ‘I know,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Come on, Andrew,’ Liz said over to the right. ‘Breakfast,’ she called.

  ‘We’re going to get pancakes,’ he said, not inviting me.

  ‘Good.’ I felt my eyes well again. Jeez, Iz, pull yourself together. ‘I’ll help out here and see you later.’

  ‘’kay.’

  Watching them move off together, Duncan in their wake (the mention of pancakes and he was anyone’s), made me long for Mel, or my mum, or someone who would make me feel less hopeless. It had all been going so well, and then one silly mistake.

  The man in the stripy apron locked up the hut, one eye on me as if he had heard I was the resident arsonist.

  Turning towards the sea, leaving the hut behind me, I took my phone from my pocket and dialled home, keen to offload to someone who might not loathe me right now.

  Dad answered after a few rings, a nervy ‘hello, 9846’ as he did so.

  ‘Dad,’ I said, feeling bad for instantly asking, ‘is Mum there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah.’

  I would have to go for it. ‘How are you, Dad?’

  ‘The same, the same.’

  Well he was making this easy.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What is new with you, Isobel?’

  ‘Oh…Stuff.’

  ‘Interesting stuff?’

  ‘I’ve been out on a boat and I’ve seen a turtle,’ I said, feeling like that day seemed an eternity ago. Had that laughing girl really been me?

  I continued to walk along the sand, the clouds still unmoving above me, past the turtle nets to the end of the beach, listening to my dad trying to coax me out of myself.

  ‘Well that does sound interesting but, knowing you, I don’t think you were ringing your mother to tell her that. Is it a woman thing or can I try to help?’ He coughed. This would not have been an easy question for him to ask and my heart softened.

  ‘Not a woman thing as such I was sort of ringing because…’ And then I felt my voice wobble. ‘Because…’ I coughed to clear it. ‘The thing is, I sort of made a mistake cooking

  the dinner.’

  Hello, world’s biggest understatement. I imagined my dad,
all concerned, sitting at the table in the kitchen, a crumpled newspaper abandoned, his crumpet half-eaten and I just couldn’t find the words. He would only worry.

  ‘Well that doesn’t sound too bad, my love, your mother often makes mistakes cooking dinner. The other evening we had parsley sauce with no parsley in it. It was most peculiar.’

  ‘Well,’ I swallowed, ‘that has made me feel better.’

  ‘What did you do? It couldn’t have been as bad as all that?’

  ‘I…’ I pictured my father’s forehead wrinkling in concern, his hands greasy from working on one of his cars, his brown eyes kind. ‘I burned it,’ I said in a quiet voice, ‘burned it all.’

  A lone tear wobbled down my cheek and I swiped at it. ‘I ruined it all.’

  ‘Isobel, it’s okay, these things happen, it doesn’t sound all that serious.’

  ‘No.’ I gulped back further explanation. ‘I’m just being silly, I suppose. How is Mum?’

  ‘Probably on a hilltop screaming at the wind or having coffee with a friend. The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.’

  ‘Will you tell her I called? But not to worry.’

  ‘Of course, you take care and, Isobel, are you sure there isn’t anything else?’

  I thought of Andrew, forlorn and smeared in ash on the beach last night. I thought of Liz’s triumphant smirk as she took in the devastation, of all the charred utensils lying about on the sand this morning, useless. I thought of all my plans to prove to Andrew that I could be good for him, for him to see me as someone capable and reliable. I thought of the thousands of miles I’d travelled in search of him and the start of perhaps a new chapter for me. Taking a breath, I swallowed, looking out over the vast expanse of ocean in front of me.

  ‘No, Dad, that was it, I just wanted things to be perfect.’

  ‘Well perfect can be overrated, my love. Sometimes I love things with a few dents and bangs. More interesting.’

  I felt a slow smile lift my cheeks. ‘Thanks, Dad.’