by Poppy Dolan
Pete rubs pie crumbs from the corners of his mouth, using the back of his hand. He lowers his eyebrows, two dark lines that measure the tone of a conversation: up and it’s all good fun, down and we’ve wandered into serious territory. ‘Where’s this come from?’
‘Nowhere,’ I try to be breezy. ‘Just something a friend said, about married people being one sort of way, single people another sort of way. Just wondering what you thought.’ I shrug, like I’d just asked him whether he thought Vimto was best fizzy or still. No biggy.
‘Of course we’re going to be different,’ he says carefully, after a pause. ‘When I was single, I thought about going to work, then going to the pub, and um, maybe – if I was lucky – pulling. To be honest, I didn’t think all that much. But now we’re together I think about us, what we’re doing. Your career, as well as mine; the fun stuff we do together; what our future will be like. If I just thought about me still, I’d be a pretty shitty kind of husband. I don’t miss it, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
I look at this kind, thoughtful man, his few grey hairs creeping in behind his ears (seven, at the last count) and his well-worn but perfect skin crinkling around his eyes. I really bagged a good one.
Closing the gap between us on the bench, I slip my arm into his and then rest my hand on his leg. ‘Course not. It was just a random chat, the other day, a bit of waffle.’ I put my head against his shoulder.
‘When you were at Jules’s?’
‘Yes, actually.’
‘Hmm. Well, with Emmeline coming along, she’s bound to feel her life is in a different place now from when she was single. Babies change things. In a really, really good way.’
Because this is a Be Nice to Pete day, because we are in a – literal – bubble of happiness right now, I choose not to register his blatant propaganda.
The big busy sprawl of London that opens up before us is a handy reminder that, in the grand scheme of things, mine is a trifle of a speck of a nothing of a problem. There are people out there losing jobs this second, losing loved ones, having the worst moments of their lives. And conversely there are probably people making babies without thinking about it that much at all, right this second too, having a bit of afternoon delight across the big city. My eyes flick from one high rise to another, across the hills of South London (a true Londoner will only gaze wistfully at their own side of the river, so I rightfully ignored the North), calculating all those windows, all those beds, all those chances of new London residents springing forth.
I just about catch Pete watching me watch the city. His eyebrows lift and he smiles as he asks in a low voice, ‘Were you just thinking about how many people might be having sex right now? Naughty.’ And he puts his big strong arm around my shoulder and pulls me in extra close.
On the way home, I’m text-stalking Lyds, since I haven’t heard from her in a little bit.
Where are you? Haven’t heard a peep from you all week. Tangled in sexy fun ‘n’ games with Guy the Potato Guy? Tell me tell me.
And she’s obviously got a free moment between earth-shattering orgasms, because she texts right back.
No, Pervy McPerveson. Busy with stall stuff and new designs innit. But have seen Guy quite a lot. You’d like him. REALLY. X
The bus trundles through Camberwell.
Oh really? You want to watch it, the last time I met someone’s new bloke at dinner, I got their gender wrong. Awkward. x
I was just being a bit silly, partially fuelled by the two pints of posh cider I’d had in Covent Garden with Pete at the food market there, post-big wheel. And partially because Lydia is the one person I feel I can still be a total tool around, no judgement. I can act like I think I’m still twenty-three with her and she’s not going to say, ‘Eleanor, this isn’t a Taylor Swift song.’ She’ll just encourage me to buy more clothes I can’t pull off and avoid tackling serious subjects, replacing them with reality TV and gin in East London bars instead. She’s the excellent, sneaky game of Solitaire when I know I should be working hard. The pudding when the sensible part of me knows I’m already full. She’s the Technicolor Oz to the workaday grey of reality.
Hey, why don’t you ever ask me round for dinner parties?
Um. What? I blink at the iPhone screen. Is she being funny? I can’t really see the joke, if there is one. So Lyds must be genuinely asking. But it’s crazy, we had her round … well, we all went for drinks not long ago, with a handful of uni friends, and she and I eat more cake than is good for us on a regular basis, but a dinner party … God, I can’t think of one she’s been at. I suppose we do get caught up in the endless Chuckle Brothers sketch that is couple-to-couple entertaining. ‘Now you must come to us next time!’ roughly translates as ‘To me, to you, to me, to you!’
But I still see Lyds ALL the time, I just assume she’ll find sitting at a table with a bunch of strangers, talking about the most random subjects and sinking three bottles of pretty average wine not altogether exciting. Mind you, put like that it sounds exactly like the nights out we have, just in a bar rather than a living room. So maybe I’ve been talking out of my arse. Cripes.
Wasn’t an on purpose thing, but why don’t you and Guy come round? Would love to grill him and make big pudding. Pete wants to meet him too. We could make it an early Xmas dinner – crackers etc! Next Thursday? Xxx
In my cringing guilt, I have offered to cook the one thing I absolutely loathe: basically, a complicated roast. Give me a triple-layered gateaux on a good day, sure. Give me cupcakes that need three different icings and hand-crystallised pansies, fine, I’ll take a run at it. But a roast? No, please God, no. Anything but that. For one, the multitasking is just bonkers. Although baking might have different bits of prep and timing and different things going on in different bowls, it comes nowhere near the stress headache that is making sure your meat, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, cabbage, bread sauce, meat gravy, sausages-wrapped-in-bacon are all ready at the same time. And piping hot. And do you know what happens when I overbake a cake? (When it rarely happens, thank you.) I put it in the bin – or turn it into trifle if I’m going to see my mum – and then I just get out some eggs and flour and start again. Simple. Cheap. No worries. Overcook your big lump of meat? There’s no time, no money and no clean pans left for you to start again. Disaster. Serve up your shoe leather and force a sickly smile as everyone chews on it for the next five weeks. Or undercook it and kill your loved ones. Whichever you prefer.
I do love the precision of baking, the almost science-lesson-predictability of so many grams of baking powder in a mixture guaranteeing it will be light and fluffy. But I also like the forgiving nature of baking, which comes in the form of icing. Cakes sagging a bit in the middle? Fill it in with icing! Burnt the top of your lemon cake? Get happy with that bag of icing, chappy. No idea how to make a dinosaur cake for your nephew’s birthday? Chop up squares of cake, rearrange them cleverly, slather in three tonnes of violently green icing. Boom. And if icing won’t help you fudge it, you can always go down the route of a ‘dusting’ (i.e. shitload) of caster sugar, some distracting sprinkles, even just slicing bits off and pretending the cake was always supposed to be triangular. But with a roast, there is nowhere to hide. You can’t dab some red food colour onto an overcooked slab of lamb, you can’t get away with studding sloppy roast potatoes with store-bought sugar daisies and if your broccoli has gone mushy you may as well just lie down in the road and pray for heavy traffic. I. Do. Not. Like. Roasts.
Well, I love eating them, especially at my mum and dad’s. But I do not like cooking them.
And, unluckily, neither does Pete. It wasn’t really the stuff of his hippy childhood – a nut roast, on special occasions, maybe, but as he describes it: ‘eating the same beans and pulses we had everyday just fashioned into a different shape didn’t really feel special to me.’ The whole faffing nature of peeling and boiling and roasting and gravy-making doesn’t appeal to his organised, energy-efficient tendencies. He can cook a mean stew, a stand-up ra
tatouille, and a damn fine sponge pudding because it makes sense to him that everything goes in one pot, which you then serve from and which then goes into the dishwasher without anyone having to burn themselves on roasting fat or swearing while peeling three million chestnuts and finishing the red before your guests have sat down to the table. All things that did actually happen the last time I tried a Christmas roast for some friends, the first yuletide we were together.
So, if I’m lucky, I might be able to coax Pete into being my strapping assistant in hauling all the ingredients back from Waitrose but there’s no way he’s going to go all Gordon Ramsey and say that he’ll be boss of the kitchen when it comes to cooking meat. Christ, I’ll have to dust off the old Delia Christmas cookbook.
But, hang on.
That gives me an idea.
Delia. Christmas. Waitrose. Foil containers straight into the recycling to hide the evidence … No, it’s too cheesy to even contemplate. Isn’t it? Like one of the awful ads I place at work and hate myself for.
I could definitely make the pudding from scratch, which would redeem me. And maybe I just won’t outright say that I prepared it, but I technically cooked it, since I’ll be putting the stuff in the oven with my own two hands. It’s not like I’m serving up Papa John’s for dinner. And I’ll be much chirpier for socialising and whatnot. Everyone wins!
Pete’s reflection in the dark bus window shows he’s quietly falling asleep. Too much cider for him too, then. But even asleep he’s upright and unwavering: he’d never fake a ready meal Christmas dinner as his own. But, for a quiet life, he probably won’t stop me doing it, either.
Guy says he’s free so yes please! Mmm can’t wait for lots of delicious Ellie cooking. Do you want me to bring anything? xxx
It’s probably a bit cheeky to say ‘A perfectly cooked turkey, with all the trimmings, please.’
Chapter Thirty
As everything in the shops, restaurants and the very London air turns Christmassy at the start of December, our brilliant little baking class has also got the festive feeling.
‘Noel!’ booms Mr Berry, rubbing his hands together. ‘Mince pies, Christmas cake, spiced biscuits on the trees. A truly fruitful season for the baker!’ He’s not quite lost his ‘TV performance face’ from when the film crew came into the class and so beams at us all as if we’re casting directors for Cake! The Musical. I think he’s trying to make his eyes as twinkly as Paul Hollywood’s but the result is more like he’s just got cinnamon in them and he’s wincing from the pain. But that just reminds me of actual Paul Hollywood and my baby-near-miss and I feel a stomach roll of shame. God, I hope this doesn’t ruin The Great British Bake Off for me next year.
Mr Berry is splitting us into groups to try one of the three Christmassy recipes he’s put together. I’ve got mince pies down, I have to say (Pete polished off three in The Eye, so I think that is categorical proof), and I’ve already got my dried fruit sitting in its booze bath for my Christmas cake, so spiced biscuits it is. I quite like the idea of some cute, Nordic-looking biscuits on red ribbons prettying up the tree. And any excuse to muck about with those little tubes of coloured icing and silver balls is definitely fine by me. Nothing says Christmas like crunchy, tasteless, teeth-breaking silver balls. Hannah’s gone for mince pies, as she thinks it might gain her maybe just an extra half a brownie point from her in-laws this Christmas (their issues about her relationship now making much more sense since she and Laurie came to dinner and Laurie said she’s been raised in a very Catholic household). Joe is going to tackle biscuits with me, because he ‘feels as rough as a dog’s tongue.’ He had an early Christmas do at his office and went at the free booze like I would go at a pile of free whoopee pies. And booze too, if I’m honest.
As we’re rolling out our biscuit dough, catching a whiff of lovely, warming ginger and cinnamon each time we turn it, Joe leans into me. He doesn’t smell bad, just a bit musty. Like he maybe slept in those clothes. And from all I’m learning about Joe, maybe he did.
‘I got a weird email the other day.’
‘Don’t send them any money. He’s not really a prince. He’s not even most likely Nigerian.’
‘Ha ha. No, I had this email from the BBC, about a cookery show. I signed up for it at that food thing they gave us tickets for. It’s called Best Dishes and it’s about everyday cooks, something like that. The same guys that do The Great British Bake Off are making it. Anyway, they want me to come and audition, cook a recipe for them. I wouldn’t usually go in for this kind of thing, but there’s a cash prize which I wouldn’t mind having a go at.’ He dips his head and smiles shyly.
‘Wow! That’s amazing, Joe! Well done you.’ We’re not quite at a hugging place in our friendship, so I plump for an ambiguous arm-punch of matey-ness. ‘A TV star in our humble little class, wow. So, what are you going to cook? ‘
‘Yeah, that’s the thing,’ he pulls at his earlobe. ‘I might have been a little overconfident in applying and now I don’t know what to do. And if I do make something on the telly, I don’t want everyone I know to see me making jam tarts, you know? It’s got to be just a bit manly.’ He presses a snowman-shaped cutter into his thinly rolled, delicate biscuit dough.
‘Hmm.’ I inspect the robin cutter versus the reindeer. Not feeling all that sure that a baked Rudolph would come out with any legs intact, robins it is. Plus, I like the idea of icing big red breasts. So to speak. ‘What about bread, then? You could build on the rolls we did in class, try something bigger. And with a bit of flavour. Ooh! Beer bread. There are loads of recipes for those, pretty manly I would say.’
‘Thanks, Ellie,’ Joe nudges my shoulder with his own, ‘that is a perfect idea. Mmmm, maybe stout and walnut, something like that. I’d better do my homework – the auditions are in a few weeks. Better buy me a six-pack.’
Without meaning to, I sneak a look at Joe’s stomach, under his tight, thin knit jumper. Six-packs were not a problem here.
‘Maybe you could try some for me, test it out? I could whip up a batch one weekend, get some really good cheese to go with it, crack open—’
‘Santa’s little helpers!’ Hannah scoots over from her bench. ‘My mince pies are in the oven and I am feeling festive. I think we should all go and get a mulled wine after this, who’s in?’
‘Sounds great!’ I trill, wiping the back of my arm across my forehead, floury hands gripping my rolling pin. ‘Just a quick one. School night and all that. We can’t all be ragers like you, Joe. Hey, tell Hannah about your big TV break!’ And with that, I pick up my well-breasted robins and flee to the ovens.
The drink after class was really fun – swapping terrible Christmas present tales (Hannah’s worst: a Chippendales calendar, after she’d told her dad she was gay. He was just testing. Joe’s was one of those electronic hamsters that sang and danced, the ones everyone seemed to go nuts about five years ago. Mine was from my university boyfriend, Ralph. Pink quartz earrings – pure Elizabeth Duke. Nice for someone, just not me. Nice for my Nan, in fact – I’m never above regifting.). But I made my excuses and didn’t stay too late. There are so many stages of Be Nice to Pete left to complete, not to mention Sort Your Head Out, Eleanor.
Saucy underwear shops are just the biggest rip-off merchants going. Worse than those people trying to sell cake pops for a fiver a go. Hello? I know it’s just mushed up cake mixed with frosting, whacked on a lollipop stick. But the string knicker merchants go even further. It’s not just the fact that they are selling you so little nylon for such a huge wad of cash, but it’s the myth they’re peddling. Ladies of the world, and gay dudes: it doesn’t matter whether it’s a pink see-through babydoll, it doesn’t matter if it’s a leather corset with laces up the wazoo, it doesn’t matter if it’s the tightest pair of Calvins ever made (for you gay dudes): all that matters is that it’s really small and comes off after 0.7 seconds. That’s it. I’ve tested this theory on a wide sample of the male population (OK, five, but that’s a espectable magic number) and whethe
r it’s the most expensive French lace thong or my oldest pair of M&S drawers that just happened to get shrunk in the wash, the men in question had exactly the same reaction: get your knickers off. And so I resent that somehow the fashion industry has convinced us that forty pounds is OK for a pair of raunchy pants. It’s really not. I’m just going to go home and hot wash the contents of my underwear drawer.
Sex is probably the most obvious part of Being Nice to Pete but so far I haven’t got round to making a special slutty effort. So tonight, I’ve applied my reddest lipstick on the bus home, tied my hair back, and put my reading glasses on. We’re going to play Naughty Librarian. Hey, I said it was going to be sexy, not original. And I have my smallest pair of pants on, which I know is like a red rag to a horny bull with Pete. I’m jogging up the stairs to our flat and rehearsing the role play. The plan is to accuse him of not returning his copy of the Karma Sutra as soon as I step through the door, and then tell him he’s got to be punished like a very bad bad …
Bee.
There’s Bee, my father-in-law, standing in my kitchen, opening all my cupboards.
‘Hey love! Guess who just popped in to say hello,’ Pete holds the tops of my arms as he hugs me, as if anticipating that inside I’m Hulking out about this unplanned visit and he’s trying to hold on to Eleanor Banner with his bare hands.
And there’s Marie, quick on his heels. Dressed in rainbow colours and flowing linens as ever, a smile on her face that I’d usually call serene in my better moods but right now I would classify as self-satisfied.
I smell an agenda.
‘We just missed you! And it’s been so long since we came into the big bad city.’ Her phrasing reminds me of my Naughty Librarian character and I suppress a shudder, trying not to visualise Marie in stockings, beating Bee on the bottom with a copy of National Geographic.
