I was going to need Mum the next day, but she’d ask why, and I’d tell her, and she’d sympathise, and I’d cry, so I thought I’d better get a bit more work done first. Twenty pizza bases, two cheesecakes and a batch of aioli later, I sat down to put in an online grocery order and dialled her number while I waited for the computer to start up.
‘’Lo?’ she said groggily, answering on the seventh ring.
I looked at my watch and discovered it was quarter to eleven. ‘Mum, I’m so sorry.’
‘Wha’s wrong?’
‘Can you come and help tomorrow at the café?’
‘I – well, yes, I suppose so. Couldn’t you have called earlier?’
‘Sorry. I didn’t realise –’
Mum sighed. ‘What time?’
‘Whenever you can get here. Eight?’
‘Alright. See you then.’ And she put the phone down.
Thus thwarted of cosy maternal sympathy, I ordered the groceries, limped down the hall to the bathroom, washed all over – hair included – with the lone bar of soap overlooked by yesterday’s toiletry thief and fell exhaustedly into bed.
* * *
I regretted the soap in the morning, when I woke with hair like matted hay. I tried for about thirty seconds to brush it out, decided I had neither the time nor the fortitude required to fix it and twisted the whole lot up into a bun.
Bending my attention to Rob’s state of mind as I mixed a batch of scones (a Pretty Delicious secret recipe, because admitting that the lightness and delectability of your scones is due to Edmonds’ Scone Mix does little to enhance your reputation as a baker), I decided he was reasonably cheerful. The wedding must still be on, then; it was just the bridesmaid that was getting the sack.
I was picking salad leaves from the narrow bed below the kitchen deck when Mum’s little car nosed around the corner of the house. I looked at my watch in panic, but it was only half past seven.
‘Morning, love,’ she called as she got out of the car. ‘Isn’t it a glorious day?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted, looking at it for the first time. Still and cloudless – it would be hot, later, but for now the air was still cool and the lawn starred with dew. Two rosellas bickered as they chased one another through a plum tree and the bougainvillea against the north wall of the garage was a blaze of scarlet. ‘Thank you so much for coming.’
‘Where’s Anna?’
‘Not coming in.’
‘Is she sick?’
‘We had a fight last night. And then she and Rob had another one when she got home, so she left.’
‘Left? Left Robin?’
‘I think it’s okay. He was going after her.’
‘Did he find her?’ Mum asked, horrified.
‘I assume he did; I haven’t heard.’
Leading the way up the steps, I put the basket of salad leaves down on the edge of the sink and peered through the oven door at the bread inside. ‘Could you wash those, Mum? Be anal about it; I plated up an earwig yesterday.’
‘I read something just the other day about eating insects. Much more environmentally friendly to farm than red meat or chicken or fish, if you could get past the thought of all those spiky little legs. Can I have an apron?’
I took one out of a drawer and passed it over, and began to make a lemon yoghurt cake. Then chocolate cake, rhubarb shortcake, bacon and egg pie, custard squares . . . Nothing fiddly; this was not the day for lemon meringue pie or choux pastry. The cheesecakes were already done and in the fridge, thank heaven, and there was a slab of emergency brownie in the freezer. There were sandwiches to cut, too; I’d forgotten to cook any meat, but there was still time, and I’d better hard-boil a dozen eggs . . . I flew across the kitchen, dragged two frozen chickens from the depths of the chest freezer, slung them into the microwave and returned to my lemon cake.
‘– in sometime?’ Mum asked.
I looked up blankly. Three eggs, four. What on earth had I done with the grater? ‘Hmm?’
‘You don’t think Anna will be in later?’ she repeated, dunking mesclun leaves into a bowl of water, examining them from all angles and laying them tenderly on the bench beside the sink. If the rate of progress was slower than I’d have liked, at least the bug screening was of an extremely high standard.
‘No, I told Rob not to let her come in.’ I found the grater lurking behind a knife block and began rapidly to zest lemons.
‘Well, it’ll be good for her to have a day off.’
‘Yes, let’s all make sure Anna isn’t overworked,’ I snapped.
‘I’m not saying that you should be overworked either, Aurelia.’
‘Mum, she thinks I’m jealous of her and Rob, and that I’m trying to ruin their relationship because I’ve got some sort of unhealthy fixation with my brother!’
‘Of course she doesn’t!’
‘That’s what she said! And then Rob said she’s got a thing about me, whatever the hell that means.’
‘Oh, sweetie,’ said Mum.
‘I try so hard to keep out of their relationship! I can’t help that she works eighty-hour weeks and doesn’t see Rob as much as she wants to! At least she’s got someone to go home to! At least she gets to leave at the end of the day! Shit!’ This last as, in my agitation, I grated my knuckle.
‘You’re both tired,’ said Mum soothingly.
Tearing a paper towel off the roll, I wrapped it around my bleeding knuckle and crossed the kitchen to rummage in the drawer beneath the microwave for a box of plasters. ‘I know, but –’
‘And she’s a deeply insecure girl, underneath it all. I think she worries that she cares more about Rob than he cares about her.’
‘There’s the dilemma,’ I said. ‘If she was perfectly sure of him, she’d walk all over him just because she could, and then she’d despise him.’
‘I can’t see your brother letting anyone walk all over him.’
‘Exactly. They’re both a little bit selfish; that’s why they’re so good together.’ I found a loose plaster at the bottom of the drawer and tore off the paper wrapping.
Mum smiled and took the plaster off me. ‘Whereas you and I, my darling, are doormats,’ she said, wrapping it around my finger.
‘Which is probably why we’re here and they’re not. What a depressing thought.’ I kissed her cheek and returned to my lemons.
‘That’s surely not a customer yet?’ asked Mum, dipping another salad leaf and shaking it dry.
I looked up as my car passed the kitchen window. ‘No, it’s Jed. He took the mixer away to see if he could fix it.’
‘Ah. I did see his van outside. I wondered if he was lurking in your bedroom.’
I couldn’t think of a properly scathing response to that, so I settled for ‘Oh, Mum’ in disappointed tones as I went out to meet him.
Jed got out of the car and came around to collect the mixer from the front passenger seat. Craig, buckled into the back, looked up briefly, responded to my wave with a small, regal nod and returned his attention to the Matchbox car on his lap.
‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘What’s the verdict?’
He smiled. He had a very nice smile, warm and sudden as sunlight through a chink between clouds. ‘Routine maintenance isn’t really your thing, is it?’
‘Was it awful?’ I asked, smiling back.
‘Yes.’
‘So I killed it?’
‘Nah,’ he said, handing the mixer over. ‘It’ll probably do another twenty years. I just pulled it apart and cleaned it.’
‘Thank you. You’re wonderful.’
‘I know. Everything okay in there?’
I wrinkled my nose, cradling the mixer in both arms. ‘Anna’s not here. Mum’s helping out today. Coffee?’
‘No, you’re busy. One thing – don’t crank that mixer up to full speed too quickly, okay? Just ease into it.’
‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘We’ll bring the car back sometime later.’
‘Please don’t spend too much time on it. If any.’
He nodded, got back behind the wheel and drove away.
‘Why does Jed have your car?’ Mum asked as I lugged the mixer up the steps.
‘He’s going to replace the fanbelt.’
‘What a nice boy he is.’
‘Very nice,’ I said, putting the mixer down in its spot on the bench.
She twinkled at me.
‘Mum, please don’t.’
The twinkle grew to a smile. ‘Why not?
‘He’s leaving.’
She stopped twinkling and became soulful instead, which was worse. ‘If it’s meant to be . . .’
Oh, for Pete’s sake. If you live three hours’ drive apart and your days off never coincide, you’re just not going to get the chance to find out if it was meant to be or not. But it’s unwise to snarl at people you intend to work like slaves for the next nine hours, so I said merely, ‘Could you put a dozen eggs on to boil, and set the timer for fourteen minutes?’
* * *
It wasn’t a good day. Normally I quite enjoy pressure – I know I can cope, so I do – but that day I never quite got things under control. I had to remember the things Anna always dealt with as well as my own jobs, and although there were no major disasters (one pizza incineration, but Mum caught it before it set off the smoke alarm), it was both unenjoyable and exhausting.
By four thirty the only customers were Gail Rogers, real estate agent and fount of local gossip, with a middle-aged couple teetering on the brink of a house.
‘Should I take them some complimentary leftovers?’ Mum whispered.
I hesitated. Anna, who had taken to reading marketing books, said that by discounting food we devalued our skill and hard work. She would be appalled at the thought of giving it away outright. ‘Good idea,’ I said.
Mum arranged a selection of cakes which would otherwise have been destined either for Rob or the scrap bucket on a pale pink plate then carried it across the dining room to their table. ‘Here are a few things to nibble,’ she said. ‘On the house.’
She was received with a chorus of thanks and exclamations. This was a lovely café, and we were so kind; you just didn’t see this sort of hospitality in Auckland . . . Leaving them to enjoy their pleasant, if fictitious, mental picture of wholesome small town life, Mum retreated to the kitchen, where she kicked off her shoes and sat down cross-legged on the window seat to massage her right big toe. ‘I think I’m growing a bunion,’ she said morosely.
‘I think your shoes just weren’t made to fit human feet,’ I said, taking a potato from the bag in the pantry and starting to peel it. ‘They’re way too narrow.’
‘But they’re so pretty,’ she said plaintively.
‘Well, I suppose you’ll have to choose between style and comfort.’
‘You sound just like your father when you talk like that. Come and sit down for a minute, love.’
‘I will. I just have to feed the sourdough starter.’ I diced my potato, threw it into a glass measuring jug, covered it with water and put it in the microwave to cook. Then I sat down beside Mum and rested my head against the wall. ‘I wonder if Anna’s coming in tomorrow.’
‘Surely she will,’ said Mum.
‘Maybe I should text Rob.’
‘Give it a minute. Just sit still.’
‘It’s much harder to start again once you’ve stopped than it is to keep going.’ I heard a truck on the road slow – barely – and turn into the driveway. ‘That’ll be the groceries.’
It was. Ratai had no supermarket, but the big New World in Whangarei delivered twice a week. A brilliant service, although the man who drove the delivery truck had all the charm of a heavy cold. He came up the driveway at about eighty kilometres an hour, stopped in the middle of the car park, got out, heaved a dozen bags of groceries out of the truck and climbed back into the driver’s seat. I just had time to throw myself and the bags off the gravel into the garden before he reversed over the spot where I and the groceries had just been, lurched forwards and vanished in a cloud of dust. At least, I thought, retrieving a pound of butter from underneath a hydrangea, he didn’t waste your time with small talk.
The same could not be said for George the prospective homebuyer, who left his coffee to help me carry the groceries into the kitchen. He then lingered, chatting, while I put them away and fed the sourdough (it was called Fletcher; you develop a certain fondness for anything you feed every day, yeast colonies included).
I was beating strawberry ice-cream cake in a mixer that purred like an expensive sports car and George was leaning against the butcher’s block telling Mum how to cook steak when car tyres scrunched on the gravel outside. I looked up, expecting Jed, but it was Hugh Wheeler from the deli who came up the back steps, a ten-kilogram sack of coffee beans under his arm. ‘Howdy,’ he said.
‘Hugh, you legend,’ I said. Anna was the stock checker – I would have remembered that we needed coffee when the machine stopped, probably midway through tomorrow’s lunch rush. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Hello, Maggie.’
‘Hello, Hugh,’ said Mum, looking flustered. Distracted by fighting with my best friend, working fourteen-hour days and kissing unavailable men with bipolar wives, I hadn’t even thought to ask about Hugh’s barbecue on New Year’s Eve. An oversight, it seemed. ‘Lia, sweetheart, what do you need me to do?’
‘Um,’ I said, ‘peel that pumpkin and cut it into half-inch cubes, please. How are you, Hugh?’
He dropped the coffee beans beside the door and came to peer into the mixer bowl. ‘Oh, can’t complain. What’s that? Marshmallow?’
‘Strawberry ice-cream cake,’ I said, crouching to get a couple of round cake tins from a cupboard. The ones I wanted were at the back, underneath a pile of baking trays and flan dishes, and as I tried to extract them I pulled the whole lot out in a clattering heap. Hugh winced and clapped his hands to his ears.
‘Sorry!’ I said.
‘That’s a terrible thing to do to a man with hearing aids.’
‘Would you like a beer to make up?’ I asked, sliding trays back into the cupboard.
He looked at Mum, who was now, poor woman, being instructed by George on the best way to cut up a pumpkin, and sighed. ‘Another time,’ he said.
‘Darling!’ called Mrs George, crossing the dining room. ‘Time to go!’
She was ignored. ‘You really want a bigger knife for that,’ George told Mum.
Gail the real estate agent smiled at me and set a stack of used crockery down beside the coffee machine. ‘Delicious, as always, Lia,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to have to tear you away, George, but we must go.’
But George wasn’t ready to be torn just yet. ‘Look at this, Cathy,’ he said to his wife, waving a hand at the shelf beneath the butcher’s block where we kept the serving platters. ‘What about this kind of setup under that corner table in the kitchen?’
‘And then where would I put my stools?’
‘In a hole somewhere would be my suggestion – horrible things,’ he told Mum. ‘Scrape on the tiles like fingernails down a damn blackboard.’
‘George, you are not throwing away my Herman Miller stools!’
‘We’ll get rid of that ottoman thing at the same time.’
It seemed that Mrs George recognised this as deliberate provocation, because instead of replying she turned to me and said, ‘That was real old-fashioned home baking. Just delicious.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘You don’t share your recipes, do you?’ she asked.
‘Absolutely. Which one would you like?’
‘That gorgeous lemon cake, if I may. So soft and moist.’
Moist. I hate that word. It even sounds sort of sticky and distasteful, and if you muttered it to yourself in public, people would suspect you of unspecified sexual crimes . . . I gave myself a brisk mental shake. ‘I’ll get the recipe book, and you can take a photo of the page with your phone.’
As I turned to fetch it, Rob and Anna, their approach unnoticed in the general confusion, came up the back porch steps. They were holding hands, unusually for them, and Anna’s body language suggested that Rob was both providing moral support and preventing escape.
Rob met my eye for just a fraction of a second. Just do a bit of smoothing over, the look said, and she’ll be right.
I will, but –
The look sharpened to a glare. But nothing.
‘Hi, guys.’ I attempted a normal, friendly smile, which didn’t feel from the inside as if it had come off very well, picked up a plastic folder of recipes and withdrew towards the counter.
‘Thank you so much,’ said Mrs George.
‘You’re welcome.’ I turned to the right page. ‘It’s one of those brilliant recipes where you throw everything in and stir, and it always works out.’
Both she and Gail bent over the page, cell phone cameras poised.
‘How long d’you want to beat this?’ Hugh asked, hanging over the pink fluff in the mixer bowl.
I looked. ‘It’s done. Could you turn it off?’
He did, and the noise level barely changed.
Anna looked at the mixer, eyebrows raised.
‘Jed fixed it,’ I said.
‘Wow.’ She took the baking paper from its drawer and began to line cake tins.
We’d spoken – civilly, if not with any particular warmth – and I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding.
‘Robin, step away from that shortcake and find me a roasting dish for this pumpkin,’ said Mum.
‘Right,’ said Hugh. ‘I’m off. Rob, if you’ve got a day spare sometime how about knocking me up a couple of raised garden beds at the back of the deli?’
Rob chewed thoughtfully on a fragment of stolen shortcake. ‘I’ve got a solid month of work up in Whangarei,’ he said. ‘If you want it done now you could try Dan Collins.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said Hugh. Dan Collins, although a pleasant chap, had a near-enough-is-good-enough approach to his work that really just isn’t what you want in a builder.
‘Alright. I’ll let you know when I’ve finished this job,’ Rob said.
‘Cinnamon teacake,’ Mrs George was saying as she leafed through the recipe book. ‘My grandmother used to make that . . . my goodness, five hundred grams of butter!’
‘Nothing wrong with butter,’ George said. ‘Wonderful stuff.’
‘Yes, dear, but not with your cholesterol.’
‘Bye, Hugh,’ I called, seeing him retreat towards the door. ‘Thanks so much for the coffee.’
He smiled and raised a hand. Mum became entirely absorbed in piling pumpkin peel onto a plate.
‘We must go, too,’ said Gail firmly.
‘Lovely to meet you all,’ George said. ‘Who knows; we might just be spending a lot more time up in this neck of the woods.’ His voice implied that we had quite a treat in store, should this come to pass.
Eventually Gail prised him loose from Mum’s side and took him away. For about six seconds the resulting quiet was a huge improvement, and then it began to feel less like a welcome relief and more like an uncomfortable silence.
‘The breeze is picking up,’ said Mum, making a gallant attempt to fill it.
‘Maybe we’ll get some rain,’ I said.
‘Not enough to be useful, from the west.’
‘True.’ Having exhausted the weather as a topic I reached up to pull the tie out of my hair, and encountered the bird’s nest from hell. ‘Oh, crap.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Mum asked.
‘Hair’s turned into felt.’
She crossed the floor to inspect it. ‘What have you done to it?’
‘Washed it with soap. Some lowlife stole my shampoo.’ I tugged at the hair tie, with no effect whatsoever.
‘Why don’t you just cut it off?’ said Rob.
‘Because I’d look like one of the Jackson Five.’
‘You’re making it worse. Sit down and let me look at it,’ said Mum, chivvying me towards the window seat. I sat, watching Anna drizzle pumpkin cubes with oil and trying to think of a pleasant, innocuous, ice-breaking remark.
I hadn’t found one, and Mum had pulled quite a large amount of my hair out by the roots, when we heard yet another car turn up the café driveway.
‘Piss off, you tossers, we’re closed,’ said Rob.
‘That’s the attitude you want in a service industry,’ I remarked.
‘It’s Jed and his little boy,’ said Mum, waving as my car passed beneath the big kitchen window. ‘Sit down, Lia, I’ve almost got it. Robin, pass me your pocket knife.’
And thus it was that Jed came up the back steps to see my mother bent over my head like a chimpanzee looking for fleas, cutting something loose with the scissors from a Swiss army knife.
‘That’s not a prawn, is it?’ he said, and Anna laughed, which may or may not have been a good sign.
‘It’s a hair tie,’ I said, as Mum gave a final snip and dropped it into my lap. Suspecting that my look was more Afro from Hell than Textured Beachy Waves, I pulled my hair hastily back into a ponytail.
‘Brush it first!’ Mum protested.
‘Later,’ I said, and smiled at Craig, who was eyeing the strangers warily from behind his father’s leg.
‘Have you got any more pizzas with cheese on?’ he asked me, cutting across the polite greetings of his elders.
‘Craig,’ said Jed repressively.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I like pizza with cheese on,’ Craig said, fixing enormous dark-lashed eyes on my face.
‘Me too.’
‘It’s my favourite food in the whole world.’
‘You can choose a pizza base out of the freezer, if your dad says it’s okay,’ I said, and my chest felt suddenly tight. Reaction, I assumed, to Anna’s annoyance at this casual handing out of merchandise – well, stuff her. I could give people pizza bases if I felt like it, especially people who’d just fixed the mixer.
Jed nodded, and I crossed the kitchen with Craig at my heels to open the big chest freezer. I lifted him up. ‘There, see? In that box.’
‘It hasn’t got cheese on.’
‘No, that’s your job. You put grated cheese on top, then bake it in the oven till it’s all nice and melted and golden on top.’
‘Oh,’ said Craig. He took a frozen pizza base from the cardboard box at the front where they were kept, wriggled to get down and retreated at speed. ‘Cold,’ he said, thrusting it towards his father. ‘You hold it.’
‘Did you say thank you?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Not to me, you turkey – to Lia.’
‘Thank you,’ said Craig offhandedly over his shoulder, in the manner of one who has learnt that it takes less effort to comply with stupid parental requests than to argue the point.
‘Revolting child,’ said Jed.
The tight, apprehensive feeling got worse. Anna was going to leave – Dad was right: what else could you expect from an enterprise that had been started with all the enthusiasm and business nous of a couple of kids playing house? And then somebody’s cell phone rang, and I realised that this latest bloody premonition of impending doom had nothing to do with me.