I open up the next box, temporarily halted by the fact that it isn’t filled with clothes. And then I rifle through it, pulling out the laptop Dan gave me, the Kindle from the flight to Bermuda, a whole host of silly things I’ve hoarded from childhood and finally, my jewellery box. Lifting the lid, I discover the sweet pea earrings, jumbled in amongst a pile of cheaper jewellery. Reuniting them with the necklace, I place them carefully in their own section of the jewellery box, and leave the box on top of the chest of drawers. Finally, I pull out a small packet. It has my name written on it, in handwriting I don’t recognise. I open it up and find a message from Clive.
‘I can’t sort out the CDs. Don’t know which are yours and which are Dan’s. He’s told me to send you this for now. Track one. Eat this note as soon as you’ve read it!’
I pull out the CD, a compilation of John Lennon songs, and home in on track one, ‘Woman’. Dan’s favourite song. Immediately, the tears begin to flow.
‘You’re crying over a CD?’ Lucy remarks from the doorway.
‘It’s just dusty in here.’
She laughs: a hard, I’ve-had-enough type of laugh.
‘You see?’ She points at me. ‘This is what men do to us, the bastards.’ Folding her arms, she surveys the semi-organised chaos through semi-focussed eyes. ‘I’m cooking dinner,’ she announces. ‘And then we’re getting off our faces.’
‘But it’s Tuesday.’
‘And? What difference does it make?’
She slams the door behind her, leaving me to stew. I’ve already had enough of post-break-up Lucy. Sober, she’s a nightmare. Drunk, complete hell. Hung-over, a strange mixture of the two. What I need now more than anything else is a serious detox, but judging by the way she’s slurring her words, I’d say she’s already made a pretty good start on the ‘getting off your face’ thing. A quiet evening in with a cup of tea is the last thing on the cards.
She’s sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by bowls and packets, empty tins and reams of onion skin. Right in front of her, a bag of flour seems to have exploded, sending its contents far and wide. On the hob, a pan filled with a strange, gooey mixture sits next to the frying pan. I take a couple of nervous steps forward, fixated on the goo. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but it’s brown and lumpy and I suspect there’s some sort of meat in there. It all smells a little odd. I turn back to Lucy. Wine glass in hand, she’s currently eyeing up an aubergine.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask, tentatively.
‘Cooking.’ She slams down the glass and picks up a knife.
‘Is that what you call it?’
‘That’s what everyone calls it.’ She points the knife at the half-destroyed bag of flour. ‘Ingredients.’ And then at the hob. ‘Heat source. Cooking.’
‘And what do you think you’re cooking?’
‘Moussaka.’
A serious case of trying to run before you can walk. And when it comes to cooking, in Lucy’s case she’s barely at the crawling stage. This is a full-blown disaster in the making, worse than anything I’d expected. Self-pity and anger, swathes of alcohol, hours of ranting. They’ve all been a given. But I’ve never foreseen this new-found obsession with transforming herself into a domestic goddess. She refills her glass, taps her phone and grabs the aubergine.
Gloria Gaynor begins to blare out. ‘I Will Survive’.
‘Do you really think this is wise?’ I shout over the din.
‘I’m working to a recipe,’ she shouts back, waving at an ancient, tatty book that’s half hidden underneath the chaos. ‘What could go wrong?’
Everything. That’s what I’d like to say. But I’m already in fear of my life. In a strange sort of trance, my flatmate begins to slice into the aubergine. And then she begins to sing along with Gloria … in a loud, defiant, totally out of tune voice.
‘When your life falls to pieces, Maya, you’ve got to find a hobby. And my hobby is cooking.’
‘Shit.’
I watch as the aubergine’s hacked and stabbed and sliced. When she’s finished, she pushes back her chair, carries the chopping board over to the hob and sets about flinging the bits into the frying pan, adding industrial quantities of oil along the way. I move over to the window, pull back the net curtain and gaze at the row of terraced houses across the street. I’ve no idea which one’s being rented. I’ve noticed no movement over the last three days, and despite Clive’s reassurances, I’m not entirely sure anyone’s installed there yet.
At last, the song comes to an end and thankfully Lucy’s too preoccupied with frying the hell out of vegetables to select another.
‘What are you looking at?’ she demands.
‘Nothing.’ I drop the curtains and sit down at the rickety table. ‘Couldn’t you find a different hobby?’
Flipping the aubergine slices with a spatula, she shakes her head.
‘What about knitting?’ I ask.
‘What about it?’
‘It’s less dangerous for a start.’
‘Bollocks to knitting.’ She retrieves her glass and swigs back more wine.
‘So,’ I venture. ‘This is moving on, is it?’
‘No.’ She turns up the heat on the pan of brown goo. ‘I think this is me distracting myself from the fact that any human being with a penis is a penis.’
And that confirms it. She’s finally moved out of shock. Bypassing
