crisps!’ Cat called after her. Fen smiled at her. Cat turned her gaze out to the English countryside zipping by outside the train. So different to Colorado, where she had remained in awe of her surroundings. Here, the scale was comfortingly familiar, if a little tame by comparison, the colours darker, damper.
‘Sorry about before,’ Fen said. ‘I’ve been horribly snappish, lately. I hate it and I can’t help it. I’m just so tired. And – well – things at home have been a little strained.’
Cat watched Fen’s gaze drop. She’d been shocked by the physical change in Fen, the wan complexion, the dark eyes, puffiness here and a general lankness there. Objectively, Fen had always been the true beauty of the three of them; her features and complexion adding refinement where Pip was just pretty, where Cat was simply cute. Today, though, Cat noticed a certain pallor now veiling this.
‘Is it Matt?’ Cat broached, though she’d intended to seek details from Pip later.
‘I don’t know, Cat,’ Fen said, a tear clouding one eye, ‘but I think it might be me. My love for my baby is so primal and complete that sometimes I feel like running away so it’s just the two of us.’
‘Don’t do that,’ Cat said and she reached across the melamine for her sister’s wrist, ‘please don’t do that. I’ve just come thousands of miles to be back in my family fold. I want Cosima to get to know her Auntie Cat. And when I am pregnant, I’ll need you within arm’s reach to tell me how to do it all properly.’
Fen smiled. ‘I’ll need bloody long arms to stretch to Clapham from East Finchley,’ she said.
‘Clapham is not, I repeat not, permanent,’ Cat said. ‘You know I’ve always had a thing for Tufnell Park.’
‘It’s good to have you home,’ Fen said, ‘but it’ll be even better to have you on the doorstep.’
Pip returned. ‘Cardboard bread with rubber cheese in between,’ she announced. ‘Don’t anyone tell Django what we’re about to eat.’
Peeping through the window, it is a joy for Django to behold his three precious girls spill out of the taxi. Momentarily, he turns away from the sight and offers a prayer of sincere thanks to all the gods and spirits who have ever interested him at any stage during his life. He can hear their laughter and their excited chatter. Will you look at Cosima – how she has grown in the last month. How naturally Fen has the baby against her. See the sun spin gold through Pip’s hair. And Cat, that can’t be Cat! Cat was the little girl with the jaunty pony-tail. Who is this beautiful woman? And what’s with the red hair!
Django had intended to position himself in the hallway, so that when the girls opened the door he’d be there; his arms flung wide, like a celebrity tenor on an album cover. In the event, he is as excited as they are and he strides out to meet them, booming his welcome. The only member of the family who does not cry is Cosima. She regards the grown-ups with her solemn unblinking eyes, absorbing all the facts and details as if logging the information that when you haven’t seen your family for a long time, you leap about and sob and touch each other’s hair a lot.
‘I’m still stuffed from tea-time!’ Cat whispered to Pip while Django tinkered in the kitchen. ‘Those scones were like cannon balls. Never mind enough to feed an army – enough to sink the navy!’
‘Shh,’ Pip said.
‘Has he been well?’ Cat asked quietly. ‘Hasn’t had flu, or something? It’s just that he looks a little tired to me, a bit peaky, since I last saw him.’
‘I think he’s been fine,’ said Pip. ‘He certainly hasn’t said anything to the contrary. He’s probably been slaving over the stove all week, preparing for our arrival.’ She spied a copy of the Racing Post. ‘Or else he’s put all his money on some old nag and lost the lot.’
Cat walked around the living-room, fingering objects, lingering over framed photos, feeling the heavy brocade of the curtains, running her hands over the worn warm upholstery, filling her nostrils with the scent of home. It was like remaking her acquaintance with the essential elements of her personal history; reminding herself how everything looked and felt and smelt and should be, while at the same time reasserting her own presence in this sacred family space.
The Spread was simmering and sautéing and roasting and steaming. Elements of it were happily marinating, or being chilled, or else ripening at room temperature. All the pots and pans were in use and every utensil had served many a purpose. The various scents emanating from oven and hob joined forces to create an olfactory explosion that, to Django, was as contradictory yet ultimately pleasing as a jazz chord.
The point of cooking and the point of jazz are essentially one and the same, Django thought to himself as he ran a sink of water and half a jar of Bar Keeper’s Friend to soak all the knives. It’s about an element of surprise, of revelation and re-education. Of experimentation. Like when the African pentatonic scale met the European diatonic scale and jazz was born; a sound that was initially bizarre, disconcertingly discordant. It simply required one to open one’s ears and one’s heart to the flattened third and seventh notes and suddenly the aural pleasure of the blue note coursed through one’s veins. Likewise, one’s initial concern that Tabasco and tuna may be odd accompaniments to duck with a celery stuffing, dissipates when one shrugs off preconceptions of convention and allows the tastes to speak for themselves.
‘Not too dissimilar to Kandinsky either,’ Django mused as he left the kitchen in search of his nieces, ‘seemingly an arbitrary cascade of colour and shape yet utterly grounded in structure and purpose. Jazz, Cookery, Abstraction. It’s all art.’
He found them in the living-room and observed them unseen for a nostalgic moment. Just then, the girls could have been any age. The scene was immediately familiar and timeless and the continuity was poignant. ‘By golly,’ Django declared, ‘sing hey for the return of the nit-pickin’ chicks.’
The nit-pickin’ chicks looked up at him. Fen stopped plaiting Pip’s hair, Pip stilled her hands from massaging Cat’s foot, Cat brought her head up from Fen’s lap and ceased tracing patterns on her sister’s legs.
‘Django, you’re not going all sentimental on us are you?’ Pip asked, resuming her massage in a businesslike way. The girls laughed. Privately, they each felt suddenly very sentimental, in an affirming way. It had been years since Django had referred to them as the nit-pickin’ chicks, because it had been such a long time since they’d sat in their huddle with their hands almost absent-mindedly working on each other.
‘Stop fiddling,’ Django said. ‘Let’s eat.’
‘I’ll just check on Cosima,’ Fen said.
‘You were only up there half an hour ago,’ said Cat, ‘and she was quiet then.’
‘You’ll see,’ Fen said, slightly defensively, feeling entitled to her knowing nod, ‘you’ll see.’
‘It transpires that Cat hasn’t just come home because she misses your cooking,’ Pip told Django, slipping her arm around his waist, ‘she’s come home to breed.’
Django took a moment. ‘Wonderful!’ he then said, placing his hand on Cat’s head as if blessing her. ‘Another reason to celebrate. There’s some champagne somewhere. It may well be in the bottom drawer in your room, Pip.’
‘I could look in on Cosima for you while I check,’ Pip suggested to Fen.
‘No,’
