red parrot tulips. I had forgotten she was coming. She took one look at my face. ‘You’d forgotten I was coming.’
‘No. Well, yeah. I’m sorry. I’ve just been having a set-to with Jack.’
‘Do you want me to go away again?’
‘Depends on what’s in the bags.’
‘Sashimi-grade bluefin tuna. Limes, coriander, crème fraîche, some tiny baby peas and broad beans, a tarte au poire from Sally Clarke’s, a nice piece of Roquefort …’
I opened the door wider. ‘Come right inside.’
Mel breezed into the kitchen. Her polished brightness made the dusty shelves and creased newspapers and sticky floor tiles look even dingier than usual. My spirits lifted by several degrees.
‘Hi, Jackson.’
Jack quite liked Mel. ‘Hi,’ he muttered.
‘I’ve come to cook you and your mum some dinner. However, that’s going to be tricky if I can’t hear myself think.’
‘Oh. Right.’ He prodded at the remote and Buffy went from screeching to mouthing like a goldfish.
Mel busily unpacked fish and cheese. ‘Great. How’s school?’
I tried to signal at her but she missed the gesturing.
‘It’s shit,’ Jack said.
‘So no change there, then.’
I thought I caught the faintest twitch of a smile on his face before it went stiff again. ‘No. None.’ He stood up and eased himself out of the room.
Mel started making a lime and coriander butter. I poured us both a drink and told her what had happened. While I talked I cut the ends off the sappy tulip stalks and stood the stems upright in a glass jug. The orange-red petals were frilled with bright pistachio green. The daub of colour in the underlit room reminded me of Lola’s jersey at the cremation.
‘I’m worried. Really worried,’ I concluded. ‘I never get to the root of anything with Jack. He clams up or walks away or shuts himself in his room. I never know what he’s thinking. What must it have been like for him, wandering around with nowhere to go and nothing to do for three days? Did he talk to the old dossers? I wonder how many weirdos tried to come on to him?’
‘Worrying won’t help,’ Mel said.
‘That’s easier said, believe me. You don’t know what it’s like.’
She had been searching a drawer for some implement but now she slammed it shut. ‘Thanks for telling me.’
‘Shit. Christ. Mel, I’m sorry. I’m a thoughtless cow.’ My face and neck throbbed with shamed heat. Mel didn’t talk about it much any more, but her childlessness was still a wound.
‘Where’s your sharp knife? Oh, it’s all right. I only want to trim the fish.’
‘Sorry,’ I murmured again. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
Mel put the knife down. She came round the worktop and wound her arms round me and I rested my head against hers. The touch was comforting.
‘I think he’ll be all right, Sadie. I’ve got no grounds for saying so, but I still think it. Trust me, I’m a City headhunter.’ It was one of the things she often said, to make me smile.
‘I do trust you. In spite of your utterly high-powered, bewilderingly incomprehensible job.’
‘Good. Remember what Lola was like when we first met?’
‘How could I forget?’
‘Right, then.’ She let go of me. ‘Now, do the veg for me, please.’
I did as I was told, dropping the little peas and fingernail-sized beans into the steamer. ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ I suggested.
‘How about me?’
‘Perfect.’
Mel shimmied the length of the worktop, rapping the knife point on jars and pans. ‘I met someone.’
‘No.’ This wasn’t exactly an infrequent occurrence. I already knew that Adrian’s days were numbered.
She stopped dancing and held up her hand. I had been so preoccupied that it was only now I noticed that her face was as bright as a star. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I really have met someone.’
While she told me about this latest one we finished off the cooking, stepping neatly round each other, tasting and discussing and amending, as we had done many times before. These were the evenings I liked best, the companionable times of making unhurried food in a warm kitchen while the light turned to dark outside. I laid the table with blue-and-yellow plates and put the jug of tulips in the middle. I lit a pair of yellow candles and the glow wiped out all the dust and shabby corners, and shone on Mel’s star face and the flowers, and the photograph of the children and me that Lola had taken up to Ted’s hospital bedside.
Mel flipped the tuna off the griddle. ‘It’s ready.’
I went to the foot of the stairs and called Jack. He appeared almost at once, changed out of his school clothes and with wet hair combed flat from the shower. He sidled to his chair and sat down. Immediately he started wolfing down the fish.
‘Are you hungry?’ Mel asked.
‘Yes.’ He glanced quickly at me. ‘Didn’t get anything to eat at lunchtime.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘I should think Mum told you.’
‘Yeah. Here, have some of these baby beans. So, who did you meet? What amazing things did you do that were worth missing school for?’ Mel leaned forward, pushing her coils of hair back from her face so that she could hear better, her eyes and all her attention focused on him. There was no censure, only friendly interest.
‘No one. Nothing,’ Jack muttered.
‘Really? It sounds deadly boring.’
He nodded and went on eating. By the time the pudding came, he even joined briefly in our conversation. He talked slowly, as if he weren’t quite used to the sound of his own voice, but at least he was speaking.
After we finished and he said goodnight, Mel and I opened another bottle of wine.
‘Thanks, Mel.’
‘Tuna was a bit overcooked.’
‘I meant about Jack. Being so nice to him.’
‘I wasn’t nice, I was ordinary.’ This was true. Mel had a gift for being ordinarily warm and inclusive. Tonight it had just seemed more noticeable than ever.
‘You look very happy,’ I said. ‘This Jasper must be good news.’
‘I
